Yesterday, our small-town con Kattcon drew to a close. The theme of the entire convention was post-apocalyptic, so our long-planned Escape from K-Town zombie survival game was a good fit and we ended up being the flagship game of the con.

First, the poster, the large glossy print of which was one of the four prizes divided between the winning players. The other three were The Walking Dead trade paperback, The Zombie Survival Guide and, the jewel in the crown; a complete set of Mayhem City PDFs.


Seven teams chose four characters out of six (Cheerleader, Quarterback, Sheriff, Hobo, Cowgirl or Nurse) and attempted to make their way from the K-Town Mall in the southwest of the map to the boat in the northeast.


The crux being that they had 15 minutes = 30 turns to do it, because the boat would only wait for so long, since the owner was leaving to escape the nuclear blast that the government had decided was the only way to deal with the zombie menace.

As you can see below, the character sheets slotted into four of the buildings, allowing for keeping track of action points, health and items and for rolling dice without disturbing the delicate eco system of zombies at street level. The sky scraper in the middle also had a suitable die-throwing terrace (which could theoretically have come into play, but never did all weekend as no one found that particular shortcut).




Here's the view down the railroad tracks. The bridges are placed a little wonkily because we tended to lift them for moves and combat underneath and then out them back once the players had passed that point.


Shaky camera phone photo showing player roof tops without character sheets.


Our heroes wade into the throng. Of the seven teams, only two made it to the boat with all four players alive. The winning team got their characters there with three moves to spare, the second-place crew with just one round left.


Kitbashed scale-appropriate subway cars block the way.


What might lurk in the subway? Maybe a shortcut? Maybe zombies? Or both?


Kitbashed street basket court tile. Zombies playing a game of pick up heads basket ball.


Third place went to the team that got one guy out as the others were being swamped in the southeast corner (just out of view to the left here), when they decided to try to start the dump truck parked there. That didn't work and it slowed them down enough for the dogs to catch up to and corner them. Bye bye.


The system was our own, based around the idea that zombies attack in groups, so you roll 1D6 for how many zombies are around a character, and that's the hit roll. Meaning that one zombie isn't that big a deal, but once you're surrounded by six or more, it's a guaranteed wound. And seeing as you have all of two health points...that's something you want to avoid.

But the zombies are fairly slow and move two squares per turn, whereas most our heroes can go up to six squares. If you didn't have to get through them within a time limit, it would be a piece of cake. Then again, they don't activate until you get too close to them or kill one of them (at which point a roll is made to see how many zombies in the vicintiy wake up). You can pull them out and shoot them away from larger groups of zombies - but again, that takes time.

Then there's the dogs. Positioned behind the sky scraper, they react - unlike the zombies at the beginning - as soon as even one of them gets line of sight. They move four, count double for to hit rolls and wake up any zombie they run past. It was a brilliantly nasty surprise for each team as they thought they were almost home free.

The best part of all was that the team that won was the one that wanted the Mayhem City PDFs in the worst way. They're convention sellers and arrangers, running Clix and other miniatures games, so I think that they will be great advertising for WWG, much more so than any of the other teams would have been.

Anyways, it was great fun, everybody loved it and adored the terrain (of course) and it wouldn't have happened without WWG, because I saw the Mayhem City PDFs, knew I had to build a town and then I just had to come up with an appropriate game.

Thanks, WWG, for one hell of a great weekend.

Looks awesome! Love it. How did the mechanics work? Roll a D6 for EACH zombie in contact or roll a D6 to see how MANY zombies were in contact? Didn't quite understand that.

I'll try to summarize it a bit more clearly:

Heroes have three Action Points. One AP = move three squares/one attack/search through one door or object. You can never do more than two of the same kind of action per round (unless your character has a special ability). If you use all three AP, you are vulnerable and zombies ignore armor when attacking.

Heroes have two Health Points and armor basically works like an extra HP and is removed if the zombies score a hit on it. As noted above, it is ignored if you are vulnerable.

Our heroes roll 1D8 to attack and have to hit 6+ for ranged weapons and 4+ for close quarters melee. Ammo works like in the game Zombies!!!, where you spend it to make your shot better. This simulates the fact that if you miss a shambling zombie, you can certainly keep firing until you hit as long as you have ammo to waste. Even without ammo markers you can still attack with your ranged weapon, you just cannot add to the roll.

If you have a ranged weapon equipped and are forced into melee combat, you still have to roll 6+ (for the awkwardness of fighting them off with a range weapon), but cannot use ammo to make the roll better. 1 is an automatic miss. Any hit zombie dies.

