If there’s one thing I can’t stand….it’s all the damn vampires.
Malawi politician stoned for harboring Vampires.
That pulp stuff doesn’t seem so far fetched now….
When Last We Left Our Intrepid Heroes….
I’ve recently been experiencing a resurgence of my interest in the Pulps, the mass-produced adventure fiction magazines of the early 20th century. I never really lose my interest, in fact– it’s one of those things that’s constantly part of my inner-geek make-up. During the past week or so, I’ve been reading up on the subject, and kicking around a couple of related creative projects– the idea of doing a pulp RPG (possibly using the brilliant OGL rules found in Green Ronin’s
Mutants and Masterminds, which I mentioned below in my “Best of 2002” post), and some fiction featuring a character I created during my high school years (Erasmus Quinn and his World Class Irregulars– sort of a mix of Doc Savage (in that he’s a two-fisted scientist with assistants), Buckaroo Banzai (a healthy dose of 80s nostalgia) and Jonny Quest (but as an adult)). Not sure if it works better as short fiction, or if there might be a novel in there somewhere. I think I need to kick the idea around a bit more. I’m concerned that setting the fiction in the 80s makes it too similar to Banzai, but then again, Banzai is pretty much just Doc Savage fast-forwarded 50 years, so maybe that’s not too big a deal.
So, in keeping with my pulpy mindset, here are some wicked-cool links for you:
Chris Kalb’s Hero Pulps site: in my opinion, the best pulp site on the web. Features links to character-specific web sites.
Jess Nevins’ Pulp and Adventure Heroes: Companion site to Nevins’ wonderful listing of Victorian fiction characters, this one concentrating on the pulp characters from 1902-1939.
The Pulp.net: More exhaustive than Chris Kalb’s site, but without as much style. Great resource all the same, however.
AdventureStrips.com: a subscription-based site featuring pulp-influenced webcomics from comics professionals (like Mike W. Barr, Steve Bryant, etc.).
Blackmask Online: Free PDF and eBook versions of many pulp stories, including the Avenger, Doc Savage and The Shadow.
So, until next time—keep an eye out for the agents of the Sin Brotherhood, and keep your guns handy.
Apollyon Noir Update
First, if you’re not familiar with my current game project, check this thread over at The Forge to get up to speed. Basically, Jason Roberts (designer and publisher of FVLMINATA) and I are working up a new game based on an idea that I had put forward in an old RPGnet column–basically Napoleonic Dark Fantasy.
We’re still plugging away, I’m glad to say. Not much further progression on the rules–that sort of refinement usually occurs during the process of playtesting, which hasn’t begun in earnest yet–but we have made progress on other elements, such as the fact that we’ve decided that the character divisions (the so-called “splats” in the above-linked Forge thread, which we’ve decided to call Sects) are going to be purely political/social, rather than indications of similar abilities.
The supernatural abilities of characters are going to be individualized, which gets away from the “all Vampires of this Clan have these abilities” over-codified nonsense that has become too prevalent in games. Jason and I agreed that the occult should always be “throwing curves”, so to speak. The players should *never* know what to expect. There should always be shocks. (This decision also makes it easier to create characters *without* supernatural abilities, which is essential for those players who wish to do straight-historical campaigns, which is one of our stated design goals.)
The past couple of months have also resulted in the unexpected discovery of inspirational material, such as the films Vidocq (mentioned below), or The Saragossa Manuscript. The more research we do, the more strange things we discover from the period, such as the “Incombustible Spaniard”, Señor Lionetto, who apparently performed regularly in Paris in 1803-4, inviting people to try to set him on fire…or information about the Dream Hunters of Corsica, who stalk totem animals in the dream-lands, which result in the death of the individual represented. Needless to say, this sort of stuff is definitely going to appear in the book.
A lot of you have sent me emails asking where you can be kept up to date on the development of Apollyon Noir, so I figured that I’ll give updates from time to time on this blog, so keep checking back.