Nero Grimes

For comic relief, Thug Notes: At the Mountains of Madness

As for help, if time allows I'll probably lift a powered down version of the psionic skills from D6 Adventure.

As for Quinn, lifer cubical drone who can still dress as Wonder Woman for Halloween.

In a mystery writing workshop I took, they described Noir (as opposed to other forms of mystery stories) this way:

Structure of Noir:

Noir is the most realistic of all subgenres of mystery.

1. Urban setting. And it is crime-ridden.

2. It's dark, gritty, sensory-filled and nasty.

3. Character-focused in relationship to the setting.

4. The ending: the crime gets resolved, but it's not pretty and it's rarely uplifting.

5. Voice is off the charts: deep, resonant, powerful, worth listening to. A riveting storyteller telling you a horrible, horrible story.

 

Other things about Noir (not necessarily the case):

1. Often the main character is a vigilante or someone outside the law.

2. It's the anti-cozy.

3. It rarely has a moral compass. Sometime the moral compass is broken. Morals don't exist at all in most noir stories. Morals are for people who have money, time, a "real life." They can afford it.

Annenberg's VoD Film Noir.

The whole course is worth a look.

http://www.learner.org/resources/series67.html?pop=yes&pid=211

TCM is running a spate of Bulldog Drummond movies June 4th.

Also in the Tom Baker era, The Pyramids of Mars.

Also from that era The Horror of Fang Rock.

The new Dr. Who story Mummy on the Orient Express.

 

doctor-who-mummy.jpg

Which is a take on the classic Hammer film

It is all moot now.

Quinn has acquiesced to a rules reset with minor patches to close the glitches she loves to abuse. We use the brunch nook in her hotel, so we have to keep her reasonably happy.

Pulp is once again on the back burner.

The Doctor Who story Talons of Weng-Chiang. Casual racism and giant rats in the sewers of London.

TCM is running a free online Film Noir class to run concurrent with The Summer of Darkness.

No, they aren't. That is just one play style. There are people that run games that are not remotely dungeon crawls, thinly veiled or otherwise.

Let me qualify that statement.

It is for this current group and most of the groups I've been in for the past few years.

Sorry.

I was raised by hobbyists so tinker I must.

My current group are great games and are not shy about feedback. I have no one to hash out ideas with.Spend a lot of time and effort working out a game - 'looks good on paper' but does not survive the first time dice hit the table.

Well, okay, but if you know your players are confused and/or turned off by that, why would you do it to them?  It's supposed to be a communal effort -- and if everyone isn't enjoying it, that's a good way to become a community of one.  If they DO enjoy it, then you are giving them what they like and no guidance is necessary.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that the guidance you're seeking is sitting right across the table from you -- what do your players say?

 

(I'm honestly not trying to be flip here -- I wish we were talking face-to-face since you would hear my actual tone of voice and all.)

Flippant is fine. The last few years of my gaming life needs all the comic relief it can get. Long, sad story.

As to the game being communal, they lack an intellectual curiosity necessary for world building. They are smart, and good, gamers; but by no means Hobbyists. They love driving but have no interest in working on engines.

I ran a SKETCH/MicroLite mash up. and it was Quinn who found the glitch that allowed her to generate fatigue to cast spells at 'no cost'. However I have see the parochial nature of her personal library.

 well, I guess the obvious answer is it's up to the Game Master really.

 

So to me (though I'm only just beginning to run Indy style Pulp adventures thanks to a new player wanting something a bit more "cinematic" than the classic CoC type stuff tends to be), it seems that the supernatural actually crops up in the Indyverse MORE than it does in my Call of Cthulhu campaign.  And that's kind of odd, really, now that I think about it....

It ultimately being up to the GM is just the beginning; I need solid guidelines lest I start 'doing my own thing',  leaving players in the dust with every free-wheeling turn I take. My favorite adventure is A Kringle in Time, which blithely trips through time and space, changes genres with breath taking impertinence, and prefers funny to logical.

BTW.  The 'stress rules' are in a free pdf magazine, Uncounted Worlds #2, at http://www.chaosium.com/. I also found two arctic adventures that will fit in with an Tunguska Event arc. (In Weird Menace: Supernatural, the Tunguska Event is caused by someone opening a Templar fortress of solitude incorrectly).

“When you're making pronouncements that Temple of Doom didn't happen and that the "true" Indy universe must include your Xena/Buffy crossover fanfic,”

Oh no! He’s hacked my super secret private fanfic file!

ToD still happened, with next to nothing of Willie in it. When does comic relief stop breaking dramatic tension and start dragging the whole movie to a stop?

Answer: when she gives it up to the director.

“Anyway, that's my $0.40 worth (that much, because I probably went on about 20 times as long as anyone wanted me to).”

Not at all.

I’ll look up Uncounted Worlds. A ffrienfd and I fiddles with a “non supernatural” magic based on Block Transfer Computations. With some of the Incomplete Enchanter thrown in.

"Anyway, that's my $0.40 worth (that much, because I probably went on about 20 times as long as anyone wanted me to). Newbie"

Not at all.

I'll check out Uncounted Worlds.

As to "non-Euclidean" or "non-supernatural" magic. A friend and I fiddled with a form of Block Transference Computation.

Does it matter?

Lucius Alexander

To me? Yes. To them? I doubt it. All games are thinly veiled dungeon crawls.

I doubt it seriously.

I take it that all/most of your players have read the Indiana Jones novels and comics?

The comics were chock-a-block with them, the original novels had a few. Humans were the main baddies but every now and then Indy would have to evade or subdue a special guest star.

Besides, occasionally throwing a beastie at players will keep them o their toes.

I'm going to table the nature of psychic powers for now; defaulting to Steven's take in Pulp Hero and Chapter 13 in D6 Adventure. What I have gleaned from the articles at the BRP forums has been interesting; however,not of use in this instance.

Perhaps a more useful metric would be the nature and number of beasties, which go bump in the night, Indy goes toe to toe with.

I'm lifting from the amazing Legendary Quest stuff. http://legendaryquest.netfirms.com/Download.htm

Gargoyles - maybe

Vamps - no, no, no! Vamps maybe canon, but logic and reason have never slowed me before. Why start now?

Zombies - as the traditional minions voodoo priests or priestesses.

Were-beasts - most cultures have a variation of were-something. I tried to run a game based on the movie Brotherhood of the Wolf.

I think it was Robot Chicken that had the vignette where Pinnochio is shivering by a campfire in the woods. He says "I don't know where Geppetto's body is buried". His nose grows, he breaks it off and throws it on the fire.

Neither is as creepy as the Roberto Benigni 2002 Pinnochio.

That's messed up.

A Push-Me-Pull-You from the dread Abyss of Time.

And from where hails the wooden boy?

Everything Wrong with Crystal Skull

Honest Trailer – Crystal Skull

How Indy 4 Should Have Ended

Well, sorry dude, but nobody can help you. .  

 

 

Do what you want, but nobody is going to see things the way you do.

So I've been told.

On occasion I find alike minded crazies

All in all it's a simple thought experiment.

What would you change and what would that affect?

what are the implications of an aspect of the raider-verse?