We’re still firmly in the “Thinking about playing games” territory right now at my house. The reasons behind this are various but I’m trying to take advantage of the time to plan ahead. I’ve finished printing off terrain and miniatures for Zona Alfa and once I get some airbrush primer in the mail tomorrow, I should be able to start work on those. In the mean time, I’m taking a bit of my free time to try and think through the campaign I plan on playing with my son.

First off we need an overall motive. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit–overthinking it, in fact. I’ve settled on keeping it simple. My son is new to this style of story altogether so there’s no need to come up with something fancy when introducing him to a new genre. The Zone is full of mysteries and a small campaign just needs one: the Glassway Complex.

Supposedly, early on in the Zone’s lifespan, there was a laboratory known as the Glassway Complex. In it, government agents and scientists were working on understanding some of the first artifacts ever found. Rumor has it they did more than just understand: they communicated.

Just what that means, no one really knows. And you? You don’t care. You’re here for one reason: profit. You’ve been hired by a wealthy benefactor to reach the complex, explore it, and get out with whatever documents you can find. No artifacts. No super weapons. Just… documents.

What could be easier?

I’ve sat down and tried to sketch the outline of the campaign narratively. I’m aiming for 5-7 missions, so I’ve thought up the following and figure I’ll add more as it makes sense:

1. Breaking the Perimeter – You’re tasked with finding a safe passage into the zone. The only route is through a dense collection of anomalies deemed too dangerous for anyone to be foolish enough to try and cross them.
   • Terrain: A line of anomalies in the woods, leading to a fence barrier and an old, ruined guard outpost.
   • Enemies: Large animals, mutants.
   • Objective: Cross the board. This is a simple “Learn to play” match where we’ll interact with some anomalies but mostly just try to make it safely across. Opportunities for anomaly focused scientists to engage with anomalies more easily.
2. Dead Air – The lead scientist on the project lived in an old, small village nearby. When you enter the perimeter, there’s a sound of static so loud it’s distracting. Nothing can dull the noise–not even ear protection. Find his house, search it for documents, and move on.
   • Terrain: Old Russian village.
   • Enemies: Zombies, mostly. A few animals.
   • Objective: Find his house. You don’t know which it is, so you roll on them as you explore. Once you find it, search for documents and then get off the board. Scientists have a benefit to identify documents more quickly.
   • Special Rules: 2 point penalty to all ranged fire. The noise makes it hard to focus.
3. The Impossible Artifact – After reading his notes, you discover there’s an artifact in a nearby abandoned city block. You’re not sure what makes it “Impossible,” but you’re sure that it also makes the artifact “profitable.”
   • Terrain: Downtown city block, partially ruined.
   • Enemies: Mutants, zombies, opposing Stalkers.
   • Objectives: Safely interact with and capture the artifact while fending off the opposing Stalkers. If necessary, kill them.
   • Special Rules: The artifact has its own unique rules. It will manipulate the terrain and transform the board, causing the ruined building to become whole and spawning more enemies. My, uh… my son won’t know this.
4. The Glassway Complex – A scientific complex, crawling with defenders. It seems the experiments never quite stopped. Your mission remains the same: break in, find any documents, and get out.
   • Terrain: Science facilities–different style from the city buildings.
   • Enemies: Humans. The whole area is crawling with Stalkers, defending it. This will be a fight.
   • Objectives: There are three caches of documents located in specific offices. Collect each and escape alive.
5. What Comes Out With You – Escape the zone with your documents and artifact. The fastest route out is back through the city, but you’ve realized that the impossible artifact is attracting attention. The longer you hold onto it, the more dangerous things get.
   • Terrain: Downtown city block, leading to a wooded area. Larger board, 6×4.
   • Enemies: In city, encounter stalkers and mutants. In the woods, encounter a lot of mutant animals.
   • Objectives: Escape the board through the woods.
   • Special Rules: Spawning rules vary based on whether or not the players are holding onto the artifact. Things will be more dangerous if the players don’t give up the artifact.

This should work as a general sketch and we might introduce some choices along the way. I could see choosing not to pursue the additional artifact, or maybe introducing the option to do a job for the Glassway stalkers in exchange for the documents. It also does a good job of spanning my terrain collection without overly relying on any given set.

So we’ve solved terrain and campaign, now we need characters.

I have, like always, built a simple Excel that allows you to build your characters via drop downs and the like. I plan on my son and I building four characters each, then selecting two each per mission. If they die permanently on the injury table, they’re out for the rest of the campaign. I’m unsure if my son will really take to building them, given it’s just dudes with guns, but I’m going to encourage him to think about it and review his options.

I realize as I look over the missions I’ll want to find more ways to encourage and reward bringing scientists. I should review The Glassway Complex mission and create an option for something dramatic, like setting off a bomb. I could probably create a three pronged option for that mission: take them head on, set the bomb in secret, or execute some dangerous mutant hunt for them in exchange for the documents.

As I build it all out, I look forward to it even more. I’m hoping to prime everything up and start painting this weekend and get our campaign underway before the end of of the month. The first two missions very intentionally use my existing terrain, so as soon as I have some Stalkers and monsters painted up we should be underway, risking life for profit.

Good hunting, stalkers.