Troll Lord Games

While watching my son play an Indiana Jones game on the Wii over the weekend, we talked a bit about whether he & his crew might be interested in a one-shot pulp adventure sometime. He thought that sounded cool, and as they're all Indy fans we figured everyone could pick things up pretty easily.

I'm thinking Savage Worlds is tailor-made for this kind of thing - I'm looking for something cinematic if not quite over-the-top, relatively rules-light, fairly fast-playing. I also get the impression that there's some published stuff out there to mine for ideas.

My other notion would be to adapt the Serenity / Cortex rules. The gotcha is finding time to tweak those for early 20th-century play - certainly not too daunting a task, just wondering when I'd squeeze it in.

What are your thoughts? And I'm open to suggestions for other games that meet the criteria above.
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"I don't wanna be remembered as the guy who died because he underestimated the threat posed by a monkey."

CKDad wrote:
While watching my son play an Indiana Jones game on the Wii over the weekend, we talked a bit about whether he & his crew might be interested in a one-shot pulp adventure sometime. He thought that sounded cool, and as they're all Indy fans we figured everyone could pick things up pretty easily.

I'm thinking Savage Worlds is tailor-made for this kind of thing - I'm looking for something cinematic if not quite over-the-top, relatively rules-light, fairly fast-playing. I also get the impression that there's some published stuff out there to mine for ideas.

My other notion would be to adapt the Serenity / Cortex rules. The gotcha is finding time to tweak those for early 20th-century play - certainly not too daunting a task, just wondering when I'd squeeze it in.

What are your thoughts? And I'm open to suggestions for other games that meet the criteria above.

Funny that you mention Cortex, that's exactly what I was going to suggest. I've converted all my non-fantasy games to Cortex over the last few months and they're running great. It's a great system for most genres though I don't like it for fantasy or supers. There are several reasons for this but none of them are due to any negative game concepts.

If you're interested, let me know what you're looking for and I might have some already completed conversions or ideas for Cortex.
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Baron Greymoor
Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades Society

If you were inclined, I would suggest TORG. It has a Pulp setting -- The Nile Empire.
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Serl's Corner

i suggest basic role playing by chaosium. quick, simple and modular for whatever addon rules u need.

Looking up "Thrilling Tales" at rpgnow.com could give you some ideas (or you could nab a cheap module)
Linky

I got Thrilling Tales as part of the free PDF promotion they ran last year. It's Pulp rules for d20 modern.


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Jason Braun
Art Monkey for Hire
Three-Headed Troll Art Wurks

Thanks for the suggestions. I snagged Savage Worlds and their pulp toolkits in PDF, as well as the SW version of Thrilling Tales. I'm leery of the whole "miniatures recommended" thing and what looks at first blush like a simplified version of feats & such, but I'm going to ponder.

I'll take a look at BRP.

TORG looks interesting but probably a bit rules-heavy for what I have in mind - as well as for my audience, which is a bunch of 12-year-olds. Not that they can't grok it - these are pretty bright kids - but I've found that less crunch is their preference. (Your 12-year-olds may vary. )

They certainly did wax creative at West End when working up TORG - Cyberpapacy indeed!
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"I don't wanna be remembered as the guy who died because he underestimated the threat posed by a monkey."

If it were me, I'd consider BRP (which I'm familiar with and know would work well) and Spirit of the Century (which I've never played but seems like it might be a good fit).
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http://www.philotomy.com
Lost City Campaign Log

This may come as no surprise, but I wholeheartedly suggest Savage Worlds for fast and fun pulp action. The slick and easy to learn rules are also kid-friendly enough to not be a burden on the actual setting that you're running. CKDad, I've played Savage Worlds without minis and had no issues at all. You could abstract the system to Point Blank/Short/Med/Long ranges and just tell the players where they fall inside that spectrum. Movement doesnt have to be granular in SW.

Savage Worlds is indeed the way to go. Miniatures are definitely not needed.

Don't let the feat-like mechanic scare you off either, as a mechanic they have been around far longer than d20.

Took another look at Savage Worlds and I think if/when we pull this off, SW will be what I use. Plus it has the bonus of being a system other people in my area are playing, should I actually wrangle time for another game and can't talk them into C&C or Traveller.
Speaking of Traveller, BD's range bands is straight from CT - good call, I'll probably use that.

And yes, I'm aware that feat-like things have been around for a long, long time... so have I...
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"I don't wanna be remembered as the guy who died because he underestimated the threat posed by a monkey."

While the range bands idea is nice and simple since it doesn't require special paper, it doesn't take a lot of effort to modify the range band rules to use graph paper to take into account range left and right.
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My small homage to E.G.G.

BASH has a 'Mystery Man' level setting that is made to emulate heroes of the earliest comics like the Shadow or Green Hornet. It works pretty good as a rules light game.

Savage Worlds is one I've been meaning to look into. I like that they have the 'Explorer's Edition' rulebook. Means I don't have to heavily invest to check it out.

GURPS handles that setting extremely well. But if your not already familiar with that system it would be a bit of work for just one-shot. If your looking to stay in that genre definately check out GURPS Cliffhangers. The older edition copies sell pretty economically and have info you could mine for any system.

Other then that there is D6 Adventure. The D6 system (imo) is rather rules light and if you liked the older WEG games then thats what it basically is. Just Generic'd up for use in a variety of settings.
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The Rock says ...

Know your roll!

I should've picked up the Savage Worlds Thrilling Tales when it was only $1.00 during Thanksgiving! Ugghh!

I've got the d20 version of it and it seems like a lot of fun. You're probably set with the SW Thrilling Tales version, but one other one you might want to check out is Forbidden Kingdoms by Other World Creations. I would suspect they'll be making it for Savage Worlds soon as they did so with Strike Force 7, so that will be another option for you. In the meantime there is a d20 Modern version over at RPGNow and Amazon is selling the Master Codex for about $3.00.

Then there is Two-Fisted Tales by Precis Intermedia Gaming, which like all the rest is at RPGNow in PDF.

For a more frugal option of course I second CharlieRock's choice of d6 Adventure - it's a Free PDF at RPGNow.

Happy Gaming!
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