Astounding Tales 2nd Ed

The Second Edition

Incorporating

SPICY HORROR STORIES and DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE

MINIATURES RULES for FRANTIC ADVENTURE in the manner of PULP MAGAZINES, RADIO SERIALS and SATURDAY MORNING MATINEES

By Howard “Masked Avenger” Whitehouse

(Torn Apart by Giant Apes, 1932

)

.‖..The first man he met with his bare hands was catapulted back

against the wall by a straight left that packed all the fiendish power of a sledgehammer gone mad, a blow that shattered teeth in their sockets and smithereened a jawbone as if it had been made of glass."

Leslie Charteris, The Last Hero, 1929 ―I relived those ages of horror and torment in the green-gold room: I saw again the malignant dwarf – A hashashin‖ Weymouth had told me. ―They belong to the Old Man of the Mountain – Sheikh Ismail.‖ I heard the crea-ture‘s dying shrieks; I saw the dacoit return, carrying his bloody knife.

Sax Rohmer, The Daughter of Fu Manchu, 1931 ―Send Lawyers, guns and money, the s$%# has hit the fan.‖

Warren Zevon, Lawyers, Guns and Money, 1978 Astounding Tales! — Second Edition

By Howard Whitehouse

Layout, Covers, Editing, & Light Housekeeping by Patrick R. Wilson Copyright © 2006 By The (Virtual) Armchair General

10208 Haverhill Place, Oklahoma City, OK 73120-3922 USA Voice/Fax: (405) 752-2420 For other products and publications, visit www.thevirtualarmchairgeneral.com

Adventurously Printed by 360 Digital Books ([email protected])

Bar Stool Ramblings to the Second Edition 3

An Introduction To The World of Pulp ₄ Gaming The World of ―Pulp‖ ₆ SECTION I : ―So How Do Ya Play Astounding

Tales!?‖ 13

―What‘ll I Need?‖— Sets, Props, Cast, &

Villains 14

Characters —Attributes ₁₇ Making Up Characters —Rolling Up

Charac-ters 18

Buying Attributes ₁₉

―Off The Rack‖ ₂₀

Skills— Table ₂₂

Female Characters— ‖Good‖/‖Bad‖ Girl

Skills Tables 24

Comic Characters— Skills List ₂₅ Examples Of Character Creation ₂₇

Setting Up The Game ₂₈

The Opening Scene ₂₉

SECTION II : ―Camera! Action!”

The Rules of Play 30

Movement— ―Legging It‖ ₃₂ ―Pounding Hooves‖— Horseback Riding,

Weaponry 33

Special Weapons, Exotic Skills ₃₄

Snipers ₃₅

Shooting ₃₆

Wounds— ―Lead Poisoning‖ Table ₃₇ Optional Wound Location Table,

―Fists‖: Close Combat 38 Fighting Styles Tables, BRAWLING TABLE ₄₀ ―SERIOUS BUSINESS‖ TABLE,

―Guts‖: Bravery 41

Guts & Supporting Cast, Get a Grip! ₄₂ ―Cut!‖—The ―Do Over Rule‖,

The Interrupt Rule 43

Orders & Communication,

―Drop That Piece, Marlowe!‖ 44

Bound And Gagged, Traps ₄₅

Snappy Dialogue ₄₆

SECTION III : Screaming Wheels ₄₇ Emergency Braking Table, Swerving Table ₄₈ Automobile Crash Table ₄₉ SECTION IV : It Came From The Sky!,

Rules For Airships, 50

Shooting Aboard An Airship Table ₅₁ Aircraft—Knights Of The Air, Aircraft

Crash Table 52

Shooting At Planes Table ₅₄ Rocketmen, ―Untrained Rocketman‖ Table,

Bullet Hits on ―Rocket Belt‖ Table, SECTION V: Weird Science

55

Zombies ₅₆

Lovecraftian Horror ₅₇

Robots ₅₈

Bullet Hits on Robots Table, Nazi Science ₅₉

Creatures! ₆₀

What There Are No Rules For, Ending a

Scene 62

―The End‖— The Big Finale, Cheap Talk &

Lies 63

SECTION VI : Sample Characters ₆₄ SECTION VII : Scenarios,

1) The Bride of the Yeti 76 2) Biggles Defies The Swastika ₇₉ SECTION VIII : Notes, Appendices, And

Other Body Parts, Astounding Titles!, 82

Title Generator ₈₃

Designer‘s Notes ₈₃

Alternative ―Pulp‖ Ideas ₈₄ A Word On Genre—Read, Watch, Websites ₈₅

Figures And Stuff ₈₇

Frequently Asked Questions ₉₁

Barstool Ramblings For The Second Edition

It‘s been a couple of years since the first edition of Astounding Tales! hit the news-stands, two exciting years of slugging burly hoodlums, stealing one-eyed idols from eastern temples, and a few too many mornings waking up in Mexican jails. In that time I‘ve played the game more, and had people I‘ve never met send me letters, telegrams and occasional hired goons to let me know what they think. Since I‘m always interested in positive criti-cism (especially from men with automatics in their mitts) I‘ve made some changes.

First off, some folks said that AT is really a role-playing game, and I should quit be-ing so coy about it. Sure, it‘s light on some of the complexities of back story, plotline and character development that Role Playing Games (RPG‘s) typically have, but if you want to play it that way, go right ahead. I‘ve made some clarifications to the character types.

Second, some folks who are primarily miniatures gamers and want to play a straight-forward shoot ‗em up and knock ‗em down were a little put off by the need for a Director with God-like powers and an outrageous ego. After all, if it‘s just you and Jim playing on the dining room table, maybe you just want to take turns moving model figures and rolling some dice. So I‘ve developed a card sequence system which enables all players to actually play. The Director becomes more a genial host than a megalomaniac creator in this version.

Third, I‘ve made some of the rules cleaner and clearer. Specifically, I‘ve made shooting a two-die-roll rather than three-die-roll process, which makes it even bloodier. Hell, most of the casualties are only extras.

Fourth, I‘ve added some rules for things like traps, zombies, robots and snipers, air-ships, planes, etc. Gotta have ‗em. And enough people said that, while they understand my dislike of points systems, they wanted some way of valuing the different grades of charac-ter, and their equipment, so that Doc Savage wasn‘t overpowered by a busload of school kids and a stray dog.

And fifth (which is what I‘m swigging from right now) I‘ve added some extra

―Skills‖ to the list, especially for our daring/cunning Heroines. And some new characters. I guess that‘s six.

I‘ve added some ideas for playing pulp sub-genres, like Sword and Sorcery and comic-book WWII. I‘d write whole sets for them if I wasn‘t so busy drinking in the daytime.

I‘ve put in some scenarios you can play straight out of the book. And some odd little devices for making up titles, and even whole stories, as if you have no imagination yourself.

Finally, in this Third Printing—already!—some errors and omissions (bad Bourbon scented) have been corrected in more sober moments since. The ―Scenario Generator‖ rules and tables have been ―deep sixed‖ from this printing as they are destined for a more suitable project soon to come.

That‘s all for now. Astounding Tales! rides again. Go play ---

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF PULP I was looking at the cover of a magazine from my grandfa-ther‘s time. Aircraft of the First World War swirled around the sky. The Allied flyers were clean-limbed and determined. The Germans employed a considerable number of skeletons to man the basket of a barrage balloon.

