Quote from: BalbinusFGU had one which I also suddenly forget.

Daredevils!  I'm trying to recall if it suffered from the same mathematical bloat displayed by other FGU games of the era.

!i!

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

Anyone got any ideas why?

My guess for a few years now: It's a kneejerk reaction to the 90s.

A lot of people were fed up with the trend toward angst and "R-rated" content in roleplaying. They found it was juvenile crap. So as usual, they went pedal to the metal into the other direction.

Somehow, a lot of people got in their head that naive, unidimensional stories featuring cardboard characters in extremely lame black and white plots full of clichés and ridiculousness are "mature".

And thus pulp mania was born.

Hero games Justice Incorporated by Aaron Allston was a good pulp game.I don't think that it is being published nowadays.
At my RPclub it is the basis for a succesfully long set of campaigns(over ten years).

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaDaredevils!  I'm trying to recall if it suffered from the same mathematical bloat displayed by other FGU games of the era.

!i!

It was similar to Aftermath, but with a few of the more complex elements taken out.  IMO it was still way too complex.

I think the Colonel has it.

Some good points above.

I think the trappings point is right, people often capture the cheesier elements of the genre but miss the heart of it.  I think John Morrow's post is spot on.

I think clearly in a gaming context when people say pulp they generally mean the hero pulps, nobody means for example the sport pulps.

Mythusmage is right on the money also I think.  Although I would query whether modern DnD is still pulp I think it is clear the earlier versions were.

Otherwise though, I think in part too it is that many pulp rpgs have actually rather heavy rulesets, which make it difficult to get a freewheeling atmosphere going.  In addition, many forget the moral core to the genre, the heroic nature of the genre, Gurps for example has a ton of period detail in its book but not so much on getting a genuinely pulpy feel.

Oh, Torg I think probably was pulp, so arguably was Gear Krieg the rpg but again for me that falls into the too complex camp.

I don't like pulp.

I don't like it at all and, to turn this thread slightly on its head, one of the things that most annoys me about the RPG world is how prevalent and respected the pulp genre is compared to other more interesting genres such as proper SF.

I don't like it because, in a nutshell, it's superheroes with spats meaning that pulp games are usually gonzo kewl-power fests with a veneer of circa WWII aesthetics carefully draped over them.

It doubly annoys me because it's been so thoroughly done to death.  Every time I lurk at the purple place it seems like there's some new pulp game that everyone's raving about and... surprise, surprise, it's pretty much exactly the same as all the other pulp games out there with only a few minor modifications here and there.

Pulp games are the middle-brow equivalent of Marvel Superheroes.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalI don't like pulp.

I don't like it at all and, to turn this thread slightly on its head, one of the things that most annoys me about the RPG world is how prevalent and respected the pulp genre is compared to other more interesting genres such as proper SF.

I don't like it because, in a nutshell, it's superheroes with spats meaning that pulp games are usually gonzo kewl-power fests with a veneer of circa WWII aesthetics carefully draped over them.

It doubly annoys me because it's been so thoroughly done to death.  Every time I lurk at the purple place it seems like there's some new pulp game that everyone's raving about and... surprise, surprise, it's pretty much exactly the same as all the other pulp games out there with only a few minor modifications here and there.

Pulp games are the middle-brow equivalent of Marvel Superheroes.

Pulp is only supers because of designers who don't really know the source material and because of fans who think they do but have just watched Indy once.

To be honest, I wouldn't have thought a good pulp game would have much by way of powers, cool or otherwise.  The key is in the feel, Conan is pulp, early DnD as Mythusmage rightly notes is pulp, a game in which characters have special powers that they use in a mock superheroic game aren't, they're an idea of pulp from someone who's never read any.

As for proper sf, too much work for most gamers, but that deserves a thread on its own.  What do you mean by proper sf though, before I start one?

Quote from: BalbinusTo be honest, I wouldn't have thought a good pulp game would have much by way of powers, cool or otherwise.  The key is in the feel, Conan is pulp, early DnD as Mythusmage rightly notes is pulp, a game in which characters have special powers that they use in a mock superheroic game aren't, they're an idea of pulp from someone who's never read any.

