Jump to content

Kharis2000

HERO Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    283

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Kharis2000

  1. M&M ranking

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Random thoughts based on the lists so far:

     

    In my home game, the Skymaster graduated from airships to Cloud Bases (think the SHIELD Helicarrier or the Flying Airfield from Sky Captain) by the end of the 1939 - just in time to have to decide which side of WW2 he was going to fall on. (He wound up fighting a mostly private war against the fascist air villains because they were a more serious threat to hs goal of world domination, but he still stole air power secrets from everyone as the war progressed.)

     

    The Pulp Era actually lasted into the 1950's, by which point all sorts of new ideas had entered popular culture. Part of the fun in working on M&M for me (and, I assume, for Steve) was in creating villains that could span the thirty-year range from the 1920' to the 1950's for people to use. That's why you see people with ties to WW1, to the rise of 'cinematic communism,' to the Olympics in the 20's, to the rise of Naziism, to everything else.

     

    There were definitive tropes from the era that were going to be in the book, but I tried (hopefully more successfully than not) to at least spin them a little so that they weren't literal retreads of the originals. Even a casual reader of period literature should be able to pick them out.

     

    Several of my home game's favorites actually didn't make it into the book: The Benevolent Master Ravi Singh and his Sacred Albino Python, Guptra; The Mistress of the Hunt, and Ned Drury, Master of Ghost Cay. You can find them in Digital Hero #35, along with a few others that didn't make the cut. (In all fairness, I turned in close to 20,000 more words than I was budgeted for, so something had to go. )

  2. M&M ranking

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    First off, I want to thank you for 1) buying the book, and 2) taking the time to comment on it. As the author, I love it when people talk about my stuff, since for good or ill, they felt strongly enough about it *to* talk about it.

     

    Out of curiosity, would you feel comfortable explaining your rationales for rankings? I realize that it's a very subjective thing, but I'm interested in what worked and didn't work about the characters for you.

     

    Thanks!

  3. Good Pulp Movies to watch

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    You can't go wrong with the original serials, but colecting these is a hobby unto itself.

     

    Take a look at the Internet Archive here:

     

    'Pulp' = https://archive.org/search.php?query=pulp%20AND%20collection%3Amoviesandfilms

     

    and here:

     

    'Serial' - https://archive.org/search.php?query=serial%20AND%20collection%3Amoviesandfilms

     

    for some complete serials available for free viewing. (You'll likely have to hunt around for all the chapters, but they're there).

  4. What "Pulp" have you read lately ?

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Re: What "Pulp" have you read lately ?

     

    City of Corpses: The Weird Mysteries of Ken Carter, by Norvell W. Page. Published 2009 by Black Dog Books

     

    Full Disclosure: I'm biased when it comes to the pulps and the authors that sprang from them; no apologies, no excuses; I simply love that era and style of writing.

     

    That said, this collection is, flat out, an example of why I feel the way I do about the genre.

     

    Norvell Page is a fever dream of an author, whose characters live out on the pointy end of the exclamation point. He was incredibly prolific, producing and selling - selling! - an average of between 100,000 and 120,000 words a month, and 1,000,000 words a year. Whether you like the pulps or not, the sheer volume of his work stands as a testament to the fact that he knew what people wanted and he knew how to give it to them.

     

    'City of Corpses' contains seven short works, all originally published in TEN DETECTIVE ACES, six from consecutive issues running from May-June to November in 1933, and a final story from September 1935. All feature the same character, Kenneth Carter, and all fall squarely into the 'weird mystery' category.

     

    'Weird Mystery' is a catch-all phrase from the pulp era that covers any mystery or crime-related story where there is an element of the fantastical or the horrible. As a rule of thumb, if the opening crime in a story is someone being shot down on the street corner, you're reading a Plain Jane adventure or crime pulp. If, on the other hand, the opening crime is a parachutist falling from the skies with his hands bound and his chute's shroud lines fashioned into a hangman's noose around his neck... you're reading a weird mystery.

     

    No one wrote better weird mystery than Norvell Page.

