Tommy's Take on War of the Dead: Chapter Two Week Twelve

With the impending release of the final Week of Chapter 2, let's take a look at the penultimate week.



When we left off, the survivors rescued another dozen survivors, leading to a bit of a conflict, as their resources were stretched by taking on this new group, and Commander Morrison wanting to leave them behind, so as not to jeopardize the existing group.

This week begins by stressing the lack of supplies, and introducing the new survivors, who are intended to be a large part of the next Chapter. A sidebar helpfully advises that you not let the foibles of the NPCs dominate anything, but just use them for extra flavor.

The bulk of this week is a supply run on a town, which thankfully brings back the "card draw" random encounter tables...I love those. A few of these are really dangerous, such as guns jamming and the possibility of missing Sprinters sneaking up on you.

Of course, nothing is quite what it appears to be...and the group gets to encounter what appears to be a couple of raiders. Unless the whole thing ends in horrible bloodshed, they make nice with the survivors and - after another argument about supplies - the two camps are presumably going to merge...unfortunately, the truth is far more horrific, and the third act turns into an action packed shoot-out, with the PCs needing to escape their trap, and fight their way back to their camp, through people and zombies alike.

Unfortunately, doing so is almost certainly going to require making one more brutal decision and this leaves the possibility of leaving the PCs emotionally hardened, if not scarred.

The final hook for the week is that one of the survivors, a pregnant lady, is showing signs of entering premature labor...so the choice is before them to rush to Colorado, or risk a premature birth without real medical supplies.

Another good entry, and I'm glad to see the return of the card draw encounter charts. It may sound silly, but I REALLY like those. Unlike the last couple of weeks, this one feels more dangerous, even with all of the supplies, but still nothing like the "we're getting our asses kicked" that's ran through most of the first two Chapters. The big horrific event didn't really surprise me, but I may just be WAY too exposed to zombie apocalypse stuff (in fact, something similar to it has already occured once in the series...in Chapter 2, in fact). I have a feeling that next week will make at least one major change to the group, setting up the new status quo heading into Chapter Three.