  I'd argue that that's essentially making the term meaningless.  All it then means is a vqaguely fantastical setting in which an action-based plot trumps all the other considerations.  Conan's pulp but then so is Moorcock and Leiber.  It's that old chestnut of non-tolkienian fantasy... no worldbuilding, no nannying tone, just balls out action and cool ideas.

  Frankly, I'd argue that ALL RPGs are pulp by that definition.  I've never played in a game that was all about Big Ideas or indepth characterisation.

  Pulp in RPG circles means supers in spats and fighting nazis and that's as tired and predictable as elves and dwarves.

  What you're talking about is games that use the same creative philosophy as that used by the old pulp writers and that's a far more nebulous concept but even then I'd argue that it is the default approach to writing used by gamers.

  I don't know... maybe I'm not getting what you're driving at.

  As for proper SF, I mean two things.  Firstly, the number of straight SF without magic in them is vanishingly small and secondly, there are, aside from THS, no games out there now that try to engage with what's going on in SF at the moment.

First of all, Mr A, where have you been?

Secondly, have you had a look at Shock?

Not sure I'm driving at anything, more meandering aimlessly.

That aside, given that I love the pulps (I'm reading some Robert E Howard boxing stories at the moment which are most pulpy) I got to wondering why the genre so often comes up in rpg designs but never gets much actual play.

And I think the answer is that pulp is about mood and pacing, it's not about kewl powerz.  Designers sell the kewl powerz but often with rulesets that actually make the pacing harder, not easier.

So many pulp rpgs IMO undermine what it is that makes the pulps great, assuming of course one isn't the kind of philistine who doesn't recognise their greatness...

I'll start a separate thread on the sf point, as I think there are some fairly clear reasons why that gets no love.

I've been here and there... mostly there though :-)  But I thought I'd make an effort and show my face in here to all the lovely people.  I just haven't been in the mood to talk RPGs for a while.

EDIT : Shock looks quite cool at a first glance, I shall look into it a bit further though it's interesting that the names it cites are largely names from the past.  But to be fair, that might well be due to the collapse of US SF in recent years.

Robert E. Howard boxing stories?  why does that make me think of Barton Fink?  are they shockingly racist? full of barely human animalistic "negro" fighters that look like gorillas?

You're bang on right about kewl powerz getting in the way of action.  That's spectacularly demonstrated by Exalted.  You look at the horrible flavour text and the ethos of the game and it's all about over-the-top action and frenetic pace but in truth it's all about painstakingly designed comboes and lots and lots of page flippping.  Exalted's the poster-child for systems that don't fit their settings.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalRobert E. Howard boxing stories?  why does that make me think of Barton Fink?  are they shockingly racist? full of barely human animalistic "negro" fighters that look like gorillas?

No, not at all in fact.  I believe one of them (which I haven't got to yet) is from a sympathetic black character's perspective.  

REH though wasn't I think a racist, he was simply a product of his time in which the idea that there were differences in personality types between the races was commonplace.  I don't think as far as I know he thought any of the other races were inferior, though he did think as best I can tell that they were different, but at a superficial level more than anything else.

He doesn't go as far as Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote some pieces which very clearly are attacking racism, but he's no HPL either.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalYou're bang on right about kewl powerz getting in the way of action.  That's spectacularly demonstrated by Exalted.  You look at the horrible flavour text and the ethos of the game and it's all about over-the-top action and frenetic pace but in truth it's all about painstakingly designed comboes and lots and lots of page flippping.  Exalted's the poster-child for systems that don't fit their settings.

Quite so.

Quote from: BalbinusI think clearly in a gaming context when people say pulp they generally mean the hero pulps, nobody means for example the sport pulps.

Even given that they don't mean the romances or the sports-themed pulps, it still leaves a very broad range of genres to cover, from scifi to fantasy to Westerns to detective to military to jungle adventures to "oriental" stories to...well, there are certainly some I'm forgetting. So even just saying "adventure" pulps doesn't really narrow it down much.