Bioflex Betrays! Zombie LARP

Last November I attended one of the UK’s coolest live action zombie events. Zombie LARP: Nightmare took place at the UEA Norwich and was an epic event jam-packed with zombies, genetically modified mutants, lunatics, rubber fire axes and an armoury of Nerf weaponry to satisfy even the most disturbingly enthusiastic gun-bunny. I was a little late signing up to play but was happy to join the ranks of the perma-zombies and excitedly attended the event, with video camera in hand.

Unfortunately for some the adverse weather meant a few attendees had to cancel and the GMs offered player slots to the perma-zombie crew. Anxiously, but excitedly, I accepted.

I’ve done my share of LARP over the years; even running events myself, but that was then. I hadn’t partaken for some time and, quite frankly, Zombie LARP presents an interesting new take on the LARP formula.

Nerf Maverick: Modded and Painted - Nerf BAP

Gone is the tavern/bar and talks around campfires, the hours of chatting (character development), the epic linear and a boss-battle on a Sunday morning. Zombie LARP starts In Media Res…and there it stays.

A quick in-character briefing, a few moments of foreboding paranoia and then…well…to quote Jeff Goldblum. “Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that’s how it always starts. Then later there’s the running and screaming."

Zombie LARP takes place over the course of one night as a series of ‘runs’, each ‘run’ is approximately 15 minutes long with a half-dozen or so players taking part. The layout of the site means they can go wherever they want and the games are fast-paced, intense, action driven and combat heavy. The beauty of the formula is, pretty much everyone who attends gets to play during the night and almost everyone not ‘playing’ is either a zombie, special character or GM so, whichever way the party goes, something grizzly and challenging awaits.

Something that sets Zombie LARP apart from traditional LARP is that dying is, refreshingly, an accepted, if not encouraged, part of the event. Survival is cool, but the game is not about winning; it is about being in the midst of a zombie outbreak and we all know that typically involves having your guts shredded or being eaten alive at some point during the proceedings. The survival rate is low and as they put it ‘Your character's death is often your best chance to write yourself into the many legends and myths of Zombie LARP’. They even have a forum thread entitled ‘So, how did you die?’



The events are very atmospheric. Shadowy figures of the recently deceased shamble in the dim half-light. Claustrophobia reigns. The visceral feel of a sidearm in a sweaty palm does little for your confidence as the moans of the undead fill the corridors and the screams of their victims spread panic through the party. It’s a fun-filled night zomb-gasm of a way to spend a night.



Their current site is well suited to the genre, although they are looking for new venues, the rules are simple to learn and ‘add’ without ‘detracting’ and the attendees are all there for one thing – the joy of zombie apocalypse simulation. The GMs do a fantastic job of putting together a great event and make sure everyone is having fun and is well and truly in the spirit of the event. If you get rule 1, you get the vibe.



Check them out. The website it is well presented, superbly written and laced with a wonderful sense of humour. It’s about zombies, about killing zombies, about being eaten by zombies and about having fun with people who are as geek as you about zombies. Did I mention the zombies?

Live the nightmare. Zombie LARP, we salute you.

Zombie LARP: Evolution runs on the 5^th March 2011

Future Zombie LARP events can be found at Zombie Shop

www.zombielarp.co.uk

Flu-like symptoms and new additions

A week away on business and a bout of flu that left friends and family members ‘in the know’ wondering if they should simply put a bullet in my brain before I started chewing on them were not events that meant a whole lot of hobby done of late.

Microtactix supermarket

Before those two occurrences another building for my All Things Zombie Outbreak City did get completed. The Microtactix supermarket. It was a tricky build due to the inset entrance. It wouldn’t have been a problem if I had worked in card but my decision to use foamcore bit back. The building is very flavoursome and will likely be an obvious survivor destination.

I have another supermarket, this time from TommyGun, underway and look forward to filling them both with plenty of groceries and loot.

I did add a few additional roof access stairs and air conditioning units, to add a little more flavour and some cover for roof-top battles.

