PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

[Koshka]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

I'm not sure which section it would fit best in, but some examples for the players on how different the economy was would probably help. The bit in Justice Inc. on converting modern currency to pulp currency (divide by 10) was handy, but didn't give a solid feel for what the cost of living was. For instance, my grandparents got engaged during the Depression -- Grandpa had just gotten a raise at his job, and he and Grandma decided if they watched their budget, they could afford to start a life together. His raise was to $18 a week.

 

One more vote for a section on racism/sexism and how to deal with them. Though some of the pulp heroes were open-minded -- I recall The Shadow always speaking in Chinese to one of his Chinatown contacts out of courtesy, even though the person in question spoke fluent English.

 

Of course, the main thing I want in my copy of Pulp Hero is an autograph -- don't sell out at GenCon till I get to the booth .

[The Owl]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Some notes and stats on car choices other that the Model T would be nice. Especially some cars of very period makes, like Stutz and Pierce Arrow.

[specks]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Something else I'd like to see is the use of "cinema points". Maybe a trade of experience points to do some life saving stunt, aid to help a skill, do a critical hit or task to help others.

 

You may want to look at some back issues of Haymaker for the use of the cinema rules.

 

Thanks Dave

[specks]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Also another vote for the expansion on the gadget rules and sample artifacts.

[Steve Long]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

how about a conversion page

 

Sorry, but no way. We have no rights to do any such conversions.

 

I'd like to add that one of the things I used to love about Justice, Inc was the rules for weapon size and carry affecting concealment. I said before that I wanted them back, and you said to remind you when you were doing Pulp HERO.

 

I'm sorry, but I don't recall the conversation. In what way are the concealed objects rules in 5E/5ER insufficient?

[OddHat]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Clear examples of Pulp Supers, including homages to Gladiator, The Spider, Doc Savage, The Shadow, and G-8.

 

A section (or more) on alternate pulp settings, including Pulp Space Opera (from Barsoom to the Lensman books) and Victorian Fantastique (at least until we get Victorian Hero).

[Greatwyrm]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

I'd like to see a few maps of the world during the pulp era. Countries had a way of being renamed or changing hands quickly or may not exist today.

 

Some examples of travel times would be neat. Like a table of average trip times between large cities by air travel available at the time or steamship or rail.

[Super Squirrel]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

We need a random country name generator for those areas between Western Europe and China.

[00Machado]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Clear examples of Pulp Supers, including homages to Gladiator, The Spider, Doc Savage, The Shadow, and G-8.

 

A section (or more) on alternate pulp settings, including Pulp Space Opera (from Barsoom to the Lensman books) and Victorian Fantastique (at least until we get Victorian Hero).

 

Yes to the Victorian thing. I second the nomination. Though it may not fit the genre, I would find it a selling point, not a detraction.

[00Machado]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Some other ideas on what I'd like to see:

maps

travel times, costs, and even likelihood of delays and transit being delayed and/or suddenly canceled between areas, by vehicle type.

 

Prices and availability of goods and common leisure activities.

 

Tying your pulp heroes game to later Champions games, and vice verse. Kind of like, prequeling, or building sequels to, the other game, and also evolving heroes to fit in the supers genre over time. Didn't batman start around the pulp days?

 

Adventure ideas

 

Ways to deal with getting the mcguffin out of your players hands over and over again. I suppose how to build the logic into the campaign, such as "it belongs in a museum", or the government takes it away, or something, so that if you want the Indiana Jones feel, there aren't a bunch of mystic powered artifacts in the hands of players after a few adventures.

 

The criminal world. Art and antiquity theft and smuggling, tomb looting, underground auctions or "acquisitions", etc. How did the economy for all this stuff work, perhaps jazzed up for readability and playability of necessary. And corresponding law enforcement actions/info.

 

Neat-o sites around the world to use as set pieces in your adventures. By name, not so much maps. I'll look up nice glossy pictures in the library for reference.

 

Some elements of the scary pulp stories. Integrating horror. I don't mean HP Lovecraft so much as I mean if they had made Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom into a frightening movie, instead of a movie with scary trappings.

