Bad Ass Game Play

 Okay, I've been playing GTA for three forevers and two Sundays, it might be time for me to branch out. This game play looks really cool and I love me some zombies!

And also, that axe man! Use the axe more! I believe this game is called  Resurgence.

Return of the King - Lord of the Rings: A Master Class in Campaign Planning Part 3

So here we are in part three of our epic fantasy campaign based on Lord of the Rings. When we last left our heroes, the Fellowship had fractured, with our hobbits Sam and Frodo in desperate peril, Sam following the captured and incapacitated Frodo into Cirith Ungol, and the rest of the crew, including new character Faramir, split between marshalling the forces of Rohan and riding to warn Minas Tirith of a coming attack.

Our intrepid GM now faces a further challenge; not only have his gaming groups split in twain, his Saturday group is now facing a potentially long-term party split. He briefly considers branching off into a third gaming group but decides even for him, that's untenable, and besides, the Saturday group are all still pursuing the same goal. He'll deal with the split party by switching back and forth at dramatic moments. He's also got a grand plan, if he can pull it off, for the end battle.

This final section of the series on Lord of the Rings as a class in campaign planning brings it all together, looking at some of the major problems a GM faces when they are many months into an epic game and nearing the end: player drift, party split, character death or incapacitation late in the game, the need to bring everyone back together, and what happens when, after the campaign ends, some of your players aren't ready to let it go just yet...

And so we begin.

Image source: Wikipedia

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View Part One

View Part Two

The Two Towers - Lord of the Rings: A Master Class in Campaing Planning part 2

Check out Part One, here!

The Two Towers: Setting up the Next Stage

Welcome to part two of our look at how Lord of the Rings offers us a master class in creating and running an epic campaign in the old-school style for your home game. In part one we looked at how the campaign starts simple and grows through side adventures and the addition of new players, and how it deals with divergent character levels by allowing for foes of different abilities and giving all players a chance to shine despite their relative level of power. It also deals with what happens when people's schedules change and the game needs to divide.

It also touched upon the commitment that a GM puts into their campaign, how there's a ton of planning and time put into it, and admittedly it faces issues that some people have difficulty facing: those of simple time. You may not have the time to deal with the issues that come up in your life as they appear in this series, and if that's the case, there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has the kind of time to create new gaming groups and play several times a week.

When we last left our heroes, the Fellowship had fractured, largely due to life and scheduling reasons. Merry and Pippin's players had to drop out of weekly play, but agreed to keep in touch in hopes they could jump back in eventually. Frodo and Sam's players had moved to Monday, and had left alone with the Ring, heading for Mount Doom. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli's players had sworn to track down Merry and Pippin, and run interference for Sam and Frodo in the process by making some noise to draw the attention of the Enemy. Boromir had died.

What had begun as a straightforward quest has now, of necessity, turned into a very nuanced game with multiple storylines and multiple adventuring parties. No longer is the GM planning a straight quest to Mordor; now he's dealing with two major story paths.

In this blog we'll move on to part 2 of our Master Class in running an epic home campaign: The Two Towers. The theme here is running variant groups of gamers in the same campaign world, roughly simultaneously in time, and how one group's actions could affect the others. 

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Image Source: Wikipedia

Lord of the Rings: a Master Class in Campaign Planning

Every GM dreams of that magnum opus campaign, the one that's so epic it's unlike anything they've done before, which people will talk about for years, and which they'll never top again. That campaign that's epic in scope, that's rich in the world you've built, with fully-realized characters and deep, instense storylines that your players will never forget.

In short, every GM dreams of running their own Lord of the Rings.

And yet, a lot of people have discussed over the years how Lord of the Rings doesn't work as a proper fantasy role playing campaign. It's too divided in its stories. The goal is too big. It doesn't allow proper dressing of in-game party dynamics. The characters are too level-diverse. Gandalf is only 5th level (a claim dating back to the old Dragon Magazine, and entirely ludicrous and unsustainable if you have a tiny bit of brain cells).

Here's the truth: Lord of the Rings is a master class in a role playing game campaign, both in its novel and its film versions. Indeed, it's particularly salient to an old school style of play, where "game balance" meant "everyone's having fun," as opposed to, "everyone's of the exact same power level." Take a look at how Lord of the Rings as a master class in home RPG campaign design begins and comes together with The Fellowship of the Ring.