Air Con Unit

Before I went away or succumbed to being patient zero I ordered a plethora of new toys to keep the postman busy and give me something to look forward to.

The Ebbles Archive DVD finally arrived. Whoot! Unfortunately a trip to the post-office and an additional payment to Mr Revenue and Customs was required to collect the treasure trove of card-modelling goodness. Thankfully there is so much in the DVD that by the time I got it home and started browsing the charge seemed irrelevant. So many of the models work superbly for zombie gaming; underground bases a la that Umbrella Corporation, check, military vehicles, check, barracks, check, stock room supplies, check, bathroom sink (and showers) check. Whilst there is a gritty sci-fi theme running through the work there are tons of great models screaming out to be built.

Ebbles FUS, pre-build print outs

The first model to be made was a simple workshop bench, to add to the generator workshop, following Doug and Bryan’s, advice a medium FUS is printed and ready to go.


What I wouldn't do for two chainsaws and a canoe paddle

Studio Miniatures Zombie Horde #1 have had a little love, just a few pieces have been de-flashed and are ready for basing. They should be hitting the painting table soon.

Studio Miniatures - Awesome

Studio Miniatures Zombies

I needed a few more survivors and having trawled the Ebbles DVD I’m tempted to give Gun Crawl a go, with a zombie make-over. To that end I purchased the Hasslefree Hazmat Squad, with a few extra 25mm bases to replace the studio miniatures ones. I don’t have a problem with the studio miniatures bases (they are actually rather good) it is simply that a wider base makes it harder to fit miniatures into a small building and by the time you’ve filled a small room with set-dressing, a few mm can make all the difference.

Who you gonna call? Zombusters

All I need to do now is actually focus on any one of these mini projects and perhaps I’ll actually finish something.

All hail paracetamol!

For A Nickel, For a Dime

In the dark, twisted fairytale of Outbreak City the streets are full of stuff, you know, bits, things, junk…stuff: telephone boxes, vending machines, fire hydrants, park benches, road signs, lamp posts, crash barriers, trash cans, dumpsters and the boxes, bags of trash, pallets and grimy, slimy detritus that fills the rat-infested alleyways and gets sent sprawling across the street in car chases.

Outbreak Alleyway

Having started to build Outbreak City for my All Things Zombie games in the card modelling style I was keen to keep that theme going. What seemed initially daunting wasn’t so much of a problem once I started researching on the intertubes. Here is just a small selection of the many items available; more stuff than could realistically be put onto one table, unless it was a really big one.

The Microtactix range has a number of dumpsters, drinks and newspaper vending machines, air conditioning units and similar items, these come as extras with some of their buildings.

Zombie Apocalypse = Free Vend.

Worldworks Games seem to produce the largest volume of items in their Bits of Mayhem set and whilst I don’t have this yet, it is firmly on the ‘NEED’ list.

Following Bryan and Doug's advice I giddily await the Ebbles back catalogue DVD, more on that once it arrives, but I did find these ‘Harmless Containers’ for free download via their forum, here. I suffered considerable ribbing, from a friend who works with shipping companies, in relation to this photo. Note to self: stack them neatly on top of each other in future.

'Harmless' they said!

TommyGun does what with Paper? Over at WarSeer or the Ebbles Forums TommyGun has made available some fantastic items, from packing boxes to arcade machines and office workstations.

Loot, swag and first aid supplies.

No change? Try hollowpoint.

He also has a full gallery of downloadable printable items available here.

The ‘branded’ goods items are superb and it is all free. He even provides a scale guide to help you can adjust your printer. It is not just ‘bits’ he has created either. He has created an entire shanty town, perfect for a little backwoods sawmill type action, and an amazing range of modern buildings including his take on Andy’s Gun Works from the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. Awesome! Thank you TommyGun, thank you very much.

Andy's Gun Works - WIP.

60 Minute (times roughly 6) Makeover

With city development fully underway the interiors of Outbreak City’s buildings were looking rather bland, empty and lifeless (but not in a good way). Time for a lilliputian Llewelyn-Bowen touch.

