Fazhoul

Re: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

All of the reviews I read about it were absolutely savage. But I enjoyed it and thought that it was better than the second mummy movie. There were one or two corny moments that I could have done without but overall it was really fun. I wouldn't mind seeing more entries in the series but I'd like to see someone besides Maria Bello as Evelyn. There just wasn't any chemistry between them.

Re: Pulp Hero PDF adventures

Fazhoul -- yes' date=' the full title is "Nazi Death-Zombies Of The Congo" ::cue dramatic theme music:: I just abbreviated some titles in the list to save myself time. [/quote']

 

You know you've done well when the title is so lurid that it sticks in my mind even though I've never read or run the adventure.

Re: Pulp Hero Binding

How ingeeeeenious! I wish I had known that when my 4th edition Champions book started to disintegrate. Instead' date=' I went to an office supply store and bought a butt-load of page protectors (according to my [i']Little Black Book of Useful Knowledge[/i]® that's two hogsheads' worth of page protectors ) and a large D-ringed binder. I then carefully removed all the pages from the Champions books and inserted them, in order, into the binder using the page protectors. Not only did I impress my friends with my ingenuity, but I could open the book to a specific page without it trying to close itself again.

When my 4th Edition hardcover started to fall apart I contacted Hero Games (pre-Steve Long ownership) and they had me return the book and they replaced it with a brand new one! They also did the same thing for two other members of my gaming group.

Re: Pulp Hero PDF adventures

Thanks Steve, I actually have a few more than I thought. I know I have the Fangs of the Scarlet Serpent because I ran that for my group and the Nazi Death-Zombies sounds familiar as well. Was the full title something like "Nazi Death-Zombies of the Congo"?

Re: Pulp Hero PDF adventures

Does anyone have a complete list of these? The online store has adventure #'s 22 & 23 posted (but not identified as such) but I think my collection stops around 17 or 18.

Re: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

In going through my collection of pulp related books for some titles to recommend I discovered this interesting little fact:

Pulp Fictions - Edited by Peter Haining from Barnes & Noble Books, 1996

Pulp Fiction - Edited by Maxim Jakubowski from Castle Books (Carroll & Graf Publishers), 2002

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps - 2007

You would think that with all of the pulp covers available for use that they would have tried to find something that hadn't been used so much. And FYI, all three books are strictly detective stories. Oh, and you can click on the titles of the first two books for a description of them.

Re: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

I just got this myself, and I agree it looks interesting despite the misleading title (it ought to be called "The Big Book of Pulp Detective Stories," since that's the only type of story in it).

 

Caveat: this is a compilation of three other books by the same editor. So if you order this one, no need to order the other three "theme" collections (heroes, villains, dames).

I'm glad that you mentioned that this is a compilation. If I had ever seen the other three books I would have bought them without a second thought. I've been known to buy a book (or DVD, etc.) and then get home only to find that I already have it on my bookshelf.

I didn't see this book mentioned anywhere so I thought that I'd bring it up. I got it in the Secret Santa exchange in my gaming group and it looks like an amazing deal. 1,100+ pages of pulp stories in a mammoth paperback for $25.00 ($16.50 at Amazon). The book focuses on the pulp crime genre so there aren't any masked mystery men, Indiana Jones or Buck Rogers type of stories but what little I've read has been very good.

The biggest, the boldest, the most comprehensive collection of Pulp writing ever assembled.

Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train—a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.

Including:

• Three stories by Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Dashiell Hammett.

• Complete novels from Carroll John Daly, the man who invented the hard-boiled detective, and Fredrick Nebel,

one of the masters of the form.

• A never before published Dashiell Hammett story.

• Every other major pulp writer of the time, including Paul Cain, Steve Fisher, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, and many

many more of whom you’ve probably never heard.

• Three deadly sections–The Crimefighters, The Villains, and Dames–with three unstoppable introductions by Harlan Coben,

Harlan Ellison, and Laura Lippman

Featuring:

• Plenty of reasons for murder, all of them good.

• A kid so smart–he’ll die of it.

• A soft-hearted loan shark’s legman learning–the hard way–never to buy a strange blonde a hamburger.

• The uncanny “Moon Man” and his mad-money victims.

