Pulptastic!

Most of my efforts seem to be put into RPG's at the moment so I have spent precious little time working on anything remotely 'tabletop wargames' - hence I have rarely posted on this blog recently.

Of course, like any other self-respecting gamer I have still been adding to the lead pile and buying terrain, scenery and rules, including a recent purchase of around twenty or so Old Glory 'Chicago' buildings. I also picked up a large 6x4 urban streets printed cloth tablemat. More on that in another post (if I get around to it...)

As I have been trying to concentrate on 1920's/1930's Gangsters and the Pulp genre I decided that picking up the above would give me a great 'city' setting for these games - it will be a lot of work painting them up though as I have also a fair amount of Sarissa City Block buildings to make too!

I have a large amount of painted figures now for Pulp genre games, such as those shown in previous posts, so it is now just a case of creating a few appropriate settings for them to adventure in.

I won't get into a detailed explanation of the various definitions of 'Pulp', as it seems to be a broad as it is long but I tend to subscribe to the classic 1930's style of Pulp, or 'Hero Pulp' along the lines of action/adventure/detective/horror/weird menace etc.

Wikipedia defines 'Pulps' as follows -

Pulp magazines (often referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the 1950s. The term pulp derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges.

The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature. Pulps were the successors to the penny-dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considered descendants of "hero pulps"; pulp magazines often featured illustrated novel-length stories of heroic characters, such as Flash Gordon, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and The Phantom Detective.

The other consideration for tabletop Pulp games is of course the choice of rules. For a while it hadn't been in fashion so there wasn't a huge interest in the Pulp genre. Of course it is always fairly easy to adapt a chosen set of rules to the genre but but these mentioned below specifically captured the right 'feel' of such games. It's not a definitive list by any means but it outlines a few of the main ones...

The classic GASLIGHT probably leans more towards the 'Victorian Sci-Fi' side of things but certainly sets the right tone. The rules are small unit based with detailed leader or main characters. Command and control is accomplished through a card-based turn system with rules for movement, combat and morale.

Astounding Tales are a very rules-lite but deeply themed set that try to give players a lot of freedom to follow a story rather than worry about annoying details like rules. They also gave rise to the excellent Mad Dogs With Guns, my choice of rules for gangster games.

The Next batch were in the late 2000's with .45 Adventure and Where Heroes Dare! Both have a lot of meat to them.

Where Heroes Dare has 'schticks' that give abilities and flavour and uses 'Dare' as a main attribute used to solve plots and perform feats. Figures can be a handful to upwards of thirty.

.45 Adventure allows you to use archetypes to create graded characters (Grade 3 being the heroes and leaders, Grade 2 are the sidekicks and Grade 1 are the rank and file mooks) and uses a Hero Points system to give characters an edge. It has slightly more crunchy rules around combat side of things.

Probably one of the most popular set of Pulp rules arrived with the excellent Pulp Alley. This really approached the genre in a different way, with very story led, scenario driven games. They have simple rules from creating a 'League' of heroes, with a Leader (the out of the ordinary Hero of the group like Indiana Jones), Sidekicks (Marion Ravenwood or Henry Jones Snr.), Allies (Short Round or Sallah) and Followers (the general minions such as Soldiers etc). Characters are defined by their basic stats and descriptive abilities that give characters specific edges and are easy to customise to what you want your heroes to be. Scenarios are set up by the use of Plot Points placed across the table and card driven Perils that have to be dealt with by the characters. Most of the action is resolved by dice based on your stats. The Second Edition has just been released.

A fairly recent addition to the roster is Fistful of Lead by Wiley Games. These have evolved over the years from a home-brewed set of Wild West rules to a published full blown genre-spanning set. They have card driven mechanics and the potential for multi-player games with several figures per side.

Most recently is the just released Crooked Dice foray into the world of Pulp, named of course as '7TV Pulp'. This was co-written by Karl and The Edge Hill University Press. The basic 7TV2 rules remain pretty much the same but this injects more flavour via new character types and abilities.

