Basically this would cover the whimsical, fantastical, and often violent world of Thimble Theatre (later Popeye) and the Fleischer Popeye cartoon. A lot of fist-fights, fewer guns. This would also cover Little Orphan Annie, various kid gang comics, and (on the more violent end) Dick Tracy.
Update: Still nothing, really. Acheron Game's Helluva Town does a sort of Roger Rabbit or Cool World sort of setting, so references things like Popeye, but it's not quite the same thing.
Little creatures hiding in the big world. Think The Borrowers, The Littles, and Fraggle Rock.
Update: Some progress here! Household by Two Little Mice does this sort of thing, though from its specifically about fairies. There's also a game called Pixies and one called Under the Floorboards that specifically namechecks The Borrowers.
Scooby Doo is probably the most well-known example, but you've got several Hanna-Barbera returns to the same concept. Ditch weird pet/side kick, and you've got The Three Investigators, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys.
Update: There's Meddling Kids I mentioned in 2019, and then there's The Mystery Business that debuted in 2024.
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I've written about this one before--and Richard has run it. Still needs a game, though.
Update: Still just the board game, so far as I know.
6 comments:
For kid detectives there is something directly targeted at that: Evil Hat Games _Bubblegumshoe_
https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/professorprof/bubblegumshoe/
Kid mystery solvers: also Bubblegumshoe?
Humorous adventure pulp: The Troubleshooters is close, although it’s focused on clair ligne comics (Tintin and kindred).
Wacky Racers feels like it's waiting on a game engine that actually does handle chases as the primary game mechanic, not one where it's an add-on to the combat rules. I would also encourage an airborne version so we can get in Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines and the deranged contraptions from the Stop That Pigeon cartoon. Yes, I know that's not it's real name, but I'm not typing two stupidly long names with "Flying Machines" in them. :)
Humorous Adventure Pulp could probably also draw from Talespin, in keeping with what appears to be an aeronautical theme here. As lighthearted post-pulp pulps go, that's one of the best.
Kid Mystery Solvers could probably be stretched to cover my beloved Tom Swift Junior series, with the "mysteries" being a combination of overcoming technical problems in developing new inventions and actual covert sabotage/corporate espionage. Also had a lot of travel to "exotic" places, which Scooby (at times) and Josie & the Pussycats featured. Designing a system that could handle that as well as Jabberjaw would be a bit of an accomplishment.
Good addition!
I would argue that Humorous Adventure Pulp is the genre of Helmgast's The Troubleshooters - just with the official setting set in the sixties - but that may be because I decided it is and outlined a 1930s-ish setting that I imagined drawn in style of someone like E. C. Segar or Billy DeBeck...
Absolutely! It even echoes the “fistfights over gunfights” point in the text!
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