CPJD is the sequel to Grave Robbers from Outer Space, and if you wish, the two decks can be combined to build Cannibal Grave Robber Pygmies in the Jungle of Outer Space Doom! (And look out for the asian installment, Kung-Fu Samurai on Giant Robot Island, coming in July.) As is clear from the titles, these are games devoted to recreating B-films and their cliches. What Grave Robbers did for schlock horror, CPJD does for pulp jungle adventure.
Technically, the point of the game is to finish with the most points, but (as will be revealed) this is mostly just luck, and I have yet to bother scoring any game I've played. The real point of the game is for each of the two to six players to make their own hilarious and cool adventure film with their cards, and rain down fiery monster-related death on their opponents' films (and thus, really, make them cooler anyway). Each round, you draw up to six cards, play cards into your film on the table in front of you, send monsters to attack other films, and then pass the turn around the table. The deck consists of 110 cards, of which two say simply "Roll the Credits". When your movie has at least one Treasure, you can play a Roll the Credits card (if you have one) to end the game. Failing that, the game ends when the draw deck runs out. The person with the highest scoring movie wins. Very simple. Indeed, the rules can be read in about sixty seconds, and taught in ten.
There are five types of cards to play. Most important are Characters, because without them your film is some kind of Russian expressionist film involving long slow pans across the jungle (which actually happened in our first game, much to our amusement). Redraws are used to make sure everyone starts with at least one Character. These include all the best cliched heroes of pulp movies, all perfectly described and titled. There's the Rich Fish Out of Water, Colonel Monocle, the Ex-Pat Loner with a Grudge, Skippy the Wonder Dog and my personal favourite, the Cold Fish Scientist Who Eventually Comes Round. Classic.
Characters have a Defence Value (used to fight monsters) and certain attributes, like Native, Female, Old or Dumb. This allows them to be effect by various other complex effects in their own way (eg when attacked by a monster, any Natives in the group have to die first). Each Character also has special rules associated with them to throw other chaos into the midst. For example, the Cold Fish Scientist gets +1 Defence for every Male character in the film, and the Lara Croft analogue can nick Treasures from other films.
Each Character can also be given any amount of Props, at a rate of one per turn, which add to their Defence, and give them further special rules. They also may have their own traits so they can be effected in other strange ways. For example, if you have the Hat (no traits), you can't die unless you lose the Hat first. Own the Ark of the Covenant and you can end the game, as it has Trait: Treasure. Own the Rickety Biplane (Trait: Vehicle) and you can steal Locations from other people's movies. Locations, by the way, are the third type of card, and work just like Props: they increase defence, may have attributes, and their own special rules. For example, the Museum gives +8 defence, but you can play no Native characters while there, and the Mummy attack always succeeds. The difference is that a film can only have one Location at a time, and you must discard one to play another (or when another is played on you.)
Yes, you can play cards on other people's films. You want to do this with a few bad Props or Locations, but you may also want to do it to set up nasty combos (maybe you Monster can only attack in a certain Location, so you need to move someone's film there first) or to get rid of cards, or to just make things more amusing. However, most of your interaction with others' movies will be sending Monsters to attack them.
On a turn, you can play cards into your film and make any number of attacks on others' films, but you may only use one Monster per attack. Monsters include Moquitos Like Harrier Jets, Nazi Troops, Haitian Voodoo Dancing Zombies and the requisite Giant Ape. Monsters have an Attack value rated between 5 and 17. If this value equals or exceeds the total defence of the film (all Characters, Props and Locations added together), then the attack is successful and the Monster may eat one of the Characters (and all their Props) on his way to the discard pile. If the attack is lesser, the monster is simply discarded.
