JakSpade Posted June 6, 2007 Report Share Posted June 6, 2007 Star Trek had sub-space. The Fantastic Four had cosmic rays. The Adventure! RPG had telluric energy. Steam power, gamma radiation, aether/ether power, alternate dimensions... What's the very latest scientific discovery in your pulp game that opens the door to new worlds, technology, or just the latest cooking convenience? (I got this idea from all the discussion on the Aether guns... ) jak Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted June 6, 2007 Report Share Posted June 6, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... Frankenstein's Journals (actually the journals of Johann Konrad Dippel). Covering experiments taking place between 1702 and 1730, the journals detail Dippel's highly successful experiments in the use of alchemical principles to re-animate dead tissue. Along with the remarkable work of Griffen, Jekyll, Giberrne, Nemo, and others, these form the basis of so called "Mad Science". Mad Science is distinct from more traditional research in that (1) its results, while demonstrable, are not always reproducible, (2) the results of experiments often seem to depend on the experimenter, and (3) core principles and key data are often concealed by experimenters, and must be re-discovered by the researchers that follow. This is compounded by the (possibly apocryphal) tendency for the records of so-called Mad Scientists to be systematically concealed or destroyed, and for their submitted papers to be frozen out, often unfairly, from peer reviewed publications. The leading Mad Scientists of the 1930s include Tesla, Zarkov, and Luther. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supreme Serpent Posted June 6, 2007 Report Share Posted June 6, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... I've used radium as a useful super-science starting point, responsible for such things as the sinister Lugomen! (tarry shape-shifting artificial men) (inspired by the minions in the Space Giants TV show) We've done various stuff with magnetism, sonics, alien space-rocks and such. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted June 6, 2007 Report Share Posted June 6, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... Superegonite, a rare variety of quartz discovered in several carved crystal skulls from pre-Columbian cultures in the Americas. A natural psychic amplifier, superegonite intensifies a person's natural psychic emissions. When properly shaped into focussing crystals or scattering prisms it enhances such abilities as telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, clairvoyance or psychometry. Stimulation of superegonite by light or electricity can increase its efficiency, and even allow non-psychics to manifest limited psychic powers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted June 6, 2007 Report Share Posted June 6, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... Oh, also worth noting; The War of the Worlds did take place in my setting, in 1898. HG Wells intentionally exaggerated and distorted the details (it was much smaller scale than he suggested), but the War Machines were captured, and much Mad Science derives from back engineering those "Martian" devices. A space ship crashed in Colorado in 1891. Various members of the Diogenes Club have made remarkable discoveries based on what little they can glean from the wreckage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barton Posted June 7, 2007 Report Share Posted June 7, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... Radium is in my game, a element is a HUGE power source. It allows in my game, mind controlling radio transmissions, deadly robots, and of course death rays. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreyGuardian Posted June 7, 2007 Report Share Posted June 7, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... Radium is in my game' date=' a element is a HUGE power source. It allows in my game, mind controlling radio transmissions, deadly robots, and of course death rays.[/quote'] And in the real world is a serious pain in the rear to get rid of if you happen to have any hanging around. Not to mention in sufficient quantities or when ingested being quite deadly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savinien Posted June 7, 2007 Report Share Posted June 7, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... My setting uses something similar to the 'mutliverse' a la Planetary. But, the forces in the Bleed allow physics to be bent depending on the wielder's wishes. So, in places where the Veil is weakened and the Phlogistan leaks in... Super-powers, Aether Creatures, alternate World bleeding happens. At this point in AotM, the Veil is relatively strong, but something will happen during WWII which changes that and allows Golden Age of supers on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleireac Posted June 7, 2007 Report Share Posted June 7, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... OddHat, I've been looking for something to help fill in the Pulp Science section of the Pulp Project 1557 wiki. This would be a nice summary, as well as all the other discussion on radium and other 'scientific' advances available... Frankenstein's Journals (actually the journals of Johann Konrad Dippel). Covering experiments taking place between 1702 and 1730, the journals detail Dippel's highly successful experiments in the use of alchemical principles to re-animate dead tissue. Along with the remarkable work of Griffen, Jekyll, Giberrne, Nemo, and others, these form the basis of so called "Mad Science". Mad Science is distinct from more traditional research in that (1) its results, while demonstrable, are not always reproducible, (2) the results of experiments often seem to depend on the experimenter, and (3) core principles and key data are often concealed by experimenters, and must be re-discovered by the researchers that follow. This is compounded by the (possibly apocryphal) tendency for the records of so-called Mad Scientists to be systematically concealed or destroyed, and for their submitted papers to be frozen out, often unfairly, from peer reviewed publications. The leading Mad Scientists of the 1930s include Tesla, Zarkov, and Luther. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted June 7, 2007 Report Share Posted June 7, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... OddHat' date=' I've been looking for something to help fill in the Pulp Science section of the Pulp Project 1557 wiki. This would be a nice summary, as well as all the other discussion on radium and other 'scientific' advances available... Feel free to borrow it, so long as you cite me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lemurion Posted June 11, 2007 Report Share Posted June 11, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... In my games, I use the fact that Pulp based technology always scales perfectly. A "pulp" based steam engine that's ten times the size gives at least ten times the usable power. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McCoy Posted June 12, 2007 Report Share Posted June 12, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... Alien tech captured from a failed ET invasion in 1894, and the "Airship" that crashed near Aurora, Texas, in 1897. Several of the world's top scientist try to reverse engineer some ot this, with few, if any, results. Then in 1899 Nikola Tesla announces he had received signals from another planet. John Carter visits his Colorado laboratory, and while there mentioned that a piece of the alien tech Tesla was working on looked like something he's seen on Barsoom. Tesla quizzed Carter on what the Martian scientist had told him. Carter had misunderstood most of it, but Tesla was able to get a consistant enough theory about the eighth and ninth Barsoomian Rays that he was able to start reverse engineering the alien tech. Further breakthroughs occured after the 1908 Tunguska incident, when Kryptonite began to fall to Earth in 1920, a second invasion attempt in 1938, and the Roswell incident in 1947. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drhoz Posted June 12, 2007 Report Share Posted June 12, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... classic wrong science! Phlogiston! Coriolis 'Force'! N-rays! Every wrong step science has taken on the road to understanding reality instead has led us somewhere very strange! (a Howard Waldrop story in which the protagonists manage to liberate Pholgiston and ignite the atmosphere, and oceans, etc as a result, springs to mind) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleireac Posted June 13, 2007 Report Share Posted June 13, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... Feel free to borrow it' date=' so long as you cite me. [/quote'] Done. It still needs to be cleaned up and edited to fit the format of the wiki, but at least its ported over. You can see the results here. Thanks:thumbup: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted June 13, 2007 Report Share Posted June 13, 2007 Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp... Done. It still needs to be cleaned up and edited to fit the format of the wiki' date=' but at least its ported over. You can see the results here. Thanks:thumbup: Looks good. Signed into the site and had a look around. Interesting stuff there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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