Anybody used this RPG for pulp adventures?
>>92571351Yes and I am consistently shilling this game ever since I've stumbled on it in '14.It's absolutely fucking perfect. There is no better pulp system. On top of that, it is one of the best systems in terms of balance between "so you want crunch or freeform", because it answers that question with "yes". This is also one of the fastest to play and easiest to learn systems out there, with great mass combat rules and excellent timer rules on "mundane" stuff, so even static stuff like "roll to see if you can decipher inscriptions" can be an actual thrill beyond pass/fail outcome.I also can't stop shut up what sort of a monumental tool the creator is, for he first mismanaged marketing for the game (focusing on so-so setting rather than fantastic ruleset, never released the rules alone, but leased them for other games etc) and how he run a KS scam for mere 30k that utterly killed any goodwill this game had.
>>92571826The skill list reminds me of what you would get if you took the 200 skills in GURPS and removed everything not useful for a Pulp action game.>focusing on so-so setting rather than fantastic ruleset,Funny, I was looking for an RPG to run a game loosely based on an excellent puzzle adventure for kids when I thought 'why not just take the dinosaurs out of HEX'?
>>92572019The rule of thumb is that the Hollow Earth and the meta plot are two of the most boring and uninspired elements of the game and should be skipped whenever in doubt. Or just skipped anyway, because chances are, you are going to come up with better setting, adventure ideas and excuses to have exciting shit going than the game itself.
>>92572069>the meta plotStill reading through, whats this?The kids book has a tropical island with lost treasure, MesoAmerican ruins, an 'abandoned' mine and an old Spanish fortress. Adapting this is turning it into something suspiciously close to the first Uncharted game.
>>92571351Definitely checking this out, I wanna run a Lost World campaign at some point and didn't know of any pulp systems except Savage Worlds.
>>92572608God bless weird old dinosaur drawings.
>>92572268>metaplotTo keep shit simple1) You WILL end up stranded INSIDE THE HOLLOW EARTH!2) Terra Arcanum, the secret organisation keeping tabs on everything, was behind [Insert Whatever]3) Atlanteans did [Insert Whatever]4) When in doubt, strand the party INSIDE THE HOLLOW EARTH!The game is so single-mindedly obsessed over the whole Hollow Earth bullshit, it misses the memo people want cool adventure first, second and last, rather than having to read through roughtly 500 pages of bare-bones lore to just do the same three scenarios over and over again. Literally the best and only useful expansion is the one about SURFACE adventures, as it also provides mechanics for bunch of features the core rules lack (like fucking magic, for starters)
>>92573686>stranded INSIDE THE HOLLOW EARTH!This doesn't sound so bad as far as pulpy adventures go. Why is it bad? It's the name of the game, isn't it?
>>92571351Had the sexiest Martian cheesecake imaginable. But was the supplement any good?
>>92574649... because it renders vast majority of the game rules useless and pointless, while locks you in a tedious, repetitive campaign from nowhere to nowhere that gets stale in zero time>b-but you can spice upNo, you can't. The game keeps track of all your shit, so unlike other pulp games, your revolver holds six shots, period, rather than unlimited ammo unless rolling a crit fail. Eventually you will just run out of supplies INSIDE THE HOLLOW EARTH! and that's a pretty bad thing that further fucks the game, as the resolution is Stat+Skill+Gear, so once you cut gear out of equation, your character might be utterly shite (and certain actions can't be taken at all).tl;dr you are better of not giving a flying fuck about the implied setting or plot, instead just going on adentures; the real strength of the game lies in how flexible it is, narrowing it down to just one thing is counter-productive
>>92574735It's pretty decent, effectively a separate rulebook for something completely different. Unfortunately, because it has Hollow Earth in the title, you've guessed it - you can end up stranded INSIDE THE HOLLOW EARTH!
>>92574761>>92574777Kek and nice trips. I get your point now. Why would a pulp game have simulationist ammo-tracking like that anyway?
>>92571351what is it and what's it play like
>>92574735They should have called it Spectacular Expeditions (SEX) instead.
