Todd Sanders has released his newest title in the Pulp series, following Pulp Detective and Pulp Invasion. This time, the focus is on Pulp Romance. The game captures the feeling of vintage romance novels and movies that might seem quaint by today’s standards, but it does so with great respect. These older stories are often masterpieces of storytelling, much like the classic film Casablanca. From a mechanical standpoint, this is the strongest game Mr. Sanders has created in the series so far.

As with the previous games in the series, playing this one feels like having a narrator in your head. You can almost hear the voice describing the inner conflicts of the main character as they navigate the turbulent emotions of love. It is a beautiful experience. The game utilizes the same

Romances With Attitude (or A Look at This Theme)

In Pulp Romance, your goal is to find true love while traveling to beautiful and exotic locations around the world. Your lost love has many rival suitors trying to steal their affection. You must expose these false lovers before it is too late! In true pulp fashion, you do this by hiring detectives to investigate their lives. The game is about managing your funds to ensure you have the resources needed to keep up with your love interest, while preventing the rivals from getting too close.

Similar to Pulp Detective, the most important aspect is the story that unfolds in your mind. You follow the journey of Percy Davenport as they seek the heart of their lost love in places like Nice, Rome, or Monte Carlo. You must fend off the dishonorable intentions of a group of bad rivals by checking in with detectives, reporters, and friends. All of this must be done while keeping your finances secure, as international travel and hiring help are not cheap. Even though the game is entertaining, the story that plays out in your imagination as you play is likely even more engaging. This story is possible because of the beautiful, authentic pulp-era artwork and the fast pace of the game. The theme and the mechanics blend well together, perhaps better than the other games in the series. This game is truly seamless.

Weird Tales (or How to Play)

Pulp Romance features several types of cards that go into the draw pile. These include Cities, Friends, Rivals, Detectives, Newspapers, and Bankers. The deck is designed so that few rivals appear early in the game, but the number increases as the game progresses. The setup is simple and quick.

Once the deck is ready, four cards are placed into the Journey Row, which are cards available for you to acquire. Three Search Tableau starting cards are also placed (cards you have before the game begins). You place markers on a tracking card to show you have 0 Victory Points and 10 British Pounds (BP). You then select a gender from a double-sided character card. Each character is associated with one of the four dice in the game. You roll the die once and place it on your character card. The result provides a small-to-moderate bonus for specific actions. For example, the red die (Gossip and Rumors) adds +1 or +2 to the effectiveness of your detectives. The yellow die (Letters of Introduction) is different; the face shows how many times it can be used, and each use reduces the die value until it reaches 0 and is removed.

On your turn, the first thing you can do is purchase a card from the Journey Row. The cost equals the card’s listed cost plus a premium for cards further to the right. Alternatively, you can choose not to buy a card and instead gather funds, which causes a card in the Journey Row to be lost. Any purchased card goes into your Search Tableau and is activated for its action if it has one.

• Cities—Activated immediately (required). You gain Victory Points based on the city and icons on cards in your Search Tableau.
• Friends—Activated on any future turn (optional). You keep these in your Search Tableau until you want to use them. They can be discarded to obtain another card in the Journey Row without paying, or to look at the top cards of the deck and rearrange them.
• Detectives—Activated on all future turns (optional). The total strength of your detectives determines your ability to eliminate rivals. If your strength is not high enough, you can spend BP to lower a rival’s strength.
• Newspapers—Activated immediately (optional). If activated, newspapers allow you to discard another card from the Journey Row. You can gain VP based on that card’s value, or convert the VP into BP. Bonus points may be gained depending on the relationship between the newspaper and the discarded card.
• Bankers—Activated immediately (required). When activated, you gain BP for each newspaper in your Search Tableau.
• Rivals—Rivals are special. They cannot be purchased but must be eliminated

  The second thing you do is check the total strength of your detectives. Compare that to the strength of any one rival in the Journey Row to see if you can defeat them. Remember, BP can be spent to make this easier. If you can and wish to do so, eliminate a rival by placing them to the left of the draw pile and gain the indicated VP.

