Thursday, August 19, 2010

Please allow to introduce myself...

Day One - Introduction

Summer of 2012: The living dead consumed Whiteville and the world as we knew it ceased to exist. In the early days of the outbreak nobody realized what was happening. There were numerous reports of violence and missing persons all across the country. We thought this was just a problem of the big cities suffering from the millennium heat wave, this couldn’t happen in peaceful Whiteville. Yeah, right!

At first there was just a single report of domestic homicide, then ten, hundred, thousand incidents…in the end the whole country was going FUBAR with millions of those creeps shuffling around. You know the story.

Me? I am Oz Whiteface, former office drone and now unshaven, shotgun wielding psycho. I lost contact to my wife and daughter on Day One. There was so much disorder and violence. We weren’t prepared for this kind of…

The cause? What the heck do I know about the cause?! And who does really care?! Some blame it on genetic engineered food, some blame it on the military, there are some weirdos talkin’ about some alien mumbo jumbo from Planet X. Who cares anyway?!


OK, my intention was to do a dramatic intro scenario for my zombie campaign, but this would have left me with more months of planing and preparing instead of just playing the game. The Whiteface Family was ready, so everything I had to prepare was to grab the dice and develop a foolproof plan for Day One.

The Whiteface Family:
Whiteface (Mr. Whiteface) - Rep 3 Star, Lucky
North (Mrs. Whiteface) - Rep 3 Star, Protective Mother
Dotty (Daughter) - small child, see "The Bleens" (ATZ:BDTZ).

Both Stars are just Rep 3, without weapons and with just one attribute. This is going to be hard but realistic. Both will receive their second attribute IF they advance to Rep 4.
Both attributes are non-standard. "Lucky" is taken from Nuts! 2 and "Protective Mother" is from the ATZ:BDTZ scenario The Bleens.

My Plan for Day One:
It's a normal working day when the outbreak of Apocalypse Z is announced. Little Dotty is in the kindergarten, Mrs. Whiteface is teaching in school and Mr. Whiteface is doing Excel Sheets in the office.
I decided that there is a one out of six possibility that Mr. and Mrs. Whiteface may be coordinating their actions by phone, but the telephone network was overstrained.
Mr. Whiteface guessed that Mrs. Whiteface highest priority would be getting little Dotty from the Kindergarten. So his decision was to get his car (1.), buy lots of food in the supermarket (2.) and to drive home (3.).
Mrs. Whiteface was indeed going to fetch Dotty (1.) and drive home (2.).
So far, so good...

 "No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy." - Gen. Moltke


 

5 comments:

  1. Hi, Oliver. I just got here and signed up as one of your followers. Day One of ATZ is a bitch! As you'll know, Vampifan suffered no better against the crowd of scared civilians. When I saw that North was facing six of them I knew she was toast! Tough luck on Mr. Whiteface, though. Beaten up by two louts and he loses his car. Being a Rep:3 Star really sucks but I greatly respect your decision for going down the same route as I took with Vampifan. Believe me, when you do get your Rep increase, it will feel oh so sweet! I'll leave a comment on your scenery in your other post. I wish you the best of luck with your blog. Long may it continue!

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  2. Welcome and thank you for your kind words (including your comment on your own blog).

    Starting a campaign as a Rep 3 was something that I intended to do for more than a year now. Being a Rep 3 without a melee weapon or firearm is evil. I ruled that all Day One locations count as one scenario. Mr. Whiteface can only use his "Lucky" attribte once during Day One. I do already know when this will happen...there is danger ahead!

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  3. Oooh, sounds intriguing! I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next!

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  4. Hmm, I would have posted the next location for Day One today, but I made a dumb mistake while playing Mrs. Whiteface's Home-Location. This mistake may have severe consequences on my story, so I cannot really ignore it.

    But apart from that I am happily gaming! :o)

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  5. I agree, if you don't start as a Rep 3 you don't get the full experience. Remember how many times LTL Dad and Nick died when we started out? I was running out of ideas how to get them back in the games!

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