Different weapons have different ranges (1-6) and a number for how many zombies they can attack per turn. For instance, the rifle and pistol both get one, the baseball bat and shotgun two, and the chainsaw gets three, provided the player spends one of the six gasoline counters she has. Otherwise, it's just a cudgel and can hit one zombie. You roll once for each zombie attacked.

You can search all doors and any objects on the playing field once per player. Some objects have predetermined items in them, others simply allow you to draw a card which can give you armor, ammo or other items. Some items (paint can, toy gun, radio) have no predetermined function, but if the players can come up with something fun and reasonable to do with the item, they get a target number to try it. Some may not seem to have a predetermined function (bottles), but can be combined with other things (plus gas can = molotov cocktail). Some are part of a planned short cut (bolt cutters).

Cards can also cause events such as triggering a loud noise (activating all zombies within four squares), a zombie attack, a survivor attack (when the player character dies and the player has to pick one of the two characters discarded at start as a replacement), radio contact with the boat (giving you two turns extra), etc.

Zombies activate when a player hits an adjacent square. However, when players end their turn in a group, the "detection radius" grows for one step per player in that group (not counting diagonals) up to a maximum of three. Zombies can also activate neighboring zombies when shot. When a zombie drops, you roll 1D4 and activate according to the pretty simple table below.



We used glow-in-the-dark zombies to show which ones were activated, so there was never any doubt there, otherwise, it's easy to lose track with so many on the board.

Zombies move two steps per turn as straight for the nearest player as possible and at the end of the zombie move, you just count how many zombies are in adjacent squares to the player and if you roll UNDER that number on 1D6, the player takes 1 hit (armor or health as appropriate). So, only one roll for each player during the Zombie Master's turn.

So a lone zombie can theoretically hit two people if he stands between them and the GM rolls 1 twice. It may seem a bit counterintuitive that the to-hit rolls are higher for the players and lower for the zombies, but I like the fact that a high roll is ALWAYS good for the players.

Zombies also have attacks of opportunity (this was a late addition as we in final playtesting found out that you could basically run through the field and get quite far). If a player runs past zombies during his move, you simply add up how many and make the same roll as above, but you do it right as the move ends, not on the Zombie/GMs turn.

Zombie dogs activate on line of sight, are worth two when calculating the zombie attack die roll and wake up any zombie they run past as they go for the players. That can make for quite a crowd.

That's basically it. It's actually very simple and even inexperienced players picked it up fast. But it still lead to some really interesting tactical dynamics, not least when the cop is in play, since has a flashlight that he can use to blind/distract one zombie per turn (for one AP) and move it two steps, making for some minor crowd control.

One more pic. Here's yours truly, bekilted for the occasion, setting up after the winning team cleared parts of the board.

Wow! Sounds like a great idea for a game. You should do a full write-up with maps and items and whatnot. Would love to play this myself!

Also, to show which zombies are active, you could also just have all zombies on their backs/fronts (you know, feeding or something) until active, and THEN they stand up. For those that don't have 2 different types of zombies to use.

Thanks, Kane. I'm incredibly proud of and happy about the favorable reception we got and how well it all played, because the final rules were slotted into place Friday morning as I desperately made character sheets and item cards after three hours of sleep (having spent most of the night building character houses and props).

We had one offer at the con to enter into discussions about publishing the game, so one never know what might happen... Personally, I'd love to see it as a Mayhem City Zombie add-on if the WWG guys would have it (and if it doesn't collide with any other plans they might have). Then you could just have different standees for inactive and active zombies - or paper standees for inactives and reuse actual minis for actives, or something like that.

The one thing I didn't have a chance to make was a Clock of Death. I wanted an actual cardboard clock where you would move the minute arm closer to boat departure time, but I just didn't have time to make it.

Honestly, I would not be surprised to see this published in some way in the next year. This really seems great. WWG would do well to pick this up. *hint, hint*

Love the clock idea. That would give it that much more visual flare.

Teaflax, that is just the dog's gonads! This is exactly the reason I'm so into Mayhem City - to run a zombie apocalypse game. I just love what you've done. Also, congratulations on the rules. Fast, simple and easy to learn - just what you want for a demo game.

I salute you sir, on a job well done!

Thanks, vampifan.

A lot of credit must go to my friend Alexander who is a rules tweaker extraordinaire. He took my basic concept and added just enough brains to make it go from okay idea to actual great game.

Very cool. I like the layout, the game, and the turnament. Great work.

Seems like a nice/quick set of rules--how do items work/what special abilites do the characters have?

Great report, pics and all. Most impressive of all - even over the fully furnished tabletop is that you got your system up and running then played!


