It does what it sets out to do, but it nevertheless suffers in comparison to <b>Enter the Zombie</b>. Unless you're simply dedicated to the <b>AFMBE</b> game line, there are better Unisystem alternatives.
Post originally by Vin Diakuw at 2003-06-29 10:43:59
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There's something wrong with Pulp, but I can't put my finger on it. It sure seems like a lot of gamers want to play in the Pulp genre, and a number of groups have responded. Early on we had Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes from Flying Buffalo. ICE weighed in with a Pulp Adventure supplement to Rolemaster. White Wolf's Adventure! is an excellent game. For d20 there is Forgotten Kingdoms. FUDGE brings us Terra Incognita. The web community gave us Pulp Era (by James Carpio, Jon Richardson, and Jared A. Sorensen) and Two Fisted Tales, both now pulled prior to non-virtual publication.
All good games.
But not a one inspires the gamer's glint and die-roller's twitch.
Anyone else feel like pulp gaming is missing... something?
Until we find it, Feng Shui seems to have captured as much pulp goodness as martial arts madness. Bring on the mooks!
Post originally by Dan Davenport at 2003-06-29 18:33:07
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Oh, I don't know about that. Adventure! certainly seems to have a loyal fanbase. And Savage Worlds, while technically a generic game rather than a pulp game, certainly has a pulpy feel to it, and is also garnering plenty of fans.
Post originally by Michael at 2003-06-29 20:15:36
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I know what you mean. On the surface, pulp should be the perfect genre for gaming. Funky villains, heroes with cool powers, scope to include as much weirdness as you want (weird science, martial arts, super powers on a variety of levels, magic, mentalism etc etc etc).
But nobody has ever really nailed it. Don't know why. For my group, the Nile setting for Torg came closest, and I believe that Justice Inc. was pretty popular in its day.
Why isn't pulp the most popular genre of all (or at least, second-most-popular, behind fantasy)?
Post originally by Dan Davenport at 2003-06-30 03:58:02
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Michael wrote:
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<b>I know what you mean. On the surface, pulp should be the perfect genre for gaming. Funky villains, heroes with cool powers, scope to include as much weirdness as you want (weird science, martial arts, super powers on a variety of levels, magic, mentalism etc etc etc).
But nobody has ever really nailed it. Don't know why. For my group, the Nile setting for Torg came closest, and I believe that Justice Inc. was pretty popular in its day.
Why isn't pulp the most popular genre of all (or at least, second-most-popular, behind fantasy)?
Curiously,
Michael</b>
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It may just be that pulp doesn't lend itself to groups very well, insofar as there's not the same kind of heroic team model to follow that there is for supers.
Post originally by Wombat at 2003-06-30 07:59:10
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I don't know.
I had a very successful pulp campaign running for over a year using th Over the Edge system. We acted as a proto-superhero type of group in that we were the odd collection of folks all banded together to fight criminals of one stripe or another. We had several of the classics in the group -- the private detective, the flying ace, the crazy inventor, the femme fatale, etc. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience -- over the top action, death-defying escapes, larger than life villains, and all the rest.
I had a very successful pulp campaign running for over a year using th Over the Edge system. We acted as a proto-superhero type of group in that we were the odd collection of folks all banded together to fight criminals of one stripe or another. We had several of the classics in the group -- the private detective, the flying ace, the crazy inventor, the femme fatale, etc. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience -- over the top action, death-defying escapes, larger than life villains, and all the rest.</b>
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Oh, I think groups are definitely <u>doable</u>. I just think perhaps that the <u>source material</u> doesn't offer much in the way of inspiration for groups. So, I don't think the concept immediately clicks with people.
At any rate, the issues I, personally, have with Pulp Zombies don't really relate to whatever problems the genre in general has in gaming translations.
Post originally by Gerry Saracco at 2003-06-30 21:22:14
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Vin Diakuw wrote:
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The web community gave us Pulp Era (by James Carpio, Jon Richardson, and Jared A. Sorensen) and Two Fisted Tales, both now pulled prior to non-virtual publication.
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Post originally by Mike Czaplinski at 2003-07-03 07:19:32
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Michael wrote:
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[snip]
But nobody has ever really nailed it. Don't know why. For my group, the Nile setting for Torg came closest, and I believe that Justice Inc. was pretty popular in its day.
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I think that JUSTICE INC is still the best of the general pulp games. Given that it used
the Hero system, the character stats were fairly complete, and thanks to the (relatively)
lower power level compaired to Champions, you didn't have to toss buckets of dice
every time your character threw a punch, and the system certainly helped to maintain
the heroic feel.
My only real quibble with it is that the gadget and unique power rules were basically
"Go out and buy CHAMPIONS". I don't put this up to malice or a desire for maximized
profits by Hero Games, since I'm sure that they figured that a lot of the same people
who would buy JI would also own CHAMPIONS (since the game systems were largely
identicle) or be willing to buy it, but it still would have been nice to have some sort of cut
down rules for those who didn't want to mix metaphors.
Of course, if you didn't like the Hero system, that would limit the appeal of the game,
but the written supplements managed to capture the feel of the period excellently
(thanks to Aaron Allston's love of the genre).
An under-rated game for a pulp feel is CALL OF CTHULHU. Even though it was overtly
a 'horror' RPG, the subgenre that inspired it was not mutually exclusive to pulp-style
adventures. Some of the most effective period Cthulhu Mythos stories were written by
Robert E. Howard after all, and some of them include a number of 'pulpy' elements
(two fisted adventurers in jungles, etc). I also like the extensibility of the Chaosium
system: As much as I admire the completeness of Hero, the percentile-based
Chaosium system was always much more intuitive for me and most of the players I
worked with, and could balance gritty seeming-realism (especially if you adopted some
of the optional combat rules) with over-the-top action without any violation of the basic
math of the system.
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