The Making of a Zombie Game: Alpha play test 1

So my friend "Grum" and I played two games of our homemade zombie game, unfortunately I forgot to take pictures, but here is an overview of how it went and what we found.

The table was setup as 4' x 4' with a 6"x 6" "safe zone" at each end of the table made of blast walls and the table was filled with scatter terrain: Crash/overturned cars, jersey barriers, barrels, barbed wire fencing etc

Survivor generation is random, so Grum rolled and got 6 survivors; 5 normal guys and 1 specialist.

We set the objective to get to the other designated area within 6 turns

Game 1:
This game was an absolute massacre to the survivors; they barely got out of the 6" deployment zone before zombies swarmed them and despite one or two zombies being killed the survivors couldn't stop them. Soon enough the zombies bust into the safe room where the last survivor was hiding and feasted upon him.

What did we learn:

• Zombies were too numerous and too difficult to kill, even for the specialist.
• Weapon allocation needed arranging

Game 2:
So from the first game we changed how zombies were deployed and reduced their stats slightly. This provided the survivors with an easier route as the zombies were fewer in number, and when attacked they died quicker. Despite this only the specialist survivor reached the other safe zone by turn 6, and 1 normal guy was alive, the rest had died at the hands of the zombies.

What did we learn:

• Survivor generation needed changing
• Turns were removed
• Shooting needed some additional notes
• Melee needed some additional notes
• Terrain needed adjusting to impact movement
• Weapons to be adjusted and expanded
• Survivors stats needing adjusting
• Scenarios needed victory conditions

So although the above looks a lot, its actually only a few little changes not a complete re-write. On a positive note the table was setup, characters generated and two games were played all in an hour, so it is a quick game as desired.

With these changes in place it's back to play-testing...

However a small quandary has come up, I want this game to be completely random: essentially turn up, roll some dice and get playing, whereas my co-writer friend Grum wants forward planning with points association and turn up with a prepared list:

I have posted the following on a Facebook group, and had some responses, which were appreciated but I'd like more, to be able to make a informed decision based of want you "the community" wants:

So I ask you the reader for your feedback, would you prefer:
A) Random character selection and weapon allocation
B) Random character selection but with pre-determined weapon allocation
C) Character and weapon allocation based on a points system.