>>92574800Because the assumption is that you will end up stranded INSIDE THE HOLLOW EARTH! and fight for your survival to the surface. And if you do that kind of scenario, sure, it makes sense. Except when you doesn't, the round-by-round bullet count is utterly fucking ridiculous, but there is a sub-rule to make shit simple in the long run.Keep in mind tthat I'm playing this game for a decade now and the only time ammo was ever a concern was when people were fielding custom weapons that were build around gimped mag capacity, effectively carrying grenade launchers that had very low ammo count and no mags to track. Then there are derringers, which are either one shot or contain no more than 4 bullets.Otherwise ammo never really factors in. Not even in prolonged, stranded campaign, because things are so lethal on the side of PCs, it's pretty much one bullet, one dead target anyway.
>>92574804Fun pulp game.Very, very fucking fast.
>>92574649Partly it’s just not very well presented. And “pulp adventure” was a relatively short lived 20th century genre, while medieval fantasy gets to leverage hundreds/thousands of years of myth and fantasy lit
>>92575007Is there a map of the HOLLOW EARTH?
Does anyone have a pdf link? These books are stupid expensive
>>92576217https://ufile.io/f/porzw
>>92576349Love you ta
>>92572019I would fight to join your table. Your players are lucky.
>>92575007>t. clueless retard>>92576217>t. zoomer who can't google>>92577093>t. retard samefag
>>92577093Its a good base for an adventure sao lets hope it works out. The whole series is good fun.Probably need to redraw this 80's guidebook looking map to something more pulpy though.
>hollow earth Isn't it full of Gnazis?I'd like to live there...
>>92577664take a chill pill
>>92573686>never played the gameWe've been playing this on and off for 17+ years. Only one of those things ever happened in our games and that happened once. In our first game. Character went to Hollow Earth and got stuck there--oh, nose! Stuck in Hollow Earth ion an rpg titled "Hollow Earth"!? Curiously enough, like Jules Verne stories long before, our adventurers went on an adventure and got stuck adventuring. ... Until they found their way back.Amazing how such things happen in any given setting.Only a Complete Moron would think that's a negative feature of the game. And lo! ...there's one now!
>>92579257Make better thread then
>>92576217>>92576349More Ubiquity system books in mega folderkHdjQJYK#p-k5h3r7tszQT4VoeZZ7Mw/folder/BW0ESarT
What does it do that Savage Worlds doesn't?
>>92584781Combat that doesn't suckSuperior gear systemMath that works
>>92571351I was intrigued by it and ran a bootleg-Wolfenstein game to try it out. Players were a Soviet Ukrainian NKVD agent and a Spanish Republican Militiaman who took down Not-Deathshead's Compound where he manufactured demonic supersoldiers. Was fun!>>92576349>>92584147NTA, but thanks! I was looking for the GM booklet for a while as I couldn't find it in Da Archive. The other stuff also looks very interesting.>Captcha: NYG40R
>>92587777>NKVD agentSo when did he shoot the Spanish militiaman?
I was reading the rulebook and the internal art really is excellent.
>>92571351It's good. The marketing lead was a retard for tying it to a specific setting though.
>>92571351>hollow earth expedition>cooks the books>takes the money and runsexile game studioayylmao
>>92592170Hmm?
Such a cool game. The Ubiquity RPG system is still alive with Leagues of Adventure and Quantum Black.God I wish it was an open system.
>>92596206being a little too obvious "anon"
>>92600265I didn't understand what the previous statement was supposed to mean
>>92571351Never played, always wanted to. can't find enough players
>>92612759>B-bump
>>92614499You should get that paranoia looked at Anon.
>>92614655>Dead thread is dead>Retard faggot makes a post when it's page 11>PARANOID MUCH, ANON-KUN?
>>92615404>be (you)>extremely invested in the death of a thread>watch patiently as each post rolls in>finally see thread on page 11>achieve what passes for you as an erection>someone posts again stealing your moment> (you)r "erection" dies instead of threadShit, being (you) must truly be suffering
>>92598006HEX always looked pretty fun to me, but sadly the pulp aspect is extremely hard to sell to people these days, just like any interest that's particularly niche. CoC and similar are far easier sells since Lovecraft is pretty popular and well known even among the filthy casual normies.It's a shame this thread did almost die several times. We've had some pretty nice pulp threads in the past. Got a lot of ideas and artwork from them.
