Michelle's Atlantis Campaign

This is a report from my wife's new Atlantis Campaign. It's a Pulp era game set in 1931. We are using a modified version of No Limits we created to do more roleplay oriented pulp adventure games while keeping the combat quick and easy like a miniature skirmish game.



Morocco, June 19th 1931 just a few miles south of Essaoria.




I, Charles Langford, my two daughters Emily and Allison with out dog Jack have set up camp near what we believe are Roman ruins.



We set out early and search the ruins all day. Emily finds a key early on with a strange stone set into it. Later we discover that the floors are covered in what looks like astrological signs and a strange cuniform script. Jack discovers a strangly heavy and smooth metal ball about the size of a baseball. Near the end of the day we discover a strange open area on the floor about 5'X 10'that is very smooth and totally different from the tiles around it.



We take careful rubbings on several parts of the tile floor then retire for the night. I stay up late to study the strange rubbings. The ruins appear to be Roman but the astrological signs and strange writing are most certainly not. The rubbings contain what looks to be a map of the solar system but oddly only the plannet Mars is marked.



Somewhere during my study I must have fallen asleep but I am awaken by the sound of jack rushing from the tent barking loudly.



I follow him out and notice he's headed for the dig site barking up a storm.



Something in the ruins has him very upset but we don't see what it is that's bothering him. I notice Emily is behind me and I can hear Allison getting out of the tent.



Suddenly we are face to face with a unbelievably horrid creature. It seems to be a large hound of some kind but with two heads and a spiked tale. Whats worse is that it's skeleton is exposed in some places by large rotting holes in it's hide. Despite this fact it is still quite animated and lively. The beast lets out an unholy howl that strikes fear in our hearts.



Emily and I move backwards shooting at the creature but we both miss. Jack seems to be frozen in place and I fear the creature will attack him and tear him apart.



Instead of attacking Jack the beast leaps right into the middle of our group and fortunately directly into Allison's sights. With one shot she drops the horrid creature.



It's only then that we start to notice the awful stench of the already decayed body. We examine it it bit unsure of what to make of it.



We are so intrigued by the creature we almost fail to notice a group of armed men have moved into out camp. They appear to be French soldiers.




Their leader Captain La Clede says his men where on patrol when they heard fighting. He is as supprised as we are at the strange creature and claims he has never heard of such a beast. I show him my papers concerning our escavation and after what seems a lengthy review he hands them back satisfied. He ask us about anything we might have found and unfortunately Emily pipes up about the key straight away.



Then captain decides he and his men should stay in our camp for the night just in case there are any more problems. I'm somewhat suspicious about his motives but I have no athority to stop him. After a brief chat I turn in for the night.



I decide to say awake for a while just in case the French soldiers are up to no good. I carefully peer out the front of the tent and notice the beast has been moved away from the camp. I also notice some of the soldiers searching the ruin. It would be most unfortunate if they were to find something important because chances are they would try to keep it to themselves. I'm in a bad position though as I don't wish to start trouble with the government after only a day in country.



After a while curiosity and the large ammount of cofee I have been drinking get the better of me and a venture from the tent to relive myself and check up on my new "guardians"



Before returning to the tent I check in with the captain. He tells me they have burried the beast. I remind him that if his men find anything in the ruins they should inform me in the morning. He assures me that his men are only securing the premiter but I still don't trust him compleatly.



I return to bed but I set Jack to guard the door of the tent in case the Frenchies try anything. Jack's a good guard dog. I'm sure the frogs won't get past him without him raising a ruckus.



In the morning I find the French Soldiers haveing breakfast. Captain La Clede informs me that he believes I should return to town and hire some guards before I return to escavate more. It's clear it's more of an order than a request we strike the camp after a quick breakfast.



With nothing left to do we get in our truck and head back to Essaoria to hire some more men for the dig. The French form up and follow us back. Perhaps I shouldn't distrust them so much but I can't help but wonder if they found more clues during their nightime searching of the ruins.

To be continued......

Trying out some Pulp Adventure

I’ve been collecting some pulp era miniatures lately with the intention of running several pulp adventure games. My favorite pulp era is the years between the world wars. Largely the 1920s and 30s. There were a lot of interesting things going on historically as well of a lot of great pulp adventure literature being written at that time. It’s the era when the last corners of the map were finally being filled in. Aviation was still a new and wondrous technology; automobiles were crafted with style and grace. It was the era of prohibition, depression, and revolution, the mafia and Hover’s FBI. Communist, Fascist, and Imperialist, threatened Democracies and each other. It’s an era full of opportunities for high adventure both exotic and domestic.
The biggest problem I’ve had was coming up with ideas that I could pull off. I’ve had a number of campaign ideas but they all ended up getting too big too quickly so I’ve had to abandon or at least put them aside in favor of working adventures around the miniatures and props I own. Not that I’m no longer collecting new pulp adventure miniatures and props. I intend to expand my collection to rival my fantasy and Star Wars collection. Another problem I’ve had is that my regular group has been a bit unstable lately. One of my members is expecting a new addition to his family any time now and another just purchased a new home that needs quite a bit of work. This leaves me and my wife as the group regulars. Our daughter sometimes games with us as well but not as a regular member. So we decided to focus on a campaign based on a character developed by my wife and myself and let the other players who show up play supporting or co-staring roles in a serial story about her character. The main heroine of the story is Abigail Blackfeather. Abigail is an American aviatrix and co-owner of the Blackfeather ranches. She’s part Crow on her father’s side and she has a teenage daughter named Karen who’s father was killed during The Great War.


