[Zombie Cinema] Great Balls of Fire
Jaakko Koivula:
Got Zombie Cinema (special handcraft edition) from Eero at the TraCon and now finally got to actually play it. We had 3 players: I and Petteri had never played the game before. Sami had played rather many games, but all with some other version of Zombie Cinema, that was published at the Roolipelaaja-magazine. Abridged, shortened or preliminary or something. We went through the rules in the beginning and there were some things that were quite different from what Sami had played. The zombies moved on the board differently, etc.
We decided, that the milieu would be a lonely country house in Finland, near the city of Oulu. Maalismaa, or some other silly little county, where the bus stops twice a week, maybe.
My character: Matti Ijäs: an old hobo-looking unkempt guy, 60-70 years old. Just escaped from prison. Known as the Knifeman of Porvoo.
Sami: Pasi Posio: an anarchistic and a black metallist. Young guy.
Petteri: Timo Ruoho: a city official, anxiously seeking for his relatives, who seem to be missing
I think the game took pretty exactly the promised 30 minutes per player and that we really nailed together a great b-zombie-flick. The story held together and kept moving constantly and at a hectic pace. No respites, just pure and escalating panic. We didn't actually get any draws in the conflicts, but the turns moved so quickly, that the zombies got to second to last space on the board by the end of the game. What happened:
Timo Ruoho arrived to search for his gran at her country house. Instead he found a heab-banging metallist and a scary geezer who threatened to stab everyone in the eye with a sharpened spoon. In the beginning, the characters happen to see a bit of news on the television: there's been a second accident at the Chernobyl power plant. Animals have suddenly disappeared and a great floating ball of light has been spotted hovering above the plant. Then the weird shit starts. Matti finds a bunch of frozen bats in the fridge. Dead bats. Lots of them. Pasi actually keeps bats as pets and later reveals, that they just suddenly started to die earlier. So he put them in the fridge, so he could send them later to be examined or something. Later, Timo realizes, that the bats actually aren't dead. He tossed them into the bin, but it seems they sort of thawed out and are now crawling all around the kitchen, hissing and snapping at people.
At the point when black deformed tentacly-flesh-bludgeon-thingies come crashing through the cellar door, everyone decides that the attic is the best place to be. The characters are pretty much assaulted from all sides at this point: there's some monster in the cellar, the bats are bloody everywhere and there's some thing up on the roof, scratching. Pasi the Batman tries to escape through the attic-window, but is stopped by Timo. In the ensuing struggle, Pasi stumbles and falls through the window anyways, to his death. Also, there's a floating ball of light, just above the country house.
At this point, the zombies break in. Timo hears the voice of his gran, calling for him to open the door. Behind the door is the grandmother, all zombified, putrefied and with tentacles. Matti and Timo escape to the roof and stumble into yet another zombie. The zombie tackles them both and all three go tumbling down the roof, crashing through at one point. Luckily the zombie breaks the fall of everyone, but at this point the zombies have evolved a new way to spread. Timo was bitten earlier and now realizes, that his whole arm is going evil. Black and infected, etc. Matti and Timo remember the scooter. They try to exit the house, but another zombie pops out from a wardrobe. Timo panics, but Matti slaps him, kicks him out of the door and shouts: "Come on, get a move on young one. I'll handle this guy!"
Timo lands on his face outside and looks back, seeing just a black doorway into the house, too dark to see what's happening inside:
Matti: "YYyyaaaaarrrghlgl" *dead*
Timo turns around and bumps into Pasi, lying there all broken up by the fall. He spots the keys to the scooter on his belt, but unfortunately Pasi is of the living dead now also, and won't give up his keys without a fight. The infected hand of Timo is utterly strong though, and he utterly pulverizes Pasi and manages to get the keys. After a short scooter ride, Pasi bumps into a bunch of special forces army guys, who had crashed their chopper and got zombied. Timo mashes a couple of them, but the hand goes evil on him again and grasps his own throat. Choking yourself isn't a viable option when fighting zombie-SWAT, so the last thing Timo sees, is a bunch of zombies ripping off his legs.
