What are your favourite Pulp cities?

[telemachus]

Re: What are your favourite Pulp cities?

 

Howzabout Kurt Busiek's Astro City? It's chock full of built-in npc's and there's that snazzy map and everything. Just backdate it, take out the superheroes (heck, some of them would probably be right at home in a pulp setting) and voila!

 

As far as real cities go, Kansas City from the mid '20's to the late '30's can't be beat for a city full of story potential. Here's a quote from Wikipedia about KC-

 

"In the early 20th Century under "Boss" Tom Pendergast, Kansas City became the country's "most wide open town", with virtually no enforcement of liquor laws or hours. While this would give rise to Kansas City Jazz, it also led to the rise of the Kansas City mob (initially under Johnny Lazia) as well as the arrival of gangsters. The 1930s saw the Kansas City Massacre at Union Station, as well as a shootout between police and outlaws Bonnie and Clyde at the Red Crown Tavern near what is now Kansas City International Airport."

 

Now, throw honest-to-god cowboys (KC was a huge cowtown back then) into the mix and you've got a recipe for some crazy-fun pulp action!

[assault]

Re: What are your favourite Pulp cities?

 

Now' date=' throw honest-to-god cowboys (KC was a [u']huge[/u] cowtown back then) into the mix and you've got a recipe for some crazy-fun pulp action!

 

Repped.

[cleireac]

Re: What are your favourite Pulp cities?

 

At the Pulp Project 1557 wiki, I am currently trying to provide simple writeups for real-world and fictional pulp cities. Go to the Pulp Cities page and select the one you might be interested in providing detail for.

 

I have provided a simple format on each one, so as to make adding information easier. Check out the New York City page and the San Francisco page to get an idea of what I'm looking for. If you want to write a longer article on any of the subject headings, just create a new page for it, linking it to the main page.

 

You will need to register (for free) with wet paint to begin editing the page, but it really is easy to edit at this wiki.

 

Please contribute! I would love for this to be one of the major sources of pulp-themed gaming information available!

 

Thanks!

 

Hank

[sinanju]

Re: What are your favourite Pulp cities?

 

Please contribute! I would love for this to be one of the major sources of pulp-themed gaming information available!

 

Thanks!

 

Hank

 

I just signed up. I think I'll be adding Santa Carla, CA (which I mentioned upthread) to the list.

[cleireac]

Re: What are your favourite Pulp cities?

 

I just signed up. I think I'll be adding Santa Carla' date=' CA[/b'] (which I mentioned upthread) to the list.

 

Awesome!

 

Anyone Else?

 

Thanks!

 

Hank

[ThothAmon]

Re: What are your favourite Pulp cities?

 

Shanghai.

 

I've ran a lengthy pulp campaign (many years real time) all around the globe and Shangahi 1920s -> 1930's was the best locale by a looong way.

[Thag13]

Re: What are your favourite Pulp cities?

 

Cairo -- exotic tombs and pyramids' date=' secret societies, ancient history, and tons of historical material available.[/quote']

 

I have set my other world pulp adventure in New Cairo, somewhat based on Arron Allstons book Doc Shide, and added some of my own stuff.

[SteelCold]

 New York City, London and Singapore.

[Nero Grimes]

A starter List

 

Ian Fleming wrote an interesting book: Thrilling Cities.

[jlv61560]

I'm just beginning to cross over into Pulp from Call of Cthulhu, but I have to tell all you pulpsters out there that there are superb gudebooks for London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cairo, and of course, the entirety of "Lovecraft Country" (the made-up towns of Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingsport, Dunwich and the entire Miskatonic River Valley) available for the 1920s, as well as guidebooks for Kenya, Morrocco, England in general, Hungary, Ireland, the Congo, the British Raj (though that one's more focused on the 1890's, as is the one on the Sudan), Iceland, Tibet, Australia, and Mesoamerica out there for your enjoyment in the Call of Cthulhu line.  I'm sure I've skipped a few in the list too.  And if you throw in things like Trail of Cthulhu sourcebooks, you'll find even more. 

 

Additionally the globe-trotting campaigns (expecially Masks of Nyarlathotep) get you to places like Shanghai, and the complete route of the Simplon Orient Express from London to Istanbul in considerable detail.  There's even a full-up campaign set in Antartica (Beyond the Mountains of Madness) which, while hardly usable as written for purely pulp adventures (unless unspeakable alien beings are part of that for you, of course) does an excellent job of describing how you outfit expeditions to such places and giving you lots of info on the continent (to include giant albino penguins, for those of you looking for them).

