Pulp FATE Game - Under Construction

[Lord_Steelhand]

I am presently working-up a fantastical Pulp game that will use FATE as the system.  The group consists of me - a very experienced player who has been reading Forge theory for some months now with an eye towards trying my hand at official, intentional Narr (instead of a hidden tendancy for theme in my games).  It also has four other players fairly inexperienced in gaming and certainly not theorists in the hobby.  Of them, only I have done extensive reading and such in the Pulp genre, but some of the players have some background in the era.

The concept of the game world is the early 1930's - war has yet to appear, but a ghost of it looms near.  An ancient evil picks now as the inevitable pefect time for launching itself into the world at large.  Mystical powers and proto-Science hide in the Shadows between the neon palaces of America.  Deep in the heart of Asia, a mountain interior hides a group whose ancient goal is the birth of the End Times.  In Europe, nationalism in close quarters is soon to develop into complete destruction - hiding the work of hidden colleges of Those That Know.

Into this maelstrom come the players, operatives of a go-anywhere, do anything adventurers for hire agency in San Fransisco.  The Agency is pulled into the fray as it is learned that one of them is the Fated Guardian of our World.

The premise of the game is "When Freedom and Law come into conflict, which do you choose?"  The game will feature many choices where the players see forces of Law and Reason trying to do the right thing, but crushing the magic that lies in spontineity and creative freedom.  They will also see places and situations where lawlessness and superstition lead to just as much degradation.  

I want, in the nature of the Pulps, to present clear choices, but not do the Pulp standard of having their be a clearcut "right choice".  I hope this will work.  I defenately will use the Good vs Evil fight to showcase the standard Pulp morality, but I want to use the currents of Law and Chaos as my thematic "wiggle room".  The age was filled with Progress and Science, as well as chaotic political change with an eye towards a new age.  There is just as much hopeful Chaos and grinding Authority as there is cancerous Change and  sheltering Order.

The goal is to run a Pulp version of Heroquest.  The concept thrives on larger than life characters who bristle with secrets and mysetrious sounding skills, contacts, and aspects that will become all-too-clearly involved in the battle for the future of the world, as the game progresses.  I also want to tailor what is going on in the game to character aspects and background, so the PCs are "in the know" fairly quickly...

Each phase will be equal to a 3 year period of time leading up to the present, with a total of 6 phases before play.  For each phase, I will read out a brief real-world summary of the time period and then add some possible setting backdrops given the genre.  The final phase is the one that lands them in the Agency, which was founded by a wealthy benefactor, if one of the PCs doesn't want to be "Daddy Warbucks" for the Enterprise.

Once the Agency is prepared, and I have an idea who the PCs are, I will begin to make plans on the Relationship Map of the conspiracies and the major NPCs driving them.  I want the game to be globe-trotting, so I will make sure the R-map spans the globe with lots of contacts and nemesis holdings being spread over the canvas of the Pulp Globe.

Finally, I will write up some Bangs for each character (keeping any negative Aspects in mind as possible involuntary invocations).  I think this plan gives me the solid basis for a very cool game with both Pulp and Narr style.

Comments most welcome.

<edited for spelling and to further develop theme>

[ScottM]

It seems to be time to lure in some players & provide some pretty & inspiring handout to encourage the creation of strong characters who'll fit the world and excite everyone around the table.

Sounds good so far.  I look forward to hearing about how it goes.
-- Scott

[iago]

Fate and Pulp just seem to end up together.  Rob and I are currently working on turning his Pulp game (using some new rules for Fate that we're planning on using in the Dresden Files RPG) into a low-cost PDF.

Sounds like you're doing some great stuff with it all.  Keep up the good work!

[Rob Donoghue]

Heh.  In fact, a lot of the elements I'm using for the Pulp game I'm running are very similar.  I'm starting a little earlier (1922) so The Great War is still pretty fresh on the mind, and the central organization is a gentleman's club rather than an agency, but I imagine it ends up fillign the same purposes.

I do have the pitch for the game http://www.logrus.com/~moose/century.pdf">here and possibly more interestingly the character sheets http://www.logrus.com/~moose/charsum.pdf">here.  I wrote up soem session summaries on the two sessiosn we've had so far as well (http://www.logrus.com/~moose/fearfulsymmetry.pdf">here and http://www.logrus.com/~moose/lostisle.pdf">here) but since they're just recountings of events, they're less useful.

So far my experience has been really positive - Pulp really has proven a good match - and I'm very curious to hear how your game goes.

-Rob D.