>>92578400
>>92616817If Nazis are a thing anon wants there's a lot of hilarious artwork in publications like Real Men, For Men Only, and other publications. Strictly speaking a lot of these are post the pulp era but the style is basically the same. /co/ has also had a long running thread now storytiming various war comics, like Commando, which typically have pretty bitchin' cover art and some of the interior illustrations might be useful as well.The gold standard website for acquiring pulp cover art is https://www.luminist.org/archives/periodicals_index.htm
>>92617245There are a shit ton of Commando comics. You can find some of them herehttps://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Commando-For-Action-and-AdventureOr you can check archive.org. Definitely not the only comic like this, and definitely some useful interior art if you like to flavor your games with that kind of thing. If you're interested in some scifi flavors I'd also recommend Starblazerhttps://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Starblazer
>>92571826Kek, I've definitely seen your posts before anonCould you give me a quick summary of how the system actually works and what in practice makes it so good?Like, what does the test resolution looks like? What are some of the more interesting mechanics?
>>92617302I'm partial to scifi myself. You can also get some decent art from old book covers.
>>92622172If you want scifi you'll want pic related. Got a lot of nifty stuff in it for scifi so it'll save you time and testing on homebrewing.
I'm surprised this thread still lives.>>92615962Honestly, I'm not unhappy about HEX being niche. Look what going mainstream did to DnD.>>92617245>>92617302Hot damn this is some good stuff! Thanks anon!
>>92571351I was invited to a campaign once. I started making a character, and realized my rough and tumble fisticuffs butler had a reasonable chance of taking on a T-Rex one on one. I thought this was funny and commented on it to the GM, who subsequently had a meltdown about how that wasn't realistic, and that's when I left.
Where should my small interwar imagination go? It has to have Spanish/Indigenous ruins, weak/corrupt government and lots of smugglers/spies.
>>92634246Pretty sure the magazine editor just throws darts at a board filled with words like Nazi, rats, whips, prostitute, spies, etc.
>>92634961
>>92634972Doc is a fun one for pulp adventures. Ripping from wikipedia since I'm lazy:>Lester Dent kept current with the scientific developments of his era. While some of Doc's gadgets were simply science fiction many of his 'futuristic' devices were actual inventions, or ideas engineers were attempting to produce. Futuristic devices described in the series include the flying wing, the answering machine, television, automatic transmission, night vision goggles, electromagnetic rail guns, and a hand-held automatic weapon, known variously as the machine pistol, the supermachine pistol, or the rapid-firer. A wide range of ammunition types were used for the machine pistols, including incendiary bullets that smash on contact, coating the target with a high-temperature paste-fed fire, high explosive bullets able to uproot trees, ordinary lead bullets, and the sleep-inducing "mercy bullets".[citation needed] Doc also developed an automated typewriter. Super science is a nifty excuse for giving your players all kinds of toys, within sensible limits.
>>92571351Yes I have. I'm a huge fan of Pulp Adventure as a ttrpg setting, the over the top "larger than life" vibe is a really good fit for heroic fantasy. Plus, pretty much everyone on the planet has seen Indiana Jones so it's a good onboarding point for people new to ttrpg's. If you want rip-roaring adventure it's a great setup. Within a few minutes you can be swinging over pits, punching dinosaurs and riding nazis. Fuck yeah.I also like the playroom floor vibe that comes with the setting. Want spanish conquistadores, pirates, nazis and dinosaurs in your game? You got em.I've run a bunch of one shots, as well as an episodic campaign centred around an extragovernmental team foiling nazi projects around the world. It was good fun.In terms of criticisms, I'm not a huge fan of the system. There are a lot of different skills and if you want to have decent rolls you'll probably end up with about 4-7 of them. I found my players tended to use the same ones over and over, and often got caught out. The number of times I asked "does anyone have athletics?" and got a bunch of blank faces got a bit annoying. I liked the "Take half when not under pressure" aspect of Ubiquity but overall I think there are much better systems out there. Recently I've been just playing World of Darkness rules/character sheets in a pulp setting, which has solved the skill issue for me.It's been pointed out a lot that games are often more fun outside the hollow earth than inside. I'd agree, but it's easy to keep things pulpy. You can explore lost temples, hidden valleys full of dinosaurs and underwater nazi bases to your heart's content. There are also some pottential issues with perpetuating racist narratives from the source material, but I think you can get around those with some creative writing.
>>92634961>Pretty sure the magazine editor just throws darts at a board filled with words like Nazi, rats, whips, prostitute, spies, etc.Sounds like an interesting way to generate pulpy stories/adventures. I wonder if there are enough entries out there to make a good random table generator.
>>92636455Don't forget the nazichauns! ... Leprenazies?
>>92617245>https://www.luminist.org/archives/periodicals_index.htmNot just the covers, do yourself a favor and check the interior art too!
