As with several genres adapted to rpgs, pulp gaming presents a little bit of a problem going from the inspirational fiction to the gaming table in that pulp fiction/movies/comics tend to be about solo heroes or a primary hero and sidekicks but rpgs tend to be about a group of equals. It's perhaps reasonable to play Indy plus Short Round and Sallah or even Doc Savage plus his Fabulous Five for one story arc, but it might not be as desirable for a long campaign.
On the other hand, a group composed of Indiana Jones, Jake Cutter (from Tales of the Gold Monkey), and Sam Spade may be fine for some, but seems to be less satisfying to me for a long-term campaign, because the characters don't see cohesive.
The solution seems to me to build a group wherein the characters are roughly equal, but each has their own specialty, and they have the same theme/subgenre. Sort of like if the Fabulous Five didn't have a Doc Savage to outshine them. There are really more examples of this in comics rather than the pulps (though that may just be my knowledge of the pulps is less). Check out the Challengers of the Unknown:
Having the same subgenre is important for keeping power levels similar. Having the same sort of theme is important for helping support their reason for staying together as a group. Of course, both of these can be stretched a bit.
Sometimes teams are brought together or forced to stay together by an outside force. DC Comics' The Secret Six and Suicide Squad (either the Silver Age nonsupers version or the later supers versions) are examples of this, but so is the more eccentrically charactered League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. For that matter, the Avengers, particularly in the Ultimate Universe and the CMU start out like this too.
4 comments:
Mignola's BPRD/Hellboy stories are another example. There's still a fair bit of power disparity even when Hellboy is largely out of the picture, but (given the multiple RPGs based on his work) obviously not beyond the scope of gaming. They're very pulpy (especially when Lobster Johnson shows up) with a weird tales vibe.
Atomic Robo and its spinoffs are similar. The "action scientist" staff of Tesladyne are well below Robo himself in terms of power, but they do stuff on their own often enough to balance that out for the tabletop. Much like Doc Savage, if you treat the powerhouses (Doc, Hellboy, Robo) as NPCs who aren't always available the rest of the characters are quite viable on their own.
I did my own version of the "weird investigations" team for the Sentinel Comics RPG over here:
https://villainyunpublished.blogspot.com/2022/11/team-paragon-investigators-of-exotic.html
Very diverse set of characters with a unifying theme of all needing Doc Paragon (a loose Doc Savage expy) and his reputation to keep the government off their backs. Their respective power levels are closer to one another than most such teams, so they're more like the Fantastic Four when they're in "explorer" mode, something that's come and gone over the years.
I can't help but think of Buffy & the Scoobies, or Moya's crew on Farscape, or the Serenity crew...
They're all kinda neo-pulp.
Also, The Secret Six's Mockingbird sure is a total dick, no?
I love a mention of the Challengers of the Unknown. Never gets enough love.
Glad to oblige!
Post a Comment