Post Mortem of a Zombie Attack
Jul. 10th, 2010 04:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinWhile the ACME test did go well, the second encounter we did suffered some design flaws. Part of that comes from the fact that I drew it up again in a hurry after realizing I'd saved over it with one of the other potential encounters I designed. I should have taken another two minutes to get it right, but I was concerned with keeping everybody waking. It seriously didn't take that long to make it in the first place, thanks to the Adventure Tools/Monster builder so I didn't save much time by rushing the second time, and the monster selections ended up being not as good for the set-up.
The basic idea is something I'm happy with: the party is in the middle of a clearing, and every round another group of zombies bursts in from a random direction. There were, all told, 16 minions, a couple of generi-zombies, and a zombie gravedigger, plus the "big bad" at the end: a zombie hulk, which I repurposed as a giant zombie bear when it became clear that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kynn's Spirit Bear was the crowd-pleasing animal sidekick of the night.
The basic design flaw that was there in the original version is that I made the clearing too big. Zombies are slow, unless they happen to be fast zombies, and I didn't have any fast zombies in the mix, before or after the redo. By the time the zombies reached where the party was clumped, the Strikers and the Wizard mostly took care of the minions and whittled down the leader of each group. There was never really the sense of being besieged that I was going for. By the time Zombie Bear was on the scene, the party had expended a number of dailies and encounter powers on the Digger, but they were very full up on healing resources and HP and there was nobody else standing but the minions who came in with ZB. It would have been a total grindfest if we'd continued.
So, if I use this again, here's what to do differently:
1. Smaller arena. The zombies need to be able to engage with characters in the center of it in one turn using a move-and-charge. If the party ends up moving off center (pulling away from a throng), they can end up further away than a single turn's movement, but then they're all the closer to zombies coming from the center of the woods.
2. Give the zombies artillery. They did in the first write-up... not one in every group but enough to make things different. If they had had artillery then the oversized arena would not have been as much of a problem. As it was, the two compounded.
3. More variety. The zombie gravedigger is interesting, but it's only got one encounter power, otherwise it's just a guy with a big stick. Again the original version was better, but not as good as it could be.
4. Less randomness. I was rolling random directions and random numbers of minions out of the total pool each time, but if I did this again I would plan things out to make sure the sense of being besieged from all sides is better conveyed.
5. Bring the big guy out sooner. It was supposed to be a climax, but if it arrives on stage too late it ends up being an anticlimax. And the players assume the special zombie with the fancy suit and and big city learning and dirty-encrusted shovel and ton of HPs is the main threat and spend too much effort neutralizing it, even though it's a one-encounter-trick pony. (Note to self: redesign that thing into a leader. It's got way too much potential for just Guy With Stick.) Really the fight should have been focused on Zombie Bear with the party in the middle, and waves of reinforcements arriving from the sides to demand the party's attention.
It was good as far as a test goes. I wanted a completely nonlinear battlefield to emphasize that "adjacent-near-close-far-extreme" aren't a set of five positions you move between, and it worked for that. It also exposed how much my east-west differentiation problem will affect things and how I can avoid that. But the encounter was not as interesting or challenging as it could have been. There needed to be some fast zombies and some throwing zombies in there, and, as mentioned, there needed to be a smaller arena.
The basic idea is something I'm happy with: the party is in the middle of a clearing, and every round another group of zombies bursts in from a random direction. There were, all told, 16 minions, a couple of generi-zombies, and a zombie gravedigger, plus the "big bad" at the end: a zombie hulk, which I repurposed as a giant zombie bear when it became clear that
kynn's Spirit Bear was the crowd-pleasing animal sidekick of the night. The basic design flaw that was there in the original version is that I made the clearing too big. Zombies are slow, unless they happen to be fast zombies, and I didn't have any fast zombies in the mix, before or after the redo. By the time the zombies reached where the party was clumped, the Strikers and the Wizard mostly took care of the minions and whittled down the leader of each group. There was never really the sense of being besieged that I was going for. By the time Zombie Bear was on the scene, the party had expended a number of dailies and encounter powers on the Digger, but they were very full up on healing resources and HP and there was nobody else standing but the minions who came in with ZB. It would have been a total grindfest if we'd continued.
So, if I use this again, here's what to do differently:
1. Smaller arena. The zombies need to be able to engage with characters in the center of it in one turn using a move-and-charge. If the party ends up moving off center (pulling away from a throng), they can end up further away than a single turn's movement, but then they're all the closer to zombies coming from the center of the woods.
2. Give the zombies artillery. They did in the first write-up... not one in every group but enough to make things different. If they had had artillery then the oversized arena would not have been as much of a problem. As it was, the two compounded.
3. More variety. The zombie gravedigger is interesting, but it's only got one encounter power, otherwise it's just a guy with a big stick. Again the original version was better, but not as good as it could be.
4. Less randomness. I was rolling random directions and random numbers of minions out of the total pool each time, but if I did this again I would plan things out to make sure the sense of being besieged from all sides is better conveyed.
5. Bring the big guy out sooner. It was supposed to be a climax, but if it arrives on stage too late it ends up being an anticlimax. And the players assume the special zombie with the fancy suit and and big city learning and dirty-encrusted shovel and ton of HPs is the main threat and spend too much effort neutralizing it, even though it's a one-encounter-trick pony. (Note to self: redesign that thing into a leader. It's got way too much potential for just Guy With Stick.) Really the fight should have been focused on Zombie Bear with the party in the middle, and waves of reinforcements arriving from the sides to demand the party's attention.
It was good as far as a test goes. I wanted a completely nonlinear battlefield to emphasize that "adjacent-near-close-far-extreme" aren't a set of five positions you move between, and it worked for that. It also exposed how much my east-west differentiation problem will affect things and how I can avoid that. But the encounter was not as interesting or challenging as it could have been. There needed to be some fast zombies and some throwing zombies in there, and, as mentioned, there needed to be a smaller arena.
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on 2010-07-10 02:13 pm (UTC)ZOMBIE BEAR!!!!!
on 2010-07-10 03:45 pm (UTC)Following those guidelines: As a player, I shudder. As a DM, I cackle.
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on 2010-07-10 05:14 pm (UTC)I've watched an arms race as each of the folks who takes a turn DMing spends more and more time making these intricate and beautiful maps. Not only does this put much larger time demands on the DM, but it also constrains them into a fairly railroaded game. As PCs we're less and less able to go off the beaten path or do anything that wasn't planned for as well.
In addition, since the game client shows just about everything the PCs need to know, there's less need for folks to stay engaged and pay attention to everything that's going on. Combine this with the enormous temptation to mess around with other things online while they wait for their turn, and you've got a recipe for some very mediocre game sessions.
All that to say that I'm right there with you. Very excited to see your mapless system is developing well!