Fortune and Glory Pulp Adventure
Many years ago I bought the board game Fortune and Glory because I loved the theme and thought it looked fun. It turns out it really is a great game, and I frankly don't play it enough. One of the reasons I bought it was that I had hopes that it could be used as a sort of "campaign generator" for playing out Pulp games with miniatures.
After all these years I finally sat down to look at it, and when paired with miniatures rules, it really does work perfectly as the Campaign for tabletop gaming.
There aren't even any real changes to make. Basically, you can just play the board game as normal. In the game you draw "Dangers" that have to be completed when you're looking for a Relic. I simply draw the Danger, then instead of rolling against the target number it wants, I translate it into a tabletop game. Some of them are easy, some require a lot of thought to change into an actual table, but that's part of the fun for me.
On the tabletop, I am using the Fivecore Pulp Adventure rules. I really like those too, though I'm not married to them and may try out other rules as I go.
It's easier than I had hoped, really. The miniatures rules have their own campaign/advancement/money system, so I was concerned it might get complicated. But it doesn't, the Fivecore rules play out completely within the regular board game turn, between the cards as it were. It's close to seamless. So far.
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| Sorry about the shine, the board is SUPER glossy. |
First I set up the Fortune and Glory board. I decided that for this game I was going to play it like a normal 2-player game, there just isn't a second player. I didn't need to choose a character card, since I'm not using the game characters (though I could, the minis are the right size and I do/will use them when I need one).
So because I didn't have a character card, I don't have the "Starting City" listed. For that, I turned to Fivecore where it has a chart to roll on to see where your adventure starts. My roll said South America, so Rio de Janeiro it is!
Then I deployed the 4 Relics per the rules to random locations, and that's the set-up.
Next I created my team using the Fivecore rules, rolling randomly whenever there was a chance to rather than choosing, and making use of random name generators. I ended up with a team of five.
Christopher "Dusty" Preston, my Hero character. He's a member of "The Order of the Saphire Oak"(which I take to be some sort of adventuring club. Like the Moose lodge, but for crazy jungle raiders and such). He has the Reloading skill, and carries a shotgun and blade in addition to the default pistol.
Two Adventurers (normal guys), Clyde Stafford and Steve Holmes. Clyde has the Leader skill, and is a member of the Order as well. Steve has Improvisation, and is an artist and enthusiastic explorer. Also a Native American apparently, based on the mini I had avaliable.
A "Hanger-On" (lesser character), a pilot named Willis Robertson. And a Follower (skilled in one area, but a disaster in a fight), Paul McKay a Scholar of some type.
I figure I'll tell the story in my regular narrative style, but make comments on the actual gameplay at points where I think it's relevant, or just to show how I am doing things.
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Dusty Preston and The Shadow of the Damned! Part one
(I rolled up a date with a d12 and a d30, for no particular reason)
October 20th - We gathered in Rio De Janeiro to start our expedition. Africa is our destination, the deep jungles of the Congo. There we hope to find The Shadow of the Damned, a rather unfortunately named gem or considerable worth in both money and history. Spirits are high, our optimism rampant, and the call to adventure has sounded!
October 24th - We have booked passage on a freighter, the Coral Horizon, headed to the African coast. The ship is seaworthy, and fairly modern. We should make good time and anticipate arriving on the Dark Continent within a fortnight.
FANG Turn 1 - Rolled a 2 for movement. Enough to reach the sea, but nothing else. Rolled to see if anything happens, and I rolled a 1. I'm attacked! Draw a card from the Enemies pile to see who attacked us. Apparently it's Thugs! Based on the picture it's actual Thugs, not street criminals.
November 2nd - While our team was all below deck, going about their recently established routines born of more than a week at sea, we were suddenly attacked!
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| I used an interior board I had to represent the below deck area of the freighter. |
A number of Thug cultists, and some more western men that appeared to lead them, flooded below deck and tried their level best to dispatch us.
My first indication of trouble was a man in a turban, wielding a sword, rushed into the room and charged me.
A brief fight ensued, an exchange of blows, sword verse machete. Eventually, fist to fist, and finally chair to turban. My attacker dealt with, I ducked out of the opposite door and into the hallway.
Two more of the boarders were out there, taking shots into a further hallway. From inside I heard the rapid shots of a pistol pair, meaning Willis was fighting them back. Crossing quickly, I knocked the western leader unconscious with a single blow. I tried to follow through against the second Thug, but he was good. He scored a heavy blow with the flat of his blade and sent me stumbling back.
In another room, Steve was likewise stunned in a fight and forced into a corner. Clyde, not having been near the hall before, was now entering the action. He gunned down a Thug in the hallway as he moved to help Steve in his fight.
Finally shaking off the blow that caused me to see stars, I ran across the hall, firing as I went, and dropped the Thug threatening Steve.
With only two of the bandits still upright, they chose to flee. We let them. I don’t know where they went to. Back to wherever they came I suppose, to report to whomever sent them. We’ve found nothing, only just having begun our expedition. I cannot imagine what they could have been sent to attack us for.
The crew of the ship was found, bound and gagged, in the ship's tower. The rest of our voyage was uneventful.
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Now that was fun!
I love how this is working already. First turn, just a movement of a piece on a board game, a single die roll, and a single card draw for enemies, and I end up playing a miniatures game where Indian Thugs are attacking me below deck on a freighter. That's excellent, and is exactly the kind of generation I was looking for.
This post is long, so the further adventures of Dusty Preston will be in another post!
Idle game thoughts: I personally really enjoy this sort of narrative game. The random creation of the sets and characters, narrated together into a coherent story. For me it creates something very compelling that feels more like a story unfolding than a story created. I never would have chosen to have the freighter boarded before the game even really started, for example. And the characters sort of develop their own personalities over time, based on their game actions, and how the figure looks.
With my limited collection of Pulp-ish figures, they are more often than not just the available figure, rather than the one I would have chosen. That too gives them a different character.
I feel like it really stretches my creative ability, sort of like painting figures with a color palate you don't normally use.
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