First Playtest of 'Zombie RV' rules

    Zombies prowling the streets in our play test of the rules, Zombie RV, from Grey Area Games

As I have been gearing up, painting figures for the release of the County Road Z rules, I noticed a post on Lead Adventure Forum about a quick, simple rules set called Zombie RV. Written by David Bezio of Grey Area Games, they are a 10-page rules set downloadable on Wargame Vault. When I read through them, I was very intrigued.

    The rules are available for as little as $1 to download on Wargame Vault

Although the mechanics on County Road Z are simple, these were even simpler. They also seemed easy to modify into a series of ongoing games, with survivors progressing and gaining new skills or experience. The rules author was very receptive to my ideas and sent me an unfinished update with some of the same goals in mind. He gave me a thumbs up to testing out additions to Zombie RV. I aligned what I was coming up with to his work in progress. When I felt it was ready, Jenny and I sat down on a Saturday evening to play test the game with my expansions.

    Our survivors deploy at the edge of the table at left, ready to scavenge for some supplies

We split the four survivors between us. I took a shotgun-armed survivor that I named Mophius because the miniature looks vaguely like Morpheus from The Matrix. I gave him 'Shooter' -- +1 to shoot rolls -- and 'Vigorous', one of my new skills that I created that modifies a roll on the wound table. My second survivor was Woody, one of my newest painted miniatures in a red hoodie and black 'Woody Hayes' hat. In Zombie RV, you get to divide amongst your four survivors a rifle, shotgun, pistol, 3 melee weapons, and a clip of extra ammo. Woody got last pick and ended up armed with a tire iron. I also gave him 'Prepper,' which modifies his chance at scavenging items from resource tokens on the board.

    Mophius has a GREAT idea -- line up all these zombies for a shotgun blast...

Jenny took rifle-armed Coop, a figure from my Bucknuts post-apocalyptic campaign. She also chose his teammate Jackie, a pistol armed woman who would prove to be our deadliest survivor of the four. Jenny chose 'Shooter' for Coop, like I did with Mophius, but also 'Brawler' to give him a +1 in melee if any zombies made it in to contact. She gave Jackie 'Medic' and 'Stealth.' After all that careful thought setting up our survivors with appropriate bonuses to rolls, wouldn't you know it but we often forgot to apply those bonuses when the situation arose! I forgot the +1 on the wound roll chart for Mophius, as you will see, and Jenny did the same for melee when zombies came into contact with Coop. Sigh. I guess we were learning a new system, so it is easier to lose track of things in that situation.

    Guess what I rolled for Mophius? On a roll of "1", you are out of ammunition

Zombie RV uses a 2'x2' board, so I pulled out four of my gray acrylic floor tiles. I placed an asphalt road slightly off-center crossing the board. The zombie "spawn point" is dead center on the table, so I placed the front door of an apartment building next to that. We could rationalize the people in the apartment had all been infected and were piling out to attack our survivors when we pulled up in our van (since I don't have an RV model). There were other apartment buildings along the road to either side of the center one, and a playground and small, stone building behind one of them. Across the road was Silent Slumbers motel and Swingle's Shawarma and Smith's Smoke Shack. The table size is fairly small and compact, so it was hard to fit too many of my 28mm buildings on it.

    Meanwhile, Coop took a position between two vehicle wrecks and successfully shoots one, leading the others to have to circle around the wrecks to get at him

Search tokens are placed in each quadrant of the board, as the rules say "somewhere challenging." So, I placed one in the balcony of the hotel, another on the second floor of an apartment, the third in the small stone building, and the final one in the Smoke Shack. I let Jenny number the board edges and roll for our starting location. We would begin on the road edge in between the Smoke Shack and one of the apartment buildings. The road itself was blocked by numerous wrecked or burnt out vehicles. Our four survivors deployed next to our van that we'd arrived in, and five zombies were placed in the center of the table.

    One zombie shambled over to Mophius while three new zombies spawn from the apartment

And here's where things started to go wrong...ha, ha! So soon, you ask? How? Survivors move first in the game, and Jenny indicated she wanted me to move one of my survivors first. Mophius saw the five zombies group together and decided they were lined up perfectly for a shotgun blast. In Zombie RV, a shotgun shoots a blast in a cone 8" long by 2" wide at its end. He confidently moved to a narrow spot between a wreck and apartment doorway, aimed his shotgun, and "click." If you roll a natural one when shooting in Zombie RV, your survivor is out of ammo. Really? My first shot?? We rationalized no noise from a shot took place, so put only one noise token next to him for moving.

    You can't see Jackie searching the Smoke Shack, but Coop's noise attracts most of the zombies

Jenny laughed at my famed bad dice rolling and then moved Coop up to a "V" between two wrecked vehicles, where there was no gap for the zombies to get at him. He fired at one of the zombies and splattered it. That's how it is supposed to be done! Jackie followed up and was the only character to roll a "6" at the start of her turn to receive a free action the entire game. This enabled her to move to the Smoke Shack, clamber over the counter, and find the medical kit that the previous owner left under the counter. Score -- our first resource token! Not to be outdone in scavenging, Woody slipped behind Mophius and into the apartment -- essentially planning to cut through it on the way to the resource token in the stone building behind.

    Meanwhile, Woody is on the lookout for more supplies, deciding to search behind this door

I felt there was one thing I think needs to be better defined in the game -- especially with my modifications. Should the characters know exactly where each resource token is before the game starts? As the rules are currently written, they do. However, the author is in the process of adding "attributes" to the game. Each survivor will have a statistic between 1 and 3 for Brains, Might, and Quickness. They assign a "1" to one score, "2" to another, and "3" to be their best attribute. Or they can be "gifted" and have "2's" across the board (like Jenny chose for Jackie). 

