Escape the Monster Apocalypse

Sunday was our annual Family Fall Festival - a holiday my son's mom invented when he was born. I don't recall the rationale, but here we are 12 years later and we still celebrate it with friends and family.

Three years ago, I suggested I could run a Halloween themed game for the party. And then again last year. Which meant I had inadvertently started a tradition. To the point that, a few weeks ago I was asked if I was going to run a game for the Festival. 

And so, somewhat last minute, I dug through my supplies and decided that, since the previous Festival games had featured Legos, so would this one. However, unlike previous years, I made use primarily of my existing collection and supplemented by raiding my son's massive tub of Legos to make the buildings for this game (and to provide player characters).

Rather than stop the zombie plague, the players would have to gather parts to repair an escape vehicle (represented by four Jack O' Lanterns around the board), while fending off zombies, skeletons, and boss monsters, and to do it all before the government nuked the town to end the monster apocalypse.

Fun, as they say, was had by all. Although my son was quite sleepy by the end.

For rules, I used One Page Rules Age of Fantasy: Skirmish, with army lists from both Fantasy and Grimdark (the players - because firearms are part of Grimdark). The players were all Hero types, which is unusual for OPR, and of course were essentially seven armies of 1, while the monsters were a much larger, but single, army. 

In play tests, the game lasted near two hours. In the event it was closer to four and as we had gotten a late start due to a delayed dinner, it was near 8pm when we started(so, a midnight finish!).

I had failed to account for the amount of discussion that would take place between the players around tactical choices - choices that I had purposely selected to add interest to the game!

Each player character had a trait that benefited them only, and another trait that benefited the party as a whole - under certain conditions (within 12", only if charging, in cover, that sort of thing). It was coordinating those for max effect that I believe had the greatest impact on total run time.

Next time, I aim for a one hour game.

And next time, will be the annual Christmas game (apparently another tradition I inadvertently started).