Graveyard on Denley Moor

Jamie came over at the weekend (it was my birthday) and as well as going out for a meal we managed to get in a game of Pulp Alley on Saturday evening.

It’s been a while since we played an episode in my very slow PA campaign “The Quest for Faulkner’s Balls”. Over a year in fact! I knocked up a simple game using my new graveyard terrain module and the standard “Trail of Clues” scenario from the rule book.

Jamie played the Friends of the Reverend Featherstonehaugh and I looked after those vicious London criminals The Muswell Hill mob.

I wanted to have a go at using the vehicle rules from Gadgets, Guns and Vehicles. I gave the Rev’s Friends a Rolls Royce.  There was also a chap from the GPO working on the telegraph line that runs over the moor.  His van was a possible source of vehicular mayhem.

The main objective was to gain control of Captain Faulkner, the shell-shocked veteran of the trenches now often found wandering the moors with his dog Sergeant.

We each placed one minor Plot Point at the start of the game. Jamie placed a large earthenware pot beside the road and I put a wooden crate at the corner of the old graveyard.

Notter of the Muswell Hill Mob reached the crate and managed quickly to prize it open. Looking up from the contents he saw a Raven perched on the graveyard wall. “C’Mon Sergeant” it squawked!  (That was the next Plot Point that I placed).

Miller and Notter interrogate the raven

In the meantime the earthenware pot was proving harder to understand (I played a Peril) on Jamie’s character. As a result it took him longer to go for his second Plot Point (a hand drawn map).

A gun battle then developed between Notter on the Mob's side and The Count and PC Newthwaite on the other.

Miller, meanwhile, managed to get over the graveyard wall and persuade Faulkner of the wisdom of accompanying a man with a strategically placed automatic pistol.

One of Jamie's reward cards allowed him to extend the game to seven turns but it wasn't enough to prevent the Muswell Hill Mob making off with Faulkner and, presumably, his ancestor's mysterious journal too!

Look out for the next episode of the Quest for Faulkner's Balls - coming to a theatre near you soon! Well, eventually anyway.