BigJackBrass

Secret decoder rings? Hardcover edition of Pulp? AND ONLY AT GENCON? Aaaaghhh!!! Hardly needs to be said, Mr Long, but if you make enough of these for general sale through the online store I'm interested. GenCon is only a dream for me this year, alas, but I'd certainly pay the extra for PH in hardcover. If you happen to accidentally forget about one of the copies and leave it under the table until after the Con ends, maybe...?

Re: Announcing — DIME HERO ADVENTURES! To my mind this is precisely the right thing to be doing. Low cost, relatively short add-ons are perfect for PDF (I've seen 400 page rulebooks in that format and can only wonder who can afford to print them out, or why) and a growing fund of material for Pulp HERO is exactly what the game needs. I hope it's successful enough to spread over to other lines as well.

Re: Alternate History This is one area where GURPS currently reigns supreme. The quality and range of Steve Jackson Games' historical sourcebooks is, on the whole, superb and they offer an instant distillation of the most game-important information for a given country, genre or period. Since most of them also cover examples of alternate history they save the less research-minded GM a lot of work. Luckily, GURPS already covers the bulk of rules needed to actually play in such settings, so many of the supplements are reasonably rules light. Because of that they are easily adapted to other games systems, which I believe was one of the original design goals for GURPS (make the supplements appealing to non-GURPS players and then slowly draw them in), and the nature of HERO makes it easy - if somewhat time consuming - to replicate the necessary effects. This, I feel, is the way to go with "minor" and variant settings such as alternate history. Not every game company is going to put out a similar line, so adapting GURPS material is a good option. I would also say that the best way to run good alternate history is to read up on the real thing: The more you know, the more you'll understand the ramifications of any changes you make. The game Fvlminata is a fine example of an alternate history setting (Roman, in this case) which nonetheless retains a remarkable sense of reality. My goal when mucking about with the past is to leave the players unsure at the end as to what is documented history and what is fiction. As for dedicated HERO products, the only thing I can think of offhand would be Champions 3-D (and maybe Wings of the Valkyrie), but only you could say if it would fit your Star HERO game.

Re: New HG book concept - opinions requested It's certainly a good idea for beginners, but probably only for beginners who are picking up a game with the intention of running it for friends as an entry into roleplaying. If they play at a club or are moving on from other games then I would expect either someone there to be able to introduce them to the system, or else if they've played other games then HERO is not especially difficult to grasp. Possibly quite expensive, depending on the supplements you choose, but very simple at its heart. If there were to be a Pulp Sidekick, something playable out of the box with rules and adventures included, or Champions Sidekick compiled in a similar way, then wouldn't that just be Justice, Inc. or the original Champions? It seems unlikely to me that the company would reverse the current approach and go back to packaging games the way they did twenty years ago.

Re: Is Doctor Who pulp? The short answer: No. But then the short answer really doesn't explain much. Doctor Who features, at different times, a good many pulp elements (such as the recurring villains, cliffhanger endings - a feature sadly neglected in the latest incarnation - and often execrable dialogue) but the character of The Doctor himself does not match the typical pulp hero. Rarely is he very physical - exceptions including Pertwee-era Venusian martial arts and the very first Tom Baker episode - and very often he is arrogant and selfish. The seventh Doctor was notorious for manipulating his companions, using them as unknowing pawns in a larger game, which is hardly something of which Doc Savage or the Avenger would approve. The first Doctor was a grumpy, vainglorious old man; the second a temperamental meddler; the sixth an arrogant bully. Although the series has gunfights, explosions, naive and resourceful companions, chases (usually down rather similar corridors) and grand megolamaniac schemes I can't help but feel that it lacks an emotional sympathy with classic pulp. The Doctor does not always do what is "right" and indeed often questions what "right" means. He commits genocide at least once. On many occasions, especially visible during the McCoy era, he actively opposes the violence and easy solutions central to the pulp way of doing things. He's an alien, with alien ways of getting the job done, and he generally (smugly) tries to outthink rather than outfight. As I say, the elements are often there but I don't think in this case they add up to the pulp experience. And yes, I have spent altogether too much of my life watching the show.

