Real world Pulp characters

[FenrisUlf]

Has anyone ever tried doing anything with real-world people from the 20's-40's who could have been pulp characters?

 

My personal favorites are both from Mongolia, oddly enough. The first is Roy Chapman Andrews, the explorer and paleontologist who went looking for fossils in Mongolia in the middle of the Chinese Civil War. Not only did he have to face the unforgiving Gobi, he got in battles with bandits, dealt with suspicious government officials who thought he must be either a spy or a treasure seeker, did some medical work for various local tribesmen, and somehow during all this found the time to dig up a few fossils. I imagine him as a very high-point total character, with at least some Luck and probably very good PRE and EGO (for the strength of will he needed to go through all this).

 

The other guy is even more of a favorite -- the Mad Baron of Mongolia, the reincarnation of Genghis Khan, servant of the King of the World and holder of the keys to the Hollow Earth -- the Baron von Ungern Sternberg. A former Imperial Russian cossack commander, he became a student of the occult (he supposedly studied alchemy learned about the Hollow Earth) and also converted to Buddhism. He was also a feared duelist and killed people with abandon, and was nearly cashiered from the Imperial military on several occasions for killing fellow officers in duels or simply shooting them down in drunken rampages.

 

During the Russian Civil War, he was sent off to eastern Russia/Mongolia, based on his promise to recruit 10,000 wild Mongols to defeat the Bolsheviks, who he hated with a fiery passion as 'Jewish dogs'. He instead decided he was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and told the Mongols he was there to lead them forth to world conquest (actually, there was a Mongol legend that 'when there is no longer a Czar in Russia, when the Son of Heaven is vanished from China, mighty Genghis will return to his people, and our campfires will cover the earth').

 

He assembled a large army with which he ravaged the countryside, committing massacre after massacre -- believing in reincarnation as he did, he declared that death meant nothing, and by killing people you were but freeing them up for another incarnation. He finally marched on the capital, liberated it from the Bolsheviks, and set about some truly epic killing. He also told his followers (at least one of whom escaped) that he was taking orders from the lord of Shamballah, the King of the World, and that he would rouse all the East to destroy modern corruption and deliver humanity to the Hidden God-King.

 

Instead, his followers abandoned him when the Red Army attacked. Sternberg was taken prisoner and executed by the Reds, pronouncing Buddhist and shamanist curses against them.

 

Does anyone else out there have any real-world adventurers of the period who they'd like to use in their Pulp Hero games, either as themselves or as avatars?

[Barton]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

A.Earhart. First women to fly across the Atlantic, flew all over the world, Purdue University professor, spokeswoman, and a generally interesting person.

[Steve Long]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Lest I show any of my cards too soon (though Fenris just x-rayed a couple ), I'll say, "See Pulp Hero."

[FenrisUlf]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Lest I show any of my cards too soon (though Fenris just x-rayed a couple )' date=' I'll say, "See [i']Pulp Hero.[/i]"

 

Let me take a guess:

 

You're listing some fascinating real-world folks in Pulp Hero as an example of the real-world adventurers & such at the time.

[Steve Long]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Yes, I'm definitely doing that in a few instances. But it's probably more likely that you'll run into interesting folks in the mini-bios section of Chapter Two (History) or as nation-specific items in Chapter Three (the World). For example, Von Ungern Sternberg gets a short section under "Mongolia" in Chapter Three.

[The Monster]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Other than "cameo" NPC's (the players have met some of the Nazi top brass -- including a faceoff with Heydrich in my pulp campaign), the closest I've come is my Adventure Hero, where Frankenstien's Monster is one of the PCs (Adventure Hero being my translation of our Adventure campaign into Hero terms, just because it works sooooo much better). Though it has also been established that the mysterious "Mister A" behind my airship-based Archangel campaign is none other than an incognito Doc Savage - not real-life, but amusing.

[ArmlessTigerMan]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

I was thinking Wiley Post would make a good npc. Back in the '30s, he was as famous as Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. Post did prison time for highway robbery, lost an eye as a roughneck on drilling rig, and went on to become an aviation pioneer. He set speed records for flying around the world, designed a pressure suit for high altitude flight (before they could pressurize the cabin I guess) and palled around with Roy Rogers.