Last scene: A large Gigantti (a large electronics store franchise) hall. Completely deserted, no people anywhere. Just tons of televisions, all showing news from all around the world. There are talks of pandemonia, clips of the floating balls of light all around the globe, and one by one, all the transmission cut off, leaving just static on all the screens.
The game was just brilliant. The mechanics worked beautifully and I think the story actually turned out pretty darn nicely. I told bits of the game to my girlfriend (who doesn't like horror movies) and she said, that she will never play Zombie Cinema ever. There were just so iconic zombie-movie bits in the story. Scenes like the "death scream from the darkness" or "Crap, Im infected! I can't let the other guys notice this." or "Hey, why are you removing all the stuff that I put before the door to.. .. Noooooooooooo!" Pure gold.
Btw. Im still really struggling with writing play reports here. Im just not sure if a detailed report of everything that happened in the game is really called for, or if it interests anyone except us that were present. But how can I hype all the cool bits, if I don't give background to the whole thing? Hopefully this is enough for us players to remember all the tons of cool bits and conflicts in between, that I just coldly left out. We also talked on the mechanics a bit, but I'll let Sami come back to those and follow up then.
Btw. I have to say that I think that Zombeja! Ovella! is written extremely well. It's was curious feeling when I read through the book and realized, that I actually could explain these rules after the first read, play the game instantly and it most propably would work brilliantly. Kudos Eero!
Callan S.:
Hi,
Quote
Timo hears the voice of his gran, calling for him to open the door. Behind the door is the grandmother, all zombified, putrefied and with tentacles. Matti and Timo escape to the roof and stumble into yet another zombie.
Not quite getting this - he didn't know she was a zombie? Why did he go and escape to the roof?
Ron Edwards:
Hello,
I love this game. What cards did you draw for the characters? I can infer a few of them, but I'd like to know the combinations.
Forgive me, but any mention of Nordic black metal instantly brings this to mind. Not to mention that in this, I am disturbed by the possibility that Eero and Jari are among those captured in #3, during their not-misspent-enough youth.
The thawed-out bats were especially cool.
Is Sami the same guy I know, who came to GenCon last year? Or another guy with the same name?
Best, Ron
Jaakko Koivula:
Callan:
The gran was missing. She hadn't been seen during the whole game and Timo's whole point was that he was looking for her. So of course when Timo heard her voice, he (true to horror-film cliches) panicked and opened the door. The attic was our safe haven that the zombies hadn't been able to breach, with just two exits: the door and the window. So when there was a grandmother-zombie at the door, the only alternative was to escape to the roof. Even though we knew that there was something waiting for us there also.
Ron:
I took three character sticks, one of each category, and got: Old/retired, Short-tempered, Finally free. So the old escaped convict sort of jumped right out of those.
Don't unfortunately know what the other people picked. Sami propably can tell what he got. Btw. Sami is Pekoraali in here, don't know if he's been to GenCon.
And yeah, that's exactly what I think about black metal too (Though, I occasionally enjoy the music, but the posturing is just hilarious). Pasi's entrance to the game: Matti and Timo are standing on the yard, when a guy blasts out of the house with satan fingers, going "Wwrryyyeeeaaaaghhhh!!" ..then realizes that there's actually people there and slinks back into the house very quickly.
Christoph Boeckle:
Hello
This thread made me laugh. Especially imagining Ron headbanging at a black metal gig. I share his fears regarding pic #3 of the second link (#3 of the first linkis quite disturbing as well).
Jaari, have you tested the cards? They have these evocative phrases all over them, which I like because it helps think about the character more than just the sticks. But of course, the sticks are much more underground. Eero "Eternal Terror" Tuovinen is a sell-out. Glory to the spirit of garage-produced RPG!
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