The owner of the magazine and I agreed that there was much about WWI that had been hushed up, and he showed me similar covers in which Oriental Panther Men, monstrous creatures, and a small man dressed like a banker all threatened an American pilot known as "G-8." This was not your everyday hero of the air. I was at something called "The Fantastic Pulps Show,‖ money was leaping out of my pocket, and a stack of cheap novelettes written in the thirties went home with me.

Pulp. High Adventure. Men in snappy fedoras and dangerous dames, with blaz-ing .45 automatics in one hand and a knife in their shoe. Chinese criminal masterminds and their minions. Men of Bronze who carry small explosive charges hidden in their back teeth. Beings who wish to destroy the Earth, or at least New York City, or subdue the populace with mind-numbing drugs to do their fiendish bidding.

What on earth can it all mean?

It‘s the world as seen in cheap magazines and low budget movies from the 1920's to sometime in the 50‘s, when television and comic books took over. Film Noir, hard-boiled novels, Pulp magazines with Charles Atlas advertisements in the back, that sort of thing. A world where most of Africa, Asia and South America are covered by impenetrable jungles, where Southern California is inexplicably dark and rainy, and where most of Canada is un-der an ice-cap year round. A world where down-at-heel private eyes fight vulgar, flashy hoodlums, but also where heroes—often cunningly disguised by wearing a tiny silk mask, which fools even their closest friends—save the world from ambitious mad scientists,

laughably inept aliens and, quite often, the Germans. A world with garish posters featuring a lot of Colt automatics, green gripping monster hands, and women in far too much mascara and far too little clothing for respectable tastes.

"Pulp" requires that you see the world through the eyes of a certain sort of audience. Often it‘s a fifteen year old American kid in 1934; at least, that was who Lester Dent—the writer of the Doc Savage books—was aiming at. What you need are simple heroes, evil opponents, and a good deal of gee-whiz science. Geography can be vague, history ludi-crous, but as long as it moves fast and good wins out, that‘s all fine.

If you were a hard boiled writer—Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, for example—the audience was older, less innocent, but still looking for a world where good people stood against evil, even if you couldn‘t find a doctor who wouldn‘t drug you and lock you up at his private sanatorium. This style demanded strongly defined heroes and vil-lains, although the more sophisticated heroes might be fairly jaded, and have their own bad habits. Actually, everyone has bad habits, as well as regrets, debts and losing bets.

In many ways the Pulp genre began after WWI (succeeding the Dime Novels and ―Penny-Dreadfuls‖ of an earlier time) in a world that was different in many ways from the

one that had gone before. Popular entertainment focussed on the new movie industry, and film stars became a new royalty. Writing styles became brief, slangy, action-oriented. Pulp sounded like Jimmy Cagney. It was flashy, garish, neon-lit. It didn‘t have a lot of class, but it had nerve. And Pulp Adventure Gaming is based on those premises. It‘s wild, frantic stuff, without a lot of concern for realism. Its only demand is to be true to the conventions of the genre. So fire eight times with your revolver, and pass the popcorn. We may not live to see the credits.

Astounding Tales! is a short, simple and deliberately incomplete set of rules for

mayhem, murder and Weird Horror set in the period between WWI and the end of the black -and-white ―B‖ Movie era in the 1950‘s. The game depends on a very fast pace, not worry-ing about details too much, and an attitude that says that heroes (and their sidekicks, dames and others in white hats) should have an advantage over thugs, punks, zombies and other minions of the Evil Overlords. It‘s more about creating scenes of frenetic action where Right Prevails than about a fair game in which the villains—though they may have already reduced cities to ashes, etc—might actually win. You can make it fantastical, with lost cities and sinister emperors, or grittily realistic with mobsters, cops and jaded private inves-tigators. And yes, history buffs, you can play the Russian Revolution or the Spanish Civil War if you want, as long as you are more interested in ranting drunken commissars and strutting-but-incompetent fascists in shiny boots than the details of armoured trains or the organisation of the Falange in 1936. Because that‘s what I am interested in, and it‘s my game. So there.

I‘d like to thank a whole bunch of people if I could remember their names. Matt Fritz, Nigel Clarke, Walt O‘Hara, C.B. Stevens, Ross Maker and Dave Markley for their as-sistant directorial skills in our big games at HistoriCon. Kim Caron for her portrayal of ―Roxy‖ and Jeff Wasileski for his German movie director. Bob Murch and Mark Cop-plestone for their amazing metal figures and general enthusiasm. Bruce Pettipas and How-ard Fielding for actual testing. Ed Dillon for his unnerving knowledge of things that blow up or spray hot lead. Rich Johnson, Legion McRae, Roderick Robertson, Peter McDonald, Harry Morris, Alvin Stuckenborg and Paddy Griffith for new ideas that I‘ve seized on glee-fully. Ed Bielcik for quotes and characterization on The Shadow and The Spider. Bill McGinnis for his Doc Savage knowledge. Mark Mintz, Scott Crane and Mike Creek for their suggestions on comic sidekicks. Dash Hammett and Raymond Chandler for putting crime back on the streets. Most of all, my wife, Lori, for putting up with all this nonsense for twenty years and more.

Frankly, that part still astounds me!

H.J.W., Big Jim's Speakeasy, 1930

All Pulp Magazine covers, photos, and any other derivative graphics appearing on the covers and in the text are intended as a tribute to those thrilling days of yesteryear when adventure could be had for a dime. No infringement of copyright or claim to ownership of

the original images is intended.

And no Pulps were injured in the writing of these rules or their publication.

GAMING THE WORLD OF "PULP"

"Sir, I fear we shall have to sacrifice the gin."

Jeeves

(Busily fashioning a Molotov Cocktail while being menaced by a large animated wooden Tiki statue in the jungles of the Amazon.)

―Jeeves, tell me again why we're in the Amazon."

Bertie Wooster

From The Crystal Skulls of Atlantis, HistoriCon 2003 Pulp can be approached from more than one direction. You can treat it as a historical period, with sensational overtones. You can treat it in the same way you‘d approach a fantasy game, with expected stereotypes, and a consistency that comes from the rules and conventions of the genre: Private Eye, Jungle Adventure, Sword-and-Sorcery, Spicy, or whatever. You can play it as a role-playing game, a miniatures skirmish system or any other way that suits you.

Real Life in the inter-war period was not good for most

people. There was revolution and civil war in Russia, more of the same in China, Spain, and elsewhere. Germany‘s fragile de-mocracy collapsed in Nazism. Mussolini‘s fascists took over It-aly, and made war in Libya and Ethiopia. Iraq and Palestine re-belled against British administration. Most of Europe was dirt poor after the Great War, and what little prosperity there was— mostly in the USA— was undermined by corruption and organ-ised crime. Then the Depression came, and everyone was in trouble. It‘s not a fertile period for heroic, two-fisted gaming, you‘d have thought. In fact, our sources in film, books and magazine chose largely to ignore reality completely. You can wargame the Russian Civil War, Franco‘s attack on Madrid or the Italians in Libya, but it‘s not likely to be Pulp. It‘s likely to be grim and gritty, which is fine, but, well, not Pulp.