The problem with this is that most Characters have 3 or 4 Defence, Props give at least +2, Locations give +3 or more, and a lot of cards combine their bonuses to quickly produce a very high Defence total, such that as soon as a film has three or more people in it, it typically becomes almost unassailable. Although bigger creatures can still threaten, it is relatively quick and easy to move your film way beyond the reach of the 12, 000 Angry Rats or the Scorpion or the Crocodile. This makes these cards useless, and not fun. Yes, you can use them to attack people whose movies are low in Defence, but these people are losing and thus you have no reason to attack them. Although, it was funny when Skippy the Wonder Dog was devoured by Leeches in our playtest game. That film went from Disney to R-rated in one second flat.
The way the game tries to get around this is with the final card type, Special Effects. These are mix-it-up cards that add to Attack levels or Defence levels, prevent actions, give bonuses or penalties or otherwise add chaos to the mix. Examples include "Pygmies Don't Wear Reeboks" (removes a Native character from play), "Raised by Wolves" (Character acquires the trait Native) and "Tacked-On Love Interest" (a Female character cannot be killed while there are also Males in her film). The majority of these effect Attacks or Defence levels, and unlike all the other cards, can be played out of turn.
This, then, is where the only real game play and strategy occurs. Soon enough, the player who is drawing all the good cards will draw clearly ahead, and everyone will want to attack him. By helping your opponent out with the attack, you can get the Attack total high enough and cause the lead to be lowered. Of course, while all this card spending is going on, someone else is coming in second and is about to move into the lead, so maybe you should save some cards to stop him, too. Or maybe you should wait until your cards are even more effective (such as if the Monster is Native).
That is the full extent of the strategy in CPJD. The game comes down entirely to luck and finding the most powerful combination you can out of the small amount of cards you have. Without the right cards, you really can't do anything, and it can be dull for a player so afflicted. Particularly in big games: with 5 or 6 people it takes a long time to come back around to you. German Expressionist films are funny, but you really do want to find the Holy Grail and kill the T-rex. Without the cards, you're out of luck.
Except, of course, that you can laugh at other people's films. Like I said, this isn't a game about gameplay and strategy, or about winning or losing. This is a game about telling a story and laughing at the cards. And thankfully, the cards are funny, and the stories they tell often hilarious. When the Great White Hunter was about to go in the cooking pot at the Native Feast, only to reveal, at the last moment, that he was actually a member of the tribe in question, whereupon he realised he was actually standing on Sacred Ground, and thus could go no further anyway, my playtest group wanted to hand out the Academy Awards for scriptwriting right then and there.
It did help, though, that my players were all roleplayers and we were doing all the voices. This is definitely a game that, like Once Upon a Time, thrives on the verve of the players. However, the cards are so full of verve already, they provide quite the head start.
It's also worth mentioning that not only are these cards brilliantly chosen and titled, but the quotes are also hilarious, the card stock is high quality and the artwork is small but superb. The game barely needs to be played, the cards are so much fun to look at. And indeed, you could buy this game simply to laugh at these cards, or use them as idea generators for your next pulp game. Need an NPC? Deal a character. Need a plot event? Deal a SFX card. Location plus Monster plus Treasure = an adventure for the evening. Too easy.
The only worry with all this is that card gags are only funny for a while, and once you exhaust most of the combinations, the gameplay could become equally repetitive. While I think CPJD could go for quite a while before this happens, it is definitely the kind of game that needs to be shelved for a while before brought back out again. Indeed, after the playtesting, I don't think I'll play it for a while, to keep it fresh. However, it's so sharply written and so effortlessly captures the spirit of pulp - and with the right group, so damn funny to play - that it is guaranteed to come off the shelf again soon enough. Which is more than you can say about many other comedy games.
And should it ever become tiresome, it would be dead easy to make up your own version, or pick up Grave Robbers or Kung-Fu Samurai and being the wonderful process all over again. Indeed, despite my reservations about the actual play and the longevity of the appeal, the brilliance of the cards and the fun we had playtesting quickly convinced me that I want the other games in the line. Just to see how they capture their respective genres. Just to see how funny they can be.
In a game devoted to films, I can think of no better recommendation than that: I want to see the sequel. In 3-D, if possible
Style 5 Substance 3
