telemachus

Re: Question about "Pulp" I agree with you whole-heartedly on pretty much every point about the effect Raiders had. I recall a sudden lack of "Indiana Jones hats" in the thrift stores in the area right after Raiders came out (probably whips, too.) By the way, shouldn't that be "Nazi 1984 TSR, Inc.?" About the lack of real world detail- I'd read in, I believe, Danger Is My Business that pulp writers were actually sticklers for detail, although that may have only applied to the higher profile magazines like Adventure.

Re: Question about "Pulp"

Re: Question about "Pulp" If only all those other games would have chapters like "The Pulp Feel" (hell, even that first paragraph)! I guess I'm just trying to preserve the sanctity of the pulps, whatever that is. I think back in the days of Dave Cook's "Crimefighters", FGU's "Daredevils", and Hero Games' "Justice, Inc.", the pulps, in whatever flavor, hadn't yet bubbled back to the surface quite like they have in the past ten years or so, mainly attracting those that already had a familiarity with the magazines (I have my dad's copy of Steranko's History of Comics, with it's chapter on the pulps, to thank for turning me on to them at an early age.) Anyway, I wasn't picking on Pulp Hero or the other pulp rpg's for that; I've heard or read that same sort of confusion among the unwashed masses in circles outside of gaming. Personally, I blame Pulp Fiction for it, but I could be wrong.

Re: Question about "Pulp" Since I see this so often, I thought I should clarify the whole thing a little bit. "Pulp" technically has one meaning, that being the magazines printed on cheap, pulp paper,or the stories that appeared in them. Pulp magazines covered a whole lot of ground over the 40+ years they were around and calling every kind of story that appeared in them "pulp" can be very misleading. Usually, what people nowadays mean when they're talking about pulps or pulp fiction is one of two things- "hero" pulps like Doc Savage and The Shadow or hard-boiled detective stories about Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and the like (including sleaze-o stuff by writers like Robert Leslie Bellam). Movies like Indiana Jones or The Rocketeer that are often referred to as being "pulpy" are actually based directly on the old movie serials, not the pulps. They were the film equivalent of the hero pulps, but had as much in common with comic books and comic strips of the time (there were serials based on Captain Marvel, Blackhawk, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers, for example). Like movie serials, "film noir" movies were the cinema equivalent of the crime/detective pulps, many of them taken directly from stories that appeared in the magazines (like Hammet's "The Maltese Falcon or Chandler's "The Big Sleep".) It seems like "pulp" has come to mean cheap thrills from the 30's and 40's, but that type of "cheap, fast, and out of control" storytelling, whether it's in the form of film, print, or even radio, to a smaller extent was a product of the time just before, during, and after World War II. I guess if you had to give it all one name, it might as well be "pulp", but calling Daredevils of the Red Circle "pulp" is like calling "The Master of the World" "steampunk". It just don't seem right, I tells ya!

Re: U.N. Armament You have completely missed the point. Butler wasn't speaking out against soldiers (since, y'know, he was one), he was speaking out against the people who run the military (like, oh I don't know, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney) who thrust those soldiers into a conflict solely for the benefit of turning a profit. No, it is not presumptuous of me, sir. Smedley Butler was a decorated war hero with more than 30 years experience in at least five US military excursions, wrote a book seventy years ago that is still in print, had a Marine base named in his honor, and topical discussions about the man taking place 67 years after his death. And you are...? Nice try. No, I wasn't "offended" and, no, I didn't "lash out" at you. I made a simple statement of fact, nothing more nor less. This time, however, you were completely offensive on a number of levels. You can consider my utter disgust this time as "lashing out", if you like. Oh, and apology accepted.

Re: Japanese Powered Exoskeleton Here's HAL's uglier American cousin that I found last week. Looks like the Japanese have got a leg up on the competition.

Re: U.N. Armament I was neither generalizing nor overgeneralizing and I wasn't talking about "people dying", I merely cited the experienced viewpoint of someone more qualified to speak on the subject than anyone here on these message boards could ever be.

Re: U.N. Armament I wouldn't be quite so sure, my fellow American. For a look behind the curtain, you should really consider reading this- http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm and for more on the guy who wrote it- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

Re: Weird request I know it's late in the game to bring this up, but do any of the write-ups take into account Fonzie's animated adventures?

Re: U.N. Armament Actually, that estimate comes from the manufacturer of the M16, Colt Weapons Systems. That number struck me as a little low, too (though I'd understood the AK family to be the most common worldwide), so I thought I should check into it. Here's the link: http://www.colt.com/mil/customers.asp

Re: U.N. Armament What's really weird about that was the report of missing weapons that the US gave to Iraq- among them an estimated 110,000 AK-47s!! I'm not well versed on the arms biz, but that just stuck me as a tad bizarre, not so much by the sheer volume (which is just mind-boggling), but that they weren't even good old American government issue!

Re: U.N. Armament That narrows things down very nicely. Thanks much! The M-16 being a popular weapon came as a bit of a surprise. I thought it went the way of the dodo sometime in the 80's. "You can tell it's Mattel!"

Re: U.N. Armament True, I don't see them packing mobile artillery, but I did see some pics of light tanks and what were possibly APC's on the UN Peacekeeper Wiki. No info about armor or armaments, though. Not quite sure what you mean about the trucks.

Re: U.N. Armament

Does anybody know what standard-issue weaponry is issued to UN Peacekeeping Forces? Do they even have standard-issue weapons? Thanks.