Sunday, April 28, 2013

It has been a while...

Here are a few pictures from our last Pulp game that I ran a few months ago:

The board before the action began.
The Players
Indie Found a Genie!

The Chinese Tong stalk the Americans

Ric fights off the Tong!

The British have tea and watch the action from afar

A Brawl breaks out in one of the locals homes!
The game was a modified LotR/Legends rule set and was a blast, everyone had a good time and are looking forwards to another game.

TK

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Finally, more pulp hits the table!

Well, it has been about a year since the last game of pulp. Why you ask? Several reasons.... A lot of us are busy with families, several of us like to play many different games (ok me), but one of the biggest reasons is because we could not find a set of rules we liked.

We started with Chaos in Cairo about 18 months ago or so. Tim and I played about 3-4 games. In the beginning, it was a lot of fun, but by the 4th game, we were tired of all the action points and all of the die rolls. Next up, .45 Adventure. This game has received a lot of praise all over the net so I was very interested in trying the game. I can see why people would like the game but it certainly is not for our group. A 2 foot by 2 foot table is not too interesting and again, there are way too many die rolls for what I get out of the game.

Believe it or not, there are not many rule sets out there for pulp. We talked about trying Savage Worlds and a few others but nothing caught our fancy. At the beginning of this project, Tim kept suggesting a port of Legends of the Old West. I poo-pooed the idea several times because I really did not think it would work. I did not think you could develop a good skill set or magic system using the rules.

After a 1 year hiatus, I suggested a game of pulp. I would host at my house and invite various friends. By the time the game rolled around, only 3 could make the game. I decided I would try using the basic Legends system (Legends of the Old West and Legends of the High Seas) for a series of playtest games.

The first game was a 3 way battle with French and British contingents fighting against the forces of the Egytian evil minions looking for fortune and treasure. After a slugfest, the French were able to fight through 2 sandstorms and find a valuable artifact.

In our second game, the French force had to deliver the artifact to their bosses in the Egyptian town. It was a real close battle but the evil minions were able to stop the French as they climbed the stairs to the building where they had to drop off the goods.

So, the real question. How was the game? Did the port work? I will be honest, Tim was correct (and he really never is). Legends was a great port for pulp.

We all decided several things:
1. The warbands work well with half heroes and about half henchmen
2. The heroes must start with skills to give it that pulp flavor
3. The campaign system needs to be revamped for pulp since pulp is so story driven

Where are we headed? I think we will be playing more pulp than we have in the past. I also think we will be working on a solid conversion of the Legends system.

Stay tuned for more...

Sunday, September 9, 2007

.45 Adventure hits the table

Well, it has been a really long time since our group had the opportunity to get a pulp game to the table. We all have jobs, wives, kids and other responsiblilities. Summer is always a hard time to get steady gaming on the table.

In August, I got the itch to run a pulp game. Our small group had talked about making this a monthly exercise and it had been 4 months or so since we even played or mentioned a game in the genre. Over the past months, I had started to lose interest in Chaos in Cairo as a system. Although I never really talked about it with the other three players, I had a feeling that they felt the same way. While the system was great for superheroes (Supersystem), I felt the game did not represent pulp the way I wanted it to on the table. A couple of the guys thought about converting LOTR/LOTOW to pulp. Since I did not think that would make for a good conversion, I started hunting for a new rule set. After lots of lurking on various boards, I made the plunge and bought the PDF of .45 Adventure. Once I bought it, it sat on my hard drive for a couple of months until I read it in August. Then it hit me.... I had to try these rules.

The rules themselves seemed rather simple. However, they accomplished something that no other pulp system I had looked at could do. It allowed the person who was running the game to tell a story to his players. Chaos in Cairo did not do this well and I still do not think a LOTR/LOTOW conversion would either. Since the designer does not believe in a points system (boo!), he has developed a number of template characters that anyone can modify to develop characters that fit the story the game master wants to tell. I set out to make some conversions of my Chaos in Cairo figures.

Three of us were able to sit down and give the game a whirl. I created a scenario where the "good guys" were in the North African desert conducting an archeological dig. While the academics were digging, the evils of the desert sought to stop them. Six fast men dressed in black with red turbans flooded over the dunes to stop the paleontologists from digging in the sites. Meanwhile, Professor Mitch Anderson saved the day. After an "unsuccessful" dig where he discovered an enormous live scorpion, he was able to jump into the company truck and save his companions by driving them back to the city.

Overall, I think the game was a success. I know how I will tweak the characters for our next session, but for a first run, I will call it a hit. By the second turn, we knew most of the rules (although we did choose to neglect guts checks for anyone who takes a wound - we will add these next time). The game offers a nice mix of simple rules and a more detailed character creation/development system. For now, I think we have a set of rules our group is going to work with.

Monday, April 2, 2007

Demo Game

Well,

We finally had our Demo game of Chaos in Cairo on Sunday. Rob & Tom got to try out the game. We played the same scenario that Mike & I tried which is basically find the loot. Tom controlled the Bad guys while Rob & I took turns controlling the Good guys.

All in all the game went very smoothly and Tom seemed to like the rule system, Rob really didn't have too much to say since he only played a few turns (while I was cooking lunch). And as luck would have it, the good side only got one chest off, while the bad guys got at least 3 chests off. And to boot, when we rolled to see who actually had the correct chest, we discovered that it was on of the two still left on the table, so no one really won.

But I think Tom would try it again, and I'm sure Rob would give it a spin. next time we play though, we will try our hand at building our own teams as opposed to using the regular West Wind teams.

Tim

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Test


Sunday, March 25, 2007

Chaos in Cario

Well I finally got around to taking some pictures of the Chaos in Cairo stuff I did for Mike, so here they are, first up the Evil minions...

The Mummy
And now the Good Guys,

The buildings in the background are from Crescent Root Studios, http://crescent-root.com/
Mike bought the pre-painted ones (which are in the pictures) I bought the unpainted ones (which I still need to paint!).
Also here are four bonus pictures that I took about a year & a half ago of a few figs that I had that are pulpy.
There you go for now...
Tim

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Update & some cool looking tables!

Well,

The Pulp Figures arrived from Canada & they look even better than on the web. They are in scale with Copplestones stuff and just look so cool. Now I can get started working on painting them.

Also last Friday night Mike & I got together & played Chaos in Cairo again using the scenario out of the rulebook, the Package.

As always I took the Evil guys while Mike took the "good guys". Basically the scenario was to get 6 counters off of the table which represented artifacts, the only problem was that only one counter was the real artifact. As soon as the game had ended you roll a dice to see which counter is the real one. Well to make a long story short, my character Baron Von Something, used his skill of "You haven't seen the last of Me" to exit the board with one package. Mike pretty well shot up all the rest of my guys. Well as luck would have it, the one counter I escaped with was the real one! So even though everyone died but the Baron, I had reclaimed the prize to win!


Here is a link from one of the German guys website about a local game event that they ran, Tactica http://www.napnuts.com/gallery_tactica07.htm

There are some gorgeous tables at this event & this is something that I would like to produce for our Pulp project games. it is a blend on model railroading scenery with war gaming scenery. I think it can be done but will take a lot of work...

Tim