Re: Purely Positive Thread Rapture! Delight! Jubilation of Biblical proportion! Ah, sweet HERO. Would that I had gainsayed the negative murmurings long ago and delved into thy sweet embrace, rather than blowing wads of cash on Heroes Unlimited. Sigh, the follies of youth. As someone who loves rules-light games such as Fudge and Dying Earth (and indeed my main claim to published fame is for some rules minimal additions to TWERPS) it confounds me that HERO should appeal so much. The books are wonderful to read, absolutely brimful of ideas, research and options, and a very large percentage of the published line is of exemplary quality; I shan't touch on the very rare lapse. To top it all, Pulp HERO looms large on the horizon like a beacon of hope and virtue. Verily, 'tis a golden age to be a gamer, methinks.

Re: What Other Pulp Hero Books Would You Like To See? Pulp Amok would certainly work for me, taking the stereotypical Pulp scenarios and set pieces and twisting them the way Villainy Amok did for Champions. Since Pulp is primarily made up of these sorts of things it would be nice to see some unusual variations on the standard themes. And certainly anything new by Aaron Allston. Beg if you have to.

Re: [Character] Planetary's Doc Brass? Well I've never heard of the character before, but he's got a really cool name...

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign. This idea has some similarities to the premise behind the Terra Incognita, and I'd certainly recommend a visit to the excellent http://www.nagssociety.com website to have a look at the resources and links there. I regularly find useful tips that I'd never have come across on my own.

Re: Australia in the current CU Given the global nature of some supervillains it would make sense to me that, even if they lacked substantial home-grown heroes, the Australian and New Zealand governments would try to attract heroes from overseas to offer assistance. Of course, that leads to its own problems if the local population objects. Under such circumstances I would expect to find some sort of programme to create powered armour and other ways to equip troops to take on superhuman adversaries. If ever there was a country built to have a secret government base hidden in the interior it has to be Australia, the geography is perfect.

Re: Pulp Film Recommendations Somewhere along the line I think "recommendations" must have been redefined... Still, if we're moving onto cheese, can it be long before someone suggests Wild Women of Wongo? Uh, apparently not.

Re: Master and Commander, Star Hero style. Absolutely. Sometimes it's nice to take a setting and tack it onto another, but it doesn't always work. In something like a CORE Command setting, dealing with over-the-top space opera and faster than light travel, I don't think that much of the Napoleonic wars era naval adventure would work, but Traveller has that wonderful design decision at its heart: speed of communication cannot outpace speed of travel. That takes you right back to the sort of problems faced in the early 19th century. Let us know how it turns out if you do try it.

Re: Master and Commander, Star Hero style. Well, you have twenty Aubrey and Maturin books to work through, after which you should have all the inspiration you'll ever need. Ignore the recently published fragment of his final book, though, because it's only the barest sketch of a plan. To me the best aspects of the novels (of which Master and Commander and Post Captain are probably the finest) is the social side and the developing relationship between the characters. Aubrey is awkward and inept on dry land, remarkably credulous, yet unsurpassed in his own water-borne kingdom; Maturin an accomplished spy, physician, linguist and naturalist who never seems to notice the state of his appearance and hates nothing so much as an informer. The plots and battles are almost an aside, and this is how I like RPGs to develop also, with the characters taking the centre stage and making it their own. You're right, there is much there to adapt for a sci-fi game, especially a "lower end" one where the galaxy has not been fully explored and tamed and imperial expansion fires political tensions. Maturin would doubtless have been in raptures over the flora and fauna of an alien world.

Re: Tacky, tacky, tacky !!!! I think you've just given me an idea for a new NPC...

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See? Good heavens, man! Don't you understand that we need rules for these things? How on Earth are we supposed to function without a rule for every possible eventuality? At this rate you'll be suggesting that we think for ourselves, use our judgement and - gasp, I can barely say it - employ some creativity.

Re: I'll Never Play Pulp ...or real lives...

