Saturday, October 21, 2017

One of Our Inspectors is Missing - a Pulp Alley day

Nobody likes an Inspector-General. Snooping, officious pedants from the central Imperium. Sniffing out the shadowy alliances and difficult compromises that are an everyday part of life out here in Hathor Sector.
Nobody likes an Inspector-General, but up until now nobody has killed one. But this time, Inspector-General Hydaspes Owen is missing, presumed dead. Everyone in the Sector would be quite happy with that, if the central Imperium hadn’t threatened to send a task force to tear the Sector to pieces as a punishment. The only way to stop the task force is to present them with the guilty party. Who killed the Inspector? How did they do it? Why?

On the weekend I ran a Pulp Alley games day. The concept for the day was developed by Major Guiscard over at The Governor General of Sector Six and happily borrowed by me (with the good Major's encouragement and advice).

The games are stitched together using the ideas from the boardgame Cluedo. The player have to discover who killed the Inspector-General, why they killed him, and how they did it. 
One card from each of the categories is removed at the of the campaign and placed in a sealed envelope. This is the combination the players are looking for.

After each game, the players are shown one clue card for each minor plot point they take, and three clue cards for the major plot point. At this point, the players are able to propose a theory about the murder: one suspect, one motive, one cause of death. Any other player can disprove the theory if they have seen one of the cards mentioned. Whoever does this is able to draw a bonus reward card and get the benefits.

At any point a player can make an accusation: again, suspect, motive and cause of death. If they are right, they win the game. If they're wrong, that's their one chance. They continue to play, but can't make any more accusations.

We had six players for the first two games,and two more joined in after that. At the end of two games, two players made incorrect accusations. The winner came through after just three games: he won every game by taking the major and two minor plot points every time!

Anyway, pictures! Not a lot of quantity or quality, I'm afraid. I was running around madly for most of the day. There were four locations to explore: the spaceport.
The battlefield.
The Imperial outpost.
The research station.
Oh, one more positive. We had a few visitors to the club to play 40k. One of them came over to see what we were up to and I ran him through three turns of Pulp Alley. He went straight back to his 40k army and was figuring out what kind of Leagues he could come up with!

31 comments:

  1. Cracking stuff Preacher, all the boards look great very different challenges for playing PA, with say the Imperial Outpost offering a lot of line of sight blocking buildings & high roofs for good shooting spots, to say the battlefield which offers plenty of cover but no where to hide.

    Well done on putting it all together.

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    1. Thanks Frank. To be honest, the table set ups were just a result of wanting different settings, rather than any conscious desire to create different tactical challenges. Now that you mention it though, I can see they would have each had their unique challenges.

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  2. What an absolutely cracking idea! Cluedo incorporated into a tabletop game, brilliant! Great stuff all around Bill, hopefully we'll see more of this type of game in the future - and fair warning, I can see me nicking this idea lol!

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    1. All congrats to Major Guiscard. So you'll be nicking his ideas not mine!

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  3. Fantastic! THANKS for playing and sharing Pulp Alley.

    Great idea for scenarios/campaign.

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    1. Thanks David. The good Major's ideas did translate very well to Pulp Alley.

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  4. Thanks for all the props Preacher.
    Pulp Alley with its short gametime and multiple objectives fits so well wth Clue/Cluedo.

    Your setup looks great with the cards and prepwork. I'm sure your crew wants you to run it again tomorrow!

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    1. Thanks for the idea and advice. Yes, Pulp Alley is a perfect fit for the campaign. The folks at the club certainly did enjoy it.

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  5. 'Genius' is a total understatement. You just blew my mind with this, looks frankly awesome!

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    1. Too kind, Suber! I was really happy with how it came together.

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  6. AAAAAND!? Whodunnit!? I'm going to go with Wife - Tax Avoidance - and... Carnivorous Plant... no, wait.. Firing Squad! Am I close?

    This idea is brilliant! I may have to steal elements of it at some point.

    Oh and that little white space ship in the spaceport turned out lovely. I had seen earlier posts of you assembling it, but hadn't seen the final results!

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    1. Sorry, it was the Governor who was a genestealer cultist and turned the inspector into a demon (not quite sure about how that would work)! It did work really well to string the games together.

      And thanks, very happy with the way the Peregrine has turned out. Still lots of interior work to do, but it's usable now, which is nice.

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  7. Clever and very inspired, CLuedo was one of my favorite games, and Pulp Alley looks awesome...as does this splendid spaceship...A fantastic post! Oh, I forgot, love the cards...

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    1. Thank you Phil. There is something satisfying about putting together all the bits for a nice looking game.

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  8. A question regarding your terrain tiles. Are the 'flagstones' etched into the cork in anyway, or is it purely a black/white line painting thing to trick the eye into seeing a gap/crease?

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    1. Hi Dave, it's all just sneaky paint. My tutorial is here: http://preacherbyday.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/sci-fi-terrain-tile-tutorial.html

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    2. Sorry Dave,accidentally deleted your reply (fat fingers on a small screen)!

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  9. That's some great scenery, and I really like the Peregrine.

    I'm slowly building up a Pulp league and villains, in an attempt to get my kids of their computers and doing something creative...

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    1. Thanks korschtal! It's a great set of rules for kids: they get immersed because story and character are so fundamental to the games. Hope you succeed in luring them away from their computers! You have some very nice railway stuff on your blog too: love the terrain!

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    1. Thanks Jason! It was plenty of work to put it together, but a lot of fun on the day.

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  11. Echoing the comments here that is a great looking game and I'm totally stealing the Clue/Plot point idea. Brilliant.

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    1. Thanks! I'd love to see it with your Stalker or cyberpunk games.

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  12. Absolutely inspirational. Love it to bits.

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    1. Thank you! It was really satisfying to see it all come together on the day.

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  13. Hmmm is anyone else having problems witgh the images on this blog loading?
    I'm trying to figure out if iits a problem onn
    my end or if it's the blog. Any feed-back would be greatly appreciated.

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    1. I can see them, but not sure about anyone else!

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    2. Works for me on both my mobile (android/chrome) and desktop (windows/firefox).

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  14. What a fantastic looking (and wonderfully conceived) game!
    And I've got to say that your Peregrine takes the cake. I pondered buying one of these models but balked because I didn't think it would be possible to make it look as good as it did in the adverts. But you've done it. Very inspirational!

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    1. Thanks Matthew. It's a great model: it always gets plenty of comments when it's on the table. Painting is not too tricky: a grey spray basecoat, then I've sponged on highlights.

      Also, the blog is a bit dead these days. If you're interested and on FB, I've started posting stuff there: https://www.facebook.com/Blacksoilbills-wargaming-adventures-101052669332692

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