Although 7TV still tends to be my 'goto' set of rules for a lot of games I think that Pulp Alley is hard to beat insofar as how it captures the flavour of the Pulp genre via the character creation rules and drives it's story based scenarios through the plot points system.

Decisions, decisions...but I still have to build and paint over thirty buildings first...

Call of Cthulhu - Strange Aeons.

Call of Cthulhu RPG.

I have been a Lovecraft fan for so many years now and Call of Cthulhu was one of the first RPG's I really got into and to this day it is still my favourite, although I don't really get the opportunity to play these days. More recently I tried to run the first scenario from 'Walker in the Wastes' as I sort of prelude to the 'Beyond the Mountains of Madness' campaign but despite positive feedback from a couple of the players I struggled to commit to being a Keeper again and had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that another couple from our RPG group are just not really into Cthulhu in the same way. Perhaps I will try again one day with just a couple of the players I know really like it but for now it is tucked back onto the shelf with all the other unused campaign books!

Strange Aeons.

I have collected many Call of Cthulhu figures over the years, most of these admittedly remain unpainted, from a few ranges but predominantly Grenadier. Having picked up a few more packs recently when I realised they were still available through Mirliton or Velillia Ltd I have been thinking about digging these out and getting around to painting them. Well, some of them anyway! I have also picked up some other 20's-30's period figures from Musketeer, Woodbine Design, Mutton Chop, Copplestone and Artizan plus a horde of Deep Ones from Black Cat Bases, Grenadier and RAFM. Perhaps a Raid on Innsmouth is needed?

Innsmouth Docks.

With this in mind we have been discussing Strange Aeons for ages and I know the Zombie Master has wanted to play for a long while but I believe the postage costs always put him off! I have finally picked up a copy of the rules from Black Hat Miniatures along with the scenario book Morbid Adventures.

Black Cat Bases Deep One.

I also like the idea of some 'High Adventure' settings in the far flung corners of the Earth.

RAFM Deep Ones.

Between us we already have plenty of scenery and terrain and you only need a small playing area and a handful of figures. ZM has a lot of Cthulhu stuff painted up, especially monster types so I am putting together some figures for a team of Agents. Next will be the Deep Ones (not that you need that many) and we definitely need some cultists but Artizan or Pulp?

Next up - Investigators / Agents.

More Oldhammer.

Desperately clutching to the coat-tails of some more galvanised 'Oldhammer' supporters I thought I would make a quick post to add my tuppence to the movement!

Here are a few links to the movers and shakers of this small but growing movement -

The Oldhammer Blogspot.

Erny's Place with the Oldhammer Fanzine.

Gaj's Oldhammer Vintage Rally.

The Oldhammer Player Registry.

Orcs Drift over at Somewhere the Teas Getting Cold.

Realm of Chaos 80's style.

Skarsnik and Old Lead's Oldhammer Opponent Finder.

Zhu's Oldhammer T-shirts! - which I highly recommend!

Zhu's T-shirts.

On a side note, I was able to help Gaj over at Warhammer For Adults in his almightly quest for the original figures from the Games Workshop scenario "Terror of the Lichemaster". I was able to assist by giving Gaj my Corabell and John-Boy figures that I had recently unearthed.

Lorabeth, Corabell, John-Boy and Willy.

He is getting really close now to achieving this collection with only Heinrich Kemler, the Lichemaster himself, to go! Keep your eyes open for Gaj folks.

Skellies.

By way of thanks Gaj picked up that I am regretting selling of some of my old Citadel C17 and C18 undead and kindly sent the above to me. I have always been after the chap with the brown robe (stretching his right arm out) and must say I was over the moon to find him lurking in the goodies Gaj sent. Cheers Gaj!

The obligatory Oldhammer T-shirt shot!

I also picked up one of Zhu's Oldhammer T-shirts and I must say I am really pleased. Good quality shirt and nice clear print. The delivery was super quick too and you get all this for a bargain £14.00!

