Pulp Game Home Pulp Traditions Typical Characters The Ghost Corps FUZION System Downloads Links Life and Death on Cheap Pulp Paper ORLD WAR II marks the end of we could easily call the pulp era and the beginning of the four color era. The cheap pulp paper magazines we call pulps were introduced in the 19th Century as a result of the development of the rotary press, which churned out millions of copies of popular fiction every week. The British pulps Savoy andThe Strand were the original homes of Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle. The Munsey and Beadle penny dreadfuls were familiar to soldiers on the Civil War battlefields. Most of what we think of as the American West is the mythology popgated by cheap, lurid fabrication of Eastern writers who nearly always avoided visiting the location of their stories. + + + We are most familiar with the action and adventur4 pulps that gained their full stride with the beginning of the Great Depression. Romantic escapism through the French Foreign Legion, the imagined landscapes of Africa and the Orient, or historical ballads of heroic sea captains and knights, all gave way to the gritty thunder of gangsters with tommy guns and grim vigilantes. Heroes abounded. The Shadow, the Spider, Doc Savage, Doctor Future, G-8 and his Battle Aces, the Phantom Detective and The Avenger took their place beside the respected ranks of private detectives, war heroes, vikings and super-scientists of pulp's new tradition. Scores of nameless peons followed the whims of dozens of mad and/or evil geniuses, criminal masterminds and foreign agents. For 10c you could know the pulsepounding satisfaction of a rooftop footrace to foil an escaping villian, a wild car chase standing on the running board of a classic roadster or the thrill of hanging from the landing gear of a landing gear of a biplane climbing to engage an escaping spy in an aerial dogfight. You could stroll beneath the racing moons of Mars, discover forgotten civilizations in the unexplored reaches of Africa, Asia or Antarctica, or stand on the deck of the flagship of a great space armada. Pulps faded in significance after the war as television became the dominant mass entertainment. Movies suffered, radio declined and the pulps became small digests lucky to reach a fraction of their previous audience. The writers who drove the pulps moved on to Hollywood, television and paperback books. Something was lost. A place where machiens did not outclass the human, where communication was an effort but not the guiding factor in every police, financial or military action. A single explosion might kill a few hundred people but there would be survivors to seek revenge. A chemical disaster might effect a few square miles. Things happened on a far more human scale and one man or woman would effect the future of the world. + + + While comics fandom was finding a voice in the 1960s, pulp fandom enjoyed such fanzines as Pulp Era from Lynn Hickman and ERB-com from Camille Cazedesus -- both of them labors of love, beautifully presented that kept the pulp dream alive. Role playing has repeatedly returned to the pulp days of adventure as a source of action and aventures. From the beginning, Fantasy Games Unlimited offered Daredevils, Hero Games did a beautiful presentation of Justice, Inc., and GURPS gave us Cliffhangers. Later Blade, Torg, and Rolemaster gave us Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, Terra and Pulp Adventures. The web has been the vehicle to bring us Two Fisted Tales and Pulp Era RPGs and hundreds of connections to sites devoted to specific characters, genres and personalities. Artists who would have been forgotten were able to see the appreciation of their work continue into another century. + + + This is all just one man's opinion, but I think there is a lot to be gained from the clarity of the pulp sense of justice, the direct intervention of the man-of-action and the sense that the villian will not escape without retribution for his latest scheme or crime. Take what you need. Leave the rest. Have some fun. Download an Introduction to Pulp gaming (.pdf file) Contact Page Author