With or without "Pulp?"

flyingmice · April 02, 2010, 01:19:56 PM

Quote from: CRKrueger;371452I see this as a problem with gaming pulp as a whole. Pulp=way over the top. A lot of people think Conan is pulp, yet Conan really has little in common with Flash Gordon, Doc Savage and The Shadow. Day After Ragnarok, for example, was referred to as Conan:1948. Not the Conan I read.

I prefer my pulp to be within human capabilities, but at the very high end of the scale. A Pulp character should be equivalent to a shaolin monk or olympic athlete - capable of astonishing feats, but completely within the human range. That's like the pulp I used to read when I was a kid, from my dad's library of pulp fiction, which ranged from the thirties to the then present sixties. He had saved lots of pulp magazines, generally SF and adventure fiction, though I knew there were other pulp genres like romance - my dad didn't read those...

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That isn't including the Victorian pre-pulp adventure writers like Kipling, Verne, and Haggard, which were particular favorites of mine.

-clash

Dirk Remmecke · April 03, 2010, 08:21:08 AM

Quote from: Gruntfuttock;371220And a great game like Two Fisted Tales that effortlessly scales from private dicks walking those mean streets to talking gorillas piloting airships? That hardly gets a mention.

Quote from: RPGPundit;371388Its appalling that 2FT is not considered, hands down, the best Pulp RPG ever made.

Couldn't that be a problem of Two Fisted Tales being invisible on the store level, in advertising, and general praise by its players/fans?

Even in well-stocked shops (where I saw such diverse fare as Faery's Tales, Hard Nova ][, 3:16, Barbarians of Lemuria, Colonial Gothic, Mouse Guard, Passages, Starblazer Adventures...) I didn't see 2FT. (Or FtA, for that matter...)

RPGPundit · April 04, 2010, 11:18:57 AM

Its too small-press, maybe. I don't know.

RPGPundit

flyingmice · April 04, 2010, 11:34:38 AM

Two Fisted Tales and Hard Nova ][ are published by the same company.

-clash

Ghost Whistler · April 04, 2010, 01:05:41 PM

What does 2FT bring to the table? I thought it was d20, but i've never played it or seen it on sale either.

RPGPundit · April 05, 2010, 11:37:06 PM

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;371719What does 2FT bring to the table? I thought it was d20, but i've never played it or seen it on sale either.

Its not D20 at all, its a house system, but not the default house system that Precis usually uses, its one made especially for pulp as far as I can tell. Character creation is super-quick, the system is of medium complexity, and it catches the fast-and-loose pulp aesthetic very well. Lots of good random tables and sample nemeses in the book too.

RPGPundit

Ghost Whistler · April 06, 2010, 10:02:55 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit;371939Its not D20 at all, its a house system, but not the default house system that Precis usually uses, its one made especially for pulp as far as I can tell. Character creation is super-quick, the system is of medium complexity, and it catches the fast-and-loose pulp aesthetic very well. Lots of good random tables and sample nemeses in the book too.

RPGPundit

I thought it was by Adamant.

Sacrificial Lamb · April 06, 2010, 05:30:09 PM

This will sound like a strange list, but here are examples of what I see as "pulp", in no particular order:

(1.) Indiana Jones
(2.) The Mummy Returns
(3.) Buck Rogers
(4.) Doc Savage
(5.) Flash Gordon
(6.) Superman
(7.) Batman
(8.) Captain Marvel
(9.) Captain America
(10.) Tarzan
(11.) Conan the Barbarian
(12.) James Bond
(13.) Dick Tracy
(14.) The Shadow
(15.) Eric John Stark

Yes, it's a weird list. :pundit:

RPGPundit · April 07, 2010, 10:25:30 AM

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;371959I thought it was by Adamant.

No, Precis Intermedia.

RPGPundit