Some jotted down notes for my up-coming Fudge Pulp Campaign web page.
Please let me know what you think.
Thanx,
Warren Shultzaberger
GMing a Fudge Pulp Game:
THE GAME:
Know the genre. While watching movies maybe a good enough way to
introduce the pulp genre to players, it is STRONGLY recommended that the
prospective GM READ pulp stories. There are some good reasons for this.
1. Since the GM usually uses verbal means to describe scenes and
action to the players, it is best to read the ways successful authors do
the same thing. The GM will find it best to copy the style of a
particular author, that they enjoy, while GMing the events of the game
to the players. I use Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan) mostly, with a
sprinkle of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lester Dent. It has been a smashing
success!
2. Read for the ideas, plots, and scenes. It makes for easy
adventure creation. Steal shamelessly.
3. They are, for the most part, damn good escapism stories.
4. Read "The Pulp Avengers" (
http://www.columbia.edu/~mfs10/Brians_Pulp_File.html ), by Brian
Christopher Misiaszek, at least twice a month (why re-invent the
wheel?). You will ALWAYS find something new on the re-read!
5. Read and apply the methods of Lester Dent (creator of Doc
Savage) in his "Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot" (
http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~rbarrett/mc/dent.txt ). If it worked for
him in writing 181 Doc Savage adventures, it would work for you
(especially the "Make the reader SEE the action!" quote).
Many websites contain excellent pulp stories that are free for
the downloading and printing to read.
http://www.blackmask.com/page.php
http://www.spaceports.com/~deshadow/
http://galileo.spaceports.com/~docsavag/
Do not be afraid to "fudge" things along to keep the game moving at a
fast clip. Just learn to fudge in a consistent manner. For at least two
years now my chase scenes. automobile, airplane dogfights, boat
pursuits, etc, have come down to one thing. the driving/piloting/riding
skills of the characters involved plus 4dF. The better roll gets the
advantage; how good of an advantage depends, on how well the roll beats
the lower roll.
Example of Dogfight dice rolls and there possible meaning:
DIFFERENCE IN 4dF ROLL RESULTS (and orientation to each other)
Tied Roll Neither is in a position to shoot the
other.
1 Point Difference Both can shoot (head-on)
2-4 Points Difference Winner can shoot (side-on)
5 or Greater Difference Winner can shoot and has a +1 on next roll
(tailing)
Combat occurs for various reasons.
1. Give the players a chance to shine and show their heroic nature.
2. Provide action and clues.
3. Show the characters how deadly something really is.
4. Only in the climatic battle with the major bad guy would the
combat be slow and heavily detail orientated.
These reasons will sometimes overlap.
If the combat is simply a chance to make the characters look
good, I will roll the dice just for the sound they make (the players do
not know this). I already know that I want the players to win. to show
how much better they are than the average (or slightly above average)
Joe walking down the street. All I do is roll the dice, try my best to
make the descriptions sound good, and down the grunt NPCs. I use the
3-part wound track that is suggested in Fudge (section 4.57, last
paragraph). I also let the level of their skill be the target level for
the player character's 4dF dice rolls (assume minor NPCs always rolled a
zero on the dice). This helps speed up unimportant combats to a near
neck break pace. Lots of fun!
If the combat were to provide action and/or clues, it would,
most likely, still be fudged. Whip up on the dastardly grunts and leave
the clue. I might hurt or have a character kidnapped at this stage.
Escaping out of the villain's Deathtrap is a great way to make the
character shine and give a vital clue to his nefarious plans at the same
time.
In every episode/adventure of the campaign, I will add about 3
to 6 NPCs to the character group. The purpose of these NPCs are
multi-fold; like guest stars in an old TV series, a NPC would be kill
off to show the deadliness of a situation and/or attack, to hide the
villain(s) amongst the players, to provide comic relief, or maybe a
romantic interest. NPCs are the GM's chance to play a character and have
fun acting the role. Enjoy them all.
The climatic battle with the main villain is always done using
the full combat rules, Fudge points, and dice rolls. Although I may
still sometimes fudge the rules a little bit, the attention to detail
makes the players nervous, hence makes the combat more tense. It is in a
combat like this that some characters may be seriously wounded. but
still showing their true mettle and hero stuff by prevailing anyway.
ADVENTURE SOURCES:
Like above. read Pulp stories!
Read The Pulp Avengers, by Brian Christopher Misiaszek.
Many of my adventures are just a string of scenes in my head
that I somehow string together. I know what scene I want to have occur
so I arrange to have it happen at an appropriate part of the adventure.