 

Bridging classic pulp bits into present day, and adapting them for the modern genre, i.e Michael Crichton's Congo (novel not film), Tomb Raider, and things of that nature.

 

Advice on pacing in the GM section. How to keep things moving at a brisk pace while at the gaming table without rushing the players through things too quickly, and giving breathers to allow for a build up to higher tension later, both in general, and specific to all the hero system game mechanics that both help and hinder the goal of pacing toward a cliff hanger ending

 

I'd like illustrtaions art to show representative fashions of the time. Costumed Hero, People dressed up to go out, dressed casually, on expedition, military uniforms, some non western types of dress, etc. A good smattering of pictures to show.

 

Info on the sensibilities of the time that we don't have today. How they were more conservative in some areas, less conservative in others, and social issues that we care about today, but which they didn't then, or vice versa.

 

A sidebar or small amount of info on the real archaeology of the time, instead of the fictionalized, so you could use it to run a more grounded in the realistic "feel" treasure hunt adventure.

 

Not only when technology was invented, but when was it realistically available, and where.

 

What was it like growing up in that day and age, especially from the point of view of coming to an adventuring aged adult in "prime pulp era"

 

A totally eye catching cover illustration that looks like the cover of some "astounding tales" short story compilation, instead of a comic book like cover. I'm thinking along the likes of Alex Ross painting, and other that I can't quite articulate right now.

 

Any notes on major geographical features that were different. Golden Gate bridge wasn't built until when? What did they use before it? Ferries? The sunset area in San Francisco was beach and sand dunes (too bad it's not still, it sounds neet the way grandma describes it). I know those are bay area specific, but they illustrate the idea.

 

New Orleans? Hey why not, it's a neat-o place.

 

I like the idea someone mentioned about the "oh yeah, i remember him villain"

 

Different world outlooks people might have based on where they come from.

How are an American and a Brit different?

What will a Chinese person (either from US/UK, or from China), think of them?

You can go on and on with a list of countries.

 

Tropical diseases. Rules for catching some, curing some, and maybe some cultist spells for inflicitng some.

 

Maps of places where the action might happen...

planes, boats, and trains, museums, cultist lairs, tombs, lots of stuff like that.

 

Maybe a rule mechanic for how early in an adventure the villains are hard to beat, and as the heroes persist, they have a greater chance of successding.

 

All I can think of right now.

[OddHat]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Yes to the Victorian thing. I second the nomination. Though it may not fit the genre' date=' I would find it a selling point, not a detraction.[/quote']

 

Allan Moore's interview in Heroes & Monsters (Nevins, 2003) sold me on the idea that Victorian Fantastic literature was the cradle of the pulps. Quatermaine, Nemo, Hyde, Griffin; none of them were (imo) true pulp characters, but they did lay the groundwork for what was to come. Pulp Hero would be a great place to give at least a teaser on how to build fantastic adventures in that period.

[teh bunneh]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Chapter 1 -- The Genre: similar to the first chapters in our other genre books. It will discuss the history of the pulps (briefly)' date=' what the "pulp genre" is, the various subgenres (crimebusting, weird menace, air adventure, [i']etc.[/i]), pulp and metagenres/other genres, important elements of the genre, and so on.

 

I'd love to see some discussion of the Crime/Noir subgenre -- the stories of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, Jim Thompson, and their ilk, and Bogart's Sam Spade and Frank McCloud movies (also flicks like Chinatown and The Road to Perdition). You know, dark, gritty stories featuring men of gray (frequently questionable) motives, where frequently the only thing separating the good guys from the bad guys is a murky code of honor, where violence is a means of communication, where a man is a man and a dame is a killer.

 

The famous line from The Maltese Falcon sums up the Noir subgenre for me: "When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't matter what you thought of him, he was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens we're in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it's bad business to let the killer get away with it; bad all around. Bad for every detective everywhere."

 

But then, you knew I'm biased toward Noir.

 

Bill.

[David Blue]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

You badly need a page at least of foreign names (preferably period names) for some typical exotic regions, sorted at least by sex, and ideally with a couple singled out as suitable for very high-class people like princesses. It's no good if whether your Zeppelin touches down in Trebizond or your autogyro lands in the Congo, everyone is called [the gamemaster holds up his hands and says] - "I'm sorry, I don't know any good native names. He's Fred, she's Ethel, OK?"