There are some real events that offer fertile ground, however. The North West Fron-tier of India was still ablaze with tribal risings, and the addition of aircraft and armoured cars on one side, and magazine rifles on the other, actually gave an advantage to the tribes-men. The French were fighting in Morocco and Syria. The US fought a lot of little wars in the Caribbean, mostly supporting their own fruit companies against the local peasants; of course, the spin doctors turned that around!

Sensationalism was almost the watchword of the brash 1920's when it came to what

people were interested in. Indeed, it almost surpassed itself in the dreary, hopeless 1930's. It was a time of much publicized heroes, like Lindberg, or the traveller (it was hard to be an

explorer anymore) Richard Halliburton. Flyers were intent on es-tablishing records of any and every kind. Gangsters hung out with film stars, and vice versa. They wore $1000 suits in yellow silk, and courted the press. Colonel Fawcett managed to get himself lost (permanently) in the Amazon. The discovery of Tut-ankh-amun‘s tomb—and the "curse" associated with it—caused a wave of fascination with all things ancient Egyptian. Rudolph Valen-tino finishedT.E. Lawrence‘s work of making Bedouin Arabs fas-cinating to Westerners, in an exotic, unreal sort of way. The dino-saur hunter, Roy Chapman Andrews, managed to parlay his genu-inely scientific expeditions into Mongolia into a money-making, highly publicized enterprise. There were cameras everywhere. There were movies everywhere too, and the fifteen year old kid from Iowa could be excused if he wasn‘t sure why Tarzan of the Apes was not out there looking for the missing Colonel Fawcett.

Now, this is "Pulp reality,‖ where celebrity heroes and villains engage in things that are dangerous—often pointlessly so—for public voyeurism. Everyone is bigger than life. Some Pulp reality games might involve:

1) Sidney Reilly, the "Ace of Spies" on his expeditions into Red Russia to contact White agents, and possibly making some dodgy deals of his own. There‘ll be sinister

Cheka agents in black leather, closed trains, and beautiful countesses who are

silk-stocking-deep in intrigue.

2) Paul Dukes, more romantic than Reilly, rescuing the same Countesses at snowy border-crossings, pursued by villainous Bolshevik guards who shoot badly.

3) Tough-but-decent Anglos (all heroes are Anglos; we‘ll get to that later) tackle Latin American bandits, dictators and their minions, using only fists, forty-fives, and maybe a battered seaplane.

4) An Egyptian tomb is protected against invaders by ancient sorcery.

5) Flashy gangsters shoot it out with the cops and G-men, using Tommy Guns and fast sedans. They don‘t run laundry businesses

and numbers rackets like real hoods, because that‘s too boring.

6) Roy Chapman Andrews fights Chinese warlords, bandits, sandstorms and possibly plagues of insects as he does his bit for science, and brings back crates of dinosaur bones.

7 ) Decent, clean-living heroes find themselves embroiled with Nazi agents and their sinister schemes. (It‘s really difficult to imagine Nazis having any other kind.)

8) A pilot crashes his experimental plane in some wilderness backwater, and must overcome rough country, unfriendly locals, fierce animals and at least one broken leg to reach safety.

Pure Entertainment. The next step on from "Pulp reality" is to

add those elements that, well, any fifteen year old would endorse. Take a plot item from the list we‘ve just looked at. Let‘s go with Roy Chapman Andrews, who many have identified as "the real Indiana Jones.‖ Reading the excellent biography, Dragon Hunter, it becomes clear that Andrews used neither whips nor dynamite as key tools in excavation. He only shot one person, himself, acci-dentally, in the foot. His problems with the Chinese warlords were mostly about having the right papers, and were solved with nego-tiations rather than gunfire. He was looking for fossils of many kinds, most of which were not nearly as sensational as the newspa-pers made out. So, we ask ourselves …

1) Why is there no gunfire? Shouldn‘t there be? What sort of bandits and war-lords are these, anyway?

2) Why only fossilized dinosaurs? Aren‘t there any live ones? This is Mongolia, for Pete‘s sake.

3) The expedition had been provided with expensive Dodge automobiles by the manufacturer. Would it have hurt them to put some armour on the vehicles? And mount a machine gun?

4) The Mad Baron—the insane Baron Von Ungern-Sternberg—isn‘t involved. Why not? Probably because he‘s already dead. Revise this awkward detail.

5) The Tomb of Genghis Khan—―Big Genghis K‖ himself. He ought to be involved. Revived, possibly. He added great charm to the 1994 movie of The Shadow.

6) Russian agents. Gotta have ‗em. Red ones, White ones. Probably one of them countesses, too!

7) Rival parties of archaeologists/palaeontologists (who can tell them apart, anyway?). Possibly Germans. Probably involved in that occult stuff, for Hitler. I don‘t care if it‘s only 1922.

Great! So you can see, we‘ve really improved this whole "researchers from a mu-seum" thing into something you‘d want to read about in a 25 cent magazine with a lurid cover.

Pulp Heroes are the next step away from dreary reality. Ordinary heroes with

power-ful fists and Colt .45's are excellent in their own way, of course, but disguised vigilantes with secret identities, and possibly secret hideouts are better still! Think of them as being the forebears of superheroes, with capes and masks but without the spandex and the under-pants worn outside.

1) The Shadow, hero of print, radio, and later on, the silver screen. Black fedora and cape, blazing automatics, dead criminals. He has a vague but immensely powerful

ability to "cloud men‘s minds‖ so that they can‘t see him.

2) The Spider is the next step on from the Shadow, a man whose personal demons have pretty much taken over his crime fighting efforts. Bob Murch suggests that he be regarded like a random artillery round; he arrives through the skylight, blasts everyone around him, then leaves again. In one issue of his magazine, he leads a hobo army against the evil forces that have taken over the USA.

3) The Phantom Detective is an urbane, society man who (donning the little black mask) fights criminals. A bit dull, really, but he remained in print for two decades.

Gaming any of these really just involves taking a gangster game and adding a spectacularly effective hero figure, who can arrive and leave with in-credible speed, shoots absurdly well, and apparently receives no wounds, ever. No problem there.

4) Doc Savage—the Man of Bronze—does without the disguise, but (through training, exercise and really good genetics) has a mixture of super-human skills and fantastic, self-invented gizmos. Doc also has a crack team of five genius side kicks, whose main function is to need rescuing. They communicate in "Ancient Mayan"—wouldn't you?

Doc operates world-wide, so he is an adventure hero in every possible setting. On a scale of 1-6, Doc rates a "9" or so in most skills, so once again, he is disproportionately powerful. However, he seldom kills anyone,

prefer-ring to knock them out and send them to—get this!—his private reform institution in up-state New York. It has been pointed out, however, that Doc‘s enemies frequently end up dead in fortuitous accidents, so it‘s not all trips to rehab.

5) "Operator 5" is Jimmy Christopher, an American secret agent who is the key to defending the republic against the massive invasion of "The Pur-ple Emperor,‖ ruler of a strangely multi-ethnic, but savage, empire bent on world domination. Managing to combine "Yellow Peril" paranoia, grand strat-egy and stupid headgear, while out in the real world were enemies that were far more interesting than the Purple Empire.

What little I have read in this series is more like a military/resistance theme than the usual crime-fighting or defeating mad villains. If you like the idea of America being over-run by Asian Fascists (I mean "playing a game,‖ not actually in real life) with a ridiculously effective hero leading the resistance, this might work as a spin-off variant of WWII

skirmish gaming.

