Genre-Bender: Pulp Roleplaying

Another genre that sees very little play here in the Philippines would be Pulp Fiction.  Named after cheap fiction magazines sold in the US during the 1920’s to the 1950’s, the Pulps were all about two-fisted adventurers and not a lot of political correctness.  This was a genre where Justice was a defining virtue, the motivation of many a dark Vigilante, or daring Adventurer.

Thinking about it, Pulp Fiction would be considered an umbrella term for a host of other sub-genres written in the same style.  There were Sci-fi, Horror, Crime and Adventure stories that all became famous in the Pulp era.

Pulp Fiction gave birth to many heroic stereotypes that eventually evolved into the superheroes of today.  Among the more popular ones would be:

• The Shadow -“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!”
• Doc Savage – “He rights wrongs and punishes evildoers.”
• Conan the Barbarian – “By Crom!”
• Buck Rogers -I don’t have a quote for this but hey, it’s Buck Rogers of the 25th Century!
• Flash Gordon – No quote either, but look! QUEEN!
• John Carter of Mars – Warlord of MARS!
• Zorro – “The pointy end goes into the other man”
• Tarzan – Lord of the Jungle

Now that you more or less know what I’m talking about when I make mention of the Pulps, let’s take a look at the elements of running a Pulp campaign:

1.) 1920’s Morality –  Pulp fiction, much like 1980’s action movies, didn’t really concern themselves with going all emo over questions of morality.  Dark vigilantes like The Shadow or The Spider pretty much kicked down doors of warehouses and gunned down criminals with impunity.  While pulp writers occasionally gave a nod to the normal procedure of taking thugs to jail, it was at par with the genre to dispense swift justice without giving it a second thought.

2.) First among equals – Pulp heroes were not everyday people.  They were above that of normal men, usually displaying almost superhuman skills or training, able to do thing better, faster or stronger than any of their compatriots.  A fine example of this would be Doc Savage, who according to Wikipedia: “is a physician, surgeon, scientist, adventurer, inventor, explorer, researcher, and musician — a renaissance man. A team of scientists (assembled by his father) trained his mind and body to near-superhuman abilities almost from birth, giving him great strength and endurance, a photographic memory, mastery of the martial arts, and vast knowledge of the sciences. Doc is also a master of disguise and an excellent imitator of voices, though he admits to having trouble with women’s voices. ‘He rights wrongs and punishes evildoers.’ Dent described the hero as a mix of Sherlock Holmes’ deductive abilities, Tarzan’s outstanding physical abilities, Craig Kennedy’s scientific education, and Abraham Lincoln’s goodness. Dent described Doc Savage as manifesting ‘Christliness.”

Take note of course, that despite all of this, there is hardly anything supernatural about his abilities.  Think of Batman, no flight, no heat rays, nothing but being a superior human in all aspects.

3.) Action, action, action – Pulp is all about going out and doing stuff.  In a way, this makes for some pretty fun games, as you should encourage your players to live up to the source material.  Pulp games are games where there’s little room for sitting around doing nothing.  As a GM, your objective would be to skim over the “boring” parts and get right to where the action is.  Of course, action is defined as any scene where something noteworthy happens.  It could be a tense social scene, like running into the Don of the local Mafia in a large dinner party on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, or it could be something more spectacular, like the appearance of a squadron of sky pirates appearing from cloud cover to strafe at the said party.

4.) Cliffhangers – Being in serial fiction, pulp stories often ended in cliffhangers, situations where the characters were suddenly confronted with an unexpected (and often dangerous) situation.  Anyone who has watched the really old Adam West Batman TV series knows that they often end with Batman (or Robin) stuck in a precarious trap or situation with seemingly no way out.  Of course, cliffhangers don’t always have to be traps, usually a sufficiently unexpected twist to a given situation is sufficient as long as you leave your players stuck on a limb and asking for more.  Rule of thumb: if the players demand that you keep running so they can find out what happened next, you’re doing it right.

5.) Yes, but – Don’t get in the way of players when they want their characters to do something incredibly heroic and incredibly stupid at the same time.  Sure we know that according to the rules, the chances of the hero leaping over from the side of the building to catch the fleeing Zeppelin’s mooring cable is slim to nil, but let them do it.  If they fail, don’t crush your player’s adventurous spirit by saying that they fall to their doom, have them, make it by just a fraction, only to be noticed by a member of the villain’s crew who was hoisting the said cable.  Rather than punish failures (or even botches) give them complications.  This achieves 2 things: The players are encouraged to keep with the Pulp genre of being brass balled adventurers, and you get to keep flinging complication after complication after them.  After all, part of the fun of getting captured rather than killed is breaking out.

Pulp Fiction based games might not be as mainstream in the Philippines as Dungeons and Dragons, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible to run games in the spirit of the pulps.  Next time your group is tired of the same old dungeon hacking, why not suggest a Pulp game?  It might just be what your group is looking for.

Related Media:

As suggested by RV in Genre-Bender: Horror Roleplaying, a great way to get the feel for a genre would be to immerse yourself in it.  As such here’s a list of some good movies to start you off:

• The Rocketeer
• The Shadow
• The Phantom
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
• The Mummy and The Mummy Returns
• Indiana Jones
• Flash Gordon

Pulp RPGs:

For those looking for a place to start off with Pulp RPGs, you may want to check out the following games:

• White Wolf’s Adventure! is a self-contained setting with a weird science explanation for the appearance of these larger than life heroes.  Also contains a gallery of colorful heroes and villains, as well as rules for supernatural knacks.
• Pulp HERO for use with the HERO system is a great resource tackling the history, the nature, the characters and even the plots and elements you can find in an iconic pulp game.  By far the best possible resource you can get to cover Pulps as a whole, from Flash Gordon-esque Sci-fi to Conan the Barbarian Fantasy.