The Games That Define Me.

Jumping on the bandwagon that is floating around the blogosphere I decided to dive in with my thoughts on 'the games that define me' as suggested by Frontline Gamer here.


I decided to keep it as a 'positive' list and I have based the entries on RPG's and boardgames that I grew up with, that influenced me in some way (in a gaming sense) or that left their mark through the memories and enjoyment they gave. There is a distinct lack of actual 'wargames' as I have played so many variations in the past (and present) that it is hard to really pull any out for specific mention. Perhaps 7TV, Strange Aeons, SAGA or Point Blank may get a mention at a later date. For now it is mainly about the RPG's and other games that really stick with me.

After playing with Action Men and 'little soldiers' when I was really young and creating in-depth stories and characters in them I soon moved on and played plenty of alternative and sci-fi type boardgames and a even a couple of wargames (with the old Airfix and Matchbox soldiers) in my youth but some of the ones listed are games I regularly played and wanted more of and these inspired me to explore.

1 ) The Awful Green Things From Outer Space (boardgame) - one of the first 'alternative' style boardgames I ever bought. It really inspired me to look past the traditional game and is probably the first thing that started me as a 'gamer'. The 'Alien' film influence really came into play here and had a kind of legendary status with my friends and I at the time. I later picked up a couple of Tom Wham games following this including Snit's Revenge. I still have them both!

2) Kingmaker (boardgame) - just a great boardgame meets wargame of sorts and again, one of the early things bought for me that made me realise there was more out there than Scrabble!

3) Car Wars (boardgame) - another one of those early alternative boardgames that I had and played before (and after) joining the school club and the discovery of rpgs. I also have to give a mention Battlecars, my follow up to the above and a much more straightforward and east to play game. It again ties into my other passion of movies and the host of Mad Max type post-apocalyptic, road-warrior fodder around at the time.

4) Runequest RPG - possibly my first 'real' rpg that I actually played. The truly different fantasy background, with its strange array of creatures (ducks, baboons and scorpion-men!) and pantheon of Gods gave me more than DnD and its dungeon crawls could at the time. I played a human Stormbull worshipper in something run by our GM Robert (still our mainstay GM to this day!) at the school games club and was completely hooked. It was a very short lived campaign but I bought the 2nd Edition (pre-Avalon Hill) and played for ages, practically my default fantasy game until I drifted out of the hobby for a while. One of the reasons for buying it was that I had a purchased a few of the boxed sets of Citadel Runequest figures after the great impression the school club games left on me.  It also introduced me to my favourite system, BRP or Basic Role Playing. Probably not the best by any stretch but always the one I felt most comfortable with.

5) Traveller RPG - this was the first rpg I bought for myself in the mid 80's after playing it a school. It was the big boxed set. I had already bought three of the old 15mm boxed sets of figures and my friend had three as well so added to the multitude of ship floor plans available we liked using the miniatures whenever we could. I loved the career aspect of character generation and the 'world creation' rules were excellent.

6) Asteroid (boardgame) - another weird sci-fi boardgame where you would select a crew from various options to fly out to an approaching asteroid mining base that had diverted course and was now headed for Earth. The base had been taken over by a supercomputer 'brain' that had killed all the human crew and now controlled all the robot workers and security. Good set of random floorplans too that could be used with 15mm figures. Great stuff!

7) Snapshot (Traveller boardgame) - excellent game and still own it. We often used 15mm figures. I was very much into sci-fi at the time and the idea of ship-board combat was really appealing. An exciting game with loads of playability.

8) Call of Cthulhu RPG - my first horror rpg and possibly my favourite game of all time. I bought the 3rd edition of this in the early 80's and ran / played constantly for many years, usually with only one or two players. I still have all the original characters that we used! One of my friends first characters was called Henry 'Harry' Winstanley, the Duke of Braidley Fennel, who somehow survived years of campaigns and whittled his sanity down to about 10 (with a bit of fudging by the GM) - he actually named his son Henry after this character...how's that for life defining! I got into HP Lovecraft after buying this game and it opened up a whole new world of horror authors to me.

