Lamrok

As several folks have mentioned, the Doc Savage stories are probably the best source for the essential pulp ethos. They aren't very well written, I swear I can tell when Dent takes a swig of bourbon, but they cover the themes, places, and plots that emcompass most of what we think of as "pulp." These are an excellent resource, partly by virtue of there beeing so many of them. They aren't that difficult to come by on ebay, either. My farorites: Seabury Quinn (the "Jules Degrandin" stories have been reprinted in paperback, but they are long out of print and very difficult to find, at least they were last time I looked), HP Lovecraft (definitely a pulp author), Dashielle Hammett (great, almost tactile depiction of the era). I also like "Weird Menace" story lines (man in mask pretends to be monster), though I don't know of any easily-available sorce of stories written by a particular author. Raymond Chandler's "The Simple Art of Murder" is a great read for anyone thinking of running a mystery-oriented episode. Lamrok

Well... Last year, Eliot Sihn's hand suddenly became sentient, and able to detach itself from him on its own volition. This sort of goes back to his origin - he was born without a left hand, but he managed to "grow" one due to his regeneration. He also had powers that allowed him to detach body parts, but the other parts didn't need to be cajoled into re-attaching. I don't think this is the kind of thing a GM would typically do to a player, but I, and the rest of the group, loved it, and Zornwil is not a typical GM. It became a vehicle for personal growth for the often overly-ruthless Sihn, as he couldn't quite bring himself to snuff it out. "Lefty" developed into a key DNPC, figuring into several plots. He started off quite innocent and childlike, but he's started to mature a bit over the last sessions, and, sniff, Sihn has decided that it is time that Lefty moves on - he's been accepted to Prof. Xavier's School for the Gifted. We'll miss him, especially since he's become the best friend of one of the other PC's. It was always interesting making sure Lefty was rounded up in time for a super battle - when you carry an OAF, you need your off-hand to hang on to it. I'm sure Lefty will still show up in a lot of up-coming sessions. Sihn will finally replace his hand - a trivial operation for him. Other characters would deal with it fine - I have a tendency to play swashbucklers, and replacing a hand with a hook, or some sort of swiss-army-knife gadget would just give them more roguish charm - several of them had hook-hands during initial design, it just has never made it into any final designs. My super-brick, "Crete! The Man of Living Concrete!", would be pretty much immune to such an injury, but he has enough normal difficulties in his every-daylife that replacing one hand with a stub would hardly be noticed. Lamrok

Bozo, I mean Bozimus , I've gone back and forth on the issue of converting Deadlands to Hero. For my group, the Hero combat system is quick and comprehensive, and I like the flexibility of a points-based character construction engine. On the other hand, the Deadlands system is really built as a large construct with a number of discrete features, rather than a bunch of features that add up to a system. The "chips" subsystem, for example, provides a counter-balance to the "open ended" dice rolling subsystem. On the other hand, chips add a lot of flavor to a game, as players have to decide when and how to use them, and the basic act of tossing in a chip definitely adds a certain entertainment factor. As a GM, I liked slowly hoarding a cache of chips to use for those final climactic encounters. And awarding chips for the playing of disads tends to destabilize a game in a very entertaining manner (or, at least it did for us.) Lamrok

Why I like Hero: - Once you have a group of players who know the rules, you can hop from genre to genre effortlessly. 4th edition and earlier versions of Hero always struck me as very easy to learn, as long as you weren't playing a Supers game. 5th edition has added a lot of chrome, and ramped up the learning curve a bit, I think. - Vanilla-flavor Hero System combat tends to produce combat results that mimic movies and books a lot more than real life. That's my aim when I GM, and I appreciate a game system that produces results appropriate to my GM style. As others have said, there are ways to easily adjust this. - You can build exactly the character you want. - The rules cover non-combat situations very well. All of the games I play in have a very strong non-combat emphasis, and Hero handles this easily. - If Hero ever does a Weird West version, well, Hero has the perfect person to write it. Steve Long is one of the best known Deadlands writers. Other than that, I completely agree with Zorwil's comments above. As for learning curve, it didn't seem too bad the last time I pulled newbies in. Genre can make a big difference, though.