Re: 007 7.0

One thing about Dalton: despite the fact that many Bond fans I know don't like him and consider his characterization "not really James Bond' date='" he was probably the actor who came closest to actually reflecting the Bond of the books. The book-Bond was ruthless and diabolically clever, and not squeamish or dashing at all.[/quote']

Not squeamish? I've read all the books and there was at least twice that Bond had the chance to kill someone early in the story and he didn't take the chance simply because he didn't want to shoot them in the back. One I recall off the top of my head was Scaramanga in The Man With the Golden Gun. Bond knew who the man was, knew what he was guilty of (among other things, killing fellow agents) and DIDN"T TAKE THE SHOT. I was almost screaming at the damned book (yeah, I get a little too into my reading at times) "SHOOT HIM!" But no, Bond wouldn't do it because he didn't feel it was "sporting". You're a f**king assassin pal. It's what you do.

 

(I guess thechnically this really isn't "squeamishness" but it still annoyed the crap out of me when I read it. If I've misremembered any of the above please feel free to correct me. It's been a little while since I've read the books.)

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Don't mess with a foul tempered Kryptonian dog. This one makes a little sense to me. Dog's take people down all the time. Just look at the damage when you hear about rotweiler or pitbull attacks. Kryptois porportianally kryptonian strong which would be nasty. He might even tear a whole into Supes when you think about it. Yeah it's silly but I can see it from a comparing it to the real world POV. Unless of course Mongul is tougher than Superman which he may be I don't know much about him other than what I saw on JLU.

Well, the pre-Crisis Mongul was stronger and tougher than Superman but I'm not sure where the power level of the current one lies. And to be honest, the one that Krypto nearly killed is actually the SON of the original (post-Crisis) Mongul.

Re: Marvel Civil War As A Gaming Campaign

Heh - that's alwasy the issue, isn't it?

 

I have to agree though - much more effective if it honestly is just the folks trying to make things better (albeit in a questionably effective way). If there's some single force behind it... well, let's face it, that just makes the whole issue boil down to "find the problem and punch it in the face." If they're honestly trying to make things better, if there's honestly backlash, then it doesn't make *either* side into 'dupes' or 'traitors' or 'heroes' in the war (not that the characters would agree.)

Good point. Like I said, maybe I'll use the V.I.P.E.R. angle as a sort of red-herring for the heroes. They'll think that someone HAS to be behind something like this but when they reveal the moles inside the government the heroes find out that the plot is even bigger than V.I.P.E.R. Of course, knowing my group, their efforts to reveal the moles in the government could end up looking more like attacks than efforts to expose a criminal.

Re: Marvel Civil War As A Gaming Campaign

I've kind of been thinking about having V.I.P.E.R. be behind the plot. It was a long range plan that they set into motion years ago. They couldn't defeat the heroes in battle so they set out to do it "legally". They have deep plants in all branches of the government and even the media that started the ball rolling. Of course, maybe they didn't mean for a full blown super-hero civil war to happen. They would have been satisfied with just legislating the heroes into ineffectuality.

But someone mentioned to me that having a single force behind everything might sap some of the meaning from the fight between the two factions. Whereas if it really is JUST the government then the battle over personal ideologies would mean something. This is assuming, of course, that I can get this kind of roleplaying from my group.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

How about when Krypto, yes that's right KRYPTO, beat Mongul by nearly ripping out Mongul's throat in Superman #170?

Re: Marvel Civil War As A Gaming Campaign

I had considered having the players make up two sets of characters so we could have the two factions already set and the other player and I have even talked about splitting the GMing duties with him taking the pro-registration side and me taking the anti-registration side. So the pro-regs would be the PCs one week (or more depending on the story needs) and then the anti-regs would be the PCs. While the thought of this experiment has me excited I can also see it devolving into chaos.

Re: Marvel Civil War As A Gaming Campaign

Are you planning on basing it in the Marvel Universe?

I might draw some characters from there but I was thinking of going with a version of the Champions Universe. And probably taking characters from other gaming books I have like M&M and Silver Age Sentinels. Might as well get some use out of them.

One of the guys in my group and I were talking about possible super-hero campaigns and he suggested running Civil War as a campaign. At first I shot it down as too dark and too difficult to run but the more I've thought about it the more intrigued by the idea I've become. While I do have my problems some elements of the series (continuity errors, characters acting out of character, certain characters possibly being damaged beyond repair), I am enjoying the story and find the arguments presented compelling.

I was thinking that if I ran CW that I would actually like to run an arc of about three sessions in length that only mentions registration in passing. Things like news reports about excessive property damage, politicians calling for registration, things like that. But not have any of the "background noise" affect the heroes directly. This would hopefully establish some sense of normalcy before things start going to hell in a handbasket. Then, after the appropriate disaster, the law would pass and then the heroes would find themselves having to make a choice.