 

 

Please be sure to include the Webley-Fosbury zig-zag "automatic revolver" in any guns list. I hope the automatic pistol that shot wooden bullets will feature too. Player characters who hunt vampires (or worse, are hunted by them) instantly fall in love with it when they find out about that one.

 

You should also mention the problem with guns: there are many marvellous designs, but they mostly use oddball ammunition (the wooden bullets are an extreme example) so you either accept great difficulties with supply, or go to standard weapons, or go to multi-calibre weapons. But still, for any pulp hero who wants a gun that's a bit different, like the Nambu broadsword/automatic pistol combination, the answer is a big "Yes!" (Naturally villains also have such things, depending on their class and individuality.)

 

And if you want a really deadly weapon - the hat-pin! (needs stats - one line) I think that should be useable with:

Super Squirrel. "Hmm, is there such a thing as a Femme Fatal Martial Art?"

Considering the frequency with which appallingly expert knee lifts are applied, I think that would be something like "Even Dirtier Infighting".

 

 

Pulp animals - not just the classic spiders-'n-snakes, but for example, a sinister pet monkey, a sardonic camel that seems to know how much trouble he's causing (and relish it), wolves (shadowing an injured hero lost in the wilds) that seem not just crafty but advanced students of Sun Tsu, or a parrot with eidetic memory and superb timing in repeating its instantly memorised speeches* - are all highly suitable for pulp gaming. At least mention this, and ideally have a sinister pet host a few appropriate side-bars.

 

* ("Awk! Put down the gun, …. Awk! Put down the gun …"

"Dash it! There was a pause there. Twice. Put down the gun - who?"

"Awk! Polly wants a cracker!"

Pulp animals can go from very sinister indeed to pure comic relief.)

 

(Monkey reminds me - there'll need to be advice on the frequent use of poisons and exotic drugs.)

 

Are you going to do great white hunters and the endless (it seemed at the time) war on man-eaters (eg. The Ghost and the Darkness), evil witch-doctors and the like? If so, I think the gamemaster new to this needs a little advice. Sustaining the tension in a man-eater scenario calls for a repertoire of tricks - but not one too many. A leopard with a three-figure kill-list is unlikely to stun the hero, bind him, explain the master plan, put the hero in a death-trap (another common use for animals, especially enraged apes for some reason I've never understood), and then in effect give him another chance; so one bad call or bad roll can be - bad.

 

 

Seconding Old Man: make the interior look more like Justice Inc. than stock Champions. Art Nouveau and/or Art Deco - is it really possible to overdo these great styles? (Though I admit it is all too possible to mix them disastrously. Maybe just one or the other.)

 

 

I think you need to underline the extreme gaps in class you get between pulp villains - mere thugs, then soldiers, crooked masterminds and evil peers, leading up to the Celestial One himself. Your definitions of what kind of success the heroes should be rewarded for and encouraged to feel good about can very drastically depending on the class of villain in play.

 

Tim, man in black asked:

"I'd like to see

A write-up of your average Mob Thug

A write-up of your average Nazi soldier of the 30s.

A write-up of the standard cultist."

 

Smart.

 

I think an important thing to specify briefly is: what would they typically be found carrying after you knock one out? For cultists, after the obvious wallet, handkerchief and keys, the list might start with candles, a lighter and a knife - all good things for player characters to suddenly be in possession of.

 

And Tong goons - basic thugs, or up to alarmingly advanced martial artists and gang leaders.

 

Also, don't just give typical villain toughness, underline typical weaknesses that the heroes should be encouraged to use to their advantage. Nazis worship documentation and authority figures. (Professor Jones, in a zeppelin: "No ticket!")

 

 

Will you be touching on related stuff? How badly out of scope is Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, or Shang Chi in his long war against his father? I'm thinking you should at least mention that the octopus of Pulp style has many tentacles reaching into different eras.

 

If you had said just before The Mummy (with Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep) that there was no such thing as pulp romance/horror/comedy adventure you would have been right - but suddenly there it all was in one package, working harmoniously. You don't want to set the bounds of the possible too narrowly in pulps.