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Photo Source: Wikipedia

Daily Dose of Literature: Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Another great and important influence on genre fiction who all-too-often flies under the radar, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish author who lived in the late 19th century and contributed seminal works to the canon of genre fiction that would later take off in the pulps and down to the literature of today. In his brief 44-year lifespan, Stevenson contributed to an astounding variety of genres, from swashbucking adventure to horror to thrillers and crime novels. 

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850. At the age of 17 he went to Edinburgh University to study lighthouse engineering. Law, however, became his passion and he switched gears to study in that field. He took the opportunity at every vacation to visit France so as to surround himself with the artists, writers and creative types of that environment and by the time he graduated in 1875, he had determined that his true calling was to be a writer. 

In 1876 he met the American Fanny Osbourne, the woman he would eventually marry. The relationship was fraught with complications, however; Osbourne was married with two children when she and Stevenson first met. She divorced her husband in 1878 and married Stevenson in 1880. The two would remain together for the next 14 years until Stevenson's death in 1894.

His first book, the travelogue An Inland Voyage, was published in 1878 and he was off and running. More travelogues followed as well as books of humor and a short fiction collection entitled The New Arabian Nights. During the 1880s his output increased dramatically even as his health declined. It was during these waning years of his life that he produced Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Kidnapped, his three best-known works. 

Consider the influence these works have had on popular fiction: Where would Jack Sparrow or even Errol Flynn be without Treasure Island? Certainly without Jekyll and Hyde we wouldn't have such notable figures as the Incredible Hulk. Kidnapped is an excellent novel which incorporates elements of the crime story, travelogue and rollicking adventure tale, and has become a template for many young adult stories that have followed. 

More information about Stevenson from Wikipedia

Stevenson's work for free on Feedbooks (in ePub, PDF and Kindle formats)

And as always, don't forget to check out Amazing Adventures, the Amazing Adventures Companion, and our whole line of adventure game supplements for all of your classic pulp and genre game needs!

Daily Dose of Literature: The D'Artagnan Romances of Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas was a French writer of historical adventure fiction in the mid-1800s. While his day was largely before the pulps, he was part of an important literary tradition that led directly up to the pulp fiction of the early 20th century. Like many of the later pulp writers, Dumas saw most of his works published as serials in the fiction magazines of the day. His works have been translated into over 100 languages and adapted into over 200 films--and that doesn't even take into account the many television and adaptations of his work or the pastiches and continuations, both authorized and unauthorized, that have been undertaken.

One of the more interesting facts about Dumas that many people don't know is that he was actually of mixed-race descent. His father was a nobleman and his mother an Afro-Caribbean slave. Dumas was brought to France and freed by his father as a young child. As with many young Frenchman of the day, he did a stint in the army, but after a break with his father chose to adopt his mother's surname. Eventually, he became the first Afro-Antilles to reach the rank of General in the army. By the age of 20, Dumas was working in the offices of the Duke of Orleans. It was here that he began his writing career, drawing upon his various experiences to craft his stories.

Dumas died in 1870 at the age of 68. 

Of his various works he is probably best known for his novels The Count of Monte Cristo and, of course, The Three Musketeers.* These tales are outstanding high-action stories in the grand swashbuckling adventure fiction tradition, though being written in the mid-1800s and translated from French, they are not exactly easy reads. Still, after one gets used to the prose style, they are well worth the time. You'll find that in The Three Musketeers, no film adaptation has ever done the story nor the characters justice.

What's better, and what most people don't realize, is that Musketeers is only the first in a series of works chronicling the entire life of D'Artagnan. These D'Artagnan Romances are all great fun to read, full of adventure, suspense, intrigue, sex and even dark comedy and humor. They're the best of heroism, potboilers, war stories and even a bit of hardboiled Noir all rolled up into one grand overarching tale and solidly establish Dumas as one of the pioneers of the swashbuckling genre along side such luminaries as Robert Louis Stevenson. Later heroes such as Howard's Solomon Kane owe something of a debt to the Musketeers and their contemporaries.

For more about Dumas, check out his Wikipedia article.

Some background on the D'Artagnan Romances. 

Alexandre Dumas on Feedbooks (in PDF, epub and Kindle formats)

The D'Artagnan Romances on Feedbooks (in PDF, epub and Kindle)

The Count of Monte Cristo on Feedbooks (PDF, epub, Kindle)

And, as always, when you've got a taste for the genre, why not try running some swashbuckling action-adventure stories of your very own with Amazing Adventures and the Amazing Adventures Companion?