What I've been wondering about is how to GM things if/when the group splits between factions like they have in the comics. If the entire group goes one way or the other then I would simply have them fighting NPCs. But if the group splits then I have two groups of PCs as possible adversaries. Do I send one "side" out of the room while I run one plotline? (I don't like this idea.) Or trust that they won't act on player knowledge if they sit in on the other side's "planning" session?

Also, not knowing how Marvel is going to end their CW I've been trying to decide how I would end it. The obvious (to me anyway) is the old "someone is mind controling" people plot line. But I think that's a bit too obvious. It could just be that the government got overzealous and too many heroes went along with the law in light of the tragedy.

Does any one else have any other ideas for a CW campaign?

Please Note: I'd like to try and keep this thread a discussion of the idea of CW as an RPG campaign. Not a discussion of the comic series. I realize that it's a fine line but I don't want people popping in just to say how much they hate/love the series. I don't mean to be a dick but there are several CW threads in the Non-Gaming Discussion board. Thanks for your input and indulgence.

Re: Help! Cardboard Nazi stand-up download needed!

Cumberland Games's Cairo Moon set of SPARKS (cardboard minis you print as a font, very cool) has some Nazi soldiers in it, IIRC.

 

Politically Incorrect Games publishes a couple packs of printable cardboard minis that include Nazi soldiers in the "Villains" set, IIRC.

You remember correctly Steve. The Pulp Villains includes Nazis, mad scientists, femme fatales, thugs and gangsters. And you can even set them up to print so that they are numbered sequentially. There are other sets that are useful for pulp that include mummies, arab assassins and ninjas. They're only $4.00 for the Villains set or you can get the two-pack of Pulp Heroes & Villains for $7.50. It sounds like I'm a pitchman for the company but I'm not. I'm just a satisfied customer.

Re: Pimp my Pulp Ride

I just found out that I was wrong in my earlier post. The Batgyro is NOT part of the Corgi line of toys. It is a 1:64 die-cast model kit. The manufacterer doesn't seem to be listed. not even on another site I found it at. It's listed at $6.99 at BuyMeToys.com. It's hard to go wrong for that. How many toy autogyros are we likely to find?

Re: Pimp my Pulp Ride

Corgi has out an entire line of Batmobiles, Batplanes, Batboats, Batcopters and even the BATGYRO!!!

1930's Batmobile - Yes, it was really red in its first appearance.

1940 Batmobile

1940's Roadster

1950's Batmobile

Re: New Pulp Books I Found

I got a chance to read one of the stories in the "All-Star Zeppelin" book. It was "The Last of the Zeppelins" by Jed Hartman and it was a fun story. It has Nazis, death rays, women in peril. In other words, all the pulp cliches. I was skimming through the book when I saw the hero's name in the first line of the story. Hugh Betcha. I HAD to keep reading.

I looked up the author online and it turns out that he got the idea from a pulp rpg he took part in one time. You can find his online journal with the full details here. My favorite character description was this one. "General Garrulous Bore, an elderly British Adventurer whose quasi-superpower was that he could be skilled in just about anything as long as he told a long boring story about how he used that skill back in the war, or during some other adventure."

I looked around here and didn't see any of these books mentioned so I thought I'd bring them to everyone's attention. Amazon recently took a good deal of my money for these and I'm looking forward to reading them. As I get time to read them I'll try to let you know how they are.

Chinatown Death Cloud Peril - Paul Malmont: Malmont's debut thriller reads like pages torn from the pulp magazines to which it pays nostalgic homage. It's 1937, and the nation's two top pulp writers—William Gibson, author of novels featuring caped crime fighter "The Shadow," and Lester Dent, the creator of do-gooder hero Doc Savage—are trying to solve real-life mysteries that each hopes will give him bragging rights as the world's best yarn spinner. Gibson follows rumors that pulp colleague H.P. Lovecraft was murdered to the fog-shrouded Providence, R.I., waterfront. Dent tracks clues to an impossible killing through the bowels of New York's Chinatown. As the two adventures dovetail, they spawn sinuous subplots involving tong wars, secret chemical warfare, pirate mercenaries, kidnappings, revolution in China and weird science run amok. Lovecraft, L. Ron Hubbard, Louis L'Amour and Chester Himes all play prominent supporting roles and offer piquant observations on the penny-a-word writing life that conjure a colorful sense of time and place. Like the pulpsters he reveres, Malmont doesn't let the facts get in the way of his storytelling, and the result is a fun, if wildly improbable, pulp joyride.