[Starwolf]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Maybe a page or sidebar about Vibora Bay and Hudson City in the pulp era. I'd say Millenium City but as wew all know that was Detroit back then....

[Sociotard]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Since there may be a lot of globetrotting, I might like a currency conversions sidebar. Or would that be a waste of time?

 

An essential for globe trotting is a basic transportation map. Show the main shipping lanes, air routes, railroads, and so forth. or some way for GM's to figure out how long it takes to get from New York to Timbuktu (Lets see, thats a plane ride to London, followed by a smaller plane to the Ivory Coast, take a railroad inland for a while, and then you have to find a guide and start walking . . . )

 

Expanded Language table. Include all those rare african languages and so forth. Oh yeah . . .

[Sociotard]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Oh! Under the Subtitle "White mans graveyard", include descriptions and writeups for malaria, dengue (sp?) and other crazy tropical diseases.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

There were some "standard" areas where a lot of pulp adventures took place, so at the very least a list of the type of pulp adventures that took place in those areas. For example: Africa, South America, The Orient, The South Pacific. Those were all areas where a lot of pulp adventures took place, but the type usually varied with the location. You might go hunting for a dinosaur in Africa, but a Yeti in the mountains of the Orient.

 

Some sample "pulp locations" would be good: a speakeasy, an opium den, a European wayhouse, that sort of thing.

 

For the South Pacific, one wierd thing that makes a good pulp hook is a Cargo Cult involvement. Though the various Cargo Cults only hit their biggest period during World War II, the earliest versions of them started appearing in the late 1880s, so they're certainly in period.

 

If you're going to include various period cars, you must include my favorite, the Stutz Bearcat!

 

Something many people tend to forget is that though pulp heroes are heroes -- fighting evil masterminds, rescuing the girl, and so on -- very often these "heroes" committed crimes for a living, or as a matter of course. A great many pulp heroes regularly engaged in smuggling, trafficing in stolen artifacts, and the like. For some reason, this wasn't seen as "bad" when a pulp hero did them. A few guidelines about this, and how to GM it in a pulp campaign, may be helpful.

[David Blue]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

PS: Will you have advice for air combat with unusual aircraft and pterosaurs, particularly as to employing the latter with Vickers medium machine-guns?

 

I believe I've seen that a couple of times. It certainly blew me away the first time I saw it.

 

Also, I remembered "the famous Pat Pike, the two-fisted archaeologist, adventurer ... grave robber" who adventured with the (very) super-powered Doctor Dare in her Penthouse Comix pornography/comedy/Golden Age Nazi-busting series "Doctor Dare and the Spear of Destiny", and his dog who wore a black eye-patch and played solitaire (on long plane flights) by turning the cards over with his tongue, "... and checkers, but he always beat me, so I stopped playing," his owner admitted.

 

Many genres can be mixed with success, and "over the top" can mean "over the top" with a vengeance!

[Lamrok]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

You badly need a page at least of foreign names (preferably period names) for some typical exotic regions' date=' sorted at least by sex, and ideally with a couple singled out as suitable for very high-class people like princesses. It's no good if whether your Zeppelin touches down in Trebizond or your autogyro lands in the Congo, everyone is called [the gamemaster holds up his hands and says'] - "I'm sorry, I don't know any good native names. He's Fred, she's Ethel, OK?"

 

I'll second this. These kinds of lists would save a lot of GM prep time.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

There are a handful of things I can think of, without reading all the way through this thread:

 

1) What's going on in Atlantis, Lemuria, and other places in the Hidden Lands during this period of the Hero Universe? Yes, I'm sure these are at least touched on on Hidden Lands, but such things are staples of pulp fiction (that's where superhero comics got them from) and so belong here.

 

2) Touch on "neo-pulp" adventures, such as Indiana Jones, TV's Relic Hunter, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the like.

 

3) Mention where pulp adventures can push their way into closely resembling superhero adventures, such as with the Shadow, the Green Hornet, the LXG, and so forth.

 

4) This may go without saying, but be sure to include at least an honorable mention of pulp sci-fi, including H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and other visionaries as well as the "cheesy sci-fi" of the 1950s.

 

That's it for the time being....

