RPGPundit Reviews: Gripping Tales Of The Impossible

This is actually a review of two different adventure modules in the series Gripping Tales of the Impossible, for the Pulp RPG "Two-Fisted Tales".  Now, I absolutely adore 2FT. It is to me the ideal Pulp RPG. But I personally have little need of published adventures for the game. I already know what I want from it, and I can make that myself.

Even so, others might need some more guidance on these matters, and that's where one would hope that these modules come in. They are both thin, softcover adventure books weighing in at 22 and 20 pages respectively. The first one is subtitled "Episode 1: Requiem in the Depths", while the second is "Episode 2: Crisis at the World's Fair". You might guess that the two adventures are connected, one benig a sequel to the former, though each adventure is pretty much complete in itself if you wish to play it in isolation. By the looks of it, each adventure looks like it could be completed in a single session. The question is: are they worth bothering with?

The setup of the adventures is the only one that readily makes sense as an easy Pulp setup for a group of more than 2 or 3 people: Namely, its the Doc Savage scenario, where the PCs are part of the "team" of a successful pulp hero, minor legends in themselves, united by a bigger hero. The hero in this case is Ajax Stewart, and the first adventure opens at the marriage of Ajax with the wild woman Shiarra. Shiarra is kidnapped by Ajax's arch-nemesis, named "Dr. Avel B'hadgai" (get it? That was a little over the top even for my often-corny tastes!).  The evil Dr. Avel B'hadgai badguy has decided that he will challenge Ajax to a contest as one of Ajax's groups (the PCs) and one of his groups will race to find four items. The adventure revolves around finding the "something old" of the four items, the Crown of the Sorcerer King of Atlantis.

Now, this idea of a race isn't bad, but the premise being that Ajax himself can't act belies one of the problems with the setup: if the PCs are a team to the best super-scientist-hero of the age, why doesn't he just go kick ass? The answer being that if he does, the PCs are shit out of luck. In my own campaign, where I had a similar background premise, I resolved this by making the "lead guy NPC" actually be an incompetent that only got the team into trouble, and they were the quietly competent ones who he was stealing the credit for. In this adventure, Ajax just doesn't act because.. well, just because the rules of the contest says he can't (even though his future wife's life is on the line).

Fuck it. Anyways, the rest of the adventure has the PCs trying to find Atlantis, running into a crazy cult leader, go down into the depths of the ocean, fight Deep Ones, then fight Dr.Avel's men in the Atlantean ruins for the crown (a dark cursed artifact).

The second adventure, Crisis at the World's Fair, has the PCs seeking out the "something new", from the Chicago World's Fair, an item called the Celestial Condenser (a superscience macguffin). The PCs spend some time searching around the World's Fair (its the 1933 one not the more famous New York world's fair a few years later). Then, Dr. Evil's "Science Commandos" attack!
Now, here is the point where what was basically a linear but standard adventure becomes a problematic adventure: when the Science Commandos attack, they are trying to kidnap a scientist (the guy who invented the Condenser). According to the book, the villains MUST fail in kidnapping the scientist AND MUST succeed in kidnapping the scientist's lovely niece, all with the PCs right there, and regardless of what the PCs do.

You know how you could have done this? By NOT HAVING THE PCS BE THERE when it happens. Otherwise, you're fucked. You're likely to end up with either an adventure derailed by the opponents all being killed, or a Total Party Kill. But what you are NOT going to end up with is the lovely niece or the good-guy scientist being kidnapped, with the PCs there, and the PCs just accepting that happening. Not my players, anyways. This is a recipe for pointless player-gm conflict, and goes from being "linear" to being a downright RAILROAD.

I mean fuck, who wrote this shit?

Wait, shit, I sure hope it wasn't Brett Bernstein! He's still due to publish two of my books, and he hasn't even paid me for one of them yet. And he's my tech moderator at theRPGsite! I am obliged to say that this product, which he is publishing, is turning out to be crap; which is bad enough. I sure hope he wasn't the actual guy who wrote it!

