Pulp Fu is a Wushu variant game designed to emulate the two-fisted and over-the-top action of pulps and pulp movies. It uses Wushu’s patented “you get dice for doing cool things rather than for having skills” system, but adds a lot of clarifications and support that was absent from earlier versions of the setting. (If you aren’t familiar with Wushu, follow the above links to get the basics of the system and my impressions of them.) The only real weakness of the game is that the engine, which works so brilliantly for Hong Kong action, can require a lot of work to keep players in the bounds of the slightly less explosive pulp genre.
Pulp Fu is a 38 page .pdf, laid out in a clean double-column format. It prints out cleanly and easily on every printer I’ve tried it with, being little more than black and white text. There is no art in the book, save the clip pieces on the front page, and so the text-density is very high. Not only does this version add 11 pages over the length of the original Wushu, it seems to have more text per page as well, resulting in a lot of new material.
Pulp Fu follows a similar high-density run-through to its parent Wushu. You start with an introduction to the rules of the game, getting the meat of the material out of the way in a quick 5 pages. These rules are mostly the same as the original game’s, but with some additions that will be discussed later.
Once the mechanics are done, the book goes into genre support. It gives a few pages of moderately useful detail about what made the pulps special and notable, and then heads into ideas and support for making those ideas actually work in game. This includes 6 pages of archetypes – character types with typical traits and genre rolls already laid out – a page on narrative structures, 5 pages of pre-stated villain types, and a hefty section on running eldritch horror games, including the requisite insanity rules, and then 12 pages of examples which cover both campaign and scene ideas for the genre and full scene examples of the rules in action.
The best thing about Pulp Fu is that it has learned lessons from user-feedback about its parent game. The rules for fighting Mooks and Nemesis are now more fully spelled out – along with the new Coupe De Grace rule that keeps PCs from trying to blow their Nemesis’s brain out with their first stunt. There is also a copious amount of support that was lacking in the original game, from character archetypes to fully stated villains and their typical mooks. All in all, Pulp Fu comes very close to being Wushu’s much needed 2nd edition.
A little more practical guidance for using Mooks wouldn’t have hurt this book. Aside from that the only problem with the game is that players tend to use the system to make games of Pulp Fu come off closer to The Mummy than The Third Man, just due to the kinetic impact the game tends to pack. Still, for most people this won’t be a problem – as you don’t generally use Wushu for subtly, and so probably won’t expect the game to support it.
Landscape layout. Need I say more?
If you like Wushu but had some problems visioning how to run it, or simply wanted more game support from the book, then Pulp Fu is probably the answer you’ve been waiting for. It fleshes out Wushu, gives it some more control and bite, and gives plenty of game support. After reading this version of the rules most of my players had a far easier time grocking the rules, and play went more smoothly than ever it did with the original Wushu. However, a few of them still found the game to be too much effort – so if Wushu was too rules-light, to player-input intesnsive, or just to weird for you then Pulp Fu will not fix your problems with the game.
For having simple to the point of invisible layout, good writing, and no art Pulp Fu gets a 3 for style. For having all of Wushu’s goodness, but with more examples, a few clarifying rules, and better game support, it gets a 4 for substance.
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