We’ve been playing Pulp Alley for over 10 years now, on a regular basis with lots of different people so sometimes get a bit blasé and forget that there are a lot of gamers who have not tried it or maybe even heard of it, so I thought it might be handy to put a blog together that try’s to explain the game.
In some way’s the name is deceptive. It would be easy to read it, look at the character on the front of the rulebook and think, ‘Aha… This is a set of rules for gaming Laura Croft, Biggles, Dick Barton, Indiana Jones and other 1920’s-40’s action heroes and heroines.’ At that point you might put the rulebook back on the shelf and move on because you were wanting to play a Western Shootout at Tombstone, or an episode of Star Trek, Dr Who or Blakes Seven or maybe put together a scenario based on the exploits of Conan the Barbarian or Elrik of Melnibone. That would be a shame, because what Dave Phipps (the designer of Pulp Alley) means by Pulp is any of those larger than life adventures that were printed as paperbacks on that cheap ‘Pulp’ paper, and that explains the concept a lot better and widens the scope considerably to include Fantasy, Wester, Sci-Fi, Gangster, War Stories and much more.
My experience, as a player is that Pulp Alley can cover all of these genres, and a lot more. When I describe Pulp Alley to someone, I would tell them that it a miniatures and period agnostic skirmish game that covers Cavemen to Spacemen and every other genre in between!
Over the next few weeks I am going to run a game using Cavemen and a game using Spacemen to show what I mean about the versatility of the rules. The main rules include optional rules for Pulp Fantasy, Pulp Science Fiction, Pulp War, Pulp Westerns, Pulp Horror and Pulp Lost Worlds.
How Many / What Figures?
A league (faction / force) for Pulp Alley typically consists of around half a dozen miniatures. Miniatures can be from any manufacturer and in any scale, so any body can play, you can use a handful of Warhammer miniatures, some miniatures from a board game or Lego or Playmobile miniatures if you want, although most gamers do use 28mm miniatures. League creation is very straightforward. You have 10 points to spend. A leader is free, a sidekick cost 3 points (and you can normally only field one sidekick), an ally costs 2 points, a follower costs 1 point and a ‘gang’ of 5 models costs 2 points. Out of your 10 points you can also buy some ‘league perks’. These either give a benefit to all characters in the league, for example ‘Riders’ costs 2 points and allows the whole league to be mounted. Some Perks allow you to change the rules on league creation, for example ‘League of Legends’ allows you to field four sidekicks in your league, but no leader. Points can also be spend on Associates and Assets as part of your league. Associates are part of the supporting cast who work behind the scenes to support your league. They cost 1 roster slot and do not appear on the table but give benefits such as extra ‘gear’ or ‘contacts’.
Scenarios and Table Size
Pulp Alley is ‘plot point driven’. This is a huge part of the appeal. The game is a story. Characters are doing, whatever it is that they are doing for a reason. Instead of the victory conditions being based on how many of the opposition you can ‘kill’, victory is determined by how many plot points you can solve or overcome. To me this was a revelation. The objective of the game now becomes ‘sneaking past the sentry’, ‘opening the locked door’, finding the ‘hidden papers’ etc. You may need to do some shooting and brawling to achieve these objectives, but that is rarely the point of the game. In the game, this is represented by ‘plot points’. When a character is in contact with a plot point they can attempt to overcome the peril associated with it. This is done by drawing a card from the fortune deck and looking at the challenge section which will require a number of successes with a particular skill. If the peril is failed, a health check is required. If the peril is passed another card is drawn for the challenge.
Pulp Alley is generally played on a 3′ square table, although there are some scenarios that are played on a smaller area if the whole encounter takes place inside a house or a boat for example. At conventions, we often set up a 6’x4′ table and then run four different scenarios at each corner of the table.
How does the game work?
Pulp Alley can be played against another player, Solo, Co-op Play or with 2-4 players or more.
The basic mechanisms are very straight forward and logical. If you are better at a particular skill you will have more dice and bigger dice. Many skills such as shooting or brawling require opposed checks. Regardless of what dice you are rolling 4+ is always a success. If you rolled five six sided dice and scored 2,4,3,5,1,6 you would have scored three successes.
Dave Phipps (The designer) has produced a fantastic 4 minute video explaining how to play Pulp Alley.
Try before you buy!
Both myself and Dave Phipps have put together lots of free downloads of the rules and character cards for different genre’s
Click here for Free PDF downloads or rules & character cards
Product Availability
In the USA Pulp Alley is available direct from Dave Phipps at Pulp Alley
Outside the USA Pulp Alley is available by Worldwide mail order from Sally 4th
Sally 4th also supplies Pulp Alley to shops and retailers across the world (outside USA).
If you own a shop and you would like to stock Pulp Alley or you would like your local shop to stock Pulp Alley drop me an email at sally4thgames@gmail.com
Game Support
I think it is fair to say that there has never been a game that is as well supported as Pulp Alley.
Dave Phipps and his wife, Bessy make two videos a week, every week covering different aspects of Pulp Alley.
Click here to take a look at and subscribe to there YouTube channel.
New products are continually being developed. These include new scenarios every month.
Useful Links:
Pulp Alley Game Reports
Pulp Alley Cavemen – The Earth’s Children
Pulp Alley in Warhammer 40K Universe
Pulp Alley Facebook Groups
Pulp Alley in the Albedo Universe?
Definitely. We have had some great Pulp Alley / Albedo crossover games.
I will hunt out the character cards and make them available as a download.