What I Should Have Done

There are probably some spoilers ahead—those that visit from the Savage Worlds Forum may want to skip the read if they plan on playing in a Zombie Run Game. You've been warned. 

Another Gaming Session. Another Learning Session for Me.

Saturdays session had a disturbing story behind it, involving a preacher with a twisted perspective on the meaning of the Zombie appocalypse. He saw it as a Ressurection of Judgement. He sees the Zombies as Agents of Judgement against the Sinful world. He also believes that the righteous can't just sit idly by and expect to be left alone (i.e. he has no problems defending against the hordes of dead). One more thing, when his "family" was low on food he decided they must do as the Agents of Judgement. In order to survive they must eat people.

I was nervous about running this session. First off, the story is just plain twisted. Second, we have in our group a character that is a Pistol Packin Preacher; so there was some explosive pottential there. Third, the way the Zombie Run is written it is assumed that characters will do certain things—I've learned that Player Characters are completely unpredictable.

One thing that I thought might happen, is that the characters just decided to not follow the preacher's kids up to the ol' homestead. To prepare for that, the preceding week (at scout camp) I kept trying to read the next portion of the story, but I just couldn't concentrate on it. I'd read it before—but I really need to brush up before the session takes place.

Some very good Roll Play took place when they drove into town and spotted the Deranged children of the Deranged Preacher. At this point they weren't supposed to know how deranged they were, but I have two characters that have beliefs in conspiracy theories—and their paranoia nearly kept them away from the home of "The Family" I let them argue it out.

My Wife's character just wanted to go with them—no pretense of a prejudistic bone present in her gothy body. The Two Paranoids wanted nothing to do with them. The Preacher felt it was his responsibility to set things right after hearing some of the teachings of their father.

When they finally got there, nothing went according to plan. Only one person partook of the drugged food and she only failed one vigor roll—so never lost consciousness. The daughter tried to seduce one of the paranoids, but the other paranoid was watching his back, so the pre-dinner snack that she and her brother had planned never took place—and they managed to heighten the alarms of everyone else. Things escalated ridiculously fast. A grenade went off, and they escaped the Cannibal Zombie Death Cult before any real harm was done to the party.

Then I had nothing—I even told them so. This was the day I got back from Scout Camp so my mind was not completely up to snuff. So my player that is a GM asked if they wanted to try out a Scenario he's writing for a one sheet, and he took over the rest of the night. I even played.

Not ten minutes after everyone left, I realized what I should have done. No, I wasn't up to an on-the-fly encounter like last session. I should have run another Interlude session—two of the players there weren't present at the last interlude.

The good news is, we've run consistently every other week for five sessions now.