Ah, the pulps. Those dime magazines printed on the cheapest available stock. They covered the gamut of fiction: crime stories, jungle lords, space opera, westerns, war, and so much more. They gave us memorable characters like Tarzan, the Shadow, and the Spider. The quality of the writing varied wildly, but there's no denying the impact they had.
Pulp Heroes was the first d20 mini game included in the first combined issue of Dungeon and Polyhedron magazines. (That's Dungeon 90 and Polyhedron 149, for those of you keeping score.) It's also a pretty impressive kickoff for the new format.
Pulp Heroes starts off with a brief introduction to the pulps. A very brief introduction. It's only a page long, including a discussion of campaign types. A pretty good illustration of a woman wearing a rocket pack takes up most of the middle column. (The first page of every chapter has a nice, pulpy illustration.) You will need a decent level of familiarity with the source material.
The next section is Chapter 1, possible origins for characters. There is no race; everyone is human. But not everyone comes from the same background. You might be All-American. (Or a True Frenchman, Honorable Japanese, etc. Pick your nationality when you pick this background.) Maybe you're an Aristocrat, or even a Primitive from some jungle or lost continent. There are six backgrounds in all, each of which provides bonuses to some abilities, feats and skills, and a starting wealth level. (More on wealth later.)
The available backgrounds cover just about anything you might need. You can even opt not to choose a background at first, settling for middle-class resources and no other effects. When a situation comes up that a certain background might handle well, you can set it at that time. From then on, you're stuck with that background and everything it implies, but you don't have to retcon anything that went on before. You might have to give up a few things.
The only complaint I have about the origins is that they can't be combined. There are a few that might make sense together, such as Cosmopolitan and Aristocrat. And what about Primitive and Aristocrat? They look to be diametrically opposed at first, but remember Tarzan. He had a Primitive upbringing, but the wealth of an Aristocrat. While there are mechanics for this sort of thing, they don't really reflect the source in this case.
Chapter 2 covers the seven character classes. All the classics are here: the Explorer, the Martial Artist, the Soldier, and so on. There is no Reporter class, but as was pointed out on Wizards' message boards, the Private Eye has the same skill set and abilities. (My apologies to the original author for the poor credit, but I've lost the link and with it, your name.) There are also no magic-using classes. Given the Scientist's abilities, magic appears to have been eliminated by design.
Not all the abilities are spelled out here, of course. You need the Player's Handbook for the Scientist's discoveries, but then you need it for character creation anyway. You'll also need the Psionics Handbook if you want Mystics in the game.
Despite the wide range of character classes, they won't satisfy everyone. Happily, there is no multiclassing penalty, so you have the flexibility to customize your character as you see fit. Want to be the Green Hornet? Aristocratic Martial Artist. Sam Spade? All-American Private Eye. Indiana Jones? All-American Explorer with four levels of Soldier for Weapon Specialization: Whip. Doc Savage? Cosmopolitan Scientist/Martial Artist/Soldier/ . . . I think I hurt my brain.
Here's where another complaing about matching up with the source material comes in. For example, the Shadow must have several levels of Mystic to gain the power to cloud men's minds. But that would give him many, many other powers along the way that he never exhibited at any time. (Well, maybe in the Howard Chaykin comics.) Sure, if you want to clone the Shadow, you can ignore those other abilities, but it doesn't feel quite right.
Skill descriptions make up chapter 3. Only skills not functionally identical to those in the PHB get descriptions. That's not to say that every PHB skill is available in Pulp Heroes, of course.
One very nice touch belongs to multiclass characters. If a skill is a class skill for any one of your classes, it's a class skill for all of them. There is no bother with counting cross-class skill points after first level. And Explorers get Speak Language as a class skill (as well as bonus languages at certain levels), making them polyglots on the cheap.
In playtest we discovered a missing skill: Demolitions. When the PCs have dynamite, they want to use it, but Pulp Heroes does not mention explosives. The solution was provided by one of the players: Port the skill from Star Wars and make it an INT-based class skill for Soldiers, cross-class for everyone else.
The next chapter covers Feats. Like skills, only those feats that need it get explanation. There are some absolute beauties here, such as Secret Identity, Sidekick and Minions. Masked crimefighters and masterminds get game mechanics.
The game cries out for background feats like those in the d20 Spelljammer, feats that can only be taken at character creation. Coming back to Tarzan, a Mysterious Background feat might allow a character to add one benefit from one other origin during play. A feat that increases a character's starting resources by one level would also be welcome. Granted, the greatest benefit would apply to characters who are middle-class or wealthier, and so might be unbalancing for Scientists.
There's a separate problem in the game mechanics that turns up in the feats. A number of feats depend on the character's reputation bonus. Each class has its own, level-based reputation bonus. Outside certain feats, what's it for? It seems as though it would affect certain skill and reaction rolls. Apparently Star Wars has reputation rules, but that's a book I don't have.
In chapter 5 genre conventions turn up. There are notes on playing each background and class, a list of distinctive traits, and assorted other notes on "the Pulp Era." It's helpful but, like the introduction, brief. The table for randomly naming inventions is a classic, though. With a d8 and a d20, you can come up with a pseudoscientific name that's total nonsense, but a lot of fun.
Chapter 6 covers equipment and the money system. Each character has a certain resource rating, ranging from Destitute to Billionaire. No character starts higher than Rich, though.