I don’t currently have a vast range of interior items to fill the buildings that are done, let alone the others planned. The Ebbles archive DVD is on its way which I am reliably informed contains some great interior items I can’t wait to get started on. I began with something simple and chose a single storey unit – a generator service and repair shop. This was also the first building I cut the doors and windows from.

Luxury swag - result!

As Vampifan has commented, each additional step in a build adds to the total build time and adding an interior is likely one of the most significant. This simple interior took a few evenings. I am glad I chose something this small as I am now have realistic expectations on the time required for the larger ones.

I added a partition wall to create a backroom and split the retail space and a workshop area. The walls were painted (I’ll try to use more printed textures in future) and the shop unit floor is a Google search for tiled floor textures. The image was re-sized and tiled to fit. The workshop floor is simply coloured paper, cut to size.

To fill the rooms I relied heavily on the superb freebies from TommyGun and re-scaled items from Jim's Dolls House Pages (more in a future post) I selected some shelving units, a workstation with keyboard and monitor. I added a wall clock, a welcome mat and a few boxes. I was mindful that the space had to be playable but needed enough interesting touches to create the illusion of a real place. I am happy with the current status but it deserves another session’s work. I would like to add a couple of generators in the retail unit and one on a workbench out back with some oily stains on the workshop floor among other small details.

Zombie free - time to snaffle generator spares!

Yup, I know - something is missing. Almost every building should actually include toilets, washbasins and a separate sink, somewhere to make drinks in a commerical unit or a kitchen in a residential property. I'll look at including those in future builds, when I have some models to make up for them.

I am guessing that replicating porcelain thrones over and over again might be a bit of a pain in the proverbial but perhaps it will help keep in mind rule # 3. Beware of Bathrooms.

Geek-Chic Zombie Couture

A broken camera forced me to re-think this entry. Hmmmm? Colin's comment on my first post reminded me to revisit the idea of what to wear to make your zombie gaming experience all the richer, so here goes.

With the popularity of zombies in entertainment growing faster than a re-make runner the opportunituies to show your Zombiephile status on your chest are growing rather favourably. There have always been the more obvious movie tie-in Tees, but here is a small selection that are more chic than geek. So, what are you waiting for? Get yer zomb on!

Andy's Gun Works from Nerdoh

Rule #2 - Absolute T-Shirts

Zombrex - Gamerprint

Nuka Cola - Gamerprint

Survival Kit - Teenormous

4 Player - Teenormous

Crossroads Mall - Teenormous

Girls Med Kit - Think Geek

Dead on You - Dusty Shirt

Zombie Hunter - Zazzle

Chainsaw - All Zombie Shirts

Shotgun - All Zombie Shirts

RE Shotguns - Stylin Online

RE Biohazard - Stylin Online

RE Umbrella Corp - Stylin Online

Go Frank! - Nift Shirts

Go check out these other awesome must-have Zombie T-Shirts.

Zombtropolis

Pulling together less than half a dozen buildings wasn’t exactly going to provide a highly flexible gaming environment representing Outbreak City for my All Things Zombie games. I knew that to create something more than just the small town feel that I was going to have to get my hobby face on.

I continued with what I had, among others I added another WWG flat from Downtown Mayhem, this time adding a removable roof so that I could add an interior in the future and I also progressed on to more buildings from the Mircotactix range and even doubled up on one, changing the signs to represent a hairdressers (inspired by Dead Rising Case Zero).

Downtown Mayhem - with removable roof

Microtactix - Re-signed Deli

With inspiration from Vampifan’s interiors I decided to try my hand at removing the windows and replacing with the coloured plastic filing sleeves. Quite a challenge, especially with foam core. As per Vampifan’s comment on a previous post, this took considerably longer than just skinning a foam core box. I made a few simple changes to the build process, such as printing the edges of the foracore in dark grey, so that I could either leave it bare or it would mask mistakes more easily if I was skinning the tops of walls.