6) Heroes of the Air included G-8 (a fighter pilot/spy who, with his two buddies, defeated the Germans in 1918), Dusty Ayres, and the really bizarre Terrence X. O‘Leary and his War Birds. If you think that air pulps should be relatively straight forward, with machine guns and Immelman turns providing the excitement, you‘d be wrong. In short order, there were the Kaiser‘s zombies, leaping Chinese villains, and incredibly hokey horror and Sci-Fi elements. What you need here is a workable set of WWI dogfight rules, with an addition of quite absurd horror and fantasy elements. Once you have decided that Eastern assassins can, in fact, jump from plane to plane with knives in their teeth, it‘s just a question of adding some extra rules. To counter this extra detail, you can ig-nore many of the real differences between plane types, as Pulp authors had little

concept of actual technical performance.

Pulp Fantastic! Beyond the realm of the masked and

unmasked heroes, who fight for good in the same world that we inhabit (as long as we inhabit it in 1933), there is what will come to be called "Science Fiction" and "Fantasy.‖ This is Buck Rogers (first seen in Amazing Stories in 1928, before he hit the comic books), and Captain Future, who intersected with the present day to save America (a lot) when a president who seems very like Roosevelt calls on him. Pulp-era science fiction is wonderful in its naiveté, all bubble-helmet spacemen, babes in brass bikinis, and monsters with huge staring eyes. Most of us are familiar with various science fiction wargames, usually set in ―techy‖ worlds of "Hard SF‘ or dystopian universes like War-hammer 40K. Pulp SF games—and I‘m only imagining here— ought to have a playful, golly-wow feel to them, with amazing

(read "completely unconvincing") scientific discoveries, aliens that we of a later time would simply laugh at, and a good deal of fist-fighting inside glass bubbles. You have to like that.

The other direction that the wonder pulps took was fantasy, a very mixed bag of Robert E. Howard‘s Conan and others, Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ various worlds, oriental tales and anything both horrific and too big to crawl out of a crypt (we‘ll get to that next). Fan-tasy wargaming flirted with the Conan-type of world in the 1970's, but somehow the savage worlds of brawny barbarians were overwhelmed by the sub-Tolkien legions of elves and Orcs. Time for a revival, by Crom!

The "Shudder Pulps" were horror tales. At the literary

end, we have H.P. Lovecraft and his followers, with the well-developed world of the Cthulhu mythos. These have survived and been built upon to form almost a genre in itself. At the other end, it‘s the grasping giant hands and bottle-blondes in baby-doll nighties. (Not that there‘s anything wrong with that....)

Horror is quite hard to game because ...er... we aren‘t frightened. We all saw that monster come out of a box, and we remember buying it at a toyshop and repainting it from the nasty green plastic thing it was. My most successful horror games have been "double blind" affairs where the players only saw things when they jumped on their characters.

"Hard-Boiled" is pretty much the opposite to the

"wonder" pulps with their proto-SF stories. These are gritty crime stories, aimed at an older audience, without zombies or gripping green hands, and a fairly tight hand on the young women in lingerie. Magazines such as Black Mask defined the private eye/detective genre that we all immediately connect with Bogart, trench coats and rainy nights in L.A. Games in this genre will have a strong role-playing compo-nent, require few figures but lots of cars, small scenes of city streets and deserted roads through canyons. Visibility is shockingly poor at all times, and the protagonists may well be drunk at any time of day. Snappy repartee is crucial. I love this stuff!

Gaming Hard-Boiled Action is essentially a variant on the historical gangster and cop sort of game. Obviously, the Private Eye is essentially a lone wolf, and will need a certain amount of unfair advantage to stay alive. He should be beaten up and left in alleys rather than killed. There will be

femmes fatale, occasional friendly cops, and villains who decide they like to have him

around. We don‘t know why.

The Yellow Peril and other Threats to Civilisation were

tremendously popular. The Victorian fear of Chinese domination (at a time when China was as weak as it has ever been) extended into a world of "Oriental" super villains, and their Chinatown minions. Fu Manchu was copied as Wu Fang and Dr. Yen Sing. The Shadow and The Spider found Eastern adversaries in many stories. Even

Hammett had to feature an Asian villain in The House on Turk St. In response, there came a few Asian good guys like Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto.

For gaming purposes, the Yellow Peril offers not only traditional Chinoiserie, with sorcerers and assassins and men with

really big fireworks, but a whole new generation of Tong gangsters, Eastern Science and a real new enemy, Imperial Japan.

Western Adventure was a staple of the Pulps. This was a West that

somehow segued strangely between the 1870's and the present, so that the whole USA west of the Mississippi featured cars, and radios, and cowboys with six guns and Indians on the warpath. Many of the cowboys sang, as well, and orchestras played from behind a large cactus. My Editor, Patrick Wilson, of Oklahoma City, thinks this is remarkable, as he recalls no rampaging Redskins during his 1950‘s childhood, but I suspect he‘s just a few years too young. A variant of the western is the North-West Romance, which features lone red-coated Mounties taking on mixed breed villains with bad French accents. Apparently biracial parentage was a cause for criminal behaviour in itself.

There‘s all kinds of Western gunfight rules out there. A Pulp version should simply feature more heroes shooting guns out of villain‘s hands, and sudden "Modernisms" like a car full of gangsters taking on Sitting Bull‘s feather-bonneted hordes (who may appear Italian or Mexican, as movie extras might).

The Un-Dead Arisen! Zombies, mummies and skeletons are

really central to the world of Pulp Horror. They were really ideal for the silent cinema, of course. So, Pulp is an ideal opportunity to get the ―skellies‖ out. You really don‘t need an excuse.

Weird Science is at the core of so much Pulp. The period after WWI provides us

with a great deal of what we think of as the ordinary devices of the modern world—cars, radios, working aircraft—so, unlike the world of Victorian Adventure, you can buy a Ford rather than rely on your crazy inventor uncle to build something wacky. However, the very

ordinariness of these things means that it takes an extra level of scientific effort to impress us. When it‘s the heroes doing it, it‘s "super science,‖ with Doc Savage‘s submarine, and the Spider‘s planes, which are somehow better than normal. There‘s not much of the Tom Clancy tech-speak in Pulp; the writers don‘t (can‘t?) explain very much in the way of engineering detail.

Villains, of course, rely on a more malign spirit of massive devices designed to inflict death, and, of course,

conquer the world. There‘s almost no limit to the scope of these machines.

SECTION I : ‚SO, HOW ‘D YA PLAY ASTOUNDING TALES?‛

―Who knows what evil lurks within the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!‖

―The Shadow‖ Voice-over

We pretend that we are making a movie. We aren‘t, of course, but it‘s a good way of staging the event rather than saying ―It‘s like chess, but with toy soldiers and complicated rules‖ or ―It‘s an exact simulation of real events‖—you know, the guff that has caused so many miniatures games to reek of sheer dullness.

The game is played with a Director—a Games Master—who sets up the Scene and decides who goes when, according to whatever seems right at the time. There are suggestions for doing this. Everyone will, however, get equal amounts of time on camera. The players are normally all on the same side—at least notionally—though equally they may play opponents, in the traditional wargaming fashion.

The Director will operate various minions, underlings, walk-on parts and others; he‘ll will try to make sure that these bit-part actors don‘t steal the limelight from the stars, unless he is annoyed with their egos.

