Extra Pulpy

Mike_Ferguson · Post by **Mike_Ferguson** » Mon Feb 10, 2003 7:03 pm

Thought you kids might like to take a gander at this website:

[url]http://www.pulpgen.com[/url]

A lot of this material's been the inspiration for my new d20 Modern campaign, as well as the fine acting of Buster Crabbe ... and, of course, cardboard spaceships hanging from wires with sparklers burning in the back.

Been fun so far.

I've been considered compiling some of these new campaign ideas into a publishable format (well, after I finish up some other stuff, anyway) - trouble is, with d20 Future on the horizon, it seems like detailing a full-blown sci-fi game specifically for d20 Modern doesn't make much sense. Thoughts? Ideas? Witty anecdotes?

Post by **goodmangames** » Tue Feb 11, 2003 11:27 am

Captain Future rocks! I don't know much about the pulp magazines but I love the pulp sci-fi comics from the 40s and 50s. I have a lot of the old reprints. A lot of the artists were amazing, especially Al Williamson (of course). The plots and characters were sometimes a little lacking... but that was part of the fun.

Have you checked out Mike Hoffman's work? He's a modern-day artist who does some pulpy comics (stuff like "Tigress Tales", about an alien who's half-sexy-woman, half-tiger). And there have been a couple recent pulp comics -- an Al Williamson tribute and Don Marquez's Retro Blast (which was just like the pulp stuff -- good art, horribly corny writing).

I think there's a pulp d20 game out now -- Forbidden Kingdoms? I can't remember the name. They used "normal" d20. I don't know whether d20 Future or d20 regular would be better. The future stuff might be TOO realistic... after all, the pulp genre has a lot of hokey stuff that depends more on suspension of disbelief than science...

Don't forget to check out www.pulpfigures.com for some figs to use in your games!

Mike_Ferguson · Post by **Mike_Ferguson** » Thu Feb 13, 2003 4:57 pm

Mike Hoffman does some terrific stuff. His work's definitely been an influence on this new game o' mine.

I'd checked out Forbidden Kingdoms - for whatever reason, though, it just didn't particularly appeal to me. There's nothing really wrong with it, but from what I read it's more of an Indiana Jones/Tarzan pulp, and I was hoping for something with more of a sci-fi bent. Hence, development of my own homebrewed game.

To give you a flavor of it, here's some of the character classes for the game:

Gumshoes - master detectives/rogues.
Space Jockeys - spaceship/airplane pilots.
Eggheads - scientist geniuses.

Also developed a special NPC class - "cub reporter". Every group of PC adventurers needs an annoying freckle-faced kid with a nose for trouble tagging along with them.

("Golly gee, do ya s'pose pushing that big black button will do anything?")

Thinking about the d20 Modern/d20 Future situation - on second thought, I'll probably stick with d20 Modern. Most of the sci-fi stuff in this game really [u]doesn't[/u] have a basis in "real" science - part of the fun is basing everything in Star Trek-esque technobabble. Example - the spaceships that I've developed for the game are powered by devices called protonic nebulizers. I've developed rules for how they work, how they can be sabotaged, etc.; but somehow I don't think they'd be terribly plausible as rreal scientific devices. d20 Modern seems to let the game run just fine "as is", so I don't think waiting for d20 Future is necessarily going to improve anything.

I'll fill in more details as the first campaign segment ravels a little more - currently the characters are on Venus, trying to escape the clutches of the evil android queen Cleopatronica ....