 

All of these are written for either BRP or Gumshoe as a game system of course, but I've found very little difficulty converting such things to D6, for example, for that more cinematic feel.  And if you like a somewhat grittier system, thanks to things like Astounding Adventures (for BRP) and the hopefully soon forthcoming Pulp Cthulhu, you can always use BRP to game out pulp adventures -- it's still one of the better RPG systems I've found.  In short, there are a whole world of resources out there that you can easily use for pulp settings, and if you go back into the long out-of-print stuff, you can add Norway, parts of France, and even a little bit of info about Chicago to the list of stuff available.

 

Mind you, most of this is set for what they call the "classic" era, or the 1920's (because that's when most of H.P. Lovecraft's stuff was set), but it's not so hard to update to the 30's if you don't want to start your players in the earlier era -- throw in a few more cars, some better roads, a few more telephones and more airplane connections, and you're pretty much set.  Oh, and don't forget to lower the prices a bit since things got cheaper during the Depression....

 

If you're looking for info on the far east, West End Games, as part of their old World of Indiana Jones game did publish a source book on Japan in the '30's, which was pretty well done.  I'd love to see someone do up a source book on China and Southeast Asia for the period too -- and rumor has it that someone might for Call of Cthulhu, which would be very useful to Pulp gamers too.

 

So, to answer the original question (and keeping in mind that I'm an American and never got to go to London -- much to my personal regret, though I did manage Paris and Berlin) -- probably either Arkham or NYC as the primary home base -- though SF or LA could be interesting too.  I'd prefer a coastal city for the greater opportunities for travel that it gives (you don't have to cross half the continent first in order to reach a major seaport).  But that's just me.

[Roter Baron]

I concur. The L.A. and San Francisco sourcebooks are superb and New Orleans and New YOrk City aren't half bad either.

 

I usually choose NYC as a setting for Pulp, Champions or almost any kind of campaign and game system set in the US (if it's not Western). I have been there are couple of times as a tourist, read quite a lot about it, it has a great diversity of people and cultures, is rich in crime (= opponent, plots and adventure) and it is instantly familiar to my player through TV and movies.

[assault]

guidebooks for Kenya, Morrocco, England in general, Hungary, Ireland, the Congo, the British Raj (though that one's more focused on the 1890's,

.

 

There was a 1920's era British sourcebook published by Games Workshop, before they stopped publishing stuff for games other than their own.

 

It was called 'Green and Pleasant Land'. Very cool.

[Roter Baron]

What do you think of the Australian Sourcebook "Terror Australis"? I do have it but did not really read it through - somehow it did not really fascinate me, but that is not saying that it is bad.

 

Do agree to your view on "Green and Pleasant Land", old chap. Marvelous little piece, indeed.

[assault]

Terror Australis? Well, I didn't buy it when it came it. I did get a second hand copy a couple of years ago.

 

I agree with your assessment of it.

 

Part of that may be the lack of what really makes Green and Pleasant Land awesome - the stuff about character types. That little essay is what really makes it for me. There's nothing like that in Terror Australis - Australian characters are supposedly just generic. Which is fair, but kind of dull.

 

Hmm. Characters from the Weimar Republic?

[jlv61560]

Terror Australis was excellent for it's time, but keep in mind it was written for Call of Cthulhu, so it spends a lot of time tying things to the mythos that don't actually need to be.  It did do a pretty good job on briefly describing Aboriginal society, though.  However, I will agree, it's not the best source book ever done.  According to Sixtystone Press (who is working on the Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion with a goal of publishing it in August), they plan to add a lot of information on the Australia section (which was the basis for the original Terror Australis supplement back in the late 80's).  That's supposed to include info on police forces, and a very nice section on proto-Nazis in the form of Thule Geselschaft, as well as the experiments performed in Australia in the 1920's to confirm Einstein's theory of relativity.

 

Green and Pleasant Land was the one I was referring to, actually -- though Cubicle 7 has done a whole series of supplements on the British Isles now (check out the Cthulhu Britannica series) and is currently pushing to completion on a Cthulhu Britannica: London boxed set that promises to be the ultimate guide to London, finally replacing the old London Guidebook from decades ago.

