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I have to say I was not disappointed.
For those who are not yet aware of tDAR, it is a post-apocalyptic pulp setting (for Savage Worlds, as mentioned above), written by Kenneth Hite. Mr Hite is not an author I have had much prior experience of, but a very good friend of mine speaks very highly of his Trail of Cthulu, so I was expecting something well done based on his reputation alone. What I was less certain of was that the setting would be something that suited me…
Why? I love pulp. But I have never been able to find a pulp game that I have wanted to play. I’m not sure why – I mean, I love White Wolf’s Adventure!, and have created numerous characters for it, and even a piece of fan fiction, but I’ve never been inspired to actually run a game. I was trying to explain to one of my gaming buddies, when I mentioned that I’d ordered tDAR, why I felt pulp games were in need of a good setting. I don’t think I did a good job, but having read tDAR I think I now understand why I think this is the case, and why Adventure!, no matter how much I love the system, doesn’t have the requirements for an inspirational setting for a roleplaying game.
I don’t know whether this is just my personal preferences of if I’m tapping into something more profound on the nature of roleplaying games. I think it also ties into why I don’t usually like licensed RPGs (ed - he says this after getting very excited while awaiting his copy of Dr Who). I think the thing that draws me into a setting is its secrets and the new places and ideas it lets me (either as a GM or a player) and my players explore. In a licensed RPG it is often the case that much of the setting is already widely known. The same thing can happen with “new” IP games too, just not as often. When I used to play oWoD Vampire I regularly ran into players who knew more about the setting that I would have liked (or indeed than I knew myself). For me it is this that usually inspires me to go a step further and write my own setting. My dissatisfaction with Vampire led me to write ShadowFlux (soon to be available as a freebie setting from the Black Orifice) and watching Firefly led me to write Sion: Deliverance (currently in playtest). Previous Pulp settings that I’ve read have done little more than add a few OTT villains and the odd mysterious island in the pacific or plateaux in the deep jungle to an otherwise historically accurate setting. I think this is a particular problem for a pulp game, where exploration is one of the key themes of the game. It’s no good if the GM and players already know what’s out there before you even start to read the setting. Perhaps I’m being a bit sweeping here and a bit overly critical of other pulp games, quite a lot of which I’ve not actually read, so I will get back to the point in hand…
Which brings me back round to what I like about tDAR, and why at some point in the future I hope to run it. But it also allows me to talk in more detail about my initial misgivings. When tDAR came out I was put off by the post apocalypse part of the setting mix, and got the impression that it was a bit more post apocalypse and a bit less pulp. For some reason the setting date, 1948 – being post WWII – also worried me. For me, pulp is really 1920s and 30s, and the 40s feels too late. And this is coming from someone who wrote a Victorian setting set in 1984! I was a fool. None of my misgivings were founded. Above anything else, the setting is very pulp. Yes an apocalypse has happened, and yes, the world has been seriously changed as a result. Yet there’s still a British Empire, there’s still a USA and Nazis, and Stalin and his evil communists. The nature of the apocalypse in fact creates a legitimate reason for all the pulpy madness that you might want – giant snakes, ape-men, magic, weird science devices made from the flesh/blood/skin of Jormungandr itself. The setting is fantastically well researched, with many historical facts inspiring some of the most unusual ideas, and the background of Ragnarok from Norse myth slotted smoothly into the whole background. Indeed, Mr Hite informs us, even the very idea that the Nazi’s were interested in trying to bring about Ragnarok was an historical fact!
In more detail the setting can be seen to break down into a number of different “components”. Each different component provides inspiration games of different sub-genres of the mix. If you want to run a very post-apocalyptic game, set it in the Poisoned Lands of central North America. If you want to go Nazi bashing, head off to Argentina or Antarctica. There are many more different ways to run a tDAR campaign, and each style is presented with a couple of pages of notes and plot hooks to help you put together your own campaign. There’s even a short skeleton campaign where a couple of lines give the inspiration for a series of adventures – or perhaps even and adventure serial. Whilst this is not in as much detail as your classic plot-point campaigns in a typical savage setting book, this format does allow the author to cover the quite wide range of campaign styles you can manage with tDAR without taking over half the book. Personally I’m not a big fan of plot point campaigns – I feel they take over a large swathe of the book and f I don’t like the campaign or want to run something a little different this is just dead space. tDAR’s approach is much more friendly to my type of GM, who is happier (indeed, inspired into) putting in a bit of work to flesh out their own adventures that I know will work with my players, rather than putting together fumbling through something someone else has created.
Looking back over this review, there’s one word that I seem to keep using: Inspire. I think tDAR is inspirational. Whilst the artwork isn’t perhaps the best you’ll see in an RPG, it certainly captures the pulpy feel of the setting – after all, if you’re artwork’s too good, it just wouldn’t feel like pulp! This is a very stylish product, from the setting content to the art, but perhaps most importantly, in its writing style. Ken Hite has a very distinctive writing style he uses in this book. I don’t know whether it is his style or if he was specifically trying to capture a pulpy style of writing, but it certainly captures your attention and draws you into the setting.
To add a bit of balance I suppose I should also say what I was, perhaps, a little disappointed with. On this score I come mainly to the game mechanics. Whilst there is the requisite smattering of flavourful new hindrances and edges, there’s nothing in the way of new game systems. I’m on a savage worlds kick at the moment, and I’m hungry to buy and read, and possibly play, as much SW as I can. As a result I like my savage settings to give me some new game systems so that I can blend them into my own settings or other games to get better mileage out of my purchase. tDAR keeps things fairly vanilla SW. It’s not a big problem – this product sells itself on its setting – but I would have liked to see a bit more in the way of new system ideas. Finally, whilst I very much like the light touch campaign-style/skeleton campaign approach, I think perhaps a solid fully-fleshed out adventure for each type of campaign might not go amiss – it would certainly help GMs who wanted to run a quick one-shot.
Overall, though it is a stylish, inspirational and fun setting that might finally see me run a pulp game, and well worth its tiny price tag!
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