Most of the game mechanisms are based on rolling an ordinary six-sided die to score equal-to-or-less-than a particular number; sometimes the idea is that one player has to roll ―to hit‖ and then his opponent rolls ―to save‖ and so avoid the hit‘s effect—an oldie-but-goody rules system from the distant past of wargaming that keeps everyone involved. The Director will give a voice-over of what‘s going on, asking the players ―So what do you do now?‖ and demanding instant reaction and movement. The Director will dictate that you roll against STUNTS or SMARTS or whatever, and you‘d best do it and no arguing, Buddy!

It‘s all about breathless, non-stop action, so we don‘t care for incidentals. Legendary detective writer Raymond Chandler—who began in Black Mask and Dime Detective—

believed that plots move along by introducing more dead bodies, no apology or explanation needed.

EXAMPLE: Director Bob decides that he wants to run a game called ―The Curse of the Lost Golden Monkey‖ (or, TCOTLGM, as you might). His friends Bill, Joe and Sue volunteer to play, because, ―Dammit, it’s the right thing to do.‖ They gather at Bob’s crummy apartment in a seedy part of town, bringing pints of cheap liquor and unfiltered cigarettes, dressed in fedoras and shabby suits (well, maybe not Sue). They understand the deal; Bob will provide an evening’s entertainment, allowing their Characters to wade through other people’s blood to an exciting climax of gunplay and smart quips, and they’ll go along with it, for right now.

―WHAT‘LL I NEED?‖

―

Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely, 1940 First off, aside from the Director and players—anything from one poor sap to maybe a dozen willing victims—you are going to need Sets, Props, Characters, Villains and Sup-porting Cast.

Sets: A game table or board, with scenery, for each

Scene you intend to play out. For this kind of game you don‘t always need whole big tables wide enough to see for miles across the Arizona desert or African veldt; a city scene might need a foot-square board with a seedy alley behind a dingy diner and the back of two warehouses, while a jungle path is really just a track with a screen of trees on either side of it. A loan shark‘s office requires just an office—maybe only 2‖ x 3‖ big—with a hallway and the hint that there might be stairs or an elevator to leave by; you don‘t need to show the bookstore on the ground floor, the laundry across the street, or the small-time accounting business upstairs that shares the washroom. Think about how movie sets are constructed! You can build several quite small sets and place them on the table as separate pieces; in the first reel the Scene is at the hero‘s hotel in New York, when the agents of Dr, Fu Manchu try to drug him and steal the diamonds. This set is the size of a shoebox, and might, indeed, be converted from a shoebox. In the second Scene we are in a Cairo market (2‖ x 2‖ square), and in the final reel we are in the ruins of an ancient temple. All three sets are separate, but share space on the dining room table this evening!

Props: These are exactly what you‘d expect, but in a world of miniature figures the

emphasis is on things that can be used by small people—cars, boats, aircraft—and fixtures and fittings like furniture, crates and barrels, that sort of thing. We may have to imagine diamond necklaces and letters in invisible ink,

since they‘d be smaller than a pinhead in this scale. I have collected die cast cars, plastic planes, boats that cover a wide period, and various other bits and bobs. Many of these are fairly generic—a kitchen table is a kitchen table—and serve in different times and places. Likewise a 1927 Ford, a rowing boat or a small brown dog—but a butcher‘s van ad-vertising a shop in South London serves to show a pretty exact time and place, along with the double-decker bus full of un-dead Egyptians on its way to Marble Arch….

EXAMPLE: Director Bob looks through his collection of models, deciding that he wants three sets for ―TCOTLGM.‖ He selects buildings, trees and other scenics that will allow him to portray a New York office, a beach in Hawaii and a jungle path in some imaginary China Seas locale. For props he decides he needs some period cars, taxis, boats and a Ford Tri-motor prop plane. The Lost Golden Monkey is a small statuette, which may appear, or may simply remain, well,

lost. The players will be allowed, within reason, to pick their own cast, but Director Bob de-cides that the villains will be a cosmopolitan art dealer, a gangster and a chief of stone-age head hunters.

Cast: These are the actual characters of the drama—heroes, heroines, trusty sidekicks,

dangerous dames, everyone who counts as a real person. For each character, you‘ll need a figure to portray them (to really impress, have several

matching figures in evening wear, tropical garb and regular clothes!). Again, I have gathered a group of 28mm scale figures that can be used in different locales, because men in fedoras and women in period day dress fit (more or less) across the globe. Each player will have at least one character to call their own, possibly with some others as friends, as-sistants, lieutenants, etc. Also included are any lesser characters that the Director may either operate himself or hand over to the players—you know, the amiable doorman, the drunken reporter, the mechanic who sees things he shouldn‘t, the cop who never believes what any-one tells him.

The four basic Character Types are as follows:

Leading Roles (LR‘s)—Since we are going with a movie motif, these are the

player‘s own characters. Leading Roles are treated with special respect, and it is under-stood that they cannot be killed unless it‘s an integral—and previously agreed—part of the plot. They can, of course, be taken prisoner, beaten up and slung in the trunks of Buicks.

They can make two Interruptions per scene (see the ―Interrupt‖ Rules, pg 43). They can

re-roll when a GUTS check goes wrong. They always do exactly what the player wants, although they take tests against Attributes as usual, and cannot be assumed to get absolutely everything right.

Secondary Roles (SR‘s)—The Leading Roles‘ companions and ―sidekicks‖ (the

hu-morous, more inept types) operated by the players. They may have ratings as high or higher than some LRs, but may not always do exactly as the player wishes. They take GUTS checks, and—most importantly—can be killed off in the course of a game.

Bit Parts (BP)—These are often simply promoted members of the Supporting

char-acters in combat, and enough HITS that they don‘t just fall over when a bullet wings ‗em. In a smaller scenario it‘s likely that you‘ll need these BP‘s rather than the masses of name-less, one-hit-to-kill Supporting Cast who populate the grand epic affairs.

The Supporting Cast (SC) are the lesser

mor-tals of limited abilities, whose individual fates are of minimal interest to us. Call ‗em extras, minions, un-derlings, whatever. They can serve either as devoted servants to the Characters—in the guise of cops, sol-diers, rebels against tyranny—or as hoods, heavies, and black-hats, the henchmen of evil. They have one life to lose, which they do, easily, and simpler rules

and fewer abilities than the Characters. They tend to run around in bunches, and may repre-sent quite a few more than are actually portrayed, because the union scale for extras means the producers can only afford ten guys where the script calls for a regiment of Mexican sol-diers. A player can control a fair number (10? 50?) of these figures, as we aren‘t really concerned about what happens to them individually.

EXAMPLE: Director Bob decides that he needs figures for his Characters and villains; often it’s good to let players select from several models to pick their own personal figure. For ex-tras he will provide New York cops, gangsters, some hokey Chinese and Japanese types for the Hawaiian set, faced off with a U.S, naval shore party, and a collection of head hunters for ―The Jungle Scene.― He will have boxes of figures available for that surprise moment when it becomes clear that the jungle island has a convention of castaway tourists/Nazi ar-chaeologists/vile creatures from the deepest chasms (etc, etc) which somehow never featured in the original plans.

