Once again my crew finds themselves in the hazardous southern reaches of the zona.
Using my homebrew One Page Zona plugin I played a series (5) of connected games on a single large map (slightly less than 6x4'). I find the setting and ruleset very good for such interconnected games; combining a mediocrum of GMing and short/snappy games that play out easily and quickly.
[An industrial warehouse compound, wide forest, and a small military outpost were the main features of the board.]
The stories were more about hitting objective points and getting from point A to point B rather than accumulating loots. There were also no 'restocking' from the shop between missions, with the protagonists moving immediately from scenario to scenario. That said, I did add some GM deus ex to taste when setting up the next scenario.
Game 1 [2024-03-31] [Threat Level 2]
The crew started loaded up in the APC, and consisted of three veteran class STALKERS (and the 4th driving the APC). The mission was to get from the road (centre-side of the board) to the small military outpost at the far-right corner of the board.
[5 optional objectives, and the compulsory objective at marker 6.]
This was pretty much a warm up mission, one of the STALKERS was knocked out, but ended up rolling off two wounds successfully in the post-game clean up.
[The anomaly spawning off the objective was a spot of luck, otherwise a rather dangerous anomaly clearance would be required.]
Notable was rolling up 3 anomalies on 4 of the objectives triggered, which was kinda harsh... including the final objective at the miliary outpost. The final objective anomaly did spawn just far enough away from the objective for the objective to be searched/activated without having the anomaly trigger.
Game 2 [2024-04-01] [TL2]
From the military outpost the crew had to trek on foot over to the industrial warehouse. The 4th STALKER jumped out of the APC to join the crew proper.
[Again, 5 optional hotspots and compulsory at marker 6.]
[Immediately rolled up another anomaly as well as some rodents.]
[Another anomaly on the mission objective, and it spawned right on it. Some dogs were also disturbed from the debris.]
[Luckily cleared the anomaly and achieved the mission. The crew had arrived, but they were not safe yet...]
There wasn't a lot to report on this mission, they basically ran most of the way and avoided hotspots, arriving and clearing the target objective by turn 7, where I called the game.
Observation
During all mission I ended up setting a (soft) turn limit of 12 turns. This seemed to be enough time to accomplish the tasks and/or explore a bit.
In regular OPR you have two sides colliding in the middle which means you only really need to traverse half the board to achieve a game. On these exploratory mission you frequently need to traverse the entire board width, so my logic is that you need at least twice the turns to play a worthwhile game.
I'm still trying to come up with a quotable formula for the rulebook, such as "6 turns per 3x3' of playable area", but the wording is still eluding me.
Game 3 [2024-04-01] [TL2]
Next the crew had to clear all hotspots (6) within the warehouse compound. Managed to achieve this on the final turn with I think 2 units still to activate, so it was busy.
Probably one of the more intense fighting scenarios that played out, given compact area and tighter mission objectives.
[Bandits were hiding within the warehouse.]
Each unit got a medkit, as they (narratively) found a stash on the warehouse docks (a bit of narrative GMing).
[
Lots of soldiers in the compound as well (2 of 6 hotspots had them).]
A Little Technique...
I technique I used a couple of times involved a) setting one or two units on overwatch, b) manually running one guy up to trigger the objective by proximity (within 3" radius). This meant I wasn't wasting unit activations with failed bolt throw (happens far too often).
With i.e. 2 units waiting to dispose of spawned critters with overwatch, plus the triggering unit still being allowed to shoot after triggering the objective, there was generally enough firepower on target to avoid the forward unit getting slaughtered immediately.
Game 4 [2024-04-02] [TL2]
With the compound clear the crew had to defend it against a bunch of hostiles drawn to the sounds of conflict from the forest. I set 6 hotspots on the board and triggered d3 of them per turn. The hostiles then rushed the compound. The hotspots could only spawn twice before they became depleted, but the critters would still generate from the remaining points. This varied the approach distance and angle.
[After clearing the compound the crew was over near the shipping containers when the hostiles started approaching the compound.]
This was quite a tense scenario with the dense forest providing cover for a lot of the paths taken by spawned critters, i.e. they sometimes emerged at the compound with little time to deal with them at range. Was fun.
The crew survived until turn 11 where I called it, as no more hostiles could reach the compound during the final turn.
[One STALKER climbed up onto the admin building to get an overwatch position, the others defended the gates (though the critters could climb over the gates). The STALKER on the roof wasn't safe from attack with mutants bounding up to attack him later in the game.]
Game 5 [2024-04-02] [TL2]
Having defended their position the next goal was the get back to the APC, and clear a path for it to drive through the forest back to the warehouse (trees had fallen across the original track from the entry point to the miliary base).
I set 3 hotspots where the crew had to set explosives, then they had to get into the APC. The other 3 hotspots would generate additional hostiles at random.
All crew were safely within the APC by the end of turn 10.
Conclusion
And at that point I called the campaign complete - in part cos I couldn't readily think of a mission to follow up that I hadn't already done. It seemed like a reasonable ending point.
I can always set up a different map if I feel like more games, but this one felt spent.
On all missions I had 6 objective points which were either objectives or random trigger points. These were controlled 'narratively' to an extent (i.e. not based on written/official rules or scenarios), but this worked quite well given the variety of overarching mission goals. I think if you had two players you could easily have one controlling their STALKER crew and the other GMing the story and hostiles. It's a definite (and refreshing) change from standard meet-in-the-middle-and-bash-away mindset.
The STALKERS didn't feel overwhelming - on most games most of them accumulated at least a couple of wounds, but by selecting appropriate actions and positions they keep the critters at bay. From start to end they just had the basic load out (well, 'assault rifle basic') with no bonus tricks or gear added along the way. They were evidently powerful enough to run this type of middle level conflict successfully.
The lack of gearing up between missions was only really a problem when it came to getting bonuses for checking anomalies. With the Veterans 3+ Quality test and Threat Level 2, thus requiring a 5+ to check the anomaly, this was always a dangerous undertaking and several times the STALKERS took hazardous hits. Veteran class stalkers only have Defence 5+ rolls so they're going to be taking hits and accumulating wounds if you put them in harms way. In generally it was a better option to leave anomalies alone except where they were unavoidable, such as when they spawned right on top of mandatory mission objectives.
There was a good mix of critters generated - the only thing that wasn't rolled up at least once was the large mutant (phew, I was not disappointed). Lots of mutants, soldiers, and rodents in this sector of the zona.
And that was the campaign in a nutshell. A bit of fun.
Until next time...