Mayhem Biege Brick - This will have the first interior

A little more on MircoTactix stuff - The Twilight Street Basic Urban Environment set is available for $20 and the Urban Buildings Expansion for $15, if card buildings are your chosen route and you are looking for some interesting variety and have access to an A3 printer, they are well worth taking a look. Following on from my previous post, if you don’t have access to an A3 printer, they also produce a Twilight Street Heroic Scale range. Further note to my last post, their free download of Horseman’s Deli is in Heroic Scale and therefore prints onto A4 with no need for scaling.

Their Strip Club and Pawn Shops were fun and the second was a larger building than some of the previous ones. However, I noticed that as the buildings got taller it was going to be more problematic to fit and play in interiors on the ground (1^st in USA) floor.

Microtactix Voodoo Jake's - Opens at 11:00am

Microtactics Pawn Shop

In response to this problem I moved into a MicroTactix apartment and sliced the top floor off, building it as a separate unit so it would be easy to build and use the interior.

Microtactix Apartment

Microtactix - Apartment dismantled

My favourite Microtactix build so far is the Twilight Street Expansion Set Theatre, the largest footprint of my buildings so far, it was a fun build and the addition of the all zombie movie posters was an obvious cliché too good to miss. I am looking forward to the interior of this one.

Microtactix Theatre

Slowly and surely the set was coming together and there was now enough for me to play my first game of All Things Zombie in a few years, a quick brush up on the rules to get me back into the feel of things. There was however something missing. The streets seemed remarkably clean and uncluttered and I felt it was time for some street furniture and other urban terrain to give the place a more lived-in (or died-in) feel.

Things didn't look good for Shaun, cheesefeast aside.

Marconi Plays The Mamba

Mullets and moustaches are no place to hide from the raging hordes of the undead and my internet research revealed that most zombie gaming terrain was, unsurprisingly, not built on Rock and Roll but was based on printable card terrain, plastic railway buildings or scratch-built masterpieces. After finding the incredible ZombieTown initially thought I was going to go down that route but the discovery of Vampifan’s Blog revealed the wonders of printable terrain and I figured I would be able to put a play set together a lot quicker that way.

It probably goes without saying that Worldworks Games produce some of the finest printable terrain suitable for modern settings. I decided to tackle a basic ‘flat’ first, something that would look good on a table but wasn’t going to require too much time to create. I settled on the Mayhem Downtown set and with a ludicrously plentiful supply of foamcore at my disposal I decided to make shells and simply print to paper and ‘skin’ the buildings. To keep cost down I settled on Tesco’s Glue Sticks for the large areas and Power Pritt for the edges and details. I printed and cut out the ‘skins’ first and measured and cut foamcore from those. The shells were glued with PVA and I used a little sellotape to keep them in place whilst drying.

Mayhem Downtown - Beige Brick

The first building worked out ok and only took a couple of hours to build and does the trick although I thought I could do better. For my second building I chose to add a parapet wall and simply cut up some test prints to skin the inside of the parapet wall. Note: I did 'miss' skinning the corners, as in the pics below, but I do plan to go back and fill them in.

Parapet Wall

It is worth noting that most of the Twilight Street range is designed for 20mm scale (although they do produce a ‘Heroic’ scale range), great if that’s your chosen scale but a simple trick for me, wanting 28mm compatibility, was to print to A3 and select ‘fit to page’. A3 is 1.5 times bigger than A4, therefore 20mm x 1.5 = 30mm; it worked out fine and what’s a couple of mm between friends? They are a little on the small size, so I ‘sealed’ the roof of Drakes (a bit too tiny for a full interior), but they add some superb character to the terrain set.  I couldn’t wait to move onto other buildings in both of these retailer’s ranges.

Microtactix Free Download - Drake's

Matt over at ‘Too Much Unpainted Lead’ pointed me in the direction of the Microtactix Twilight Street ranges available through RPG Now. Their superbly evocative models have a more cartoony style that Worldworks but I felt they suited the theme perfectly and would bring some welcome variety to the table. Three Buildings, Drake’s TV and Video, Horseman’s Deli and Stinky’s Pizza, are also all available for free download, result!

Microtactix Free Download - Stinky's Pizza, Yum