A look at pulp role-playing games

When most people think of role-playing games (RPGs), they usually think of Dungeons & Dragons. But since that game came out 1974, it helped spawn a whole industry of games in various genres.

While fantasy of various sorts is popular, science fiction (Traveller et al), mystery (Sherlock Holmes, etc.), superhero (Champions and Villains & Vigilantes, etc.) and other genres have been used.

And on occasion, the pulps have been the inspiration for the games. Now, one pulp-related genre that has become big since Chaosium released Call of Cthulhu is H.P. Lovecraft-inspired games. A look at those will be the subject of another posting.

And steampunk and similar retro genres will be overlooked in this article.  Same for Sherlock Holmes.

Mainly pulp heroes and 1920s/’30s adventurers is the main focus here. And I am sure there are a few I have left out. Further, I am only looking at role-playing games, so no card games, board games (for instance, Avalon Hill did a board game for John Carter of Mars; I still have a copy at my parent’s place), or miniatures games (yes, that’s a thing).

Now, most game companies have their own gaming system that is sometimes used in all of their games, rather than creating a new system for each game (which some may do). Chaosium started this with their Basic Roleplaying System, which was used in all their games starting with Runequest. Hero Games followed with the Hero System, based on what they used in their Champions game; and it’s gone through a few iterations, now in its sixth edition.

And Steve Jackson Games took it a step further with GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System), which was published separately, and then created works with supplemental rules and genre settings for people wanted to play specific types of games (fantasy, sf, horror, superhero, etc.).

The first pulp RPG that I know of, and got, was Hero Games’ Justice Inc., which came out in 1984. It was a boxed set with a rule book and campaign book with several adventures. This was based on Hero Games’ third edition rules. The game had a trio of authors, one being Aaron Allston, creator of Doc Sidhe. Two supplemental books came out Trail of the Gold Spike and Lands of Mystery, both written by Allston. Long out of print, they are now hard to find, tho Hero Games does make them available as PDFs.  Thankfully I have both.

Sadly, Hero Games never reprinted this game. But later came out with Pulp Hero in 2005 as part of their fifth edition system (but never updated it for their current 6th edition). They also did a trio of supplemental books: Thrilling Hero Adventures, Thrilling Places, and Masterminds & Madmen. These are still available from Hero Games (either books or PDF), along with a large number of scenarios in PDF format. Even in Pulp Hero (which is over 400 pages long) there is a lot of information and resources listed on the pulps that may be of interest to pulp fans. I was even surprised that they included other pulp games. In 2007, Hero Games came out with an anthology of New Pulp stories titled Astounding Hero Tales. I’ll cover this in a future posting.

I mentioned SJG’s GURPS. And yes, they did a pulp genre book: GURPS Cliffhangers. First edition came out in 1998 and a second one in 2002. I have the first edition when it came out. In it was a two-page bibliography of suggested reading that I marked up (in pencil) with notes. They were off on some reprints. I checked off what I had, and went looking for a few I hadn’t heard of. I read Michael Crichton‘s Congo due to that list. I only recently went out and got Richard Sale‘s For the President’s Eye’s Only (years ago I had looked for it and never found it. I will review it at some point). I don’t have the second edition, but it’s still available as a PDF. They did do one scenario book, Chaos in Kansas (also available as a PDF). Another was promised, Black Diamond, but AFAIK, it never came out. No idea why.

Now, one of the biggest RPG companies at that time was TSR (since bought out by another company). So did they do a pulp-related RPG? Kind of. One was Agent 13, that tied to their Top Secret RPG that was about secret agents. But because of what came out of that I am going to devote a future posting to Agent 13.

The other was an article that ran in the March 1981 issue of Dragon magazine, published by TSR. This article by David Cook is “Crimefighters: Playing the Heroes of Pulp Fiction” and lays out a game to do just that. This includes a sample adventure, then a one-page explanation of pulp heroes by Bryce Knorr. Someone pointed me to a PDF scan of this on the internet.

Flying Buffalo, better known for their D&D-like game, Tunnels & Trolls, put out Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes in the early 80s.  And, yes, it’s built on T&T‘s mechanics. While not specifically a pulp RPG, it can be used for pulp inspired games (PIs, soldier of fortunes, lost worlds, etc), and even has a few solo games people can run.  I thought it interesting that one gaming material they created made use of the Shadow’s son and grandson (tho not in costumed form).

From White Wolf was Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society, which came out in 2001 as part of their “trinity universe” line of games, though the whole line was dropped in a couple years despite its popularity. I have not seen this yet, but it looks more like pulp adventures than pulp heroes.  They didn’t create any supplemental materials for it, either.

Now there are a few others I’ve heard of but have not obtained copies of, or am in the process of doing so. These include Daredevils from Fantasty Games Unlimited; Two-Fisted Tales from Precis; Iron Crown Enterprises’ Rolemaster: Pulp Adventures; Thrilling Tales from Adamant Entertainment; Weird Adventures from RPGNow; and Worlds of Pulp from Scaldcrow Games, which is also doing a Brother Bones game.

If I missed any, post comments about them; and if you’ve played some of these games, please post about them, too.  I think there are enough pulp RPGs I didn’t cover here (or cover in much depth) to warrant a second part.  And I hope to do a posting on some Sherlock Holmes stories as well as one on the various Lovecraft-inspired ones as well.