Weighing in at a beefy 166 pages, TWO-FISTED TALES wants to be the one-stop answer to all things pulp, and it largely succeeds in this regard. Detailed character generation rules allow players to make everything from a gadget-master to a lord of the jungle. The most common character types are enumerated as “templates,” thus enabling a quick start. These templates can be tweaked quite a bit to allow for variant player tastes, but for those who want something just so, the Everyman is provided. The Everyman is simply a blank slate, a generic character who can be turned into almost anything, and thus serves in the stead of a ground-up char-gen system. However, most players will find what they want among the templates. And when a game has taken the time to mention a character like comic strip veteran Mandrake the Magician, it’s pretty clear no stone has been left unturned.
Similarly, when it comes to covering all possible situations in the rules, TWO-FISTED TALES aims for completeness. Using an unusual combination of playing cards and dice – a system that will take some players some time to get used to, but is surprisingly solid – TWO-FISTED TALES has gone out of its way to simulate everything from a bout of fisticuffs to a mid-air combat between heroes on jet packs and zeppelin-piloting Nazis. TWO-FISTED TALES has managed to do all of this without bogging the game down in endless rules. Author Stevens hasn’t forgotten that pacing is one of the most important pulp adventure elements.
TWO-FISTED TALES’ approach to superscience gadgets is refreshingly simple. Utilizing everything from a de-evolution ray to a space helmet involves the same basic system as one might use to operate a car. Magic, martial arts, and trained animals (To me, Tantor!) follow this “less is more” philosophy, which means the game can get down to packing in more stuff without wasting time with brain-deadening rules.
The GM’s section of TWO-FISTED TALES is crammed with goodies, from random adventure/encounter tables, to pre-made NPCs and solid advice on mastering the genre. Heck, even the index is surprisingly well done. In fact, the only place TWO-FISTED TALES falls down is in the presentation. After a stunning Christopher Shy cover, the interior art simply doesn’t satisfy. Matt Drake has done a great job with layout, but some of the illustrations are distractingly poor: the Wild Man template (think Tarzan) is graced with what looks like a jungle Jesus, and a recurring placeholder image of two bullets appears at first blush to be a pair of marital aids. Set this disappointment aside, though, and one has a top-notch game with a lot of heart.
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