Steve Mitchell

Yarva Demonicus Etrigan!

The real pulp fiction is any fiction published in the pulp magazines. Lovecraft had stories printed in Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, and Weird Tales, so he was most definitely a pulp writer. As were Long, Derleth, Howard, Smith, et al. It's the gamers who have tended to restrict the concept of "pulp" to the action-adventure brand of pulp fiction. But you could just as easily make an RPG about romances in the old west, college sports, or defective detectives and call it a Pulp RPG. Right now, I'm hard at work on an RPG based on the legendary pulp magazine Strange Suicide Stories. One-off adventures only, though; the topic does not lend itself well to campaign games.

It was "real soon now" when I talked to Chaosium guys at Origins in 2002. . .and again in 2004. I haven't made it back to Origins since then, but I bet I'd get the same answer. Lovecraftian Cthulhu is not pulp in the "smashing action tales" tradition of pulp, although a couple of HPL's stories drift in that direction, notably "The Lurking Fear" and "The Horror at Red Hook." But Lovecraftian Cthulhu is not the only Cthulhu brand; there's also Howardian Cthulhu, much more in the pulp action vein. Remember, when confronted by the loathsome aberrations of the Mythos, a prim New England mama's boy will curl up in a ball and whimper a lot while his hair turns white; but a barrel-chested he-man from Texas will grab the nearest yataghan or six-shooter and charge straight in!

"Long out of print, though someone's licensed it for True20 implementation, unless I remember incorrectly." That's Shadows of Cthulhu, coming from Mongoose Publishing under their Flaming Cobra imprint.

That's very good news, Jason. I was leafing through some Leigh Brackett material last week and started thinking (once again!) about how much I wanted to see Interplanetary come out.

"Location: Plano,Texas just south of the dallas ruins" Wow, did the Earth reverse its axis during the Great Cataclysm? The last time I drove up Highway 75, Plano was north of Dallas.

Thirty-plus years ago, I played a lot of White Box D&D with my local gaming group. Except about half of White Box D&D made no sense to us, so we tossed the magic system and used the one from Tunnels & Trolls instead, and then grabbed a bunch of character creation options and other things from Arduin. That's how I ended up with a werebear-fighter character. I gave him the very clever name of "Ursus." I still have the mini; his adventuring days long behind him now, he's resting peacefully on a type-drawer display in our kitchen.

Well, darn. This was the BRP expansion I was most looking forward to. Hope to see it emerge eventually, in whatever new form.

Something that would be fun to see would be a BRP Supers version of Ken Hite's Adventures into Darkness. AiD is already available in two versions, one statted for Mutants & Masterminds, the other statted for Truth & Justice. But given the Lovecraftian origins of the villains in AiD, a BRP conversion seems like a natural.

This sounds like a lot of fun. I'd prefer to see Chaos & Catacombs as a self-contained rule book (keep the parts of BRP that apply, drop the psionics and superpowers and options that don't), but if the monograph route is the only way to get this project launched, I'll be happy to buy the monograph when it comes out. And it should be very easy to port in the Lovecraftian monsters. I think any fantasy campaign is vastly improved by the addition of Shoggoths and Dimensional Shamblers and Star Vampires!

My eyes blinked and watered momentarily as I was looking over the thread list, and I read the title for this one as "BRP Rommel." So, uh, where are the templates for "Sneering Aryan," Bombastic Latin," and "Stalwart Tommy?" And the stats for the Pz-IV?

"You can die during chargen" Now there's a clever technique guaranteed to get new players interested in role-playing games.

I haven't seen C. L. Moore mentioned yet. Her "Northwest of Earth" stories offer all the requisite sword-and-planet elements, but also add broad crimson swathes of horror. Every time Northwest turns around, he stumbles into another temple to a Hideous Abnormality from Beyond Time and Space. . .or else stumbles across a dimensional threshhold to an Abnormal Realm that is Hideously Beyond Time and Space. A few of Clark Ashton Smith's "scienti-fiction" tales hit this theme, too, notably "Vulthoom," "The Dweller in the Gulf," and "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis." So, I hope there will be some options for extra doses of horror along with all the flashing steel and swooning princesses!

Thanks, everyone. Just another reason to buy the new BRP rules!

Does anyone know if the new BRP rules will have any provisions for super-powers? (Possibly someone who has seen the proof copy version?) Or is anyone planning a licensed or authorized superhero supplement for the new BRP rules?

Alan is 21 years old and has just graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology. He's going to work for a year or two before returning to school for post-graduate studies. And, his hobby interests notwithstanding, he's a well-rounded young man with an active social life. So I don't think Cthulhu or gaming or Lovecraft have warped him too much. (Not as badly as they warped his father, that's for sure.)

My son was pretty tough-minded as a youngster. He was watching werewolf movies with me when he was 4 years old. Watching them, and enjoying them. He was very interested in my gaming activities, and insisted that I run a Call of Cthulhu game for him. So I agreed to "moderate" Wendigo for him. I think what upset him at the end was losing the game more than the shock and outrage of having his brain transported to Yuggoth. But the experience did not shatter his young psyche. He read most of Lovecraft when he was in high school, and he currently games World of Darkness: Vampire and Dungeons & Dragons: Eberron. Although I've never been able to get him to try Call of Cthulhu again. . . .

Hello, I just found my way here through a link at Mongoose Publishing. I go back to first edition Runequest and Call of Cthulhu. I ran my first Call of Cthulhu game as a non-Lovecraftian pulp adventure in Africa, with my intrepid heroes scaling the "Ju-Ju Plateau" to battle Atlantean mummies and rescue a lost aviator. My favorite Call of Cthulhu experience, though, came when I ran Alone Against the Wendigo for my pre-school age son (he was probably about 5 at the time). His character's ultimate fate was brain extraction and a one-way trip to Yuggoth; at which point, he jumped up from the table and declared, "H. P. Lovecraft is a terrible writer who writes terrible things!" My primary gaming interest is wargames (boardgames); but I also enjoy historical miniatures, HeroClix, and various RPGs, with CoC as my all-time favorite. And now to check out the news and the downloads!