"Pulp rules for large games" Topic

I run a large game every year at Cangames every year that draws around 12 players, Next year I am doing a Pulp game but I don't have a set of rules for that many players. Does anyone have a suggestion?

Hi

Something simple like a variant of one of the dungeon crawl Board games. Like talisman, Warhammer quest, or even Heroquest. Rules can be found on Boardgame Geek

Astounding Tales from Howard Whitehouse

Being a participation convention game , with a large number of players,I'd suggest you make your own rules, as you really want something that is dead simple, moves along briskly, and has just enough flavour to give some pulp feel.

You haven't specified if each player has 1 figure, or a group, and how long you want the game to be. but i can offer some general advice, based on convention games I've run:

You've got 4 things to consider – turn initiative, movement, combat, and "flavour"

1. Initiative – for that many players keep it simple. Each unit/squad/hero has its own card or chit, you randomly draw to see whose turn it is.

2. Movement – Everything has a fixed movement rate, ideally with minimum variation – foot move 1 rate, fast things move another.

3. Combat – Both figures in melee roll a die and add their combat skill, highest wins. Maybe attacker gets a bonus.

4. Flavour – this is where you create the pulpy feel and theme to the game. Three ways to to this:

- firstly have limited special pulpy abilities for different figures/characters, but not too many – have these written on cards for the players.

- Secondly, or alternatively, give each player "pulp points" that he can spend to give figures bonuses – extra move, combat bonus, etc.

-thirdly, have special events to throw some unpredictability into the game.

A few other thoughts – You want to keep dice rolls to a minimum, using them for only really important things – dice rolls slow things down, but you need them to create tension and uncertainty. So combat is the obvious place to use them – and for special occasions, such as testing to see if a hero manages to leap the 50 foot chasm.

You can tie this in with pulp points – roll a dice every time you spend a pulp point – on a '1' the figure fails spectactularly. As long as players know of the possibility in advance, a spectacular failure can be as entertaining to players as a great success.

Hope this helps – good luck!

Oh, and one more thing I do for convention games is working out the game length and how many turns it will go for.

Say you want to run 4 sessions over a 10-5 day for 6 players. Taking out an hour for lunch and a chance to wander around the other games, that leaves you with 6 hours for 4 games, so 90 minutes each.

Then work out how long an average player's move will be – lets say a player takes 3 minutes for his move, so a 6 player game will take 18 minutes per turn – which works out at 5 turns in a 90 minute game. Is this long enough to get achieve objectives in your game?

Then you have to add in time for explaining rules etc at the start…

I've never run a 12 player game, so i take my hat off to you :) … will the players all be individuals, or can they play as teams ?

All the best

Well, it depends. I assume each player will control a very small number of figures – say, up to 6?

Pulp feel will mostly come down to the miniatures and the scenario.

I'd look at "Gutshot." Designed for the Old West they are simple and fun, and have enough Hollywood to make the leap to Pulp pretty easy.

.45 Adventure is designed for Pulp and is kind of "RPG Lite" so a stripped down version might suit?

Pulp Alley gets lots of good press and is designed for multi player games.

Second Extra Crispy – the scenario is the most important thing for the pulp feel

We've run GASLIGHT games for 12-20 players. You can tailor the rules with aspects of Big Battles by GASLIGHT to support larger games.

A second to Howard Whitehouse's Astounding Tales:

link

I've used it for a number of convention games with a dozen and more players.

A third vote for Astounding tales. here are some examples where I have run it so you can get an idea of the game sizes:

link

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Yes I am thinking 6-10 figures per player. 3 hour game and everyone "active" at least 50% of the time.

We have used in Her Majesty's Name before and it was OK. I agree with the point around simple rules. I am considering Chain of Command with Pulp elements but I suspect that is too "hard core" of a game – we get a lot of RPG players.

The main we want is IGOUGO – we can't be waiting for 10 people to do their turn.

I'll check out Astounding Tales.

Card activation games work fine with big groups. The trick is for the GM to flip cards and let multiple players activate at once if they won't be interfering with each other.

A Fistful of Lead has a neat card activation system, designed for large groups. Each turn the GM deals players a standard playing card for every figure they have. Then starting with Kings, any player who has a King gets to activate a figure, then anyone with a Queen activates a figure, and so on. If you need to break ties then use the suit of the card. And some cards in the deck have special events/abilities.

I would recommend QILS (I wrote it. It's free.).

It has the features you are looking for in terms of con games. You can use IGOUGO. When you are going around the table in sequence, it is pretty easy to determine who can and can't "skip ahead" and take their turn without messing up dependencies.

QILS is pretty easy to learn and fast to play. As Extra Crispy says, the real pulp is in the scenario.

If you are 13 or fewer (as you indicated), I would recommend a "Race for the McGuffin" scenario. Each player has a small "equal" team (a leader and a couple minions, a dynamic duo team, a tinkerer in a big steam suit, a squad of only henchmen, etc.) and they are moving around a suitable environment (ruined Asian temple, sewer, alien world, etc.) collecting treasure (diamond number cards from a deck) distributed all around the board (face down). The goal is to collect X total points of treasure (radioactive fuel, ancient artifacts, diamonds, etc.) and get off the board. Of course, X is high enough that you will have to fight with some teams to take what they collected, but not more than half the total, so multiple teams could get off the board with "enough", but still different totals. 30 points if you put out all 13 diamonds and count royals as 10 points each.

This is also good for a con, since you can stop at any time and count points for an interim victory if you need to.

You can also add the "archenemies" mechanic. Randomly assign a spade from a deck to each player (team). Secretly deal a club from the deck to each player. If a player kills the last member of the team matching their club, they claim an immediate eight point bonus. If they kill the last team member from a team adjacent to their club (one up or one down, wrapping A to 2), they claim an immediate four point bonus.

This adds some intrigue and also mitigates "gang up on the currently most successful team" syndrome.

etotheipi, do you have a link for your rules please ?