Jungle Screams

At Little Wars 2005, Jim Stuht, one of the playtesters for .45 Adventure: Crimefighting Action in the Pulp Era, ran his Jungle Screams scenario. He has chronicled the exploits of Sir Peter, the bumbling hero of the tale and was happy to share it with our Gallery. Click on any of the images below to see a larger version.

All's quiet on the Southeast Asian scene before the battle commences.

Downtown Chicago won't stay this calm for long.

Brains Sinapse, Sir Peter, and Doc Patella discuss their strategy before meeting the foe.

Casper Belliboi (seated), watches as his lovely sidekick Edie moves.

Everyone watches intently as Sir Peter (hidden by Casper) tries a stellar gambit.

Joel Memphis (far left) attempts to regain consciousness under the gaze of Doc and Brains.

As for the game itself, it is loosely based on your typical Saturday morning serial from the 30s, 40s, and 50s -- with a touch of the
Maltese Falcon and Indiana Jones thrown in. The rules are set up so they can be run on a small board (2' x 2') with each player running from 1-4 figs each. In this game most guys had 2 characters while the player running the hero - Sir Peter - just had the one fig. His figure had the "lucky" stat which involves a bit more attention, so I figured he would have plenty to keep him busy with just the one fig.

The backstory to the game was that Sir Peter and his loyal stalwarts had come into possession of the "Jewel of Fire", a fabled ruby that had been pilfered from its' rightful place as the third eye in the statue of Chaka-Laka-Boom-Boom in far off Kampuchea. Sir Petey and his Fly-by-Night-Four were bound by honor to return the jewel to its' home. Doing his best to thwart Sir P and friends was the master of evil, Casper Belliboi, and his two lackeys - Joel Memphis and Edie O'Shaughnessie - plus some assorted gunsels.

We started at board one which was the upper floors of an office building which housed Sir Peter's offices, then transitioned to an
alleyway behind the office building. From there we proceeded to scene 3 which took place aboard the SS Bilgepump enroute to Kampuchea. Scene 4 was on the docks at Kampot where our heros and villains debarked and then on to scene 5 which was -- depending on prior discoveries -- either a jungle trail or a native villiage. (In this instance, due to finding a map, we just had the jungle.) The final board, scene 6, was the mysterious Temple of Chaka-Laka-Boom-Boom where our heroes must attempt to return the jewel to the statue and foil the dastardly Belliboi and put his forces of evil to route.

As per the rules, each board had a number of tokens which had to be searched for and found. This was one method of ending a "scene" -- when the last token was found we would fade to black and reassemble on the next board. At other times, I just placed a time limit to the scene so that the players would keep moving. Otherwise, guys tend to forget and start blasting the dickens out of each other with no other motive than it's fun! I was limited to a 4 hour slot and had to keep things moving along -- a 5 hour slot would have been a bit better as towards the end I had to speed things up more than I really wanted to.

Since this was a convention game and I wanted all the players to be in the game til the end, I made some alterations to the basic rules. As per the typical "serial", nobody bothers with reloading, so I dispensed with any ammo restrictions -- we had 10-shooters galore! Also, in the normal course of a serial no one ever gets killed or even seriously wounded til the very end of the movie. So, in this spirit, as we moved from board to board I had the players erase any damage they had taken and they started each new scene fully healthy -- until they hit the jungle! On the last 2 boards, they had to carry their wounds from board to board. This made them a bit more cautious about exposing themselves to gunfire but didn't seem to slow things down at all. Also, some of the things that could be found along the trail were healing roots and a witch doctor that could save them if necessary. Plus one of the good guys was a medic who could also help out his friends if needed.

I also dropped the morale checks when a fig gets hurt -- this would force a fig to retreat until he can pass a morale check and usually I don't use these type of rules at a convention. Players tend to really grumble if they have to pull out of a fight -- even if only for a turn -- so I just ignored the morale. This is only for con use, for normal play here in Madison I keep the morale as it is a nice twist as just when you think your all set to go, a fig decides to split for a while and louses up the best of plans.

Hope this gives you an idea as to how the game ran. The players all seemed to have a great time and wanted to know where they could get the rules. I know I had a gas of a time running the game and will be running it or a sequel again very soon.

Jim S.