Posted January 2, 200619 yr comment_37407 The idea of reforming rather than warehousing criminals was explored in the pulps, most notably with Doc Savage and his Crime College. Doc never killed when he could help it; his Crime College was there to help criminals reform. Most Pulp heroes killed when they had to and otherwise trusted to the justice system, while some heroes just went in guns blazing, seeing all crooks as beyond redemption. Do you maintain a genuinely redemptive institution in your Pulp games? Or an Arkham style madhouse? Do your heroes go for the capture or the kill? Thoughts welcomed.
January 2, 200619 yr comment_902679 Re: The Crime College, Criminal Reformation, and Pulp Hero. Thoughts? First, Doc Savage would be a criminal in my campagin, for wiping the memory of those he captured, causing untold suffering in thier innocent mothers, wives and children who never knew what happened to them. That having been said, I do acknowledge his motives were pure. Redemption is a big theme in my campagine, a center-piece is Venerable Comic Book Cliche #16, "Any sufficently popular villian will reform and get their own title." I've gotten a lot of milage out of Foxbat trying to walk the Straight and Narrow.
January 2, 200619 yr Author comment_902689 Re: The Crime College, Criminal Reformation, and Pulp Hero. Thoughts? First, Doc Savage would be a criminal in my campagin, for wiping the memory of those he captured, causing untold suffering in thier innocent mothers, wives and children who never knew what happened to them. That having been said, I do acknowledge his motives were pure. Redemption is a big theme in my campagine, a center-piece is Venerable Comic Book Cliche #16, "Any sufficently popular villian will reform and get their own title." I've gotten a lot of milage out of Foxbat trying to walk the Straight and Narrow. I've done Foxbat as a hero as well. As to Doc's lobotomies and mind wipes, they are by modern standards brutal and criminal (and scientific nonsense, but in a Pulp universe I guess there may be a "Crime Gland"). However, I'd say that, for the time, his actions were very progressive. He wasn't killing his foes by the score and marking their corpses (The Spider, The Shadow); he was taking them alive, and trying to bring them back into society. Still, yes, his approach was deeply creepy.
January 2, 200619 yr comment_902788 Re: The Crime College, Criminal Reformation, and Pulp Hero. Thoughts? Redemption is a big theme in my campagine' date=' a center-piece is Venerable Comic Book Cliche #16, "Any sufficently popular villian will reform and get their own title." I've gotten a lot of milage out of Foxbat trying to walk the Straight and Narrow.[/quote'] You don't see too much redemption in the pulps, at least not in my small sampling. You may find the occasion reformed gangster turned follower, or seductress with a heart of gold, but usually bad is bad. I don't have much use for it, as it goes against the source material. But I love how wrong the idea of the crime college seems to modern readers. Now, give a villain the opposite of this, a treatment to remove all morality and virtue from a subject... sounds like something Sun Koh should have.
January 2, 200619 yr comment_902802 Re: The Crime College, Criminal Reformation, and Pulp Hero. Thoughts? I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy !
January 2, 200619 yr comment_902893 Re: The Crime College, Criminal Reformation, and Pulp Hero. Thoughts? That's a good one, st barbara! A real "***** pleaser" so to speak. Think I gonna get that one on a t-shirt!
January 2, 200619 yr comment_902894 Re: The Crime College, Criminal Reformation, and Pulp Hero. Thoughts? Hmmm, seemes they edited the K R A U T away ... Is that such a naughty word nowadays? One puzzled Deutscher
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