Friday, October 21, 2016

Sun, Sand, and Savage Creatures from Another Dimension - a Pulp Alley Game

With our Pulp Alley sci fi campaign done, we're pressing on with new things at the club. Rhys volunteered to run a Cthulhu campaign for us. This game was quite the novelty for me: I think it was the first time I've played a game of Pulp Alley that I wasn't running. It made a nice change!

An ancient evil is rising and we need to stop it. A set of seals are crucial to that task. We're all here in the village of Ash-Shatt to find the seals. I ran the tramp steamer crew, Mark took the mad scientist and Andrew ran his rocket troopers. Rhys was in charge of the nasties (which he did a lovely job painting).
Doctor Veruckthaar, mad scientist, grabs the first seal.
As he does, an unearthly piping begins. Ever character must pass a challenge when they activate, or all they can do is move towards the piper!
My league, the tramp steamer crew, decide they quite like the sound of pipes!
When the next seal is grabbed, a snakeman and his cultists appear!
While we're still trying to deal with snakemen and cultists, the next seal unleashes a hideous tentacle.
Amidst the chaos, Dr Veruckthaar manages to grab the major plot point, unleashing an unspeakable terror!
By the end of the game we were still dealing with cultists and tentacles and squishy things, but we had only managed to grab four out of five seals. Mark won, with the major and a minor plot point to his name. Andrew and I snagged a minor plot point each. Rhys was a bit bewildered at our enthusiasm for killing each other rather than the horrors from another dimension. Are we not gamers and friends, I say?! What else would we do?
The game was lots of fun. By the end of it we were on tenterhooks every time a plot point was passed: waiting to see what fresh horrors Rhys would unleash on us.


14 comments:

  1. Sounds like a brilliant game...and looks mighty impressive, too!

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    1. Thanks Gordon, it was a lot of fun. We never knew quite what was going to happen next!

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  2. A great AAR Preacher, there doesn't seem to be any limits with what you can do with PA.

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    1. Cheers Frank! I think any heroic, cinematic skirmish,you could use Pulp Alley. The latest thing I've been idly thinking about: could you use Pulp Alley for Blood Bowl? I've never played Blood Bowl, I have no relevant miniatures, but I think it would be an interesting experiment!

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  3. This game is off the charts for Fun+Creepy. Well done. I love the brightly coloured eruptions from the dark side, as if the world were a thin veneer covering an abyss of nasty ick. (I really need to stop writing comments at work!).
    Lovely game, you make me want to check out Pulp Alley.
    Cheers,
    Michael

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    1. Thanks Michael. Hopefully work is not inspiring those kinds of comments! Pulp Alley is great for heroic skirmish stuff: it's easy to create interesting narratives, and it's an ideal multiplayer game. There is a free quick start version at the Pulp Alley store if you want to try before you buy.

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  4. Hmm, you never cease to amaze me with Pulp Alley! I do really need to give it a try!

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    1. Very kind Suber! You should give it a try, although you are doing great things with Rogue Trader at the moment. Would a game over Skype work for you at all? Time zones and family responsibilities might make it tricky, but if you're interested we could explore options.

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  5. Great stuff! I think I saw the horror deck hiding in one of the photos :) Was this your first go with it? How did it work out for you? I got mine about a week or so ago but haven't tried it out yet.

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    1. Thanks Ivor. Yes, it was our first run with the horror deck. We got bits wrong: we automatically gave cards to people who interacted with horrors and we forgot how to get rid of them. Even so, they added interesting things to the game. The first four or five we pulled were all beneficial to the players: Rhys was starting to groan. The next few, though, brought out some nasty effects. Played right, I think they'll be lots of fun. I also reckon you'll notice the effects more in a two player game: with four players there is so much going on already, it's easy for the effects to get lost among everything else and not noticed as much.

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  6. "By the end of the game we were still dealing with cultists and tentacles and squishy things, "

    ...aren't calamities the best part of games?

    Thanks for sharing the action. Great stuff.

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