There's been some discussion among the RoR playtesters; some are happy with the game being action-oriented while remaining with in the high-risk context of the standard BRP rules; where characters have relatively few hit points, are vulnerable to insanity, etc.
Others, however, would like RoR to be far more "Pulpy", to have much tougher characters able to stand up to a more novelistic/cinematic level of combat, to be affected by insanity but not as lethally vulnerable to it (perhaps having more means to "recover" from insanity-causing effects), etc.

Which would you prefer?

I'll note that the current idea will be to offer both: the baseline rules being very much in following with the standard BRP-power-levels, while presenting a set of optional rules to "pulp up" your game..


RPGPundit

Both are fine.  Personally I would prefer a less "Indiana Jones" pulp especially since when most people say Indiana Jones they really mean a Bugs Bunny version of Indiana Jones.

It depends, sometimes I want thoughtful horror, sometimes I want The Mummy Returns. Having options for both is the best road to take. One thing I can't handle though is nihilistic grimdark "no matter what you do you're fucked" stuff.

Give me the Howardian "if it bleeds we can kill it" approach like Conan - kill the cultists, disrupt the ritual, banish the monster, drive back the darkness for another day, rather then the "crawl up in a ball and go mad from the notion that the universe sees you as a dust mite" approach.

That's about as pulp as I would want to take the Mythos.

I'd like to do a range of Pulp with the setting. From The Mummy/Bugs Bunny to Indiana Jones to The Rocketeer to raymond Chandler and Mike Hammer stories of Noir. If the setting is written well enough, it can accomodate all of the above.

Quote from: CRKrueger;708906Both are fine.  Personally I would prefer a less "Indiana Jones" pulp especially since when most people say Indiana Jones they really mean a Bugs Bunny version of Indiana Jones.

Basically yeah. I am partial to the former approach in the OP, and I think it should be the baseline, but if options and sidebars explaining how to pulp-up your games help some folks get what they want out of the game, I'm cool with it.

Quote from: CRKrueger;708908Give me the Howardian "if it bleeds we can kill it" approach like Conan - kill the cultists, disrupt the ritual, banish the monster, drive back the darkness for another day, rather then the "crawl up in a ball and go mad from the notion that the universe sees you as a dust mite" approach.

That's about as pulp as I would want to take the Mythos.

I like that level too.  Conan can be pretty scary, even if the hero tended to succeed in the stories.  I don't think modern readers can appreciate the suspense of the original stories where the idea of Conan's ultimate triumph was not common knowledge.

Quote from: CRKrueger;708906Both are fine.  Personally I would prefer a less "Indiana Jones" pulp especially since when most people say Indiana Jones they really mean a Bugs Bunny version of Indiana Jones.

Like Indy IV...sigh.

It always makes me a bit sad when people complain that a game "doesn't do pulp" because it's too lethal or dangerous.

First, because pulp is a medium and not a genre in itself (a bit like anime).

Second, because in pulp men's adventure (Doc Savage, Sailor Steve Costigan, El Borak, Khlit the Cossack, etc.), the genre people typically conflate with "pulp", the draw of the story was about extraordinary men braving extraordinary danger. Remove danger from the equation and you're just going through the motions.

I'm not crazy about the idea of imitating the form (zeppelins! gorillas! Nazis! Thuggees!) without the essence (life-threatening danger at every turn).

I really am OK with the idea that the PCs are larger-than-life übermenschen a cut above ordinary folk. But I'd tread carefully around any proposal to mitigate lethality.

Still, I don't think it'll hurt any game to add a few options for different modes of play.

Quote from: The Butcher;709010extraordinary men

This is the part that leads to high hit points and so on. Let's face it, an average person who tried half the pulpy feats would end up as, er pulp. So we represent that with stat and skill inflation amongst the extraordinary. There's really only the illusion of danger in pulp, the hero never dies.

Quote from: The Butcher;709010It always makes me a bit sad when people complain that a game "doesn't do pulp" because it's too lethal or dangerous.

