Not sure why, designers love pulp games, fans don't seem to buy them much.

Anyone got any ideas why?

Also, what's out there?  Off the top of my head:

Thrilling Tales
Hollow Earth Expedition
Adventure!
Spirit of the Century
Pulp Hero
Gurps has one I forget the name of which I didn't personally like so much
FGU had one which I also suddenly forget.

Damn, I really shouldn't post when tired...

Amazing Tales!
Savage Worlds, arguably

I'm sure there's tons of others, what are they?

Well pulp is a pretty small genre, so it even geeky folks probably have limited exposure. I tried doing something with Adventure! but I had too little a grasp of the genre, and was a bit of a flop as I tried to hit a Pulp vibe.

Two-Fisted Tales Revised is nearing completion, heralded as the ultimate Pulp RPG.

Quote from: BalbinusNot sure why, designers love pulp games, fans don't seem to buy them much.

The same was formerly true of Victorian-era games.

My own take is that pulp is less than successful because it is underwhelming in the kewl powers department.  The guns are generally not big enough and the super powers seem lame compared to wizards and caped ubermenches.

Quote from: jrientsMy own take is that pulp is less than successful because it is underwhelming in the kewl powers department.  The guns are generally not big enough and the super powers seem lame compared to wizards and caped ubermenches.

Which means that there is no reason why you can't use an existing RPG to deal with the rules part, as most of what makes the Hero Pulps what they are has to do with things that rules do poorly or not at all- specifically, mood and pacing.

Is TORG pulp ? I always kinda of liked that game. For me, I'm a little uncomfortable with Pulp because I can never get the tone right. I most often stray into camp terrain for some reason...

Regards,
David R

Quote from: BalbinusNot sure why, designers love pulp games, fans don't seem to buy them much.

Anyone got any ideas why?

Because on paper, they look like a perfect fit as a role-playing setting.

I think they are often making the same mistake that Sci-Fi makes with those cheesy original movies they keep making.  I loved cheesy 60s and 70s science fiction movies despite the fact that they were cheesy, not because they were cheesy.  So if they make a movie that's nothing but cheese, it misses what was really great about all those old movies.

I think the same thing happens with Pulp when people try to do it today.  They focus on outward trappings that are often pretty cheesy and miss the heart.

I'll also, again, point people to section 5 (about 3/4 down the page) of this essay concerning genre.

Quote from: John MorrowBecause on paper, they look like a perfect fit as a role-playing setting.

True, but I also think "Pulp" suffers from two lacks - one of focus, the other of definition. Nobody really seems to be able to define exactly what "pulp" is. A lot of that is because "pulp" wasn't really a genre in and of itself, but a collection of genres. The old pulp magazines ranged from sports to science fiction to supernatural horror. They seem to have been an evolutionary step between the dime novels depicting cowboy heroes and the later superpowered characters of comics.

The pulps never really went away. They simply evolved with the times. The closest thing to pulp magazines of old are episodic TV shows of today. Episodic TV runs the same gamut as the pulp magazines - romance, drama, adventure, detectives, scifi, etc. I think "universal" game systems that try to cover a wide variety of genres - GURPS, d20, TORG - come closer to emulating the pulp magazines than attempts at dedicated "pulp" games. These  universal games take a basic formula and modify it to suit the particular genre, just as the old pulp magazines used essentially the same basic format (magazines with short stories and/or serialized stories) modified to suit whatever genre they were trying to cover (cover art, the copy on the cover, interior art, writing style, etc.).

I think too many hear "pulp" and equate it to Indiana Jones, King Kong, or the Rocketeer. While all these stories would be great examples of a certain type of pulp, they aren't the entire spectrum of pulp. Hell, "Cinderella Man" would be a good story for a pulp magazine, seeing as there were pulps dedicated to boxing stories. For that matter, "Red Dawn" and "The Hunt for Red October" would fit comfortably in the pulp spectrum, just as any number of hospital dramas would.

Quote from: ColonelHardissonI think too many hear "pulp" and equate it to Indiana Jones, King Kong, or the Rocketeer. While all these stories would be great examples of a certain type of pulp, they aren't the entire spectrum of pulp. Hell, "Cinderella Man" would be a good story for a pulp magazine, seeing as there were pulps dedicated to boxing stories. For that matter, "Red Dawn" and "The Hunt for Red October" would fit comfortably in the pulp spectrum, just as any number of hospital dramas would.