     

    These stories are, in essence, the tryout that he (unknowingly at the time) produced in order to be offered the job as the lead writer for The Spider serial pulp which ran for 118 monthly issues from 1933 to 1943. He was offered the job after the spurt of stories in 1933, accepted it and produced a run of breakneck paced stories about the Spider that are, well... hell, just go read one. You'll understand.

     

    Ken Carter, the hero of these stories, isn't the Spider, and certainly doesn't come with the baggage that any of the 'big three' pulp heroes [Doc Savage, the Shadow, & the Spider] did, but the people that he fights and the crimes that they commit are as colorful as the foes the two of those that Norvell Page *didn't* write ever faced. If Carter has a flaw, its that he's 'sentimental' and doesn't like to see a woman come to harm, even a bad one. The bad ones frequently do, since being hoist by one's own petard is a staple of pulp villainy finales, but Carter isn't out there pulling a trigger on them. He's athletic, a good fighter - although not superhuman, since he frequently loses his fights to wake up at the dubious mercy of the villains of the piece - and has the requisite jack-of-all-trades skill set of the pulp hero.

     

    If you're looking for an introduction to the pulps in general, the weird mystery genre within it, or you want to read some sizzling slam bang fiction by one of the masters of the style, you can't go wrong with this collection.

  5. What "Pulp" have you read lately ?

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Re: What "Pulp" have you read lately ?

     

    "Fantomas," by Marcel Allain - french pulpesque criminal/antihero. Not my favorite of the European pulp-style characters, but an interesting read. Followed up in succession with: "The Devil Doctor," by Sax Rohmer (it's Fu Manchu, doesn't get pulpier); "Jack O' Judgement," by Edgar Wallace (vigilante versus the underworld by the author of the 'Just Men' series); and "The Green Rust," also by Edgar Wallace (bioterrorism in the pulp era).

  7. Pulp Era City Guides

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Way back when, when the pulps were 'live,' the Works Progress Administration came up with all sorts of projects to help get people working - in this case, it was writing city guides to places around the country that told you (in the language of the day) where to go, where not to go, what to do, and what not to do (and a lot more) in locations ranging from New Orleans to New York, to San Francisco.

     

    Here's a link to a collection of free PDF versions of some of those city (and, in some cases, state) guides. Hope they'll help you guys out as much as they've helped me!

     

    http://www.digitalbookindex.org/_SEARCH/search010histus20fedwriproja.asp

  14. Thrilling Tales Theatre: Undersea Kingdom?

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Re: Thrilling Tales Theatre: Undersea Kingdom?

     

    I've actually got a copy on DVD I bought several years back, and found it entertaining enough to contemplate using something like it in my Pulp HERO game. There are chariots, tricked-out sci-fi vehicles (a rarity in the serials), flying ships, Lon Chaney Jr as a bad guy henchman, and what has to be the best 'WTF costume' ever handed to an actor in a serial since the one worn by villain henchman Appolyon in 'Lost City of the Jungle' (all I can say is that it takes a *confident* pulp hero to wear this thing; it makes Flash Gordon's tights look positively sensible).

     

    The submarine scenes are actually the weakest in the serial, so ignore those and wait for the better stuff to come.

  18. The Great Movie Serials: any favorites?

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Re: The Great Movie Serials: any favorites?

     

    Lord, so many choices.

     

    I'd go with Captain Marvel, Spysmasher, The Fighting Devil Dogs (flying wings, lightning torpedoes, and a villain whose costume design inspired Skymaster in 'Masterminds and Madmen'), Mysterious Dr. Satan, Nyoka the Jungle Girl, Nyoka and the Tiger Men, The Phantom, any of the Flash Gordons, Buck Rogers, Secret Agent X-9 Captain Midnight... heck, it might be easier to list the ones I *haven't* liked.

  19. Shane Black directing and writing Doc Savage film.

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Re: Shane Black directing and writing Doc Savage film.

     

    I'm heartened that they're setting it in the 30's (any plans to update to the modern world would be a failure, IMHO), and that the Fab 5 will appear. As for casting... I'm expecting that we won't see any 'big' names in this; the cast will all likely be relative unknowns and solid B & C-listers. Discounting any additional figures added by the script, there's be *six* protagonists at some level in the film and, much as I love the stories, no studio will front the cash to get big names for a film with that many cast members which doesn't have a huge built-in audience, and, sadly, Doc Savage isn't 'The Lord of the Rings.'

