Pulp Alley Question - Costing of Scenario-based allies

[FramFramson]

This is sort of a question for Dave, but some of you might have also come up with solutions and in any case I think the answer might be useful for everyone.

A normal Pulp Alley game assumes league vs. league. Now, in the Perilous Island scenarios, You are sometimes given Lady Elaine as an additional character. How is this costed in terms of adding additional challenges for the league?

I know the game has some wiggle-room, since several of the league abilities provide additional characters who may not show up every game (Wealthy, Altar, etc.), but I imagine there was still some accounting for guaranteed allies, to avoid making things too easy.

Say you wanted to do a scenario which grants additional characters - 2-3 Followers, an Ally, or even a Sidekick. How would you cost the opposition? Is it as simple as giving an opposing force equal points worth of opposition? So if you grant the heroes an Ally for the scenario, you also grant the enemy (or other player) an additional 2 points worth of figures?

It's not something I want to do every game, because obviously that gets into size creep that will affect the game, but from time to time it would be neat to script in the addition of a powerful ally or useful helper.

[pistolpete]

make the 'extra' character a major plot point so whoever gets them first has a slight advantage.  but they could be 'lost' and change sides too.

[d phipps]

I like Pete's suggestion, and we've done stuff like that before.



In Pulp Alley, it is fairly common for one or both sides to pick up extra characters from the Scenario Events table, Backup points, and campaign rewards.

So adding an extra Ally or Followers is actually part of normal play and should be expected. Personally, I think these temporary characters can really add to the story of the scenario/campaign.


For special scenarios, there’s nothing wrong with giving one or both sides some extra characters. Slot for slot, Allies, Followers, and Gangs are all carefully balanced, so you could easily give both sides 6 to 12 extra slots worth of level 1-2 temporary characters. This sort of thing will work best in a two-player game.

If you’re going to give an extra temporary Sidekick to one side, you could balance that out by giving the other side 5-6 extra slots.


Again – this is actually something that will happen during the normal course of a campaign. As leagues accumulate resources, someone is going to eventually spend 3 of their Backup points to buy a temporary Sidekick. This can really pay off in the climactic conclusion of the campaign. 



HAVE FUN

[FramFramson]

Yeah, I like that not every game is going to be perfectly balanced, that the game inherently has some capacity to accept a little unevenness - that's something I like to see in my games, because I actually like to try and pull out a win in a crappy or underdog situation.

But I just want to make sure I don't go too far!

[Wolf Girl]

Yeah, I like that not every game is going to be perfectly balanced, that the game inherently has some capacity to accept a little unevenness - that's something I like to see in my games, because I actually like to try and pull out a win in a crappy or underdog situation.

With something like this, you might just want to playtest it a few times to see how it goes. Instead of giving the other side an equal amount of points, you could also adjust the scenario rules, deployment, setup, and objectives to balance it out.