  

  The last thing you do is check for rivals in the Journey Row. If there are any, the right-most non-rival card in the Journey Row is discarded to a special pile called the Coterie of Rivals.

  Anytime a card is removed from the Journey Row (purchased, discarded, gained by a Friend, defeated, etc.), all cards shift to the right to fill gaps, and a new card is drawn to replace it at the far left.

  

  The game ends when the Journey Row contains nothing but four rivals, or when all nine rivals have been revealed (not necessarily defeated). At that time, total up the points in the Coterie of Rivals pile and subtract this from your total score. Compare your score to the following chart:

  01–15 — It was not meant to be, alas!
  16–25 — You will stay in touch.
  26–40 — You will remain good friends.
  41–55 — The spark is there.
  56–70 — We can build a life together, perhaps.
  71+ — True love forever!

  Love Story (or My Thoughts)

  As indicated above, this is the strongest entry in the Pulp series from a gameplay perspective. Nearly all of my reservations regarding player agency in the previous Pulp games are absent in this latest venture. You have enough information sitting in front of you at all times to make rational and meaningful decisions. There is randomness in the order the cards come out, but you can look at the cards available in the Journey Row, look at the cards in your Search Tableau, work out the cost of any given card, know the effect of that card, and make an informed decision on how to proceed.

  Despite this, the puzzle remains. You need to figure out how to gain Victory Points, how to manage your funds, and how to balance your Search Tableau to provide you with those things and the resources needed to deal with the rivals before they cause the game to end. This is a darn good game! So far, I have played a dozen games or so, and the best I have managed to pull off has been the creation of a good friend. No true love for me. Yet. I will keep playing this and look forward to the expansions. I have Expansion 1 (Companions), but I have not yet included it in any of my plays. I really want to find true love with the core game first.

  Ranch Romances (or LGBTQIA+ Friendly Content)

  It was early while reading the rules that I realized Todd Sanders had created something special. It was when I looked at the character cards, the lost love cards, and the rival cards. If you want to play a female character with a male lost love, you can. Just know that you will have a mix of male and female rivals for that lost love’s attention. The same is true if you play a male character with a female lost love, or a female character with a female lost love, or a male character with a male lost love. As the expansions come out, I am hoping that someone who is Trans or otherwise non-binary, or perhaps androgynous, will be introduced. I suppose it will depend entirely upon the art he has available.

  The Argosy (or What is Missing Here?)

  Above, I state that the game is truly seamless. For some, this might suggest that the game is a 5/5 and flawless. Not quite. One of the elements of Pulp Detective and Pulp Invasion that made the immersion complete was the combination of the artwork and the pithy text on those cards. That pithy text is missing here. The character cards have names, but nothing to suggest who they might be beyond the image. The city cards let you know what city is being depicted, but have no hint as to what that city might mean to you. The newspaper and banker cards sometimes have enough to let you know the names of the institutions, but not always.

  But that is it. Nothing else beyond the images. Granted, the images are beautiful and evocative. But they were in the previous games in the series as well. And Mr. Sanders, in those games, blessed us with some wonderful text, sometimes just a snippet of suggestive words, that added so much to the experience. Lost loves? Friends? Detectives? Rivals? Not even a name for any of these. Some of the detective cards have artwork that was used in Pulp Detective. Even if the names (and titles) from those cards had been re-used, that would have been more than enough to allow those images to leap off the cards and have far more meaning than the image or the text alone could provide. Heck, that would have even created a beautiful linkage between the games! Looking at the gorgeous artwork of the various loves, friends, detectives, and rivals without even knowing their names, let alone their titles or a snippet of who they are, is a tragically sad loss of opportunity. Including this one small detail would have expanded the possibilities for the truly great elements of the game.