Taking 45A to Comic-Con

[Wirelizard]

The local Comic-Con had a small gaming (mostly RPG) track that my brother Corey (Burgundavia here on LAF) got involved in to run D&D 4th Ed. He and I have run pulp with his D&D group before, and his GM, who was organizing a lot of the gaming stuff for the con, suggested he and I run a pulp game.

It turned out to be the only miniatures event at the con, far as I know, and I wound up running most of the game, as my brother was finishing up some D&D thing while we started pulpish goodness. That did leave him free to take some nice in-game pics with a friend's good camera, at least!

Two of the players were in Corey's D&D group and had played before, three had never played, and for one of those three this was her first-ever miniatures game of any sort!

We used a 3x3 table, all jungle and ruins, and ran Rattrap's (free!) 45A scenario Quest for La Calavera Negra de la Luna pretty much straight up, although I substitued pterodactyls for the scenario's treasure-defending spider. Everything is cooler with dinosaurs.


Noted big-game hunter Sir Reginald Woodward and his daughter Eugenia (with shotgun, and damn good with it, too) lurk in the ruins just beside the Temple of the Golden Skull. (the shiny golden skull is just visible in the top-right of this shot, actually.)


The Temple is located, with the Golden Skull in the centre, and various thugs beginning to rush the platform.


Late in the game, one of the pterodactyl defenders of the skull flies in pursuit of the thug holding the skull, who flees into the jungle as fast as he can, dodging fire from a number of other characters!

More and larger pictures over on Burgundavia's Flickr Set.

We had some good moments - the first pterodactyl to appear on the board when down in a heap after a butt-stroke across the beak; the guy who got away with the Skull made three dodge checks in a row to leap off the platform, not drop the Skull, and then dodge a short-range blast of shotgun fire for Ms. Eugenia!

We also had a classic case of psychopath's luck - the first player to begin firing never actually HIT anyone at all with all his firing, and wound up loosing two of his three characters by the end of the game! (including Buster the bulldog, who continues his great streak of dying messily in every game he appears in. Poor Buster.)

It was a good game, we introduced a couple of new people to pulpish insanity, and may have made a convert, as one of the players (the 14 year old who had the psychopath's luck) wants to come out to our regular gaming group on Sundays up at the university and give pulp another try.

[tima113]

Sounds like fun. I played La Calavera a few years ago as my introduction ot 45A. I like your pteradon idea instead of the spider (I hit nothing but legs on that thing when I played). What stats/rules did you use for the pteradon?

[Operator5]

Sounds like a great game. And I might just have to up-armor dogs in the game. Seems as soon as one is on the board, everyone has to open fire and try and kill it. (I think they are Cat Lover agents.)

[Froggy the Great]

Sounds like a great game. And I might just have to up-armor dogs in the game. Seems as soon as one is on the board, everyone has to open fire and try and kill it. (I think they are Cat Lover agents.)

These are villains doing so, yes?  They're just Kicking the Dog.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KickTheDog

[UncleRhino]

Maybe it is a regional gaming thing...we did a game at Chuck's place where the "not-Tintin" little dog kept chewing the arms off of the degerate hillbillies.

Looks like it was a fun game, hopefully you converted a few new players to pulp-style action.

Ryan

[d phipps]

Fantastic! Looks like BIG fun!!   

[Doomhippie]

Sounds like a great game. And I might just have to up-armor dogs in the game. Seems as soon as one is on the board, everyone has to open fire and try and kill it. (I think they are Cat Lover agents.)

I guess it has to do with the age old tradition in Hollywood movies that the family dog never dies. I remember watching Dante's Peak in the Cinema on a visit to the States and I remember some critic writing in a magazine about how it is a nice movie and all but "...for once in a catastrophie movie could a dog please die?" Iheartily agreed with him.

Oh, and remember good old Starshiptroopers? Well, we learned that the bugs are really dangerous when we saw the dead dog in the ruins of Buenos Aires.

So I think it's only natural that everybody tries to kill them friggin' dogs!

[warrenss2]

Where did you get those dactyls, Wirelizard?

You're right...Dinos always make it better. And one can never have too many dinosaurs.

[Wirelizard]

What stats/rules did you use for the pteradon?

Straight out of Rattrap's Thunder Lizard supplement. Not quite as tough as the spider, and not as dangerous when it attacks, but much faster.

We also had "the amazing recycling pterodactyl" - the first to appear died of a butt-stroke across the beak, so I reminded players that the legends about the valley spoke of multiple terrifying winged guardians, and resurrected the beast!

Where did you get those dactyls, Wirelizard?

HLBS' late, lamented 28mm dino line, and I only have one. Again, apparently Copplestone bought all those molds, so hopefully it re-appears soon. Copplestone's own flying dino is molded as walking on the ground, far as I can tell, not flying.

As for the late Buster, the very dead bulldog - the player controlling him (along with "Ohio" Smith, rogue archeologist and Ohio's ladyfriend Marion and/or Debbie) sent the dog - a Grade 1 Heroic Dog - up against two pistol-armed characters solo (Grade 2 & 3, so much tougher than the dog) whilst Ohio hung back and sniped iwth a pistol. A pistol makes a lousy sniping weapon, and any Grade 1 character is going to have a tough time against a G2 & G3 both with pistols... plus, it's entirely in keeping with Buster's previous appearances on the table that he croaks. He's used to it by now.

I did a sheet of cards to go along with La Calavera's encounters, which I should post sometime soon. They're designed to print on Letter-sized business card blanks, like a lot of the stuff I do.

[Mr. Peabody]

Ooooh! You should bring this game to Salute in Vancouver next March!!! *nudge, nudge!!!

Very cool!

[Burgundavia]

We could be convinced to come to Salute, as a bunch of us here in Vic made it over for 2008. That was where we caught the pulp bug in the first place.

[Wirelizard]

Trumpeters Salute 2008 was indeed where we caught this damnable pulp contagion! (I think I might have been lurking here before that, but can't recall. Checking my LAF profile, I see I finally registered about a week after getting back from Salute/08...)

Didn't make Salute 2009, but returning to Salute 2010 to run a pulp game would have a nice circularity to it! Pass on the contagion!

There's a mini-convention (another!) here in Victoria in ten days, up at the University of Victoria campus, that we will probably do something pulpish at. Might well run this scenario again, as we've the terrain and figures for it, know how it flows now, and it's a good expandable scenario for anywhere from 2-many players.

[Mr. Peabody]

Aye, you are a good man to spread the contagion!
  We should consider a LAF area at Salute 2010, or at least a LAF games table!

[Wirelizard]

Flickr Link for larger view & notes.

This is the only picture I took that worked (the pics earlier in the thread were by Burgundavia), and it's a good overview of the whole table early in the game - turn 1 or 2, no later.

Notice that the main temple platform isn't on the table yet - it displaced one of the CD-based ruins roughly in the centre of the board when it appeared, after the players found the three monuments to locate it.

The players started spaced roughly evenly around the edges of the 3x3 board. And yes, the riverbank on the near edge ends kind of randomly - I've only got 2' of shoreline so far! (I should bang together either another 12" length, or a corner bit to take it off the table, before the next game.)