No item has a price. Instead, it has a resource rating. If your resource rating equals or beats that of an item, you can buy it. It's a simple and slick system that fits the game perfectly.
If you need to buy something beyond your means, you'll need a windfall. The GM awards windfalls as she sees fit, but they usually represent found treasure, payment for special services, etc. A windfall allows a character to purchase an item one level above his current resources. A character can also save up five windfalls, then trade them in for a permanent one-step increase in his resource level.
The equipment list itself is very short, a little more than half a page of weapons plus eleven vehicles. But everything is described in general terms, general enough that you can stick any name onto a weapon. For example, there are only three pistols listed: a revolver, a light pistol and a heavy pistol. The revolver does the most damage, but has the fewest shots. The light pistol does the least damage, but is easiest to conceal. The heavy pistol is between the two in damage and has the same number of shots as the light pistol. Now, these are obviously wrong for real-world firearms. However, they are game balanced and in keeping with genre conventions. After all, the dame with the .25 in her garter is at least as dangerous as the thug with the .45, and maybe even more so.
The combat rules in Chapter 7 follow the D&D standard, with only a couple of changes. Pulp Heroes uses Vitality Points and Wound Points, rather than hit points. For Attacks of Opportunity, unarmed strikes threaten adjacent squares regardless of class, and even though pistols are ranged weapons, they don't provoke one. And characters can ready actions before combat begins, allowing for a classic Mexican Standoff.
The rest of the combat rules are all about chases, especially vehicle chases. Rather than round-by-round segmented movement on the driver's initiative, chases follow a speed/distance/feature model. The relative speeds of the vehicles, the distance between them, and the terrain and other things affect the chase. Characters act on their initiative, with the drivers controlling the vehicles. Every round or two, the GM introduces a chase feature, which can be a change in terrain or traffic, the results of any Drive or Pilot skill failure, an obstacle (FRUIT CART!), or whatever. The emphasis is on action, not on mapping.
The final chapter of Pulp Heroes describes discoveries and powers. Discoveries are spells from the PHB, dressed up in pseudoscience babble. Naming is mandatory. A Scientist does not invent an Erase spell device, he makes a discovery--a scientific breakthrough--and uses the information to build a Full-spectrum Flux Nanotransformer that removes writing or printing from a page. Because of this requirement, the random naming table from chapter 5 belongs here instead.
Scientists gain discoveries by level, following essentially the same progression as sorcerers. They build inventions based on discoveries with time. If the Scientist's resources are high enough, he needs less time. The basic invention takes up two body slots and has 50 charges. Certain feats let the Scientist build things smaller, or mass-produce them, or design them so they don't burn out after 50 uses, etc. These feats increase the effective level of the discovery for purposes of building the items, but as I read it, the only other requirement seems to be that the Scientist has made the basic discovery. He doesn't need to be of high enough level to make the higher-level discovery. He just needs to invest the time equivalent for the higher-level discovery.
Powers, available only to Mystics, are psionics. Chapter 8 lists several first-level powers, but not all the ones available in the Psionics Handbook. And it's the only source of powers from second level and beyond, which means it's absolutely required once your Mystic hits fourth level.
Enough about the rules themselves. How do they play? Well, my playtesters came up with the following characters: an Honorable Japanese Martial Artist, an Aristocratic Explorer with twin .45s ("Lori Craft"), a Cosmopolitan Gangster modeled after Sallah from Raiders of the Lost Ark, a True British Soldier with a condescending attitude, and a Cosmopolitan Explorer who was a professional archaeologist.
I sent them on a quest for a lost pharaoh's tomb, an adventure taken directly from Deep 7's freebies. It started with a murder and suspicious behavior, then turned into a boat ride plagued by crocodiles and bandits. At the tomb, they were double-crossed and captured for use as human sacrifices. High science mixed with high sorcery and gunplay in a showdown right over the sarcophagus.
Diplomacy checks turned out to be more important than BAB in almost every instance. No one tried to negotiate with the crocodiles, of course, preferring to let rifles and pistols do the talking. But the bandits gave them safe passage in return for shared meals and a campfire. Faced with certain death as human sacrifices, the gangster and the archaeologist started a whispering campaign of Bluff checks designed to make the henchmen question their loyalty. It felt right, they roleplayed it well and rolled better, so it worked beautifully. Surrounded by enemies who were former employees, the megalomaniacal Aristocratic Scientist surrendered. Of course he'll return some day.
Overall, David Noonan captured the feel of adventure pulps quite well. There's no "monster list," but then most of the opposition will be other people. For non-human adversaries, the Monster Manual has an adequate list of normal animals, and the occasional prehistoric creature or other strange beast will only add to the more fantastic games. For added fun, mix in Ravenloft.
The artwork throughout looks like it was inspired by classic science fiction, adventure and horror stories. It's all well drawn or painted. There are also ads scattered throughout that sell all sorts of services and products, with nods to the classics. Kudos to the art team of Leanne Buckley, Kalman Andrasofszky and Richard Pace for adding to the feel of the game without overpowering it.
Pulp Heroes isn't perfect. There are probably more holes in the skill list than just Demolitions, and you can't precisely model every classic pulp hero, though you can come close. (But then, show me a system where you can model every classic pulp hero exactly.) But Pulp Heroes works, and works well.
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