Villains are those cast members who are—gasp—enemies of all that is decent; as such they

are controlled by the Director or by a player serving as Assistant Director. This is not the same thing as when players compete against one another, since the players are trying to ―win‖ in a much more straightforward manner; we might think that Colonel Rommel is a villain by virtue of his being a German officer, but that‘s not necessarily the case in the mind of the player controlling him. Besides, everyone knows that Rommel is a ―Good German.‖ Now, the Gestapo operative watching over Rommel‘s shoulder is clearly a villain! The key thing about the villains in Astounding Tales! is that they serve to further the plot, provide dramatic tension, etc, but they are not intended to win at the end of the day. They can have their moments of triumph, with much gloating, etc, but in the final Scene, they must lose. If the Director cannot man-age to make them lose—if the players are either grotesquely unlucky or incompetent—then a sequel must occur. Note that, though defeated, a good vil-lain can often make a cunning exit to appear again in another place and time! That‘s why there are so many Fu Manchu books.

CHARACTERS

―Meet the sinister and mysterious Dr. Satan—-the world‘s weirdest criminal.‖

Cover blurb from Weird Tales, August 1935

Astounding Tales! is all about characters. Well,

that and unlikely plot twists, irresponsible behaviour with weapons and talking in a terse, snappy sort of way.

Characters have 6 Attributes: FISTS, GATS,

GUTS, STUNTS, SMARTS, and HITS. This list is

known in AT! as a Profile.

Each of these Attributes is rated between 2 (poor) and 5 (very good)—possibly 6 for Pulp Hero types, maybe even 7 for Doc Savage, who is just one step short of the guy with the cape and the phone booth. An ―average‖ Character would be rated 3 for most things, understanding as we do that Pulp Era Characters are seldom average. For almost every-thing, roll 1 D6, modify if needed, and equal-or-less succeeds. So 5‘s do very well, 2‘s fail constantly, which isn‘t very heroic, I know. Six‘s can fail by rolling a six, then rolling 4-6 on a second roll. Seven‘s can fail by rolling a ―6‖, then rolling a ―5-6‖ on a second roll. (That Savage, boy howdy….)

FISTS—Close combat, with or without weapons. Socking ‗em in the jaw, slapping

‗em with a pistol, poking them with the Sword of Nemedis, secretly buried lo these thou-sand years.

GATS—Shooting with any weapon, including knives, rocks, bottles as well as the

blazing .45s we expect for this genre.

GUTS—Intestinal fortitude when faced with hideous bug-eyed monsters or ugly men

with Thompson Submachine Guns.

STUNTS—Because a chandelier is not simply a lighting fixture. All kinds of

leap-ing, divleap-ing, dodgleap-ing, driving around flaming tankers.

SMARTS—Getting wise to the game, figuring out clues and not playing the sap for

anyone. This includes most kinds of charisma, observation, and anything where having a brain might be helpful.

HITS—Being the amount of damage you can take, between ―3‖ and ―6‖ for a

hu-man, more for robots, horrific beasts, and possibly the larger sort of German. You collect wounds until you have no more, in which case you are out of the game, and possibly out of everything. Some wounds are worse than others, and take away points from other Attrib-utes at the same time as they take Hits.

In addition, some Characters will have SKILLS, like inventing amazing explosive devices out of common kitchen items, or having really nice table manners—that‘s mostly the 1920‘s English detectives, who have no access to proto-atomic weaponry and the like, and have to fall back on the martial art of Etiquette. Being unusually ugly, or lucky or whatever are included as ―SKILL‖ as well, for convenience sake.

MAKING UP CHARACTERS

Sergeant Burt Moran was a tall man with hard flat features and eyes that were cold and dull, like those of a snake. He was that comparatively rare thing among cops, a man equally hated by crooks and his fellow offi-cers. Operators on both sides of the law forgot their differences and came to agreement on one point at least: that Moran was a heel by any or all standards.

William P. McGivern, Death Comes Gift-Wrapped, 1948 More often than not, you will be able to take a basic character concept and work out some reasonable Attributes and skills for them—for instance, a private detective should be good with fists and guns, fairly smart and able to take a few blows, whereas a Mad Scientist might well be weak in everything but

SMARTS, but have amazing SKILLS, and possibly a collection of loyal minions to supply the muscle, etc.

The following section features the ideas of Roderick Robertson of California, who gives us examples from the gangster genre. These are taken from a developing AT! Variant known as ―Gangsters: Mad Dogs With Guns.‖

To create a cast, you may either A) roll up characters, B) buy characters ―off the rack.‖ or C) purchase ―basic‖ low level people—recruits, assorted minions, or punks—and improve them (or any combination). A player may combine these methods to create his cast (see the example, below).

Supporting Cast can simply have a single rating for all Attributes to keep it easy. A 3 would be an average gangster, Tong member, German soldier, etc. Punks would be 2, enforcers, hard men, elite soldiers, 4. You can mix up ratings if you like, though. For instance, sailors brawl well, Gurkhas have tremendous STUNTS skills, and all nameless henchmen are pretty stupid, as is well known. Since any hit takes them out of the game, they effectively have a HITS of 1 because most serious wounds would cause several HITS, enough to make them stop harassing the characters, at any rate. You can make it more detailed if you want, but why? Only automatons, hash-crazed Eastern assassins, giant apes, etc, would be higher. And they‘d have their own special rules. Naturally.

The ―Budget‖ concept is based on a gangland setting, where income from nefarious activities balances the costs of keeping a criminal organisation together. You can also think of it as a points system, but without the dweeb factor (as Little Caesar would no doubt put it).

1) Rolling Up A Character

If you want to just make up a character randomly, roll 8 D6. For every set of ―1‖ and ―6‖ that come up—that‘s both a ―1‖ and a ―6‖—read them as ―2‖ and ―5.― Take the best six of the eight dice results and assign them to the

Attributes you wish, depending on the kind of character you have in mind. For every ―6‖ rolled (whether you modified it or not), roll on the SKILLS Table. The only thing to ensure is that HITS is at least 3, and should generally be close to FISTS in level, because people with tuberculosis seldom hit like Joe Louis. Female characters cannot have FISTS above 4 (although Amazon Queens or other characters approved by the Director might). Indeed, Female characters can use their own SKILLS Tables (below).

2) Buying Attributes

A basic character has all stats of 2. From this base, you may purchase higher Attributes and SKILLS. Bit Parts and Supporting Cast (punks, conscripts, civilians, etc) cost $25 and all Attributes set at 2.

Only Leading and Secondary Roles may use the SKILLS Table. Leading Roles pay $50 for each roll made on the SKILLS it, and Secondary Roles pay $25 per roll. These characters may choose specific SKILLS from the Table, but must pay twice the ―random‖ rate.

If a player rolls a SKILL he doesn‘t want, he may roll 1 D6: 1-3= He must keep the skill rolled;

4-6= He may roll again, but pay an additional $25. The

player may continue to roll until he gets what he likes, but must pay every time, like it or not!

Example: Bob rolls GUN SHY for his torpedo. Not wanting to have one of his best figures flinching every time he’s shot at, Bob rolls to see if he can get another chance—he rolls a ―5,‖ and pays an additional $25. He rolls GIMPY, and doesn’t like the ―improvement.‖ He opts to roll again, and comes up a ―4‖, so he pays $25 more, and rolls up NOT IN THE FACE! At this point, he decides to give up and keep this one. The character figure has cost an additional $50 and not got any better!