  20. New Robert E Howard collection

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Re: New Robert E Howard collection

     

    I'm glad to see the El Borak stories back in print by a major publisher again. They were the second series of Howard's that I found when I was just getting into pulps (Conan was first and Solomon Kane was third), and I still find myself wishing that he'd had more success with them, so we'd have more of them that we do.

     

    I recommend them to anyone looking for a inspiration for adventures set in the Middle East during the early pulp era (and likely all the way up to WW2).

  21. “Iron Man: Armored Adventures” character build question

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: “Iron Man: Armored Adventures” character build question

     

    As was previously stated, this is the main drawback to the higher levels of power you can access with the Focus limitation and/or building the suit as a vehicle.

     

    I've played power armor characters before, and short of having some way to carry the suit with you, there's (in my mind at least) an accepted metarule that the GM will, at some point, zap the power armor guy when his suit isn't handy. The archetypal version of the character in comics, Tony Stark, has been attacked and had to hide to change, been attacked and had to try and handle the fight without the armor, and, memorably, on one occasion was tossed/fell out of an aircraft in flight and had to try and get into the armor on the way down.

     

    Granted, not everyone is going to want to try and go that far to avoid building a rapid deployment system, but a few that I've seen in game use and in comics include: the suit is a cluster of nanites that hide in the hollow spaces of the wearer's bones and 'foams' out when donned [comics]; the suit 'tags along' with the wearer in an 'out of phase' manner and phases in when donned [game]; the suit is literally 'beamed' to the character when summoned [both]; the suit changes shape to a vehicle of some sort [both]; the suit changes shape to that of the character's significant other and 'unfolds/transforms' into armor that literally wraps around the character [game - and the comments *started* with "Lends a new meaning to 'I want you inside me'" and went a far piece downhill from there.]

     

    Ultimately you'd need to strike a balance between the armor and the wearer's capabilities outside of it.

  22. Nazi Belt Buckle Gun

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Re: Nazi Belt Buckle Gun

     

    Okay, aside from the fact that this collector was a governor of my state before I was born, adding weirdness to an already weird deal...

     

    ...WTF?

     

    If I read this right, you can fire all four rounds at once the way it is configured. Granted, they're only .32 ACP, but still... dude, that's a lot of energy to be popping off with nothing to resist it but your abdominal muscles!

  23. Paying for Magic Items

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Paying for Magic Items

     

    In our Fantasy HERO game, the GM went back and forth on costs and the like, and ultimately decided that he'd resolve the whole issue of PC's making items by instituting a 'guild' system whereby magic was segregated into types of magic by general feel or political maneuvering, and one had to belong to a specific guild to access their types of magic.

     

    So, construction of items was based on membership in the Artificer's Guild, who also had subsumed within their ranks the arts of creating constructs and any magically-enhanced construction techniques. You pay Perk points for access to the spells of a guild, with the higher power spells and abilities costing more perk points to learn (and frequently involving political maneuvering and favor trading to justify the perk advancement, much less the technique you're after). No PC has, to date, cared enough about constructing items to join the guild (multiple memberships are possible and likely, but some guilds prohibit membership in specific other guilds), so we've not worried about that.

     

    For regular items, we just treat them as 'found' and use them until they break or until they're lost/stolen. For 'signature items' however, we adopted a system whereby the PC pays for a Perk: Signature Item that costs 1/5 of the Real Cost of the item, and guarantees that if it's lost, it finds it's way back to him, if destroyed it can be rebuilt at no character point cost (role-playing costs not barred, however), and so on.

     

    It's been interesting watching various characters and players to see what they were going to identify with strongly enough to declare a signature Item.

  25. The Question (Rene Montoya/ DC)

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: The Question (Rene Montoya/ DC)

     

    I think that she'd be fine with (as was suggested) the removal of the Intergang blaster (which flies in the face of the character as far as I'm concerned; The Question has always, to me, been more about seeking the answers up close and personal, not zapping folks with sci-fi rayguns).

     

    For me, the interesting part of the character would be how the origin changed to recreate Montoya in the game she would be played in, and how the actual adaptation was done mechanically.

×
×
  • Create New...