*It is worth mentioning that Dumas wrote many of his more successful works in conjunction with silent collaborators, the most well-known of whom is Auguste Maquet.

Daily Dose of Literature: H. Rider Haggard and Allan Quatermain

Henry Rider Haggard

H. Rider Haggard was an English writer of high action tales of adventure, sometimes incorporating elements of horror and the supernatural, and was a pioneer of the Lost World genre of fiction along with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Born on June 22, 1856, his literary career began in 1882, but he did not find success until the first book starring the character for which Rider would become synonymous: Allan Quatermain.

The book was King Solomon's Mines, and it introduced the world in a huge way to the adventuring explorer who would later evolve into a figure we all know and love--Indiana Jones. While Indy wasn't a carbon copy of Quatermain, the literary origins cannot be argued. All in all, Haggard wrote fifteen Quatermain tales, which cemented him as a giant of the early pulps. He died in 1925 at the age of 68.

Like many of the tales of this era, Haggard's stories are bursting with the societal ideas and mores of the time, and include many concepts that today would be considered uncomfortable for readers. It should be noted, however, that especially in his views of native and tribal cultures, he was quite progressive for his day, even featuring Zulu heroes in some of his stories, something that was considered unheard of at the time, even if he did fall back on the "noble savage" ideal and overall appear to support the English imperialism and colonialism of the day.

Regardless of his social views, when read in the context of the era in which they were written, his stories are a collection of rip-roaring adventure tales, full of pulse-pounding pacing, great drama and even heartache. It's easy to see the influence that Haggard's Quatermain had on future heroes from Doc Savage to El Borak all the way down to Indiana Jones.

The Allan Quatermain stories on Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/list/7/allan-quatermain

The H. Rider Haggard oeuvre on Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/author/32?lang=en

H. Rider Haggard on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Rider_Haggard

And when you're done reading, why not cook up some of your own exciting turn-of-the-century adventures in the deserts and jungles of Africa, exploring lost civilizations and ancient tombs? Check out Amazing Adventures for everything you need to get up and running!

Daily Dose of Literature: Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) may not have single-handedly invented the detective story (Indeed, Edgar Allen Poe had more than a small hand in that honor as well), but he certainly created the single most famous, often-imitated, parodied and continually explored literary figure in the entire genre. We're talking, of course, of one Mr. Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street (a fictional address, incidentally).

Doyle is another seminal figure of the early pulps (or more appropriately, pre-pulps). His Holmes stories directly influenced every generation of mystery and crime writers that has followed since. Writers such as Dashell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie and even James Patterson owe a huge debt to Doyle's work.

Like many writers of his day, Doyle led an adventurous life. He was a working doctor and ship's surgeon, an enthusiastic occult investigator and believer in spiritualism (his acquaintance, the noted illusionist and skeptic Harry Houdini would go around in circles with Doyle regarding this issue), a professional football (soccer) player and cricketeer, and even a politician.

Besides Holmes, Doyle must be remembered as a pioneer of the very genre of fiction that is named after his own novel: The Lost World. Doyle wrote a series of fantastic novels about a character who in many ways could be considered a forerunner of the Steampunk genre: Professor Challenger. The Lost World is one of these tales.

Do yourself a favor and check out some of Doyle's works. They're outstanding.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes stories on Feedbooks (ePUB, PDF and Kindle formats)
The Complete Professor Challenger stories on Feedbooks (ePUB, PDF and Kindle)
Full Arthur Conan Doyle story set on Feedbooks (ePUB, PDF, Kindle)

And, as always, when you've got the itch to run some epic Victorian pulp adventures, check out the Amazing Adventures Role Playing Game!

Daily Dose of Literature: Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Time to address the elephant in the room! We've covered Lovecraft and Burroughs, but what about the man who was once called "The greatest pulp writer in the whole wide world?" We're talking about none other than the creator of such luminary characters as Conan the Barbarian, Sailor Steve Costigan, Solomon Kane, Kull the Conqueror, Bran Mak Morn, El Borak and more: Robert E. Howard. Between the mid-1920s and up until decades after his untimely death in 1936, Robert E. Howard was leaving an indelible mark on not only the pulps, but on genre fiction in general. He is thought of as the father (or grandfather) of heroic fantasy. While not as well known or spoken of as Prof. Tolkien, Howard's tales of Kull and Conan were some of the earliest forms of sword and sorcery literature to see print, and have had just as much influence. Indeed, in some way Howard's work has influenced directly or indirectly almost every fantasy writer to come along since.

