The Pulp Project

Finally, more pulp hits the table!

2008-09-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

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...

.45 Adventure hits the table

2007-09-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

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.

Demo Game

2007-04-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

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

Test

2007-03-27T22:14:00.000-07:00

Chaos in Cario

2007-03-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

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

Update & some cool looking tables!

2007-02-28T08:30:00.000-08:00

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

Copplestones Arrived!

2007-02-21T07:24:00.000-08:00

Well a few of us, Rob, Mike & Myself ordered a few Copplestone packs last week and they arrived. I ordered these two packs:

C38 Dinosaur Hunters

BC19 Female Archaeologists

Right off hand can't remember what Rob & Mike ordered but I know Rob also got the Dino Hunters as well.

Mike & I both ordered a few packs of figures from Pulp Figures http://www.pulpfigures.com/

Here are the packs I ordered:

PWM1 Werid Villains

PHP6 Scientifc Minds

PHP3 Sinister Spies

PBT1 British Army Tropical Command

Now once the figures are painted I will post up some pictures, the above Pulp Figures were taken from their site.

Tim

The Quest for Rules

2007-02-17T23:34:00.000-08:00

The four guys in our group are all very excited about this pulp project we have started. The first step is finding a set of rules we can all agree on. Rules on audition right now are Chaos in Cairo (a goalsystem game), .45 Adventure, and perhaps a Lord of the Rings (from Games Workshop) modification. Personally, I was looking forward to trying Chaos in Cairo first being a huge Supersytem fan (another goalsystem game).

Tim came over this morning and we busted out some Mordheim buildings Tim had and the Chaos in Cairo figures. Naturally, Tim chose the evil side. After about 2 hours, the game had reached a conclusion and good beat evil. Basically, the purpose of the game was a test drive of the game system more than anything. We did not set up objectives or any story. We fought a big street brawl to the bitter end.

CinC is a pretty simple system. Every figure or henchmen unit has 4 essential stats that drive the entire game. Each stat has a number that represents the number of D6s you roll when you are doing something that uses that particular stat. It can be hiding, searching for an objective, hitting someone in close combat, shooting someone from a distance, etc. Various skills, weapons, etc. add to the number of D6s you roll for a particular action. Anytime you roll the dice, a 4+ is considered a "goal." If it is an opposed roll, and you get more "goals" then your opponent, you are successful. So, if you are involved in shooting your opponent, you would each roll your number of dice based on the appropriate statistic and skills. If the attacker is more successful because he rolled more goals, you move onto the damage phase of the combat. If the defender is more successful, the attack fails. Likewise, if it is an unopposed roll situation and you roll a predetermined number of goals based upon the task you are doing, you are successful. Overall, the system is quite elegant and requires some resource management as the goalsystem is action point based. For instance, every inch you move in good terrain is an action point, it cost 3 action points for a close combat attack and 4 action points for a range attack. You must decide each turn the best way to spend your action points.

After the game both Tim and I decided the goalsystem is very solid. This is the second game we have both played in the series (the first being Supersystem). We obviously need a few more games to really see how the system shines, but overall it was a positive experience. The only rule we talked about modifying was the initiative system as we thought it could really bog down when you add more players to the mix.

All in all a good day of gaming (thanks Tim) and now I look forward to painting the pulp minis that arrived from Copplestone yesterday!

2007-02-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

So what’s this Pulp thing all about?

Well a few friends of mine (Rob, Mike & Tom) have been talking about doing some pulp style games. Pulp gaming is basically something along the lines of Indiana Jones or the mummy movies. The term Pulp refers to the Pulp magazines of the 20’ & 30’s about crime fighting and exploration.

We are also influenced by skirmish style games that you control only a handful of figures. Our little group has been doing this sort of skirmish gaming for a few years now with games like Necromunda & Mordheim as well as a few modifications of these rules. Recently we have been influenced by the Lord of the Rings game by Games Workshop. In fact I have even written a set of rules that are for Pirates using this system.

So after talking about it we all decided to take the Pulp plunge and start doing something. This Blog is the first step, and we have started purchasing figures & terrain to start this little project. Right now Mike is casting Hirst Arts molds, Tom Rob & I are purchasing figures & Mike & I just ordered a few Crescent Root buildings.

We are also exploring a few different rule sets right now which are Chaos in Cairo by Scott Pyle, .45 Adventures by Rattrap Productions and exploring doing or own using a LotR variant that Rob has been working on. Right now we are just trying to get in a few games using each system.

Another great source of our rekindled interest has been the Lead Adventures Forum http://forum.backofbeyond.de/ which these guys do some awesome pulp style games. What makes them so awesome is that they have nicely painted figures, lovely terrain and there games are based around a storyline that is linked from the previous game. This has been something that we all have wanted to do. Terrain is something that can make or break a game in my opinion, and these guys have some beautiful stuff.

So are goals are to find a nice set of rules that will allow us to do gaming from things like giant gorillas named Kong, to stopping evil Nazi’s from trying to take over some religious artifact, to stopping some mad scientist from building a death ray gun to try & conquer the world!

So there you have it, our newest little project, stay tuned for more…

Tim