Adventure, vol. 1 - Edited by Chris Roberson: ADVENTURE, the first volume of an annual anthology of original fiction in the spirit of early twentieth-century pulp fiction magazines, features stories from all genres, promising both literary sophistication and pulse-pounding action. Contributors to the first volume, among them leading lights and award-winners in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and western, include John Edward Ames, Lou Anders, Neal Asher, Kage Baker, Barry Baldwin, O'Neil De Noux, Paul Di Filippo, Mark Finn, Michael Kurland, John Meaney, Michael Moorcock, Chris Nakashima-Brown, Kim Newman, Mike Resnick, Chris Roberson, Matthew Rossi, and Marc Singer.

Lester Dent's Zeppelin Tales - Lester Dent: Lester Dent penned many pulp adventures before he created Doc Savage in 1933 under the house name Kenneth Robeson. Lester Dent's Zeppelin Tales collects five airship-themed stories published from 1930 to 1932, and includes material restored from Dent's original manuscripts!

"Zeppelin Bait": Jed Day, American Great War flyer, is framed for spying for a notorious German Zeppelin Captain! Originally published in the October 1932 issue of Sky Birds.

"Blackbeard's Spectre": Zeppelin pirates steal the passenger dirigible City of Oakland before its maiden flight to Japan! One of Dent's first published works, it originally appeared as "The Thirteen Million Dollar Robbery" in the March 1930 issue of The Popular Magazine.

"Peril's Domain": Bill Kirgan battles a pirate band on a Zeppelin en route to the Arctic! Originally published under the title "The Frozen Flight" in the February 1931 issue of Air Stories.

"Helene Was A Cannibal": What menaces the flight of Germany's newest Zeppelin, the Vaterland? Originally published as "Teeth of Revenge" in the May 1931 issue of Scotland Yard.

"A Billion Gold!": A private dick gets mixed up in a Zeppelin-sized scheme in New York City! Originally published as "One Billion-Gold!" in the June 1931 issue of Scotland Yard.

All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories - Edited by David Moles & Jay Lake: A showcase for the finest in contemporary retro-pulp. Includes Benjamin Rosenbaum’s Hugo-nominated novelette, “Biographical Notes to ‘A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes’” and Howard Waldrop’s classic Jazz Age alternate history “You Could Go Home Again.”

Re: Tales Of The Gold Monkey

One or two people have recommended to me an early 80s TV series set in 1938' date=' [i']Tales Of The Gold Monkey.[/i] Unfortunately it only seems to be available in bootleg DVD form from http://www.goldmonkey.com as far as I can tell from a simple search. Before I search harder I thought I'd ask for further input on whether (a) it's fun to watch, and ( it's good Pulp stuff.

From what I can remember of the show the answer is yes to both questions. I'm going to have to look into getting those DVD's.

Re: Creatures from Skull Island

These are great write-ups Susano. I can't wait to unleash them on my players. I've been buying up packs of Kong action figures just for the monsters. They even have one set devoted just to the chasm-dwellers. BTW, would it be possible to get the Hero Designer files for these creatures?

Thanks for all your hard work.

Re: Inspiration: The Five Fists of Science

Oooooooooo! Rep for the kid, as anyone who points me to funky Tesla pulp tales gets rep darn it!

 

EDIT: Oh and rep for Fazhoul for the cover pic. That's good soup!

Thanks! I've never gotten rep before.

Re: Friends, 1934

This is a GREAT idea for a game and wouldn't you know it, there are EXACTLY six players in my gaming group.

Some thoughts:

If someone uses Gunther as a German NPC, Nazi or not, don't forget that Rachel (as well as Ross and Monica) is Jewish. Maybe Rachel's dad was a spy and Gunther has been sent to follow her thinking that she is in possession of some important intel or item. But of course he winds up falling for the daughter of his enemy.

There was a joking reference to the Soup Nazi owning a shop just down the street from Central Perk but Friends and Seinfeld really do exist in the same "universe". Phoebe's sister Ursula was a waitress in several episodes of the sitcom Mad About You with Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt. Paul's character was subletting his old apartment to Kramer who lived across the hall from Jerry. Helen Hunt and Leila Kenzle even appeared on Friends as their MAY characters and mistook Phoebe for her sister Ursula.