Howard was a huge history buff and though self-educated, was well-informed on the various popular, accepted and fringe theories of history of the day. He adopted several of these (particularly fringe ideas) in his crafting of lost ages of humankind and his ideas of racial memories that influenced later characters in his fiction. He was especially concerned with the idea of civilization vs. barbarism, often coming down heavily on the side of the latter and believing that civilization was by and large a series of interruptions between periods of barbarism.

He is perhaps most famous for his friendship and correspondence of H.P. Lovecraft, who thought very highly of Howard and his writing, and indeed wrote a famed obituary of Howard when Howard passed.

It takes volumes to get into the details of Howard's life; suffice it to say it was as interesting as the stories he wrote. His fiction alone is worth exploring if you have not; much of it is in the public domain and there's a reason why he has had such an effect on writers and genre fiction to this day.

Some of the best books about Howard:

Price-Ellis, Novalyne. One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard, The Final Years. Donald M. Grant, 1986. Amazon Link

Finn, Mark. Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard. The Robert E Howard Foundation Press, 2006, 2011, 2013. Amazon Link

Robert E. Howard's Fiction on Feedbooks (available in PDF, Kindle or EPUB formats, for free!)

After you've read up on Howard, if you've got the itch for some gritty, high action fantasy, historical or general pulp gaming, check out Amazing Adventures! 

Daily Dose of Literature: Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Father of Star Wars

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"The Father of Star Wars?" you say. "That was George Lucas! What are you smoking?"

Yes, Lucas invented our favorite science fantasy world, but in a very real way, Burroughs was the start of it all. Certainly there were science fiction writers before him--Shelley, Wells, Verne--but the realm of science fantasy known as space opera or planetary romance was very much established by the Barsoom Chronicles concerning the hero John Carter of Mars, and an argument could be made that without Burroughs, we might not have Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers or Star Wars. 

Burroughs also served as a progenitor for later muscle-bound swords-and-sorcery heroes like Conan with his tales of Tarzan of the Apes, a precursor to the same themes of barbarism vs. civilization that authors like Robert E. Howard would later claim as their own.

While you're at it, don't forget his lesser-known romps like the early hollow earth saga of Pellucidar or the adventures of Carson of Venus! You might be surprised at just how many areas of pulp literature Burroughs spearheaded.

But ignore all that: Burroughs was just a rip-roaring great science fantasy and adventure writer who spun memorable characters and exciting stories. If you haven't read his stuff, you're missing out.

Fortunately, a lot of it is in the public domain and you can read it! Check out this listing of his works on feedbooks.com, available in a variety of formats including epub, kindle and PDF. 

Stay tuned for more blurbs about classic writers that every gamer should read, and as always if you're feeling inspired, don't forget to check out the Amazing Adventures RPG!

Daily Dose of Literature: The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft...at the Library!

 
One of the most important and seminal writers in the history of genre literature, H.P. Lovecraft, drawing upon precursors like Poe, Chambers and Ambrose Bierce, defined the Weird fiction story as it came to be known in the golden age of the pulps--the 1920s and 30s. His so-called "Cthulhu Mythos" (which he actually referred to as "Yog-Sothothery") has gone on to influence almost every single horror author that's come along since.

If you've never read Lovecraft, you're really cheating yourself. But fear not! All of his works are in the public domain, and the fine folks at Dagonbytes are here to help out. Check out The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft, all online and 100% free! Beware, though: you might find out that Cthulhu isn't the nuclear-blast-immune ultimate horror that many modern works and RPGs make him out to be. In his initial appearance, they...well, I don't want to give it away. Read it for yourself and see!

Many of his works are also available in ebook format over at Feedbooks (in ePub, PDF and Kindle format)

When you're done scaring the bejeezus out of yourself...why not grab up a copy of Amazing Adventures and try to run some Lovecraft-inspired games to scare your friends just as bad?