Basic Character Costs By Type

Character Leading Role Secondary Role Bit Part Supporting Cast

Basic Cost $400 $200 $100 $50

Plus For Each

Attribute of ―3‖ $20 $10 $10 $5

Plus For Each Attribute of ―4‖

$50 $25 $20 $10

Plus For Each

Attribute of ―5‖ $100 $50 $40 N/A

Plus For Each Attribute of ―6‖

3) ―Off The Rack‖

To buy a gangster off the rack, just purchase one of the gangster templates below. You may purchase additional stats or abilities as above in ―Buying Attributes.‖

All characters are assumed to possess equipment suited to their role (knives, pistols, nightsticks, decoder rings, etc) though the Director may allow each player to select one ex-tra item suited to this adventure. This has to make sense. (Why would the perky platinum blonde secretary have a death-ray next to her Smith-Corona typewriter?) Given the genre, we accept that she carries a .32 revolver in her purse at all times. That‘s only sensible, and Roderick has permitted anyone with a GATS of 3 or better to have a gun for free. Note that soldiers (Bit Player or Supporting Cast) are allowed to have rifles, bayonets, etc, and even the most unwilling conscript has a GATS of 2, yet is issued military equipment at no extra cost.

Roderick Robertson gives an example of creating a gang.

EXAMPLE: Bob’s Gang start with a $1000 budget.

First he rolls up his Boss. He rolls a ―4,‖ ‖3,‖ ‖3,‖ ‖5,‖ ‖6,‖ ‖6,‖ ―1,‖ & ‖2.‖ The ―1‖ and one of the ―6‖s modify to a ―2‖ and a ―5‖, so the dice read, in order ―2,‖ ‖2,‖ ‖3,‖ ‖3,‖ ―4,‖ ‖5,‖ ‖5,‖ & ‖6.‖ Bill needs six Attributes, so he ditches the twos. The two sixes rolled mean two rolls on the SKILLS Table. He also gets an additional $25 to spend on a SKILL or Attrib-ute.

Type Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits Skills

Mob Boss _$225 4 4 4 2 4 5 2 Chosen Skills

Accountant $110 2 2 2 2 5 3 Required to make payoffs

Gun Moll _$140 3 3 3 3 4 2 Hell Cat or Nice Girl

Torpedo _$325 5 5 5 4 4 4 3 Rolls on the Skills Table*

Enforcer _$225 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 Rolls on the Skills Table*

Hoodlum _$100 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 Roll on the Skill Table*

Slugger _$45 3 2 3 3 2 3 No special skills

Punk _$25 2 2 2 2 2 2 No special skills

* May choose (instead of roll) SKILLS for an additional $25 each.

Equipment Costs

Item Cost Item Cost

Tommy Gun $200 Fancy automobile $500

Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR)

$300 Grenades $25 each

Pump Action Shotgun $75 Pistol One free to GATS 3+

figures; others $20

Double barrelled Shotgun $50 Hand-to-hand weapon Free

He decides that his Boss Jimmy ―The Nose‖ O’Donnell is a scrapper, so allocates his dice as follows. He chooses REAL SCARY and BRUTAL CHAMP, spends his extra $25 on a rolled skill, and gets SHOTGUNNER.

He buys an accountant ―Off the Rack‖

Every Mob Boss worth his salt needs a Gun Moll, so Sally Mae is bought ―off the rack‖ and upgraded. He specifically chooses CRACK SHOT and selects HELL CAT from the two choices given to Gun Molls.

He’d like to buy a Torpedo for his gang, but he’s already spent $400 on his command structure. Instead he buys an Enforcer as his ―heavy.‖ He rolls well on his skills!

He picks up some basic hoodlums for soldiers.

Finally, he rounds out the gang with some expendable punks.

Name

Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits

Skills

Jimmy ―The Nose‖ O‘Donnell

Free 6 5 4 2 3 5 Real Scary

Brutal Champ Shotgunner Double-barrelled

Shotgun $50

Name

Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits

Skills

Accountant $110 2 2 2 2 5 3 Accountancy

Name

Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits

Skills

Sally Mae $240 3 3 4 3 4 3 Hell Cat

Crack Shot

Pistol Free

Name

Cost Fists

Gats

Guts Stunts Smarts Hits

Skills

Saul

―The Gat‖ $225 4 4 4 4 4 4 Two Gun Kid

Tommy Gunner Pistol 2nd pistol Tommy Gun Free $20 $100

Name

Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits

Skills

Giorgio ―The Shiv‖ $100 3 3 3 3 3 _{3 Mack the Knife}

Pistol Knife

Free Free

Guido ―Fists‖ $100 3 3 3 3 3 _{3 Brutal Champ}

Pistol

Bob has spent a grand total of $995, and is ready to control his part of town.

SKILLS

―I learned much of the secrets of make-up from a clown named Ricki. To the

grave-eyed man with the long black burnsides who traveled with the show under the name of Don Avigne, I am indebted for knowledge that has made the knife one of the deadliest weapons in my hands. Then there was Professor Gabby, who taught me the principles of ventrilo-quism---while I was hanging around the circus I won the confidence of Marko the Magician ----‖

Calling the Ghost,

The Ghost Super-Detective, 1940

As we‘ve said, for every ―6‖ rolled in creating your character, you get to roll on the SKILLS Table. You may want to pick these skills, but it‘s more fun to roll 2 D6, reading one as tens and the other as units.

Skills Table

2 D6 Roll Skill Description

11 Bomber Can take a second ―Flick‖ when throwing Grenades (page 34) if the first lands off target. (Must ―Re-flick‖ from original starting point.)

12 Pick

Pocket

+1 to STUNTS when trying to sneak anything off another character. Failure means the ―Dip‖ is caught in the act.

13 Brutal Champ +1 FISTS when he‘s in a public place and people are watching. 14 Acrobat +2 STUNTS for all climbing feats.

15 Cold

Blooded

COLD BLOODED--Always fires an extra round to ensure that an op-ponent is down for good. If adjacent to a downed figure for a full round that figure automatically takes an additional ―6‖ wound on the appropriate table. Character is not influenced by FEMMES FA-TALE, REAL CHARMERS, SCARY, and rolls again if another SKILL would be NOT IN THE FACE!

16 Crazy

Inventor

+2 SMARTS when contriving device from whatever is handy (―A tin can, box of matches, bottle of Moxie, ball of string, ---Yes! It will work!‖)

21 Drunk/

Addict

At beginning of each Scene, roll 1 D6: 1-4=―-1‖ each from GATS, SMARTS, & STUNTS; 5,6=―+1‖ to GUTS.

Name

Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits

Skills

―Tommy‖ $25 2 2 2 2 2 2

Baseball bat Free

―Billy‖ $25 2 2 2 2 2 2

Switchblade knife

22 Fast May add up to 3‖ when Running.

23 Flashing Blade +1 to SERIOUS BUSINESS using a sword.

24 Call Me

Sherlock

+2 SMARTS in connection with evidence, etc.

25 Gullible If told anything during a Scene by a Friend, he will believe it after fail-ing a SMARTS -1 test. As soon as the truth is demonstrated--anytime, anywhere--he cannot be fooled again by the same character for the rest of the scenario.