The author, David Bezio, had asked me to find ways to incorporate these skill checks into the game. My first thought was that survivors have to make a Brains check (roll 1d6 and add your attribute seeking a 6+) to spot the resource token. As the rules are written, that didn't prevent us from heading directly towards them, though. The rules also have players make a search roll once they are adjacent to the resource token. I created the "Prepper" skill for survivors who are better at scavenging resources to receive bonuses.

   Mophius proves unready for melee, too, missing both attacks - now he is swarmed by four zombies!

It seemed odd to have to roll to see it, then roll again to search it. Maybe it would work better to instead mark several potential locations of search tokens in each quadrant. If a character passes their Brains check once in line of sight of where it is located, then it is really there. If they fail, it isn't. If they're having bad luck (like Mophius), and are down to the final potential spot, they can keep trying on each action to spot the resource token as it will really be there. I'm not 100% sure this is how I want to do it or not, so will definitely welcome feedback from the author.

   Coop steps over to get a shot at the line of zombies and "Click!" Out of ammo, too!

After the survivors move, it is the zombie turn to do two actions each as well. The rules have an AI which makes sense for their movement so that you don't need a GM. Zombies in contact with a survivor attack with their actions. If a zombie is in line of sight of a survivor, they move to the one with the most noise tokens. We made a mistake here. Since Mophius had gone "click" rather than shoot, ALL of the zombies should have moved towards Coop, as he had made more noise moving and firing. Instead, we had the three closest to Coop move towards him, while the one closest to Mophius moved into contact with him with both its actions. We then rolled to spawn three new zombies that came stumbling out of the center apartment building.

    With Mophius down and his rifle jammed, Coop splatters the closest zombie and runs back to the van

Yikes - Mophius was in bad shape already. I had chosen the extra ammo for him, but to use it he had to kill the zombie in front of him, and then reload. I rolled a melee attack first and got a "3" -- miss! Next, I rolled a "2". Wow, this survivor's luck was really bad. Things got worse, though. Coop stepped around the wrecked car to get a bead on the conga line of three zombies shambling towards him. He rolled a "1" -- out of ammo, too! Jackie shook her head at the incompetence of the male survivors and rolled two attacks with her pistol. The first one was a "4" forcing the zombie back, while the second roll was a head shot and splattered it. Girl power! Woody exited the apartment building and made it around to the building containing the search token, passing his Brains check to spot it.

    Jackie does the same, splattering her zombie in melee and then sprinting to join Coop at the van

On the zombie turn, the one in contact with Mophius missed...woo-hoo! But all three of the newly spawned zombies moved towards him. Should they have? We may have done that wrong, again. Things were getting worse for my "Shooter"! He had chosen his position well, where only two zombies could get at him at a time. However, he was definitely attracting a crowd and was rolling subpar. The zombies near Jenny moved into contact with both Coop and Jackie. When we rolled for spawning, a "Nasty Zombie" showed up, in addition to three ordinary ones. 

It was now our turn three. Our rolling had better improve soon, or we would no longer be "survivors"! Mophius attacked one of the zombies and killed it. He missed the second one with his next roll. Five rolls, and all except one were a three or below. That won't going to cut it during the zombie apocalypse! Woody successfully searched and found a loaded pistol in the building. Coop did a melee attack on the zombie in contact and forgot to add his +1 for 'Brawler." He missed. On action two, hes splattered it -- still not adding his +1.  Jackie continued to fire at zombies and splatter them. Girl power, indeed!

    Also available for $1 (unless you donate more like I did) is this 4 scenario mini-campaign

Then it was the zombie's turn. The remaining zombie in contact with Mophius missed on its first roll, then hit on the second. When a survivor is hit, there are two steps. First, he can try to tough it out and roll a "6" on 1d6 with a Grit check. Mophius failed, of course. Next, the player rolls on the Survivor Kill Table. Jenny rolled a "6" -- which equals "dead." A "4-5" would have been wounded and knocked down, while a "1-3" is wounded. Wounded survivors get only one action per turn instead of two. Remember the skill Mophius chose, "Vigorous?" The one that gives him a -1 to the die roll on the kill table? No, we didn't remember it either! So, Mophius was dead and would turn into another Nasty Zombie at the end of the turn. Grreeaatt!

The rest of the zombies moved back into contact with Coop and Jackie, while the other ones trampled over Mophius' body to try to cut off Jenny's survivors. Turn Four - time to get the heck out of here! Coop splattered the zombie in front of him and then bolted towards the van. Jackie did the same with the one who'd climbed into the Smoke Shack with her. She also bolted off table. Hearing all of the shouting going on and no more gunfire, Woody crept off table to, clutching his new pistol and hoping to get back to the van before his friends took off!

    Mophius in the center, back in his happier days when he was alive...ha, ha!

Well, our first game of Zombie RV was over. We had made a mess of it with our dice rolls, for sure! Technically, this would be considered a "Failed Mission" under the ideas I'd scribbled down before the game. We'd lost one of our survivors, the shotgun and extra ammo he was carrying, but had gained a pistol. Will we continue the saga of the "And then there were three..."? We shall see. I will be curious to see how the author responds. My modifications, which I was worried might make the survivors too tough, obviously did nothing of the sort. Perhaps there are more things we did wrong? It was fun to get the zombies and survivors out on the table, though. Zombie RV plays very quickly. It is available for download on Wargame Vault. David asks for a $1 minimum price, but I gave him $5 for it, knowing how rules writing isn't easy. There's also a follow up, four part scenario campaign called, "A Place to Chillax." Pick them both up and see what you think!

Miniature Painting & Purchasing Tally for 2024

• Miniatures acquired in 2024: 64
• Miniatures painted in 2024: 90