9) Pendragon RPG - an awesome game. Other than the superb setting I really loved the system and the idea of creating a dynasty of sorts with your character and their descendants. The epic feel and the traits and glory aspects really raised this above most standard fantasy games. To be honest, by this point I was a complete Chaosium fanboy!

10) Warhammer Fantasy Battle 1st to 3rd Edition - I bought the 1st and 3rd (and Warhammer Siege) but we always played it pretty free-form and more rpg / campaign / story based rather than a straight up tabletop battle. It is responsible for the massive pile of 25mm fantasy lead that I now own...

11) Aftermath RPG - I only ever played a short campaign run by our usual GM Robert (again!) but it really stuck with me and this, added to my love of Zombie movies fuelled my obsession with post-apocalyptic settings. The system itself may have been over complicated and we always managed to roll the hit location 'groin' but it was a good crack at the genre!

12) Vampire the Masquerade RPG - some of the best character driven stuff I have been involved in. Roberts long running campaign still rates in my all time top games. My introduction to the game was incredibly memorable as I was asked to come up with a basic background for a modern character with a few highlighted skills and personality traits. I was not told what system or game we were playing and had no idea what the concept was behind it. I turned up to our usual session with character notes and proceeded to be excited and terrified as my character was woken and chased through the night by god knows what. Then the thing caught me and apparently I was dead. It was only at this point it I was told I was now 'Kindred' and the name of the game we were now playing was revealed to be Vampire: The Masquerade! The campaign was run to perfection, as background and story slowly opened up and the group of characters (who's players had all endured individual sessions like my own) gradually bonded and grew together. My characters ultimate fate came when he frenzied at an untimely moment and whilst being restrained by the rest of the group, one of them, who had an ongoing issue with my character, decided to take his opportunity and proceeded to rip my head off! There was one more Kindred character for me following this and a brief part of the campaign with a Werewolf character but the game soon ran its course and has never been picked up on since. We have played short games since but nothing has captured the thrill of the original campaign.

13) Earthdawn RPG - another of my all time favourite campaigns. This also had a lovely setting and great concept of 'hero' characters. Despite its apparent clunkyness I quite liked the system too. Yet another favourite character too with the elemental wizard Gustaf Treblinki. We journeyed across Barsaive and undertook many adventures linking years of play both in and out of game. I have literally pages and pages of notes on this campaign and we still talk about a key moment in the characters story - when the annoying thief Sevran (sorry ZM) who was always getting into trouble, tried to pick the pockets of the Troll warrior, Irod, resulting in the death of a character. I intend to set the record straight now as recorded in the ancient journals of Gustaf...


"As the group (Gustaf, Sevran, Irod, Laranus, Bjorn and Carlos) approached a small town called Haven and argument broke out among Irod and Sevran, the continuation of a previous disagreement between the two. There had always been a hint of one upmanship and aggression between them and Sevran delighted in mercilessly stirring up the big Troll at any given opportunity with taunts and digs at his ugliness.
This time things escalated quickly. It seemed Sevran had tried to pick the pockets of the big warrior Troll! After it had apparently calmed down, Sevran suddenly tripped Irod who crashed to the floor, face first. A serious fight began and Irod threw one of his hawk hatchets at the stunned Sevran who retaliated with a deft throw of his dagger. Fortunately all missed. Irod, finally at the end of his tether with the thief, drew his sword and insisted Sevran apologise for all his previous actions and insults over the previous months. Sevran characteristically refused and just before matters grew worse, Gustaf began to cast 'slow metal weapon' in hope of avoiding any injuries between the two. Bjorn, a dapper swordsman and cortisan, tried to grab Sevran to calm him but was too slow and was deftly thrown to the ground. Gustaf shouted at them to stop but by this time Sevran charged Irod, who hit Sevran with the flat of his sword. Sevran then decided this was his moment to apologise. Satisfied, Irod turned and picked up his hatchets from the floor.
Suddenly, Sevran made some form of magical attack that smashed Irod to the ground by hitting him on the back of the head! The whole group then fell into disarray as Bjorn (suitably embarrassed from being out-played earlier) leapt in and attacked Sevran. An arrow then flew through the air, possibly fired by Laranus and narrowly missed - Sevran realised he was in serious trouble. He dropped his weapon and the angry and hurting Troll stood up. Full of rage, Irod then strode over to Sevran and tried to prize loose the blood magic charm (an earlier gift from Irod to Sevran) from the startled thief's chest! Sevran retaliated with his dagger, trying to stab Irod who responded with force, cutting down the thief where he stood! Irod and Bjorn buried Sevrans corpse as the others looked on in shock..."