Like mentioned above it would be silly of WWG to pass up on a simple ruleset that could be bundled into a great Print&Play game. Esp. if some custom building were done for it. The other plus is Paul's set that is looming behind the closed doors - this ruleset would just rock his release. Couple the rules with some standees from either or both Alberto Silva & Matthew Cuenca this would a both a great game in itself and a fantastic showcase of the Mayhem line.

Oh great kilt by the way - standard fair for you or just for the event?

Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

Looks like a lot of fun.

Did the folks in the bus manage to roll over a few zombies? Large vehicles are a lot of fun for zombie squashing. Last time I ran a zombie-esque game (All Flesh Must Be Eaten - also with World Works terrain) the team used a subway train in an inventive, but ultimately suicidal fashion. Upon finding out that the Mother was using a disused subway car on a hidden siding they used another subway car to smash into it. They killed it, but the surviving zombies killed them. Two weren't in good shape following the crash, for that matter.

The Auld Grump

Thanks again for all the kind words. Now to answer some questions;

No, sadly, I don't wear a kilt every day. I own only one, so I only get it out for special occasions. I'm planning on getting a few more eventually, though. Living in a small town I kind of dread being pegged as "the guy in the kilt", but I guess I can live with that, because I really do love wearing one.

There are no rules for cars (as yet), we just threw in "car keys" as a card to be a red herring, and it worked. Mwahahaha.

The cards had extra weapons, ammo, first aid kits, armor (all characters started without armor) and a few events, like a zombie attack, survivor attack (explained above), radio contact with boat (to gain you two extra moves) plus various items such as a fire extinguisher (which will incapacitate up to six zombies for five turns - three uses),or a booby trap (one mail box and one car blew up). You can also find an ally if one of your characters has died. In fact, the guy who was the sole survivor of the third-place team started as the Drifter, died and then came back as the Quarterback.

As you can see on the Cheerleader card below there is one carry slot, one armor slot and two hand/weapon slots. Two-handed weapons are placed across both hands. Ammo, HP and AP fields are where you keep your gem markers. Items go to the carry slot and it costs one AP to switch.



Originally, we were going to buy some hero figures online, but when I ran across Last Night on Earth - a pretty nifty zombie board game - we decided to use their miniatures, because they were really nice, if unpaintable plastic.

So, the images for our player cards are taken from theirs, and if we ever make this a professional release, we will of course change not only them, but also some of the characters back to the ones we had in mind originally.

But for last weekend, this is what we had:

Sheriff
Starts with: Pistol + 10 ammo & flashlight

Gun nut: gets plus one range and to hit on all guns and rifles
Blind: can use his flashlight to distract one zombie and move it two steps per turn for one AP

Cheerleader
Starts with: pistol + 10 ammo & Axe

Raided Daddy's Gun Locker: Gets 50% extra ammo
Desperate: Can use both gun and axe at close quarters

Quarterback
Starts with: baseball bat

Fast: can move 4 steps per AP
Takedown tackle: Gets plus one to roll and can attack one extra zombie if melee attack comes after a move. (this gives the baseball bat 3 attacks for 3+ - not bad)

Cowgirl
Starts with: chainsaw + 6 gasoline

Chainsaw
Can use chainsaw to attack 3 zombies in one attack for cost of 1 AP and 1 gasoline. If there is no gasoline, the chainsaw can still be used as a cudgel.
Long distance runner: can use all 3 AP to move

Drifter
Starts with: axe & cleaver

Street Wise
Can discard and draw again in searches once per turn for cost of 1 AP. If the draw is an event card, it can be avoided for 1 AP, but no new card is drawn.
Wild Swing
Can use two close combat weapons simultaneously. Zombies attacked do not have to be in adjacent squares

Nurse
Starts with: Rifle + 6 ammo, 5 first aid kits

Heal
Can use First Aid Kit to heal 1 health point for cost of 2 AP. Needs one other player in adjacent square to spend one AP in order to heal self.

Unafraid
Can repel one adjacent zombie (moved one step back) during zombie attack phase if she has AP left. No vulnerability penalty caused if AP drops to 0. (We judged that this last power can also be used during the hero phase, allowing her to repel a zombie and then fire her rifle without the close quarters penalty - AP penalty as per normal, however)

One of the improvisations I liked was that one of the three shortcuts is through the subway, and we had judged that it would cost three turns without the flashlight-wielding cop, two with. One team had found a can of paint and a previous judging for molotov cocktails that said "everyone has a lighter", so they poured out the paint in the tunnel and set it on fire to light it up and reduce the time to one turn.

Generally, we tried to give bonuses for inventiveness as long as it wasn't plain stupid, but we had decided from day one that no cars would roll, whatever the teams tried.