10 of the Most Nightmarish Places on Earth

 

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Still looking for crazy stuff to throw at your Amazing Adventures group? Check out these crazy actual places! The tagline for the article reads, "Unless You’re Insane Or Evil, Stay FAR Away From These Places. Seriously."

The photo above is The Door to Hell. No, I'm not kidding. Click the link and find out.

Sub-Genres of Pulp Fiction

 

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When folks think about Pulp--especially in a role playing aspect--they tend to think of things in the style of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, P.I., Indiana Jones, or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (if you'll forgive the modern references).  They think of The Shadow, of Doc Savage, of The Rocketeer. The common conception of Pulp in a role playing sense is either noir-esque gritty detectives, masked psychics using the secrets of the orient to track down mysterious criminals, or two-fisted action-adventure.

There are, however, many more types of stories that fit into the Pulp mold than these. Remember that as a rule, "Pulp" refers to the popular fiction magazines that reached the zenith of popularity between the 1930's and 1950's. However, the history of pulp can be traced all the way back to the dime novels of the Old West and the penny dreadfuls of Victorian England. In general, the pulps were named because of the cheaply-produced paper upon which they were printed, and refer to any sort of raw fiction designed to appeal to the masses rather than the literary elite.

That leaves a lot of room for a lot of different types of stories, and a wide variety of writing skill levels and style. The Doc Savage books, for example, are generally written to be easy to read and digest. They consist of short, choppy sentences with a journalistic vocabulary and stories that tend to be pretty black and white. On the other end of the spectrum, works by H.P. Lovecraft are full of flowery prose, fifty-cent words, and heavy concepts of nihilism and cosmic horror.  Somewhere in the middle lies the work of Robert E. Howard, who is generally thought by scholars to have been a masterful wordsmith, who could produce fiction that was exciting, stories with pretty heavy philosophical concepts underlying the fast-paced events, and do so without writing down to his readers while still maintaining a base level of comprehension.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a massive fan of Howard's work. And there's a very good reason why any Amazing Adventures GM should look into it. Howard, you see, while he is known for Conan the Barbarian, wrote in almost every sub-genre of pulp you can think of, from detective stories to Oriental stories to swords and sorcery to weird westerns and cosmic horror to swashbuckling adventure.

 

This latter is one of my favorites, and a genre to which I think Amazing Adventures is well-suited. The stories of Solomon Kane, which take place in the same general era as the Golden Age of Piracy and the swashbuckling tales of the D'Argagnan Romances are set in a period that is rife with possibilities for pulp adventuring. Many of the character classes (excepting, possibly, the Gadgeteer) are well-suited to adventuring in this period with little more than flavor-based adjustments. Pirates, for example, could be Hooligans with the Sailor background and maritime-related knowledges. Constables and Privateers could be modeled after the Gumshoe (the latter also using appropriate backgrounds and knowledges). The future planned sourcebook for AA will have new classes specifically geared towards this type of play (the Duelist, Soldier, Acrobat, etc.) but in the meanwhile, a bit of creative, "outside the box" thinking can yield a pretty broad range of archetypes for swashbuckling adventure.

 

You would need to cook up your own naval combat rules (which will also be included in the sourcebook), but these can easily be modified from your favorite open license source--AA is uniquely compatible with almost every edition of "That Famous Game," and all of the clones of it. Indeed, running a swashbuckling game in AA could easily be accomplished by importing appropriate classes from Castles & Crusades; rules for black powder firearms are, I believe, included in the Castle Keeper's Guide and combining the two sources could yield a rollicking fun game.

Anyway, just a few thoughts to get your juices going for a Monday morning.

Robert E. Howard

http://howardworks.com/howard.htm

 The Works of Robert E. Howard web page.  The idea behind this page is to make available for the Howard scholar and collector, a list of every story, article, fragment and synopsis written by REH, and where to find them. It is not intended to make judgements about Howard and what he wrote, but merely to list everything. Some additional material is included, such as verse books, books about Howard, etc.  Please feel free to comment on anything you find here.  To reiterate one more time, this site is a work in progress and is not yet complete.

In many ways, Howard is one of the grandfathers of pulp fiction. Certainly he is one of the most highly regarded of the men who stalked the shadowy, hallowed halls of magazines like Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, Action Stories, Fight Stories, Ghost Stories, Cowboy Stories, and more.

