People of Parador! I love you!

[warrenpeace]

People of Parador! I love you! I love your mountains and your valleys!

I'm developing a fictional banana republic as a setting for pulp adventures. Am taking its name from the movie "Moon Over Parador" starring Richard Dreyfus, Raul Julia, Sonia Braga, and Jonathan Winter. I'm told that "parador" means "stop" in Spanish. In Paraguay that is bus stops. In Spain that is a chain of high end hotels in historic locations. Am vaguely setting this somewhere in South America. I'm intending a campaign through towns, including a German settlement, a monastery, a ranch, a military outpost, a banana plantation, a part of the Amazon jungle, and eventually perhaps the Lost City of Z.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_City_of_Z

Because I've bought more miniatures than I'm ever likely to have time to paint in my lifetime, I'm telling a couple of friends who are totally new to miniature painting that they can keep any of my figures that they paint. Hopefully this will lead to more painted miniatures being available to play with in my local community. The younger guy is working on my skeletal and ghoulish pirates, with the added incentive of me giving him pirate ship models when he reaches target numbers. The older guy is painting Pulp Figures and Foundry Mexican peones for this Parador project. I think his work so far is fantastic for a new painter. Here's a few of his Paradoran police/army and peones:









He is giving the old Foundry Mexican peones a very colorful spin. It's delightful to see the color schemes that he's coming up with. The police/army are a mix of Pulp Figures Mexican federales and German seabattalion. I'll post more as we go along. He has painted two mounted Pulp Figures Mexican federales and has another 4 peones painted. Will get pics of them later.

[chickenbane]

I don't play much pulp adventures but this interests me, I will look forward to more updates and am interested in the successful outsourcing of painting.

[commissarmoody]

Cool idea, I am always a fan of imaga-nations.

[Marine0846]

Really like your thinking on this.
Sounds cool.
Excellent painted on the figures.
Look forward to following along with this adventure.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Great concept, excellent execution. Looking forward to seeing more!

[nandrin]

I want to visit Parador! 
Great miniatures, and I like the idea of "outsourcing" the painting to beginners very much.

[Commander Roj]

I want to visit Parador! 
Great miniatures, and I like the idea of "outsourcing" the painting to beginners very much.

Isn’t that what children are for...?

Interesting idea. I am sure there are some out there, but I can’t remember seeing miniatures games in a banana republic. There used to be an interesting board game on the subject based on area control (I think) I will have to look that up. Look forward to seeing more.

[warrenpeace]

Isn’t that what children are for...?

Interesting idea. I am sure there are some out there, but I can’t remember seeing miniatures games in a banana republic. There used to be an interesting board game on the subject based on area control (I think) I will have to look that up. Look forward to seeing more.

For board games you may be thinking of Junta, set in the Republica de los Bananas 🍌. I have a copy. It's a nasty game of oligarchs trying to assassinate each other while looting the county and transferring money to their Swiss bank accounts. There are other games in what is called the COIN series, involving counterinsurgency warfare. A well known game in that series is Andean Abys.

For miniatures games, I'm inspired by Hammers' long running thread called "Chicken Race on the Arumbaya" on the Triumph & Tregedy sub-forum here. But I don't think Hammers has played a game with those amazing items yet.

[Commander Roj]

For board games you may be thinking of Junta, set in the Republica de los Bananas 🍌. I have a copy. It's a nasty game of oligarchs trying to assassinate each other while looting the county and transferring money to their Swiss bank accounts. There are other games in what is called the COIN series, involving counterinsurgency warfare. A well known game in that series is Andean Abys.

For miniatures games, I'm inspired by Hammers' long running thread called "Chicken Race on the Arembuya" on the Triumph & Tregedy sub-forum here. But I don't think Hammers has played a game with those amazing items yet.

JUNTA! Thanks for putting me out of my misery. I will have to look at the Triumph and Tragedy board then. Don’t think I have before.

[warrenpeace]

Commander Roj, it's called "Child Boards: Triumph & Tregedy" and is the little dark line just below the Pulp forum. This used to be at the top when LAF was hosted in Germany. And I got the name of the river wrong. It's the Arumbaya. This epic thread is 44 pages long, filled with delightful figures and items.

[Elk101]

Really cool idea. I hope it goes well.

[Commander Roj]

Commander Roj, it's called "Child Boards: Triumph & Tregedy" and is the little dark line just below the Pulp forum. This used to be at the top when LAF was hosted in Germany. And I got the name of the river wrong. It's the Arumbaya. This epic thread is 44 pages long, filled with delightful figures and items.

Got it.

[Chairface]

JUNTA! Thanks for putting me out of my misery. I will have to look at the Triumph and Tragedy board then. Don’t think I have before.

Junta is a beautiful game. I've played many times, once memorably as El Presidente for the entire game before escaping to the Soviet embassy on the last turn just ahead of the assassin.

I love this project. Do you have an El Presidente model picked out yet?

[warrenpeace]

I love this project. Do you have an El Presidente model picked out yet?

I haven't decided yet on whether or not the adventurers will encounter El Presidente himself. Maybe. I have thought about it a little. Several Latin American countries have had very interesting characters as El Presidente. My friend who lived in Paraguay for nine years has stories about a couple of them.

I'm not basing this series of adventures on the Junta boardgame or on the movie Moon Over Parador. Instead what I have in mind is a search for Colonel Fawcett and the Lost City of Z, with Parador as a jumping off place to plunge into the jungle. I'm drawing inspiration from the historical Colonel Fawcett, the various efforts to find him (including that of Aloha Wanderwell and her husband flying a float plane into the Amazon jungle), the expedition of Teddy Roosevelt into the Amazon, the historical Chaco War, a fictional adventure of Corto Maltese, and the above mentioned Chicken Race on the Arumbaya project of Hammers. And I have some characters based on the fictional Lost World tv series and movies. There is also Peter Benchley's Amazon tv series to draw a little inspiration from. And this is set squarely in the interwar period around 1930 give or take a couple of years, and before the historical Chaco War.

Because of that the explorers will have encounters at a ranchero, a banana plantation, a monastery in the jungle with monks, maybe something in a city, a settlement of German Mennonites, an oil exploration site, a little fort (as in the Chaco War), a river gunboat (also as in the Chaco War), uncontacted jungle natives, an area of big snakes, and perhaps eventually the Lost City of Z itself. There will be some airplanes and vehicles and boats where terrain allows. Although a lot of figures are being painted, this is purely an adventure series for Pulp Alley. No really big battles are intended.

Note that the guy who is painting the figures pictured above and below for this project was a teacher in Paraguay for nine years, and he travelled around a bit in South America. So he has a very colorful take on these six Wargames Foundry Mexican Peones with rifles and knives:



The two mounted police/soldiers pictured here are from Bob Murch & Pulp Figures. The woman in the dark shawl and the sleeping peone are from Wargames Foundry. The woman in the bright green dress is a Haitian from the Brigade Games Carribean Empires line. And the building is one of a few buildings that I bought from my friend Jeff, which he scratch built:

[Manchu]

I love the sound of the setting you are sketching out, with all its varied and colorful dimensions. Looking forward to reading more about the many perils of Parador!