First, because pulp is a medium and not a genre in itself (a bit like anime).

Yeah, the term 'pulpy' here seems to just be a synonym for 'cinematic'.
I always thought it was a bit funny when folks complained that Chaosium hadn't brought out Pulp Cthulhu, because CoC seemed like it was already that thing... including optional rules to toughen up the PCs if that was a group's desire.
So far I don't get the appeal for Raiders... except for frustrated CoC players who were grumpy that they never got to kill Cthulhu.

Quote from: The Traveller;709022This is the part that leads to high hit points and so on. Let's face it, an average person who tried half the pulpy feats would end up as, er pulp. So we represent that with stat and skill inflation amongst the extraordinary. There's really only the illusion of danger in pulp, the hero never dies.

That's the precise mindset I'm not crazy about. I think Conan is badass because he's a flesh-and-blood mortal who wrestles an ape-demon and survives, not that he wrestles an ape-demon and survives because he's a prehistoric Celtic demigod. If the heroes of your pulp adventure RPG are no longer flesh and blood, but a construct that eats danger and spits favorable outcomes, you might be doing a good job of emulating the source fiction, but your game will be missing out on the very excitement that to this day draws people to the classics of the medium. IMHO, YMMV, etc.

Quote from: Simlasa;709024Yeah, the term 'pulpy' here seems to just be a synonym for 'cinematic'.

Not a great term either, because cinema, like pulp, is also a medium and not a genre. I realize this is a nitpick and that most people will conflate "cinematic" with late 20th and early 21st Century Hollywood action movies, much like "pulp" has become shorthand for "pulp men's adventure" even though everything from Lovecraft's cosmic horror to a fair bit of the SF that inspires Traveller, fits under the "pulp" umbrella. But it is kind of a pet peeve for me.

Quote from: Simlasa;709024I always thought it was a bit funny when folks complained that Chaosium hadn't brought out Pulp Cthulhu, because CoC seemed like it was already that thing... including optional rules to toughen up the PCs if that was a group's desire.
So far I don't get the appeal for Raiders... except for frustrated CoC players who were grumpy that they never got to kill Cthulhu.

I didn't chip in to RoR because, other than a 1910s sourcebook for CoC and some neat-looking maps and props, I couldn't really make sense of what exactly it brought to the game table.

Generally speaking, I find the BRP engine as presented in CoC more than "pulp" enough for my purposes.

Quote from: The Butcher;709051That's the precise mindset I'm not crazy about. I think Conan is badass because he's a flesh-and-blood mortal who wrestles an ape-demon and survives, not that he wrestles an ape-demon and survives because he's a prehistoric Celtic demigod.

Unfortunately if you try to translate that into game mechanics, you just end up with a lot of dead PCs, leaving you with a gritty realistic game. Pulp is the art of making superheroes seem human, so when the dice start rolling you need to have the advantages in place to emulate this central feature of the genre.

You're saying you want gritty realism but with the survival and success rates of pulp  - that's not going to happen by itself.

Quote from: The Traveller;709054You're saying you want gritty realism but with the survival and success rates of pulp  - that's not going to happen by itself.

Giving the PCs plot immunity isn't going to feel like Conan either... no suspense when you know, based on the math as well as any genre conventions, that they're going to win every fight.
I just don't want to play out battles where I know I'm pretty much sure to win... why not just say 'tell me how your PC kills the sorceror', why bother with any rules at all?

Quote from: Simlasa;709055Giving the PCs plot immunity isn't going to feel like Conan either... no suspense when you know, based on the math as well as any genre conventions, that they're going to win every fight.
I just don't want to play out battles where I know I'm pretty much sure to win... why not just say 'tell me how your PC kills the sorceror', why bother with any rules at all?

I agree, and my own preference is for gritty realism, but plot immunity is what pulp actually does once you peek behind the curtain. I suppose in a certain sense that's what most fantasy/sci-fi fiction does too, until George RR Martin hit the scene anyway.