So few of the pulp authors have gone on to have schools of scholarship built around them--Howard stands near the top of this heap, alongside his friend H.P. Lovecraft. Possibly the reason for this is Howard's sheer versatility. There seems to be no genre the man could not tackle, be it as the founder of the Heroic Fantasy subgenre, a contributor to western stories, detective tales, even planetary romance. And his writing was good, too. In fact, many consider him to be one of the greats, so far as his sheer writing ability goes. That's no small feat in a genre of writing whose hallmark is often purple prose.

If you need ideas for your pulp game, you could do far worse than consulting Howard's stories.

A link to free online versions of his work: http://www.feedbooks.com/author/245

Secrets of the Snake Queen

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ARCHAEOLOGISTS tunneling beneath the main temple of the ancient Maya city of El Peru-Waka in northern Guatemala have discovered an intricately carved stone monument with hieroglyphic text detailing the exploits of a little-known sixth-century princess whose progeny prevailed in a bloody, back-and-forth struggle between two of the civilization's most powerful royal dynasties, Guatemalan cultural officials have announced.

This is totally going to figure in to a future Amazing Adventures module, and I'm using that title, too.

Real-life Basilisk/Medusa Lake!!!

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There's a deceptively still body of water in Tanzania with a deadly secret—it turns any animal it touches to stone. The rare phenomenon is caused by the chemical makeup of the lake, but the petrified creatures it leaves behind are straight out of a horror film. 

Holy crap!!! This has to find its way into a game somewhere, somehow. 

Pulp Star Wars Action Figures!!!

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Okay, folks, it doesn't get much more awesome than these...

 

 

 

Click on any of those pictures, or the link at the top, to see them all! Awesome stuff!

Public Domain Superheroes!

Source: http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Public_Domain_Super_Heroes

Need inspiration for your game? In my last blog I discussed how superheroes are part and parcel of the classic pulps. The site above has over 1,000 public domain superheroes that you can use for inspiration for your pulp game. Click on the picture to go there--it's awesomesauce!

Curious as to how to do superheroes using Amazing Adventures? It can be done by thinking outside the box a bit with the Arcanist, Mentalist, and Gadgeteer classes--I'll be including full rules for that in a future sourcebook.

The Arcanist in Amazing Adventures

Before I get into today's blog, I'd like to mention a few sites you may want to check out.

1. First is the official Amazing Adventures Facebook page.  Here you can find general news and announcements about the game, and can post your own thoughts and ideas.
2. The second is a pretty cool Google Plus group run by the inestimable Joey Mullins. This one has some neat fan-created material on there and could use some more membership!
3. Finally, and most of you probably know this, but be sure to check out the official Amazing Adventures message board on the Troll Lord Games Forums!

Now, onto the main blog!

One of the most common questions I get from people about Amazing Adventures is, "why the Arcanist? How is a D&D-style spellslinger in any way pulp?"

Okay, that's two questions. But the second is basically a re-phrase of the first.

I've actually had people go out on a limb and unequivocally state that the Arcanist doesn't belong in the game. On this point, I have a couple of responses. The first, obviously, is, "then don't use the class in your game." Amazing Adventures is a toolkit game, and the book is pretty explicit that not all classes will necessarily be available in all campaigns; players are expected to check with their GM to see which classes are appropriate.

To those for whom that explanation doesn't hold water, I submit that the Arcanist in the style in which it is presented does indeed fit into the pulp tradition. This goes back to my inaugural posting on the Troll Dens, in which I discussed the various definitions of Pulp. AA covers two basics in the introduction: Literary and Serial, and while these two certainly apply to gaming-style Pulp, there are literally dozens of other avenues you could pursue.

Lest you think I'm just using a blanket statement to justify a pet class, I'll get a bit more specific. 

Comic books--especially those published in the Golden and Silver Age of comics--are part and parcel of pulp fiction. And while it would take an entire book unto itself to do super heroics with the SIEGE Engine, Amazing Adventures does allow for certain styles of comic book to be covered. Dick-Tracy-style comics, for example, can be well done with Gumshoes, Hooligans, and Gadgeteers. And obviously, there's a huge place for the Arcanist in those two comic eras:

 

In addition, in the more modern "pulp" tradition--that is, those novels and tales that mimic the classic pulps for the modern age--we have the ever popular Harry Dresden, who is a multiclassed Gumshoe/Arcanist if ever I saw one. 

