What's A Jeep?

Having recently gotten a couple of volumes of the E.C. Segar's Popeye by Fantagraphics books, I decided to stat up one of the series' most unusual creatures, Eugene the Jeep, who first appeared in the strip on August 9, 1936.

Jeep
# Appearing: 1d4
Alignment: Lawful
Movement: 120 (40)
AC: 5 (14)
Hit Dice: 1+1
Attacks: 1 (bite)
Damage: 1d4
Save: E1
Morale: 7

Jeeps are strange hybrids of wild dogs and alien, fourth dimensional cells.  They're found in Africa or some other exotic locale.  The size of a small dog, they appear as somewhat bear-like (myabe), often bipedal creatures, with longish tails.  Jeeps are highly intelligent, though incapable of speech.  They tend to communicate via body language. Jeeps are able to teleport (without error) short distances--in a manner simpler to blink dogs.  The creatures are also able to pass through solid (nonmagical) objects, or walk on ceilings, or even levitate in midair.

Getting Class

art by "Reno" Maniquis

In planning for my own Weird Adventures game (that I’ll hopefully been kicking off soon), I’ve been thinking about classes. The standard D&D classes don’t map as well to a pulpy world. What’s are archetypal for traditional genre fantasy isn’t as archetypal here. 

Now, this is not to say the standard D&D classes couldn't be used straight in fantasy pulp setting--fighters being the various tough guys, clerics the evil battling priest, etc.--but I think down that run lies something more like Shadowrun, not Captain Easy, Sam Spade, or the Green Lama.  Which is not meant to be an insult to Shadowrun, nor to suggest I'm not doing a bit of incongruous genre mashup myself, here.  I just don't want to loose that cheap whiskey-esque pulp flavor.

I suppose there are two solutions. One would be to add several more classes--Private Eyes, Gangsters, Mystics, etc., but I’m concerned with what the sheer number of these might be, and (a perennial issue in class base systems) what gets to be a class and what doesn’t. Is an ex-soldier just a fighter, while a gangster’s something different? Or vice versa? Or none of the above?

D20 Modern uses an interesting system wherein the classes are mapped to ability scores. There’s the Strong hero, Fast hero, Smart hero, and so on. This strikes me as a potentially adaptable system as it distills the all the various character types found in different types of pulp fiction to archetypes as unadorned as (maybe) the D&D basic classes are for standard fantasy.

My only concern is, does that take away some of the “flavor” and immediate role-recognition that more delineated classes provide.  I suppose there's D20 Modern once again, and the addition of "occupations"--but then have I just exchanged classes for "things that are sorta classes-lite?"  Of course, Warhammer FRPG used a similar sort of system, and I liked that implementation there.

Anybody got any thoughts in this regard?

Warlord Wednesday: Warlord Sightings

I'll leave Morgan and Ashir in peril for another week, to delve into the Warlord crews appearances in other media...

Skartaris and its prominent citizens appeared in an episode of Cartoon Networks Justice League Unlimited.  Airing originally on September 24, 2005, "Chaos at the Earth's Core" features members of the JLU getting drawn into the inner earth by Jennifer Morgan's magic.  Morgan and his allies need help in the fight against Deimos, who has raised an army equiped with advanced technology, and seeks the mysterious "Great Stone"--which turns out to be kryptonite.  It's a well done episode where all the Warlord supporting cast make an appearance.  It can be found on the season 2 boxset.

In 1982, Remco released a line of action figures to cash in on the popularity of Masters of the Universe, and they chose Warlord as the center of this line.  Other figures were comic cast members like Deimos and Machiste.  Another figure called "Mikola" doesn't appear any any comic I'm aware off, but he resembles the Warlord character Rostov, a bit.  Rounding out the line were non-Warlord DC characters Arak and Hercules (Unbound).