 

Most of the monographs are fairly good, though they can be spotty.  The one on Hungary, for example, was obviously translated into English, apparently by the same people that translated Japanese stereo instructions back in the day, so is very difficult to use unless you already know (or are willing to spend the time to research) a lot of info on Hungary in the 1920s and 30's -- and even then manages to gloss over things like the Communist state that was formed there briefly in 1919.  Others, on the other hand, are simply outstanding.  The more recent "official" books on Kenya and Morrocco are the result of well-written monographs published back about a decade or so ago and then formally updated by Chaosium to full "product" status.

 

And, as I said before, the WEG supplement on Japan (Rising Sun) is the best thing I've read on 20's and 30's Japan in some time.  Other publishers really aren't doing things like that much.  Steve Jackson Games has a couple of useful sourcebooks, though -- in the form of Mysterious Places, and some of the ones on Ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt that might inform your pulp game if you're doing the "tough guy professor -- archaeology" theme in your game.

 

Of course, none of these are written for Pulp Hero, but I got a copy of 5th Edition recently, and I don't see it as being terribly difficult to convert most of these to Pulp Hero stats if you wanted/needed to do that.  On the other hand, unless I'm actually playing the game system these are written for, I use them more for inspirational ideas anyway, vice actual specifics.  Let's face it, you usually have to spend time tailoring official supplements to your campaign and character situations and circumstances anyway.

 

Oh, another thing I recently ran across is something called "Any System" books, for which they have something called Pulp Egypt (along with half a dozen associated adventures set in Egypt), and Heroes of Ruratonga (sort of a play on Tales of the Gold Monkey from what I can see) which also has several adventures associated with it.  The deal with these is that they aren't written for any particular system -- just with guidelines on how tough to make things, which makes them very easy to translate into Pulp Hero (or anything else, for that matter).  Finally, Kenneth Hite wrote up something called "Tomb Hounds of Egypt" as part of his Pagan Press series called "Ken Writes About Stuff" which purports to give good guidance on how to run an Egypt-centric pulp campaign in the 1930s.  I haven't gotten the last two yet, so I can only report hear-say on them at this time, but Pulp Egypt is fantastic, which bodes well for Heroes of Ruratonga; and, of course, I'll read anything Ken writes that I can get hold of.

 

Anyway, there's a lot of really cool and useful background info out there if you have the time, inclination, and money to go after them.  I use a lot of these to drive my own research (especially GURPS sourcebooks and things like Suppressed Transmissions) -- for example, a mere mention of something I ran across somewhere put me on the track of the Pirate Brig Whydah (which wrecked off the coast of Massachusetts in a massive storm, going to the bottom with all hands and a supposedly vast treasure) which was subsequently found by divers off Cape Cod in the latter part of the 20th Century.  Clearly then, that could become something the players seek in the 20's/30's in order to a) recover treasure; b  ) find a clue leading to an even BIGGER treasure; or c) prevent the bad guys from getting something THEY need/want from it.  As part of that, of course, they would need to learn how to dive in the era before SCUBA equipment (for which skill, useful information can be found in a Call of Cthulhu supplement called Fearful Passages -- which also, BTW, includes scenarios and information on such diverse forms of transport as a giant biplane passenger plane from the 1920s, elephant riding, and armored cars from World War I), which in turn could lead them to the ruins of the semi-mythical pirate stronghold of Libertatia in the Indian Ocean, and thence to the famous Treasure of the Indies (the richest haul ever made by a pirate vessel), and so on.  (Interestingly, the pirate captain who captured the Portuguese treasure ship in question, hid the treasure and left a ciphered note behind that hasn't been solved to this day that supposedly leads the clever treasure hunter to the treasure (the cipher has been broken, but no one can figure out the clues); now THAT would be an interesting adventure -- especially if you give the players copies of the cipher, clues to solving it, old treasure maps, and that sort of thing to work with!)  Lots of opportunities there, all from simply glancing through sourcebooks on Arkahm Massachusetts and Miskatonic University (which is where I started my players from)!

 

Now to some extent, I obviously have hijacked this thread, and for that I sincerely apologize; but the point here is that sourcebooks from just about anything can be used to help you with your Pulp Hero campaign...and help you define cities in ways that make them useful as home bases for your players; witness how Arkham plays perfectly into my Whydah scenario idea by sheer accident!

[lou_tennant]

I have used Boston and a few others in Maine and/or New England - nice for a little Horror Pulp.

 

Paris is good, as is Venice.

[John Desmarais]

Although I tend to lean heavily on fictional cities, for real cities I favor New York and London. New York has everything you need in a campaign city, and most (American) players are at least passingly familiar with it. London has everything NY has, but gobs and gobs of history to exploit.