AH, no, actually, it was someone named Joshua Unruh. Piece of advice, Brett: Don't get this guy to write you any more adventures. You want some more 2FT adventures? Maybe a whole campaign book? I could go for writing something like that. I wouldn't write any railroading-crap, either. You want to see what I'd be doing? Check out my "Lost Valley of the Gnomes", in Gnomemurdered.

Anyways, back to what's left of this review. Supposing that by some miracle your Players haven't all walked off in disgust at being forced to allow the badguys to kidnap the pretty girl right in front of their eyes, they're meant to now follow her into a display at the world's fair with dinosaurs. These dinosaurs "come to life" (actually robots), for no apparently good reason, and attack the PCs and citizens.

The PCs will later learn from the scientist-dude (the one who would NOT be successfully kidnapped by the science commandos, even if the PCs threw him at them), that he has the Condenser and Dr.Evil has been wanting it for a while. Then the Science Commandos then offer to trade the girl for the macguffin.

The trade goes down at the airport where the Graf Zeppelin is currently docked. The final fight to save the chick predictably happens on the Zeppelin itself, and even more predictably there is again a railroady determination that at some point a shot fired (by the bad guys if no PC is using a gun) will start a fire on the Zeppelin leading to a huge disaster.

Ignoring for a moment the fact that Zeppelins actually have a tremendously bad rap as far as this sort of thing, and a small fire in the control cabin caused by a spark from a radio would be very unlikely to cause a "hindenburg-esque" disaster, the whole book reads like its the author writing out his Actual Play report, of what he did with his PCs, and demanding that you then repeat it scene-for-scene in your own play. I don't know if its true, if he even ran this thing, but it sure has that vibe. Stuff like how incredible the fight at the zeppelin should be, and how "impressive it should be" if the Condenser is used, make it all sound like the author just trying to replicate the same "cool" experience he had with this when he ran it.
Of course, the difference is that the first time around, it was all up for grabs. This time, the only thing that can end up variable is whether the PCs end up with the Macguffin, or the bad guys.

Anyways, unfortunately I was not very impressed with these adventures. At their best moments, they're just average. At their worst, they're Railroading pieces of crap. Two-Fisted Tales, being the best Pulp RPG around, deserves better.

Get these adventures only if you really REALLY can't come up with something to run for 2FT. Otherwise, I really don't see the point.

RPGPundit
 
Currently Smoking: Mastro de Paja bent apple + H&H's Namaste

Thanks for taking the time to review them. They are more targeted for beginners. Obviously, some pre-made adventures aren't for everyone. Josh's stories are based on his Ajax Stewart creation. Whether you liked them or not, I find them quite enjoyable. To each his own.

I stopped reading when you veered off into self-aggrandizement and plugging your own work. If you think you can do better than the author, awesome! Do it! But don't take review space and the reader's time to bluster about how cool you are. That's crap.

I found them as Pundit said, but I didn't actually mind. I never run commercial adventures, but I use them to mine ideas, settings, and objects, and for those purposes, they suited just fine.

-clash

Quote from: ticopelp;333583I stopped reading when you veered off into self-aggrandizement and plugging your own work. If you think you can do better than the author, awesome! Do it! But don't take review space and the reader's time to bluster about how cool you are. That's crap.

That might be true of a mere moral review, but this is an RPGPundit Review! Veering off is just part of the territory; when the Pundit reviews something, all bets are off. Be thankful I didn't veer off into a discussion about the U.S. Health Care Debate!

RPGPundit

Think of it as entertainment value added, ticopelp! If he didn't veer off, you wouldn't have bothered blowing your top, and that wouldn't have been fun at all!



-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;333936Think of it as entertainment value added, ticopelp! If he didn't veer off, you wouldn't have bothered blowing your top, and that wouldn't have been fun at all!

Hey, I mighta blown my top for no reason whatsoever... maybe... okay, you're right.