 

Definitely a rennaissance man, of a sort.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

My personal favorites are both from Mongolia' date=' oddly enough. The first is Roy Chapman Andrews, the explorer and paleontologist who went looking for fossils in Mongolia in the middle of the Chinese Civil War. Not only did he have to face the unforgiving Gobi, he got in battles with bandits, dealt with suspicious government officials who thought he must be either a spy or a treasure seeker, did some medical work for various local tribesmen, and somehow during all this found the time to dig up a few fossils. I imagine him as a very high-point total character, with at least some Luck and probably very good PRE and EGO (for the strength of will he needed to go through all this).[/quote']Roy Chapman Andrews has some interesting flaws as well. It's not widely remembered that he didn't go to Mongolia to discover dinosaur bones and fossilized eggs; he was a racist who went there to prove his pet theory that the various races of man (black, white, asian) evolved separately and hence were not the same species. He was looking for evidence of early man, not dinosaurs. Of course, since humans didn't evolve in Asia but rather in Africa, needless to say he didn't find what he was looking for.

 

That having been said, his wonderful books on his Mongolian adventures were one of the things that have given me a lifelong interest in paleontology and evolution. I first read them when I was 10 or 11 years old.

[Beetle]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

I think Sidney Reilly (born Sigmund Rosenblum) would be a great pulp character. He's the spy who's life was dramatized in Reilly: Ace of Spies (with Sam Neil as Reilly)

 

Here's a brief bio courtesy of Amazon.com:

 

Reilly: Ace of Spies is a thrilling dramatization of the fantastic life and exploits of Sidney Reilly, arguably the first modern secret agent and a complex, often unfathomable individual who invented his very name and identity. Sam Neill has never been better as the former Sigmund Rosenblum, an Odessa-born Jew who becomes a freelance spy for the British at the dawn of the 20th century. Calculating, ruthless, and more certain of his own counsel than the wisdom of his superiors, Reilly (he changes his name by the end of the first episode, "An Affair with a Married Woman," to obscure his personal history) can't help but remind one of a particularly determined James Bond. Reilly's reputation as a womanizer--not entirely deserved, but then none of his associates can quite figure out his thriving love life--adds to this historical figure's Bondian mystique.

 

In other respects, Reilly's version of espionage is far more complicated, and has greater historical repercussions, than that of Fleming's superspy. The first half of the 12 episodes in this set concern Reilly's daring work ascertaining and even securing the West's access to Middle East oil and, looking ahead to Russia's possible rise as a major power, determine the extent of that country's oil reserves. At the same time, Reilly always has one eye trained on ethically ambiguous opportunities to accrue wealth or play one friendly interest against another. The oil mission leads him from virtual house arrest in the foothills of the Caucuses (where Reilly sleeps with the young wife of an aging preacher as cover for his escape, leaves her to be arrested, then later marries her) to Port Arthur in China (where he clears the way for British allies the Japanese to invade) to France (where Reilly competes with the Rothschilds over Persian Oil concessions). The latter episodes focus on Reilly's extraordinary attempt to overthrow the Bolsheviks following the Russian revolution, barely escaping St. Petersburg after a botched attempt to assassinate Lenin and later risking his life by returning and advocating the killing of Stalin.

[Badger]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Well looking up the Mad Baron, found another wierd guy in Mongolia, Dambijanstan, who was to the Chinese about what the Baron was to the Russians. Evidently Dmbijanstan had a rather disturbing torture. Take some sheep knuckles and place on victims temples, twist till eyes bulge out enough to snip off, keep his "trophies" in his tent until it stunk unbearably. Then he goes and gets the now blind victim and kills him using the victims skin as furniture cover. Well, me might not being eating supper tonight.

[tkdguy]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Ernest Hemmingway would qualify as a pulp character.

[specks]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Ian Fleming.

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

for the early pulp days

Winston Churchill

TH Lawrence

how about some of the early rocket pioneers for that matter

Goddard, Von Braun, Ley, etc

 

now I am goingto have to reread The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

 

would Richard Fenyman qualify as pulp or is he too late?

[Greatwyrm]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Mata Hari

 

Ned Kelley (although I'm not sure the time-frame is right)

 

John Dillenger and just about any of the Depression-era gangsters

[gallandro]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Frank Buck, intrepid animal collector and jungle adventurer from 1920's-40's, would be a great real life Pulp character to highlight.

 

 

Yancy

[st barbara]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Another "real life" person who might be worth a writeup is F A Mitchell-Hedges, explorer and discoverer (actually his daughter is supposed to have discovered it) of tghe best known of the "crystal skulls". Amy Johnson and Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (first man to fly the Pacific) are to more aviators who could be worthy of a mention !