I also will shape the adventure to fit my player's characters
skills and backgrounds (diversity is a welcome blessing here).
Terra Incognita has an excellent suggestion of reading the spine
of a National Geographic magazine and forming an adventure out of the
scenes the words inspire. I guarantee that, if you use this method, you
will never run out of exotic places, creatures, and treasures.
For every exotic location you have an adventure in, lookup some
of the language on the web. I am not saying you should try to become a
fluent speaker, just learn the names of some important features that you
plan on using at some time in the adventure. along with a greeting,
curse word, and goodbye. This would add a lot of flavor and "realism" to
your campaign.
This also applies to learning some 20's and 30's slang terms to
pepper the talk of some of the individuals the characters would meet.
http://home.earthlink.net/~dlarkins/slang-pg.htm
Creatures: The best way to use creatures, I have found, is
explained in a direct quote from Aaron Allston's "Lands of Mystery:"
""Monsters affect the hero in many ways: They endanger his life
by trying to bite his head off, they delay him by try to bite his head
off while the bad guy is getting away with the Princess, they give him
heart failure by trying to bite the Princess' head off, they make him a
friend by giving him the opportunity to rescue a native from having his
head bitten off. Monsters add color, excitement, and an element of
variety to these tales.
"Monster encounters should always Serve a Purpose. Each
encounter should advance the plot or give a character a chance to
demonstrate his thinking or fighting ability".
Keep their stats in a simple shorthand method that will give
enough information to run the creature. Flesh out the creature even more
by using your descriptive style of verbage.
This can be applied to ANY encounter in the game. Creature, bad
guys, etc.
Added Tidbits:
Think of your Pulp Adventure Campaign as a series on TV. How
many times do you think the director yells, "CUT" and rolls some dice to
determine the outcome of a particular action on the show? Of course not.
Try the same techniques with your campaign. Think to yourself, "What
would the best result to increase the tension and suspense of my
audience (the players)?" Then find a way to apply that result. Soon you
will notice that different parts of your brain will be processing the
player's actions, the best way to describe those actions, the best
possible results and how to apply them, and thought of the NPCs.
When conducting a mystery adventure; pay close attention to the
deductive guesswork of the players, their ideas might be better that you
original one. If so, go ahead and use them, it would just prove the
players are some damn smart detectives.
Try to make adventures that are tailor made for your player's
character's skills, talents, and backgrounds. If you have a Tarzan-clone
character in your troop, then run an adventure in a jungle setting. The
archeologist character will be the first to decipher the glyphic
markings on the walls of the ruins. The collage professor would
understand the language of the descendants of the lost Roman Legion. The
back-alley brawler will have the opportunity to beat the bad guys in
hand-to-hand.
While it is best to give every character a chance to be in the
limelight in every adventure, this could be hard to do in each gaming
session. Another good way to move the campaign along is to focus on one
individual character's background for that particular session. Have the
group encounter a mystery/adventure visiting one of the character's
family during Christmas. Allow, even encourage, vacations for the
characters, then slam them into an adventure. Have the action seek them
out at every turn in their lives. This also allows the players a feeling
of depth and continuation in their campaign world.
NEVER RUIN your game by having an established Pulp hero (i.e.
Doc Savage, The Shadow, etc) steal the thunder of your player's
characters. After all, this IS the player's characters adventure series.
Have the character always be the best at whatever skill in which they
specialize. It is okay to have the character assist the Pulp hero or be
better than them in one particular field.
Example: Nel's character shot the gun out of the hand of The
Spider to prevent him from killing an innocent NPC then defeated him in
hand-to-hand combat using her Jujitsu. The Spider was impressed to no
end. Another example; Doc Savage would never had come up with the
antidote without Tracy's character's expertise in chemistry and
medicine.
Use highly descriptive terms in actions and combat. Make the
players SEE, HEAR, SMELL, FEEL the action! The players will catch on
(hopefully) and start adding their own descriptive terms, making the
campaign an ongoing adventure in mutual story telling. This, in my
humble opinion, is the best way for a campaign to run.
Never have a character die uselessly or needlessly. It is ALWAYS
a momentous event.ALWAYS! If you, the GM, are going to kill the
character, allow them perform one last, exasperating, action that would
turn the tables of the battle. Maybe the dying character drags their
dying over and pulls the lever of the Ultra-Power-Ray, there bye
weakening the Villain, allowing the other player characters to defeat
him.
Once again, Thanx!
Warren Shultzaberger
Hikuta - Easy, Fast, Effective Self-Defense!
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