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!