Exactly. By-and-large, there's just nobody reading actual period pulps anymore. It's no accident that basing your impressions of the medium on George Lucas idealized childhood memories translated to film decades later results in a shallow understanding and a tendency toward camp.

D&D's Eberron is Pulp and it seems to be doing pretty well.

It's not that we don't like pulp games, it's that the designers have no damn idea of what they're doing. There is one pulp game that is very popular. It is popular because the designer grew up on pulp. He read pulp as a child, he understands it. The designer is E. Gary Gygax and the game is Dungeons & Dragons. The most popular pulp RPG ever published.

I've read old pulp fiction stories and D&D does the best job of emulating those tales of any RPG published. Because it wasn't designed to fit somebody's ignorant idea of what pulp was about. Pulp is about adventure. Pulp is about strange lands and strange peoples. Pulp is about daring deeds and facing impossible odds. Pulp is about prevailing when all seems lost. Pulp is not about fairness or balance or any crap like that. Pulp is about heroes, and the sacrifices they make to do the right thing.

Pulp is never about the rewards and the glory. Pulp is about upholding American ideals; honesty, determination, self-reliance. Pulp is the American mythology, and like all true mythologies it can't be imitated or faked.

D&D was not designed to be somebody's idea of what pulp was supposed to be, it was designed by a man who knows pulp from close, long term personal exposure to it. That's why it works as pulp. D&D is to so-called pulp games what a good chedder is to processed cheese food.

See my take (Shades of Earth) is more the gritty type of pulp less the Indiana Jones type. Guns kill, people die nasty deaths and much of the flavor is set by the GM. And I have a decent following.

I think the big problems I would list would include:
1) Genre is not as popular as Sci-fi or fantasy.

2) The death rate vs kill power. You need to give on something. PCs can die in a  n RPG, but they seldom (maybe occasionally) die in pulp. Fantasy and Sci-Fi have magic and science to heal you up instantly.

3) Pulp, much like Horror IMHO, has a lot to do with the mood. Fantasy and Sci-fi have a lot of built in mood. Player show up wanting to slay the dragon or kill the aliens. In pulp, a lot of times they seem to view it as showing up so the GM can jerk me around hunting the Maltese Falcon or some other mcguffin only to pull it out at the end by a series of outrageous circumstance. Note: that is pulp done poorly. Pulp done well is intrigue, adventure and fun...what makes any adventure fun.


Bill

Pulp has two big problems, to my mind:

• As has been mentioned, "pulp" covers a huge range of genres. While most self-described pulp games go with the two-fisted action/low-powered supers aspects of pulp, they still seem to want to cover everything from film noir detectives to Lovecraftian horrors. Some things just don't mix well.



• The aforementioned two-fisted adventure tales tended to focus on one great hero, with maybe a band of amazing sidekicks. That doesn't track well with the traditional RPG "adventuring party" concept.
  

Quote from: ColonelHardissonTrue, but I also think "Pulp" suffers from two lacks - one of focus, the other of definition. Nobody really seems to be able to define exactly what "pulp" is. A lot of that is because "pulp" wasn't really a genre in and of itself, but a collection of genres. The old pulp magazines ranged from sports to science fiction to supernatural horror. They seem to have been an evolutionary step between the dime novels depicting cowboy heroes and the later superpowered characters of comics.

Yeah, it's a bit like having a genre of 'books'. Even of 'comic books'. I was in disbelief the first time I heard someone say there was a "pulp" RPG. Especially if you aren't willing to purposefully encorporate tone in, but even if you do you are only going to get a slice of the spectrum.

As for John Morrow's very good point about it being a mistake to emmulate the outer trappings. I agree. However that cheese is going to ooze from within anyway. Which supports mythusmage contention, because if there is something that oozes cheese it's D&D.  And it came with it to the D&D movie, which captured a D&D gaming table so well in all the wrong ways.  As well S&S has it's roots deep in pulp. See how D&D does cheesy S&S so easily and utterly sucks at the higherbrow Toilken.