I've watched the GMG review, and as a primarily solo wargamer these days, I'm very disappointed. Looks like another Osprey Blue Book system so generic as to be bland, with four or five tiers of hero/unit that you buy a few perks/edges/abilities for and some slapdash scenario creation rules and examples. The closest thing to something recommending this game over Pulp Alley is you don't need any decks of cards for this game. That's...not much, especially if you already own cards for Pulp Alley.
The biggest sin, in my eyes, is despite Osprey's book blurb reading, "Suitable for both solo and cooperative play as well as the classic head-to-head mode, Pulp! contains all the rules needed to game globetrotting escapades in this rip-roaring era," according to my pause-fu, it looks like the only allowance for solo is two lines in the introduction effectively saying that a single player can just play all sides to the best of their ability and rely on the dice mechanics to provide unpredictability. Which is, of course, the complete lack of solo support in game rules. You can play any game solo by playing both sides yourself!
I was hoping this game would give us at least rudimentary AI rules, which is the bare minimum expectation these days (especially since the pandemic) for claiming your game to be "suitable for solo play". I was hoping for this in order to give it an edge over Pulp Alley. (Pulp Alley solo rules provide a new deck to compensate for the lack of an opponent to play cards against you, but still rely on you to play the NPCs as if you were a second player.) But as it is, Pulp Alley provides more customization of your forces, more robust scenario support even in the corebook, and at least they go as far as publishing a Solo Deck to adjust the base game for easier solo play.
I find myself very glad I didn't give in to the temptation to pre-order this book. I'm a pass on it, unless some supplementary rules are published to add more oomph to the rules and actual solo/co-op support.
06 April 2014, 12:27:10 AM