[st barbara]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Oh geez "St B" ! TWO mor aviators. I think that the internal "spell check" in my head has been disabled !

[Koshka]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

While the link really doesn't give enough detail on the guy, Wayne Wheeler could be an interesting character for an early-period game. He was both one of the primary people responsible for the stricter provisions of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, and one of the primary people responsible for the inefficiency of Prohibition enforcement. (Since you won't find that in the link, he used his political influence to make Prohibition agents subject to the political spoils system instead of Civil Service and to get the Prohibition Bureau made a department of the IRS instead of the Justice Department.)

[FenrisUlf]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Well looking up the Mad Baron' date=' found another wierd guy in Mongolia, Dambijanstan, who was to the Chinese about what the Baron was to the Russians. Evidently Dmbijanstan had a rather disturbing torture. Take some sheep knuckles and place on victims temples, twist till eyes bulge out enough to snip off, keep his "trophies" in his tent until it stunk unbearably. Then he goes and gets the now blind victim and kills him using the victims skin as furniture cover. Well, me might not being eating supper tonight.[/quote']

 

Another pair of nasty troublemakers in Central Asia during the Russian Civil War were Enver Pasha and General Ma.

 

Pasha was the man responsible for the Armenian Genocide. He got Lenin to approve his plan to create a Turkish army for Communism, and then used said army to try and create a new Turkish Empire. Got shot dead after he suingle-handedly charged half a dozen machine gun nests.

 

General Ma was a Chinese Muslim who organized a revolution in Sinkiang. He mainly massacred non-Muslim Chinese and Russians, but he was a figure of fear for a few years. Finally surrendered to the Communists on promise of fair treatment and was shot for his pains.

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

I had another thought, about an interesting real world character

 

the Reverend Billy Sunday

who gave up a promising baseball career to take up evangelism

 

I think he was a pitcher for the Cubs or White Sox, and he was from Indiana

[ThothAmon]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

IMO the most obvious one (but nobody seems to have mentioned him yet) would be Howard Hughes - aviator, director, womanizer, millionaire...

 

A definite would be W. E. "Delicate Dan" Fairbairn, the Shanghai chief of police who was one of the few Westerners to study Oriental martial arts in the era. During WWII he was one of the HTH 'dirty' combat instructors/gurus for the OSS and other Allied special forces. His partner Bill Sykes would also qualify - he too served in the Shanghai police force during the 30's (Sniper Squad IIRC) and as a representative for Remington Firearms.

 

I'd also pitch in Bugsy Siegel - megalomaniac mobster who started building Las Vegas AND said no to the Mob - go read Tim Powers' novel 'Last Call' for a really good pulp/fictional take on Siegel

 

A last 'pulp' figure I'd nominate would be Evelyn Waugh. An incisive reporter, stunning wit, ego to match and writer of scurrilous good fiction such as 'Vile Bodies', 'Handful of Dust' and 'Brideshead Revisited'.

[tkdguy]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Another Western martial artist to consider is Donn F. Draeger. He was a Marine in World War II and was stationed in Japan after the end of the war. He became an enthusiast in Japanese martial arts and published several books. He is still considered one of the greatest Western martial artists today.

[st barbara]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Another pair of nasty troublemakers in Central Asia during the Russian Civil War were Enver Pasha and General Ma.

 

Pasha was the man responsible for the Armenian Genocide. He got Lenin to approve his plan to create a Turkish army for Communism, and then used said army to try and create a new Turkish Empire. Got shot dead after he suingle-handedly charged half a dozen machine gun nests.

 

General Ma was a Chinese Muslim who organized a revolution in Sinkiang. He mainly massacred non-Muslim Chinese and Russians, but he was a figure of fear for a few years. Finally surrendered to the Communists on promise of fair treatment and was shot for his pains.

Enver Pasha sounds like a right charmer ! Having the P C's running around Turkey/ Armenia and finding HIM working for the opposition could be fun !

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

William J Donovan. Awarded Medal of Honor for WWI, various intel missions in the inter-war years (including his first one during his honeymoon), set up the OSS for WWII. Found time to lose a few political campaigns too.

[tkdguy]

Re: Real world Pulp characters

 

Actor Audie Murphy was the most decorated soldier in WWII.