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Sunday, November 05, 2006

2006 Halloween Horror Game

Horror

Each year, around Halloween, I host a miniatures game with a Halloween theme.

This year, I created a scenario that centered around the invasion of a small Victorian era European town in the Kingdom of Zenda by a multitude of Halloween horrors.

Each of the players was given a squad of monster hunters who had come to the town on a variety of pretexes. The groups were the Wolfen Jager, who had followed a deadly pack of wolves from a nearby village; The Vatican Hit Squad, who were supposed to kill vampires, and investigate and exorcise the town graveyard; The Witch Hunters, who were pursuing a witch who had turned a neighboring burgomaster into a toad; The Zendarian Strike Team, sent by the King to investigate the strange goings on of a certain Dr. Frankenstein; and a team of British agents, who were sent to recover the kidnapped Queen Victoria.

Each of the teams had special powers. The British agents, for example, were accompanied by the Sikh Suicide Squad, who were equipped with dynamite body harnesses.

I played all the monsters.

To play, we used the Rippers rules, which are a miniatures skirmish subset of the Savage Worlds RPG. One change I made, though, was to make the game an Igo-Ugo affair. The rules worked pretty well, and were easy enough to allow each player to handle ten figures with ease.

Each turn began with a “Monster Generation Phase,” in which I generated random monsters for each of the four sectors of the board: the Town, The Woods, the Farmlands, and the Ruins. The monsters were place in position, and then the players took their turn. After that, the monsters moved.

Each of the major monster types was linked to a particular location, and to a “boss” monster. The vampires and other undead, for example, were linked to the graveyard (naturally enough), and their “boss” was Count Dracula himself. The farm monsters (scarecrows, pumpkinheads, headless horsemen, rat swarms and vorpal bunnies, etc.) came from a pumpkin patch, and was guarded by The Great Pumpkin. The ruins were the home of Dr. Frankenstein and the mad scientist monsters. The woodcutter’s cottage generated forest monsters such as werewolves.

Each of these areas would continue to generate monsters until the home location was visited and the “boss” defeated. The players, of course were not told about this—they had to discover it on their own.

Points were awarded during the game to each player for the monsters his team killed. Points were subtracted for every team member lost.

There also were random “treasures” for the players to find. Examing the boxes scattered about the table would reveal any of a number of different useful items, such as wolfsbane, holy water, and even the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

One of the things that made the game so much fun was that it was non-competitive. Although they were competing for points, they weren’t going after each other. In fact, much of the game required cooperation.  The different types of monsters required different teams to deal with them. The Zendarians, for example, could slaughter Frankenstein’s constructs with their firepower (and they did), but were pretty much helpless against Vampires. When they came under Vampire attack, they holed up in a house and used their rifles to slow the Vampires down until the Vatican Hit Squad with its crossbowmen could come to the rescue.

The Vatican Squad, on the other hand, simply didn’t have the punch to bring down a couple of Frankenstein’s monsters at the same time.

The figures I used came from a variety of sources and are the result of a couple of decades of collecting. There are, however, a large number of West Wind’s figures in there. The buildings were all made by me from either foamcore or plaster. The cobblestone and brick roads are from various Christmas village sets.

I’ve got photos of the game here.

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