Pulp C22

[Bryanbowdell]

Another excellent right up Pete, and a mighty victory for me!!

[salcor]

Thanks for sharing.  It sounded like an amazing campaign.  So what did youearn about running Pulp Alley for a Sci Fi settings?  Are there any house rules or custom character options you would like to share?  How did vehicles work for you?

Salcor

[pbjunky1]

The rules are the most adaptable to any period  that I’ve come across. It is worth buying a book like Vice Alley even if you don’t have gangsters as all the scenarios easily translate to any other period game and the gangs mechanism included works well for any setting. Similarly Perilous island scenarios  and mechanisms  (blasts, terrors, zombies etc) adapt  well to any period. We all like the Fortune cards as they dovetail a  really nice resource management system into the dice based miniatures game.
The fact there aren’t really  ‘power’ leagues is good, they are just different types of league. Players do need to  try to play in ‘character’ of their league and take skills & stat lines that reflect this. Some were better at this than others. Maybe a local adaptation would be  the chance to gain extra points by playing in character, its something we may explore in future games.
One thing we did find was that if specific areas were perils players just skirted around them hence for some games we had counters (approx 30) of which 5 were perils. Area perils like running over rough ground, climbing up walls  work fine as perils as per the book  but point perils (e.g. a gas vent) were being avoided by players.  As counters these were turned over  when characters came within 3”  and then were removed or left in place if they were perils . Similarly  in some games we had 10 potential plot points and the league could pass a cunning or finesse test when within 6” to determine if they were genuine or not and therefore to carry on to try to take them. These mechanisms reflected better our  leagues wandering around a hostile alien environment like a post-apoc wasteland. Also again in keeping with the setting games where bystanders were active opponents against the leagues gave more enjoyable games but I can see in more ‘law-abiding ‘ settings that the way they are covered in Pulp Alley would be better.
Vehicles is still a bit of a tricky one. We had the odd scenario where one side had a tank and the other a big gun capable of taking it out but once one side had won the ‘shoot-out’ they had a significant advantage in the remainder of the game. I also think that for unarmoured transports there should be some chance of a single small arms shot taking it out or maybe causing damage that could accumulate. We’ll need to have some more games involving vehicles and big guns I think.
Pulp Alley gives a really  enjoyable game and we’ll  probably try some more games around the New Year, perhaps going back to 1930’s Pulp as I think that setting lends itself more to players playing in character.