>>92636910
Want a slave? Let REAL MEN show you how!
>>92634961>The Stripper Spy!>Nympho GuerillasIt was a different time. >the sub that sank itselfHas anybody actually read one of these magazines, are they good for silly game ideas?
>>92635098Not just Indiana Jones, this clearly inspired the Mummy.
>>92631407>Game's set right at the tail end of Chaco War>Game's set right before the final skirmishes of Mexican Revolution hold-outs>Both mentioned explicit in the book, so even people clueless about period's history can use it>hOw Do I fIcTiOnAlIZe A wAr?I bet that in case of Asia, you would post 1920s map of Chinese warlord cliques and ask how to do it in the 30s, missing the memo the game starts in the middle of the Long March
What if...Doc Savage teamed up with Bruce Wayne to fight crime?
>>92639245>>hOw Do I fIcTiOnAlIZe A wAr?Why did you reply to my post without reading it? I said INTERWAR as in the period BETWEEN WW1 and WW2. I'm not trying to fictionalise a war. I was asking Anons if they had any good location ideas for a small corrupt imagi-nation. >the gameMy game starts in whatever year I want it to.
>>92639387>B-but interwarWHAT FUCKING YEAR IS 1935 YOU DUMB FUCKING SHIT?! WHAT POSSIBLE PERIOD IS THAT YOU DENSE CUNT?!
>>92639483Anon calm down and stop replying to posts without reading them, nobody mentioned 1935 before your post, I haven't even decided on a specific year yet. I was just clarifying I was talking about the interwar period not a specific war.
>>92639387>My game starts in whatever year I want it to.So which one is it: you struggle with idea of the fictional war in the confines of the game, or you have completely free hand with this? At least decide which shitty path of bumping this dead thread you want to pickSeriously, every single HEX thread for past 2 years is the same image dump for covers, with zero discussion about the game and the most flimsy of flimsiest excuses to post at all, without even pretending any kind of discussion is the goal - just bumps.At times like this, I'm actually glad we've got the week-long autosage
>>92639221Asolutely. That film series also showcases a lot of the classic pulp character archetypes. You've got square jawed all american adventurer, sacred warrior, rougish pilot and hot librarian.I get a lot of inspiration from things like "The Lost World", "The Land that Time Forgot" because everyone loves dinosaurs.
>>92639558>So which one is it: you struggle with idea of the fictional war in the confines of the game, or you have completely free hand with this?Stop shitposting Anon, deliberately misinterpreting peoples posts makes you look like an idiot.
>>92639579Everybody loves German submarines. Secret Nazi submarine bases can go literally anywhere and provide a nice change from caves and old Spanish forts.
>>92639608https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O35p4TSKQXU
>>92639613Excellent, thank you. >The sight of an automatic pistol, calmed them.
>>92639608Session 2 of my episodic campaign revolved around infiltrating an underwater nazi lab. One of my players characters was a Polish psychic woman with a werewolf boyfriend, so they went to rescue him and free the werewolf test subjects that were being created from his blood.Good game that.
>>92639579I think it's a great shame that of all the pulpy films of the last 30 years or so, only The Mummy gained any real traction. I mean, we had attempts at a pulp revival (The Shadow, The Phantom); a modern pulp-inspired comic hitting the big screen (The Rocketeer); a couple of dud Indiana Jones movies; Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which I still think is superb; and Darkman, which despite its modern setting feels like Sam Raimi trying to bring pulp up to date a bit.I still sometimes fire up one of the old radio or cinema serials to indulge, or something starring Doug McClure or with Ray Harryhausen effects, as I find pulp adventures to be the perfect antidote to both modern life and ponderous dungeon crawls. Now, if only we could get a Doc Savage revival...>>92639583I learned a long time ago that posts like this, though kindly meant, are a waste of effort. Certain shitposters are the embodiment of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, and revel in being contrarian and acting enraged just because they get the audience's attention.
>>92639613I love how racist the narrator is. He's even racist against other, inferior Germans.
>>92639696>effeminate Rhinelander>Alsatian swine
>>92639696>He was a German but only a Rhinelander and a commonerI'm stealing this guy.
>>92639173I swear I read something about the "prozzies" who sank a hundred U-Boats, or some shit. Ironically, don't fuck with a prostitute.