Now this campaign is going to be neither a traditional role playing game nor at regular table top miniature game but rather a miniature adventure game with elements of both RPGs and miniature battle games. Unlike a regular role playing game the players won’t be sitting around for hours doing detailed investigation with a the occasional action sequence. The action sequences will be the focus and any off board role playing will be used mostly to set up the next chase or shootout, or exploration of some underground tomb. Although unlike a regular table top miniature battle role playing during the course of the action is just as important as winning the fight. The action sequences will also often require non combat skills to resolve special problems during the action sequence. For instance half the party may have to hold off a group of cultist while one of the party deciphers an ancient manuscript. The action sequences and role play interludes will tie together into a serial campaign.
I plan to experiment with several rules sets during this campaign and since I’m planning on presenting my campaign reports as narrative battle reports the rules used for each particular session are of lesser importance. For this first episode I chose to use No Limits for my game rules although I altered them to suit a smaller character driven game rather than a sci-fi battle game. The No Limits rules are really quite flexible and include a detailed system for creating your own characters, troops, creatures, and vehicles. I really like the No-limits combat system and I especially like their force building system. The rules worked pretty well for this episode despite the fact that I was using some house rules and I’ve only played this system a couple times. No-Limits is also totally free to download and a very complete game with active support on their forums.
Ok enough explanation. On with the report. In the future I will be presenting these more as a narrative web comic based on the game play but for now I’m just going to show pictures from the game with some description of the action. This was a small simple encounter we used to test out some of my rules ideas.

Colorado 1928 at the Blackfeather Ranch south of Denver. It’s early spring. Abigail Blackfeather and her daughter Karen are loading equipment and supplies into a Lockheed Vega. A black sedan pulls up near the airstrip and a man in an old military uniform steps out. It’s U.S. Marshal Leland Grant. Marshal Grant needs Abigail’s help to track down a group of armed men who broke into the Denver Museum and stole, among other things, a coded treasure map that supposedly leads to a cache of lost Spanish gold somewhere in the area. What’s unusual about these men is that one witness described them as German soldiers. The local law enforcement hasn’t been able to locate them but it is believed they are still in the area searching for the treasure. Abigail agrees to help the Marshal and they take off in her plane to search for the robbers.

After hours of searching they spot a camp. Abigail flies in for a closer look.



Strangely enough the men do resemble German Soldiers. Then men in the camp shoot at Abigail’s plane and one of them scores a hit but the plane is not badly damaged. Abigale flies away from the camp and lands in a nearby field.



They decide to approach the camp from the South West sneaking through a wood to avoid detection by any patrols.



The party sneaks up a hill over looking the camp.



Karen get’s a little too curious and despite being very well hidden she is spotted by one of the soldiers who begin to shoot at her.



Marshal Grant moves to the edge of the woods and guns down one of the soldiers shooting at Karen.



Abigail pulls Karen back down the hill and she and the Marshal engage the soldiers in a fire fight. Karen ignores her mothers order to say down and used the confusion to sneak around the side of the hill.



The heroes trade fire with the soldiers in a fierce gun battle. Three soldiers are shot but the last two have heavy cover.



Karen moves out of her cover to try and get a better position. Abigail realizes Karen is no longer behind her and runs after her daughter trying to catch her before she gets shot.



Marshal Grant rushes down the hill to distract one of the soldiers from shooting at Abigail. He ducks behind the front of the truck just barely avoiding getting shot.



The Marshal then charges the soldier and engages him in hand to hand combat.



Being an expert at hand to hand Marshal Grant knocks the soldier out in one punch.



Karen decides to follow the marshal’s lead and she charges the soldier.



The soldier laughs and tries to knock her out.



It’s a good thing Karen took those karate lessons. “HAI YA!” The soldier goes down clutching his privates.



The Heroe’s interrogate their prisoners in the camp. At first the Germans are reluctant to tell the Marshal where the rest of their group is so Abigail threatens to scalp them winking at the Marshal. The Marshal explains to the Germans that Abigail is a wild Indian and they better take her threat seriously. “Please do not scalp us. Ve know vhere zhey are!” The heroes have a laugh that the Germans fell for such an old trick.



Fade to black. Roll Credits.

Chronicles of Highcliff Journey to Orc Island Part 4

Chronicles of Highcliff
Journey to Orc Island Part 4
Encounter at the Forest Edge

Saturday 8th day of the Harvest Moon, Year of the Horse
After healin up a bit we decided our best bet was to press right on through the forest and perhaps try to camp on the very edge before trying to find the mine our “guide” told us was where the Rockfist tribe was havin the youngins work. We got to the edge without any incident then decided to rest up as best we could since we were not fully healed from the previous nights ordeal. It was still before noon so we pitched out tents and set up our standard watches.
I guess it was sometime well after dark when a large patrol of Rockfist orcs came around scountin the edges of the forest. Helsa and Mary was on watch and they heard the orcs makin their way along the tree line. Aleena was up readin a book of some kind. Like I said before that elf never sleeps.