26 Gun Shy All rolls of ―1‖ on the Lead Poisoning Table are treated as ―2.‖

31 Hothead Must attack nearest enemy in running range in hand-to-hand combat. 32 Just Nuts +1 STUNTS when escaping from opponents by leaping / diving / etc. 33 Lucky Cuss 2 re-rolls per scene, but only for actions by or against himself directly. 34 Mack The Knife +1 to SERIOUS BUSINESS when using a knife, and +1 GATS when

throwing a knife.

35 Mean Drunk +1 to FISTS and GUTS, but -2 to GATS when he‘s got a skin full (Director‘s call).

36 Tongue Tied Character can communicate normally, but when involved in an Action Scene (fighting, shooting, plane crash, man-eating gerbil stampede, etc) he can only say two words each turn to the other players.

41 Not In The Face! All BRAWLING wounds require an extra round to recover from. 42 Cracksman Can attempt to open any safe/strong box/door/gate or anything with a

lock on it by passing a STUNTS +1 test. 43 Martial Arts +1 STUNTS in close combat situation.

44 Pineapple Man +1 GATS when throwing explosives such as grenades or dynamite. 45 Exquisite Manners If a non-Leading Role enemy is about to start a fight, the character can

say just the right thing to put him off (prior to shots being fired or punches thrown). The character tests his SMARTS +1 each turn until he fails--then the fun begins!

46 A Real Charmer Character can get any non-Leading Role character to do anything he asks this turn (Director's call). He must first pass a SMARTS +1 test in order to do so.

51 Scary Opponents roll GUTS-2 when facing him.

52 Shotgunner +1 to LEAD POISONING when using a shotgun.

53 Snappy Dresser Character cuts a fine figure and when talking to characters other than Leading Roles may add "1" to his SMARTS when telling a lie. If he passes the test, the listener believes him--until the opposite is proved. Costs an additional +$25 (hey, good suits don‘t come cheap!)

54 Spunky Kid Can re-roll 1 GUTS once per scene.

55 Squeamish -1 GUTS when rolling if you or a friend wound have been struck/ wounded.

Female Characters

Some of the standard Special Skills don‘t work too well with female characters, or at the very least some need rewording.

TOUGH SOB becomes TOUGH BROAD, for instance. Females also have a variety of qualities specific to their gender. In the Pulp world, women are either ―Good‖ Girls or ―Bad‖ Girls. Decide which your character is. For the character‘s first SKILL, roll a D6, either as a ―Good‖ or ―Bad‖ Girl. For the second and subsequent SKILL, you may choose whether to roll on the same chart, or on the standard SKILLS Table. If the result seems absurd, try again.

―Feminine Wiles‖ Table

Bad Girls

D6 Roll Skill Description

1 Femme

Fatale

Character may make three attempts to control one or more male charac-ters per scenario. The intended victim tests SMARTS. If he passes, he can-not be tested again. If he fails, he must do what she wants him to do

(subject to Director‘s approval). Femmes Fatale are automatically COLD BLOODED and REAL CHARMERS.

2 Hell Cat +2 to LEAD POISONING and BRAWLING Tables.

3 Two

Faced

Shows all the attributes of NICE GIRL (see other table) and lasts until she commits some obviously wicked act when he will test SMARTS to see if the fooled party finds her out.

4 Mimic Can impersonate any voice on the phone or otherwise when out of sight. Hearer must test against SMARTS to recognize being tricked.

5 Vamp She can attempt to make any one man become A SUCKER FOR A DAME. This will work on a roll of 1-3, and if it works, it lasts until she is found to commit some wicked act when he will test SMARTS to see through her de-ception.

6 Sweet

Talker

SWEET TALKER--Can make any man test to be GULLIBLE whenever she wants, but only three times during a scenario.

61 Tough SOB/Broad -1 from wounds against him for first two wounds.

62 Two-Gun Kid May fire with a pistol in each hand per round without penalty.

63 Wheel Man +2 to STUNTS for driving feats. Accelerate/decelerate two speeds per action instead of one. (Applies to a Pilot as ―Flyin‘ Fool.‖)

64 Boxer +1 to BRAWLING die rolls.

65 Crack Shot +1 to LEAD POISONING when using a pistol, rifle or carbine. 66 Gimpy -1‖ from all Movement, but -2‖ from Running.

NOTE: Some SKILLS referred to below are found under rules for COMIC

CHARAC-TERS (below).

COMIC CHARACTERS

These can be either Leading Roles or Secondary Roles. The Director may assign one or more to any charac-ters, or one may be claimed by any player with the

Director‘s approval.

These are SKILLS (and nowhere is that term more out of place) primarily for ―Sidekicks.‖ Since they are all negative to some degree, whenever the player rolls a ―6‖ while creating this character, he must pick from the list be-low. Note that the Director reserves the right to assign one

―Feminine Wiles‖ Table

Good Girls

D6 Roll Skill Description

1 Feminine

Intuition

Once per scene the character may have a free ―Interrupt‖ by making any male character back up and repeat an Action—but she gets to Act first!

2 Doll Face All men become TONGUE TIED and CLUMSY in her presence until actual violence breaks out. She is also a REAL CHARMER.

3 Nice

Girl

Friendly characters must always tell the truth and cannot break any laws, promises, or confidences in her presence. Opponents –1 to GATS and FISTS against her.

4 Packs A Punch +2 to BRAWLING die roll.

5 Ingénue -1 to her SMARTS when being persuaded or conned until deception be-comes clear, the +1 on any roll that helps her get revenge.

6 Heroine

Scream

Can choose to scream at times of crisis, summoning friendly male char-acters within 24‖ who must make a free RUNNING move to reach her side, and will continue until reaching her in as few turns as possible.

or more of these SKILLS as part of his scenario.

Braggart—Claims skills he may not actually have. "Sure I can fly a plane/drive a car/

operate a submarine/ make a fire without matches/etc." Players may believe him or not--they haven‘t seen his Profile.

―Wrong-way Corrigan‖—No sense of direction. If he goes to get help (for example), or

does anything relating to direction, test his SMARTS -2. If he fails, randomly determine the direction he will take or indicate—so long as it‘s wrong!

"Errant Knight"—The character will accept such challenges as to "Throw down your gun

and fight like a man!," or similar acts of ill-considered chivalry if challenged. Test versus SMARTS -2.

Totally Oblivious--Subtract 2 from the character's SMARTS whenever his observation

skills are needed.

"Stutters"--Can't relay information for a turn after any exciting activity or narrow escape

(Director‘s call).

Unlucky--Director or opponent may demand this character re-roll one successful (but

non-fatal) die roll per scene in the hope of failure.

Baffled—Confused character must spend an Action simply reacting whenever a new

ele-ment appears in a scenario.

Clumsy (Character must have STUNTS of 3 or less)—Director or opponent may demand

STUNTS test once a scene for tripping, dropping things, etc.

Technically Inept—When working with any sort of technology, a failed roll leads to the

worst possible (non-fatal) outcome (―What do you mean the bomb's timer sped up?!‖)

―Absentminded Professor‖--Curious about everything to the

point of ignoring the business at hand. Always wandering off chasing a rare butterfly, poking around the mysterious but very dangerous equipment to see how it works, always touching the "Wet Paint" sign to see if it is, etc.

―A Sucker For A Dame‖—Will let any woman talk her way out

of the room, get him to put down his weapon, remove her hand-cuffs, etc, if he fails a SMARTS -1 test.