An important thing to remember about the pulp world, while women do not suffer penalties on stats based on gender you do occasionally have to roll a saving throw against panty failure. This is 100% authentic to the genre.
>>92639173>69 turncoat nazi butcher-girls
>>92642392>hitler's secret army of american prostitutes!
The Lust Slaves of the Nazi Treasure Cave sounds like /tg/'s kinda game module.
>>92642525The only sensible way around the mechanic is all combat must be initiated while buck ass nude.
>>92642589Alternately The Nazi Madhouse Zoo of Ravaged Women. Anyone want to stat the knife monkeys?
Them wacky Nazis. No clue why they're suddenly the good guys to so many people, they're such fun villains.
>>92642652Each word is more insane than the last>>92642589What colour is feldgrau? Army Man green apparently. Are there any stories leaning into the Thule mysticism angle or is it all wacky sex weirdos in Jackboots?
Goddammit, Jenkins, stop bringing your microscope to the gun battle!
A classic.
>>92642782>Are there any stories leaning into the Thule mysticism angle or is it all wacky sex weirdos in Jackboots?Just run of the mill Nazi rape torture harem dungeons, nothing weird.
>>92643315And sometimes Soviet rape torture harem dungeons.
>>92643347And very rarely a Where's Wally rape torture harem dungeon.
Nazis are popular today.
>>92643402>>92643347>Project Bluebook: Sexy Edition
>>92643415
>>92642525For a British take on this particular trope, see the newspaper strip "Jane" and its spin-offs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_(comic_strip)>>92642722Compared to some of the magazine covers, this could almost be a Biggles book.>>92642782>Thule mysticismI was actually having a similar discussion with a friend (who is an aspiring YA author) about Hitler's obsession with the occult, and how it played into the first two Indiana Jones movies and the tie-in media. That'd be a fun era to be pulp adventurers in...I'm actually not sure what to make of those magazines. Some I know are fiction titles, but others... the covers are like some salacious anti-Nazi version of the Weekly World News, but with a hint of GQ.
>>92643430
>>92643442>>92643358Nazi Rapeboon Torture Dungeon
>>92643449>Is lesbianism a cure for frigid women?Truly asking the important questions
>>92642737I want to read this story to figure out who is using a bow on the Moon.
>>92643442Caption Competition.
>>92643941MFW I see an inferior effeminate Rhinelander
>>92643892https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/SF/AS/AS_1956_09.pdf
>>92644411Thanks Anon.
>>92644461You can find a ton, but sadly not all, of the popular pulp stories here >>92617245
>>92642392see the cover here (ironically the image of the post anon responded to)>>92634961It was actually Roosevelt's elite stripper spy who took out 100 U Boats with just her g-string and her trusty pole. Also>I led the nympho guerrillas of Luzon
>>92639173This has a number of different magazines, including True Men and (heh) Climaxhttps://archive.org/details/20211026_20211026_1014/Climax%20v03n06%20%281959-03%29/
>>92644779The interior art reminds me of Fallout's skill images, but with slightly more racism!
Is it just me or is the thread sliding early? Shame if true. We can have 24/7 slop threads but Moot (who?) forbid we have thread where people are sharing pulp art.
>>92645109Threads autosage after 7 days, following a certain anon's behaviour of keeping his autistic threads up for a fucking month.
>>92645109>Is it just me or is the thread sliding early?One week autosage has been the norm for a while. It was changed months ago.
>>92645109>Retard faggot goes full retardAutosage is in place for almost 3 years now. And it's been described much earlier on, when other anon rightfully called you out on making n-th terrible HEX thread. At this point you are even reposting the same covers
>>92645345>>92645341I honestly did not realize this had been up seven days. If I had I would have posted more covers just to satisfy >>92645602 and whatever bee crawled up his ass.
>>92645109You should try getting the bing AI to make pulp slop. Results can be quite amusing depending on your slop tolerances. I'm happy the damn thing knows enough to try. Plus for bonus points you can share the results with this anon:>>92645602You've been nannying a thread you loathe just to chimp out in it? 4chan /that guy/s are the worst.
Pour one out for the thread. I'm a big pulp fan so I enjoy combining it with my love of ttrpgs.
Agreed. I love that this thread is still going. Love this game. And the system.
Week autosage is retarded. Nobody likes this change other than spiteful retards like >>92645602
>>92648650Some of us do like that the plague of>What's an example of what you just wrote?posts, of which that is a nearly exact quote, can't bump threads for weeks past their due death.
