A month or so ago I came across a terrain system for 3D printing in MyMini Factory called Hexhog Tabletops. The system is made up of roughly 3″ across the flats hexagonal tiles that are clipped together with OpenLock clips to make up very detailed model landscapes. Hexhog offer a completely free set of files called Campfire Confusion that you can print out to try the system. The terrain that I am using for this game is made from these free files. I did a review / painting & modelling guide a couple of weeks ago that you can read here. The set even comes with some scenario ideas for playing a D&D / Pathfinder scenario using the free tiles.
When my son Lewis last came over to visit, we decided that we would have a go at putting a scenario together for our favourite miniatures game, Pulp Alley using the terrain. We are half way through a Pulp Alley campaign based on the ‘Tomb of the Serpent’ campaign set in first century Rome, which we jokingly call Pulpam Angiportum: Sepulcrum Serpentis! Quiet a mouth full!
The scenario idea is that the player league is travelling on a long journey and has settled down for another nights uneventful sleep but are awakened by a surprise attack on the camp. The player league is not specifically expecting trouble, so just has one character on watch, the rest are sleeping around the campfire. The league is transporting a valuable relic which is the major plot point. This has been hidden nearby.
After deciding which characters are going to take a turn at sentry duty, we rolled so whose watch the attack happened during. The terrain that I had made was only 18″ across which is half the size of a normal Pulp Alley table. This did not really matter as the attack was happening in darkness, in the middle of the night using the Pulp Alley hidden and spotting rules. The attacking league was selected at random from the Servants of Apothis leagues in the Tomb of the Serpent book. I ended up with a league containing a Serpent Priest and five Cultists (Allies) four with ranged weapons and one with just a melee weapon. A D12 was rolled to determine the entry point. I rolled ‘2’ for the Two o’clock position. My league started off the table and moved on when activated. As it was dark, the whole table was difficult terrain, so moving over 6″ triggered a peril but in order to keep hidden, figures could not move more than 3″ per activation.
Line of sight was blocked by trees and boulders and restricted to 12″ because it was dark. As the attackers crept forward the sentry could attempt to spot them by winning a spotting check. The character ding the spotting rolls there cunning dice, the character attempting to remain hidden rolls there finesse dice. If the hidden character rolls more successes than the spotting character, they remain hidden, otherwise they are revealed.
The sentry can, as an action, attempt to make up the rest of the party. A Fortune Card is drawn and the challenge is attempted. If the challenge was successful, the character can roll however many dice they have in the skill rolled and for each success they can nominate a character to be woken up. The character can not activate that turn as they are waking up and getting there boots on, but if attacked can defend themselves as normal.
The defending players characters are minor plot points. If a character is ‘down’, as an action an attacker can attempt to interrogate them to find the location of the major plot point. If the peril and challenge is overcome, the major plot point (the relic) is placed by the defender within 6″ of the campfire. Who ever is in control of the relic at the end of the six turn scenario wins the game.
When we played the scenario, the Servants of Apothis managed to torture on of the Gaul’s to reveal the location of the relic early on in the game. The bow and sling armed cultists concentrated on taking out minor characters while the Serpent Priest searched for the Relic.
By turn four the Serpent Priest had retrieved it and a desperate chase was underway as Centurion Tertius (retd.) attempted to take back possession of the relic. As always in Pulp Alley, it was a close run thing, exciting down to the last dice roll of the last turn, but at the end of the day, the bad guys won and managed to keep control of the relic right to the end of the game.
The scenario was a lot of fun to play and a good chance to really get to grips with the hidden and spotting rules in Pulp Alley. It played very well on an 18″ across board and the level of detail in the Hexhog terrain worked very well.
Useful Links:
Pulp Alley: Semi-RPG / Skirmish rules for all periods & genres
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