Even now, many years after the event, this still provokes debate in our group! Unfortunately the campaign eventually wound down, probably in favour of the next big game but I will always hold this campaign as one of the best I have ever played in.

14) Kult - one of my favourite modern horror games. An extremely dark background and I loved running it but it was almost too bleak and horrifying to maintain. I wrote multitudes of deep background for this game and had a good stable of non-player characters. My style was to focus on stories for each player-character with different scenarios. We left this one hanging somewhat, a particular player-character was technically a zombie...perhaps a return to this is due one day.

15) DnD RPG - the first rpg I ever saw and I created a wizard character for it but I never actually played DnD until years later with one of the school groups. Much later, with the release of the 3rd Edition and the whole d20 craze, Zombie-Masters horror / fantasy crossover campaign was one of the best things I have played in. Ulfgar Rannaheim, the Dwarf Cleric of Moradin, was one of my great characters. This game introduced our group to the whole d20 mechanic and became our standard system for several years, leading to everything from Conan to Judge Dredd and modern settings. Conan d20 should get a special mention here as it looked like this could be our next big fantasy game but the enthusiasm waned and we have yet to pick it up again. ZM has recently been spreading tempting rumours that he would like to resurrect (such an appropriate term here) his horror / fantasy game. Unleash the undead horde ZM!


Some other games that I should mention:

Twilight 2000 RPG - I ran some good games with this. A good military game and in my opinion a solid attempt at a believable post-apocalyptic setting.

Fading Suns RPG - should get a mention too. Another great campaign by Robert - I remember my  character, Ratchet the engineer, very fondly! We have essentially replaced this game with Dark Heresy that we still currently play.

Bushido RPG - definitely gets any honorary mention. Another school club game in the 80's. Hardly played it since then so this is more about good memories - who can forget the desperate charge down the valley with arrows whistling past you in the first scenario! I would like to play this again sometime.

Ars Magica RPG - would make the list as a new game for me. I only recently discovered this with the 5th Edition and have bought every supplement since. We definitely don't play this enough. I love the medieval / low fantasy Europe setting and the idea of 'troupe' play. Some of the best characters in our campaign are Grogs!

Judge Dredd RPG - a good filler game, easy to drop into as most people are aware of the background to some extent and have at least seen the character in the comics. As a massive 2000AD fan back in the day I loved this! Played the first version a lot and quite enjoyed the d20 version too.

Cyberpunk RPG - just loved this game. As a fan of the genre I also played with several different groups outside the normal crowd so I would put it in the list it for that. I even ran this with a couple of 'non-gamers' who really enjoyed it and got into the spirit of things.

Paranoia RPG - was great fun and very different but would never make the 'A-list' of games that influenced me.

Luther Arkwright RPG - was really good but only played a couple of times so I cannot justify it being in the main list.

Fighting Fantasy Books - worthy of a nod? Like a lot of folk, I picked up the first book in the early 80's and this probably helped set me off on the RPG path.

