1 | Dicey Tales, Dogs of War, Honor + Intrigue, etc to be discussed here » Pulp-ish Adventure films of the '80s » 3/07/2026 11:56 pm |
- Gruntfuttock
- Replies: 17
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Which brings us back to the supplement 'Dicey Tales Adventures No.1' and wicked Gamboa Station. We had some great fun in that setting!
| Lands of Lemuria » I Remember Lemuria, but do I remember Sword & Sorcery correctly? » 3/07/2026 11:54 pm |
- Gruntfuttock
- Replies: 7
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Crimson Blades is a great setting - Elric's Young Kingdoms, but different!
| Greetings, this is where we meet. » Hello again » 3/07/2026 11:51 pm |
- Gruntfuttock
- Replies: 4
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Welcome back, fellow swashbuckler!
| Dicey Tales, Dogs of War, Honor + Intrigue, etc to be discussed here » Pulp-ish Adventure films of the '80s » 3/07/2026 12:03 am |
- Gruntfuttock
- Replies: 17
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Wow!! I'm surprised anyone could struggle with BoL mechanics!
Just for interest, why does the player struggle with BoL?
| Dicey Tales, Dogs of War, Honor + Intrigue, etc to be discussed here » Pulp-ish Adventure films of the '80s » 3/06/2026 12:01 am |
- Gruntfuttock
- Replies: 17
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Please let us know how it goes.
Are you using Dicey Tales for the ruleset?
| Dicey Tales, Dogs of War, Honor + Intrigue, etc to be discussed here » Pulp-ish Adventure films of the '80s » 3/05/2026 10:44 am |
- Gruntfuttock
- Replies: 17
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I feel your pain with players who sign up to a pulp game and want to be a science wizz (totally fine) but make the PC a combat klutz (not fine at all). Been there, suffered that.
And your set-up sounds great. I like the idea of mystery men/adventurer super team.
| Dicey Tales, Dogs of War, Honor + Intrigue, etc to be discussed here » Pulp-ish Adventure films of the '80s » 3/05/2026 3:05 am |
- Gruntfuttock
- Replies: 17
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Yes, the part of Malak was slight and poorly written - you could have left him out of the film and it wouldn't have mattered - but they needed better lines and things to do for the character to do - and an actor that was good at comedy.
Would I be right in assuming that you are planning a 1920s/30s globe trotting game? If so, there are two ways to do this that work well, in my opinion. One is like my League of Nations 'Cops from Geneva' game - a new locale every week. As I said above, the players really liked not knowing where they were going to go from case to case.
The other way was suggested in an afterthought in the GURPS 3rd edition supplement 'Places of Power' (if you want some kind of magical focus to the game). PoP was a list of many (probably too many as they were all covered quite lightly) sites across the world with places with some supernatural myth attached to them - Stonehenge, for example. They also included Atlantis. In suggestions at the back of the book it proposed linking all of the sites together in a single campaign. This is the basic thread of many classic Call of Cthulhu campaigns of course.
But obviously, you can mix and match this. In my League game the investigators 'followed the money' trying to track down evidence that a noted German industrialist was actually the master criminal known as The Cardinal. So they travelled to Itally, France, the UK, Germany, the USA, and finally back to France where they arrested the villain - job done. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island, and the team moved on to other cases for a year of playing time. And then he escaped and returned to Europe bent on revenge!
One of the investigators was a retired jewel thief, blackmailed into working for the law to avoid jail. Which makes me think of Lassiter. The Saint is the classic reformed (sort of) thief in the original source material.
| Dicey Tales, Dogs of War, Honor + Intrigue, etc to be discussed here » Pulp-ish Adventure films of the '80s » 3/04/2026 11:39 am |
- Gruntfuttock
- Replies: 17
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Sometimes people's ignorance of what when before is staggering to me, but I always remind myself that I'm old and grew up watching old black & white films on tv, and I should cut people some slack - the idiots!
Not a action adventure film at all (and not one I particularly like) but Romancing the Stone had a great character to stealing for games - Danny Devito's hustler. That's the sort of sneaky thief writers and directors put into sword and sorcery films as comic relief - and they are generally the most irritating characters in the film. Devito did it right in Romansing the Stone, and I always wanted to see him in tunic and sandles standing next to Arnold's Conan, figuring out when to double cross the stupid barbarian and make off with the loot.
| Dicey Tales, Dogs of War, Honor + Intrigue, etc to be discussed here » Pulp-ish Adventure films of the '80s » 3/04/2026 12:08 am |
- Gruntfuttock
- Replies: 17
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When it comes to 'neo-pulp' films I have a great affection for the first two Brendan Fraser Mummy films. They both move at a rattling pulp speed, and while the first one is the best the second has some lovely scenes. They really capture the pulp flavour, just as well as Raiders did.
The less said about the third film the better.
| Dicey Tales, Dogs of War, Honor + Intrigue, etc to be discussed here » Pulp-ish Adventure films of the '80s » 3/03/2026 3:28 am |
- Gruntfuttock
- Replies: 17
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I've actually not seen either film, which is surprising as Alison loves Tom Selleck! Lassiter is just up my street, particularly as it features the sadly missed Bob Hoskins (playing a copper for a change). I'm sure I'd like it.
Not that I have anything against globe-trotting adventure. I ran a series of games about investigators working for a ficitious criminal investigation unit of the League of Nations where characters roamed the world bringing criminals to justice. Nations who were part of the League could request help with cases, and if a crime crossed borders and it wasn't clear who had jurisdiction, the unit would also investigate. Sometimes however they did go to non-League countries undercover if the clues led there. J.Edgar Hoover hated the unit and would arrest any caught on US soil. A great appeal of the game for the players was that they would never know where the next case would send them.
I'm a firm favourite of not having magic or the supernatural in 'modern day' games. Although I also run modern day monster hunters from time to time. Our Hollywood Pulse games are usually all about monster hunting or mad mages, and Ze Ze Bastide does come across the supernatural in 1930s South America from time to time. However with Ze Ze I use the 'Indy Rule' - one supernatural maguffin only per game.