[Agemegos]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

I'm sorry' date=' but I don't recall the conversation. In what way are the concealed objects rules in 5E/5ER insufficient?[/quote']

 

In Justice Inc the SIZ of pistols ranged from 0 (for a Kolibri auto) to (IIRC) 5 or 6 for a Peacemaker. That gave much finer resolution than the "Pistol +2 to +3" in 5th ed. There was also a substantial reason to carry a Beretta .25 (SIZ 1) or a Walther PPK (SIZ 2) rather than a Colt M1911 (SIZ 4).

 

These days, with SIZ not included on the weapons table, and with precious little difference between the largest and the smallest pistols, all players seem to choose weapons on the basis of combat effectiveness alone, and carry big military pistols.

[FenrisUlf]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Are you going to do great white hunters and the endless (it seemed at the time) war on man-eaters (eg. The Ghost and the Darkness)' date=' evil witch-doctors and the like? If so, I think the gamemaster new to this needs a little advice. Sustaining the tension in a man-eater scenario calls for a repertoire of tricks - but not one too many. A leopard with a three-figure kill-list is unlikely to stun the hero, bind him, explain the master plan, put the hero in a death-trap (another common use for animals, especially enraged apes for some reason I've never understood), and then in effect give him another chance; so one bad call or bad roll can be - bad.[/quote']

 

I don't know if this is an option for everyone, but reading any of Jim Corbett's amazing books would giove you tons of ideas for the 'Great White Hunter'. Corbett was a British official in India in the first half of the 20th century, and he hunted down quite a few nastily clever man-eaters (his book on the leopard of Rudraprayang is creepier than a dozen horror novels -- no animal should be that smart, especially when you're on its menu!) and wrote quite a bit on life in India for both Europeans and locals.

 

Very fine books.

[fredrik_nilsson]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Considering how many threads there has been about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that kind of "Pulp Hero/Champions"-mix should almost been seen as a separate sub-genre. I was be a bit disappointed if "the League" wouldn't be mentioned.

 

Hidden lands has its own book, but I second the idea of touching on the subject in Pulp Hero too.

 

A discussion about the difference between Pulp Supers and Champion Supers, that goes a bit deeper than the one in the Champions book.

 

Pulp Sci-Fi in all its forms (aliens, flash gordon H. G. Wells, swamp monsters...). The more, the better. Don't forget super-technology.

 

I'm quite sure Noir Hero isn't on the schedule for 2007, so I would love something about Noir. Too be honest a text about every genre that often get "mixed up" with pulp fiction (for example, noir and camp) would be good. Something short about similarities and differences. Adventure! had something, but that text were to short.

 

Some construction ideas for amazing talents. That is super powers that are in genre with Pulp Hero.

[AlHazred]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

I think it would be a great idea to cover Pulp archetypes; a lot of people don't really think about the differences between character archetypes then and today. So that, for instance, in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, several of the people I saw it with went, "What's up with the annoying woman reporter?" I had to explain to them the fact that the Annoying Female Reporter was a staple of the genre.

 

I don't think we really need names, since there are other sources for those. Just drop appropriate references in the reference section.

 

I will second the motion on Contacts; if there's ever a genre book for Hero System that should cover Contacts in more detail, Pulp Hero is it!

 

What really gave people in my year-long Pulp Heroes game trouble was coming up with appropriately "pulpish" powers. They could do superpowers, no problem, but "pulp hero powers" drew a blank. While I went through and showed them a few examples (by, for instance, statting out the Shadow, the Avenger, the Spider, Doc Savage, and the Phantom) they still didn't have enough range of examples from which to draw inspiration. Most of them ended up making Golden Age Superheroes instead, for precisely that reason.

[ArmlessTigerMan]

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Chapter 2 -- History of the Pulp Era: ...

Chapter 3 -- The World of the Pulp Era: ...

 

I don't want a history book. The Pulp Era is fictional, so I would like the setting details to be as fantastic as possible. There are plenty of sources for the crunchy details on prohibition and the rise of Nazism for example. I'd be more interested in the state of tourism to Maple White Land, or whatever happened to King Kong's body after he died. Setting and history based on the source material, not on the real world.