Others played and not forgotten plus a few I owned but never got to actually play! - Space Opera, Top Secret, Gangbusters, Star Wars, Millenniums End, The Morrow Project, James Bond, WHFRPG, AFMBE, Amber, Conspiracy X, Chill, Skyrealms of Jorune, Wheel of Time, Champions, Golden Heroes, Chivalry & Sorcery, Dark Conspiracy, DC Heroes, Marvel Heroes, Feng Shui, Gamma World, GURPS, In Nomine, MERP,  Recon, Shadowrun, Space 1889, Stormbringer, Elric, Underground.

Our current crop of games includes Outbreak: Undead, Dark Heresy and Lankhmar / Heroquest.

Oldhammer.

"In battle there is no law..."

Oldhammer!

I have recently been re-developing my interest in fantasy miniatures and wargaming and through painting various old figures from my age old collection from the 80's (predominantly with Runequest in mind) I have started to come back to the idea of playing some fantasy skirmishes using rules I already own. We have discussed Mordheim, a set of rules I possess but have never actually played and this looks likely to happen at some point, after we have reached saturation point with other ongoing projects! Mordheim still interests me as it is a smaller scale skirmish, scenario and story driven game and you can follow and improve your warband and characters as they move through their battles and adventures.

Following on from this, I recently started following the blogs of Zhu, Thansants "Somewhere the tea's getting cold" and Gaj's "Warhammer for Adults" and been inspired to dig out all my old Warhammer Fantasy Battle rules, notes and scenarios.

WHFB 1st Edition.

I liked the clunky 1st Edition and its massive army supplement "Forces of Fantasy" but I have to say its the 2nd or 3rd Edition all the way for me! I read the 4th Edition but I never even really liked it much and to be honest I had drifted away from the hobby by then. I didn't even touch the 5th to 7th Editions. I have looked at the 8th and I guess I wouldn't mind having a look at '9th' whenever that may appear but the whole GW WHFB thing now seems to be very army building specific and slightly rules heavy. It seems you have to have the (expensive) rule book plus several 'army' books to be able to play. In my day the army 'lists' used to be in one book!

WHFB 2nd Edition.

Personally, for me WHFB was always about small to large scale skirmishes, not neccessarily the mass battles that seem to be encouraged now. I really loved the slightly open feeling of the 2nd/3rd Editions. We used to play heavily story driven games that had little to do with points and army building and everything about the narrative behind the game itself. We had mixed troops in our battles, admitedly this was often down to the figures we had early on, but ultimately it came down to the scenario itself.

WHFB 3rd Edition.

We had our own little part of the Warhammer world populated with characters and kingdoms that had a reason for fighting. The background was there in the books, but there was plenty of scope for you to bring your own backstories and histories into the mix. Our stories began around the chronicles of King Jorick Stefel-Horowitz, also known as Vlard Stalinsky, and his succession to the throne of the Theldar Fief, as the 30th king of Theldar, Dathal, Hurgoland and Damask. Through diplomacy, consolidation and treachery he incited civil wars in his neighbouring Fiefs and overthrew his opponents. His massive new territory was renamed the Grenland Fiefs and he ruled over a prosperous and poweful nation for many years, handing down power through several generations. The Grenland Fiefs saw incursions from powerful sorcerers, demonic hordes, the Goblin Wars and even a campaign ending in a civil war as the ruling family, under King Sternjaw IV and his sons Prince Leopold Caprinski and Aramir 'Bresharde' Sibertine the Half-Elven, fought with their own traitorous kinsmen led by his nephew Elfwine Castaroff and a general of note Elstar Gorky, to retain the seat of power.

WHFB Siege.

These epic stories were played out using the first three versions of the game and later supplements such as Warhammer Siege, and gave us some fantastic and memorable battles and kept us creative with the stories behind them. Perhaps it was just the way we played it, in "the spirit of the game" so to speak but with a little bit of history, some maps and an occasional 'RPG Lite' element to this we kept our little part of the Warhammer world alive for many years and it was fun to play through the trials and tribulations of a nation...