The worst thing about monastic orders or fightin schools and the like is that while you can learn some good fightin in places like that you still don’t get more field experience. This was the case with Helsa. She told Mary, who is quite sneaky and light on her feet, to hide back in camp while she scouted the orc patrol. Now to say Helsa couldn’t sneak through a hall of passed out dwarves after a week long beerfest is being kind. She would also have a hard time hiding out in a school for the blind and deaf. She might as well have walked right into the Orcs path because the orcs spotted her straight away and shortly after that they spotted out camp.

The orc boss and a few of his goons attacked Helsa and the rest of the orcs moved into the are of our camp.

Helsa was havin a hard time with the orcs that attacked her. Seems their boss was a pretty tough character.

Mary however was well hidden so she let a group of orcs move passed her position.

Then she sprung out of her hiding place to attack them.

Meanwhile Aleena managed to zap one of the orcs with a spell just as I was gettin into the fight.

Unfortunately the orcs didn’t take kindly to this display of arcane type power. One of the orcs stepped up and knocked Aleena out with one powerful hit.

Fortunately Finnias came out of the tent at that very moment. Helsa was also doin better. She managed to cut down one orc goon and without missing a beat cleave into the other. It was just her and the orc boss in that fight now.

After killin the rest of the orcs in the camp Finnias and I moved up to help Mary with the orc archers. Unfortunately we didn’t get to her in time and she went down before we could help her. Joe had also managed to get himself up and join the fighting.

The sight of our ogre hireling caused the rest of the orc archers to take to their heels but Joe soon ran them down and killed them all.

We then helped the injured to their feet with a little healing. We had captured two more orcs in the fightin which was a good thing since they had more recent information and it would be easier for us to play them against each other to get it.

Unfortunately the battle left us in just as bad a shape as we had been before we rested and even though we were only a few hours from our destination we decided we would need to find and even safer place to rest before we staged our rescue. We moved camp a bit deeper into the woods and hid our position as best we could.

Chronicles of Highcliff
Journey to Orc Island Part 3
The Haunted Forest Part 2

As told by
Snori Wallburg
Translated from the original hill dwarf by Nathan Miller

Seein all them corpsified pirates was somewhat disturbin but we figured we had to get through the woods if we was gonna have a chance to help the youngins. Wasn’t too long until we found a place to camp. We pitched out tents, set watches, and prayed to the gods we would have a peaceful night. As luck would have it though our prayers went unanswered.



A few hours after the witchin hour Helsa and I was patrollin the camp when we saw several shadowy figures shambling in our general direction. I never seen such a host of walkin dead in all my years. I’d say there were at least 30 in three groups an each one of the groups was lead by a wight. Well there wasn’t nothin to do but fight em off as best we could whilst shoutin and hollerin to try and wake our companions. Fortunately Aleena was also awake readin on a book. That elf never sleeps.
Helsa clutched her holy symbol and called upon the power of Heironeous as she strode towards 10 of the walkin dead. The lesser skeletons she was facing fled from her but the wight was undeterred and kept commin.



Aleena stood before a second group of undead types and began to cast a spell. Suddenly the ground beneath their feet turned slippery as a greased pig. The wight an several of the skeletons she was facing fell over.



Havin neither magical hoodo nor holy powers to call upon I did the next best thing. I grabbed my axe and charged head first into the third group of Undead. Several however slipped passed me.



I was havin no kind of luck trying to kill the undead ghoolies that was facin me an I was a startin to get concerned. Fortunately though all the racket we was causin woke up Mary and Joe and they joined the fray. Just about that time Helsa was gettin the better of the wight but I was gettin quite surrounded and I began to wonder if I was finally gonna meet Moradin.



After what seemed like ages and a day our sleepy cleric Finnias managed to rouse himself to battle.


I guess he needed a little extra shut eye cause after a quick survey of your situation he pulled out his holy symbol and called upon Fharlanghn to protect us seein as how we was travelin an protection of travelers was his thing.
I don’t know what kind of power Fharlanghn has but he must get powerful upset when travelers are in trouble cause the whole host of skeletons I was fightin vanished in a cloud of dust. All of em sept the wight who I was still wrastlin with.


Now Helsa seems like a brave paladin and she seems devout but her god must be a tad sadistic cause as only her luck would have it the last wight an another skeleton managed to pull themselves up from the greasy pit Aleena had formed below their feet and they charged Helsa straight away.



This proved to be more than Helsa could handle. The wight managed to knock her out with one powerful blow.


Fortunately for her Finnias and Aleena were there to save her from certain death. I also managed to finally send the wight I was fightin to the grave…..again.



Finnias immediately knelt beside Helsa and prayed for her protection. It was a good thing he did too because otherwise we may have lost our brave Paladin.