Now, in the more classic Weird Tales literary pulp tradition, I'll grant that sorcerers tend to be darker, more mysterious, and are often villainous. They generally appear in the Oriental Tales subgenre and are often antagonists. Those who appear in Western-themed stories are often in Lovecraftian horror stories, and are inhuman and insane. The GM is free to only use Arcanists in that tradition if she feels it appropriate.  

Darkening the Arcanist

I do have plans to introduce in a future sourcebook a darker spin on the Arcanist, with new spells and rules for corruption and madness. For the time being, though, if a GM wants to include an Arcanist in her game and tie magic to a darker angle, I'd recommend simply adding a SAN cost to all spells. For spells up to 6th level, minimum SAN loss should be half the spell's level, and max SAN loss would be the nearest die type. Thus, a first level spell would be 0/1d4, where a sixth level spell would be 3/1d6. 

For spells above sixth level, start into die types for minimum loss, and continue the progression for max. Thus, a seventh level spell would be 1d4/1d6, an eighth level spell would be 1d4/1d8 (I got the 1d4 by halving the spell level and going with the nearest die type. Half of 8 is 4, so 1d4). Ninth Level spells, then, would be 1d6/1d10 SAN Loss to cast.

Those numbers are off the top of my head; you may need to tweak them some to work for your game.

Since this adds an additional down-side to playing the Arcanist, I suggest also granting them the Forbidden Lore Knowledge (Amazing Adventures, p. 56) as an additional Class Ability. This extra benefit (a sort of "true" occult knowledge) should help to offset the down-side and allow you to maintain the normal experience progression for the class.

These minor tweaks to the system should sufficiently darken the Arcanist so that the class better fits into a Lovecraftian-style game, or into an Oriental Stories mold, especially when combined with GM oversight into which spells are allowable ("flashy" spells like fireball, for example, will probably not be suitable for such a game).

Vintage Pulp in the Digital Age

 Image source: http://www.giantsizegeek.com/2013/09/doc-savage-dynamite-covers-by-alex-ross.html

 

If you're a fan of Amazing Adventures, you'll be looking for as many resources as you can find to build your own over-the-top pulp universe! One of the great things about pulp as a hobby--be it gaming, fiction, or what-have-you, is that much of that written in the 20s and 30s is now in the public domain. With a bit of Google search-fu, it's possible to dig up some awesome resources for your gaming and reading pleasure. Indeed, the pulp community is so large that there is even an annual convention called PulpFest that takes place in July, in Columbus, OH.

Even those pulps that are not available for free as public domain works have seen fairly extensive reprint and re-release efforts, so a wealth of pulp fiction is available right at your fingertips!

One of the more expansive resource sites on the Web for classic Pulp is ThePulp.Net. A more recent addition to the site is their fairly extensive list of digital pulp sources.

To quote the site: "Pulp magazines and reprints aren’t the only way to enjoy the works of classic pulp — or New Pulp — fictioneers. Many readers find e-readers, tablets and even mobile phones a convenient method of perusing pulp fiction. Our new digital pulp page adds new links and consolidates others from pages elsewhere on ThePulp.Net."

One of my own personal favorite sites for public domain ebooks is Feedbooks.com. I've downloaded dozens upon dozens of classic public domain fiction, both from the pulp and pre-pulp era. I have extensive ebook collections from such writers as Robert E. Howard, L. Frank Baum, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard (the Allan Quatermain series), Alexandre Dumas, H.G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and many others, all very professionally formatted and completely free. The "professionally formatted" bit is especially attractive, as I've found that those free versions of public domain works commonly available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and others, suffer from exceptionally poor formatting, because these services would rather you bought their higher-priced pay versions.

Another nice thing about feedbooks is that you can, once you find a story you're looking for, click on the author's name and get a complete list of available ebooks by that author. Some authors have clickable sub-listings for series as well (Howard, for example, has a sub-listing for Conan stories). Alas, it's difficult to search the public domain stories--they don't come up in a normal search since Feedbooks is first and foremost, a retailer, but with a scant few minutes of searching the public domain sub-headers (Conan, for example, is under Public Domain, then Fantasy), you can usually find a story by the author you want, and it's worth it for the superior quality of the text.

Since as we all know, the best place to mine for RPG ideas is the deep well of previously-published fiction, the digital age is a blessing in making many of these classic public domain works available at the click of a button.