Re: I'll Never Play Pulp The trouble with Pulp is that it's a very tricky thing to define, yet everyone seems to have strong opinions about what it covers. As a result it's often seen as old-fashioned and out of touch. Pulp covers a massive range of genres, romance to westerns to sci-fi to supers, but the strongest associations are the Doc Savage and Shadow style settings. To my mind, Pulp is a feeling (if I can badly misquote David Byrne here), a certain approach and tone rather than necessarily a genre per se. When the Indiana Jones films came out everyone suddenly wanted to do Pulp again, and most of the bandwagon-jumpers didn't last for very long. We had a handful of RPGs as well, and they managed moderate success, but something about Pulp holds people back. I sometimes wonder if it's not akin to inviting the average computer gamer to sit down with an Intellivision or Vectrex... they just assume that it's had its day. The people who like Pulp tend to love it. I got into HERO, Silhouette and "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" through the Pulp games/supplements and I'll cheerfully sell my girlfriend so that I can afford Pulp HERO (my girlfriend who does not, I trust, read these boards...). The problem I've had is not finding people who love playing Pulp games, it's letting them know that they do. Getting someone involved is the biggest challenge, so don't tell them that you're running Pulp. Sell it as a detective game, or action/adventure, or superheroes, or sci-fi or a western. Play it with square-jawed Pulp sensibilities, show your players just how much fun that style of play is and you may just make a few converts.

Re: Ringworld, Stargate and Apocalypse... oh my! I noticed that a copy of Chaosium's "Ringworld" game went on eBay.co.uk for £110 this week, a serious amount of cash for such a relatively unsuccessful game. Reviews of the game when it first appeared all pointed to the fact that it was beautifully done but virtually unplayable: Player characters were so far beyond the tech level of any potential opponents that there was no threat. The weapons were too powerful (and the ones from the companion were, if I recall, a bit silly. A gun firing compressed pellets of air sticks in my mind) and supplies were never a problem because there was equipment to turn almost anything into food. The problem was that the novels didn't present the sort of problems common to SF gaming, they were on a much bigger and very different scale. There's no reason why you can't run a successful game with the setting, but I think you've taken the right approach by considering some serious changes. The Ringworld itself should be a genuine wonder, but I think that taking it out of the Known Space setting helps a lot. As for Dyson Spheres... fascinating idea, but I think that my players are much more likely to encounter a Dyson Vacuum Cleaner. Might be more dangerous, too.

Re: I'll Never Play Pulp Just don't pummel anyone with the Pulp HERO book itself. Judging by the page count you'd have some fatalities on your hands.

Re: I'll Never Play Pulp No reason why Pulp shouldn't encroach onto your other games. Champions, Star HERO and even Fantasy HERO can be a simple portal into a Pulp game, even as a temporary one-shot to whet the appetites. Time travel, alternate dimensions, perhaps even a Lost World adventure where the Fantasy HERO characters are the ones who live in the hidden valley discovered by Pulp adventurers... If your players won't go to Pulp, then bring Pulp to your players.

Re: Lands of Mystery A month, eh? That should just give me enough time to rent a crane so I can lift the thing...

Re: Dudes, I need help building a city. Beyond looking at existing cities published for HERO, or indeed any other system, I'd say have a look at the real world. Maps, travel guides, population statistics, even names of sections and streets, are all there waiting to be taken and tweaked. Many towns and cities have tourist and information boards just itching to send information like this if you contact them, and that's even without searching libraries and the Internet. Too many cities I've seen created from whole cloth have fallen down because very, very few of us really understand what makes such a thing tick on every level. Things don't appear in a city for no reason, with no historical drive, and yet in roleplaying we tend to make perfect creations with barely a nod to the realities. An historical jumble gives the place that feeling of solidity, and you can pinch all the things you need from every continent on Earth. And variety? Just compare a map of Toronto with one of Stockholm. There are wonders all around us. (And then there's Milton Keynes, which is best avoided)

Re: I'm considering Hero... If an interesting magic system is important then have a look at "A Magical Medley" from Grey Ghost Press, a semi-generic supplement offering a variety of different approaches to magic. Because of its "toolkit" nature HERO can simulate any of these quite easily. With a system such as D&D you have to fundamentally change the rules in order to offer a different way of spellcasting, but with HERO you simply use the rules to create a different effect, with different biases and clauses. For that reason I'd say it gives you pretty much the greatest flexibility of any game on the market, outside of something like Fudge which takes a radically different approach to the problem.

Re: Are there 10 possibilities for Binary Man? All seems to suggest that what I saw written on a T-shirt is true: "There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't."

Re: Lands of Mystery It's a pity that we're unlikely to see a licensed HERO supplement, because if there's one match-made-in-heaven I'd love to get my hands on it would be Aaron Allston's "Doc Sidhe" for "Pulp HERO." Ah well, adapting it myself will fill the time now that the nights are slowly drawing in again.