Pulp Hero X

Back in this post on my modular modules, I didn't actually have a pulp hero module identified. Part of this is because I never actually did anything with the modules. Then again, there isn't really all that much that needs to be done. If by Pulp Hero X I mean something along the lines of Brendan Frasier's The Mummy or Harrison Ford's Raiders of the Lost Ark or possibly Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing, except also with the possibility of completely non-supernatural games, then what really needs to be done for Pulp Hero X that isn't already there in Horror & Macabre X, License to Kill X or Weird West X anyway? Pulp Hero X becomes more of just a setting than a full module, utilizing nothing new or original that can't be pulled out of the already identified modules. In fact, if Horror & Macabre X's default is a kind of Lovecraftian 20s or 30s, a la default Call of Cthulhu (which it probably would be) then Pulp Hero X is literally the same module, just played with a different tone.

Honestly, what does either of them need that Dark Fantasy X doesn't already provide? Eliminate the fantastic non-human races of Dark Fantasy X, redo the equipment section to focus less on Medieval-like items and instead include some "modern" stuff like guns and cars to replace all the swords and wagons, and you're pretty much good to go. You've got your Lovecraftian magic... if you want to use it. You've got lots of monsters... if you want to use them... and you've got everything you need to build a character. I noticed this when I made a Western appendix area in my Fantasy Hack X game, back when I was still more overtly Microlite derived. I replaced the black powder piratey and musketeer-like firearms rules that Dark•Heritage Mk. IV, the then current version of what is now DFX was, with six shooters and rifles that, honestly, would still be perfectly fine rules for most modern firearms today. Then I had more definition and detail around horses and horseplay, which seemed very genre appropriate.

For something like License to Kill X, I could do the same thing except instead of more with horses, do something about vehicle chases, including car chases, and have more detail and definition around guns because those seem genre appropriate. 

The modules under this paradigm can be as simple as a one pager detailing what elements of the DFX game not to use, and then some expanded stuff that's a little hyper-focused (to the degree these rules-lite rules are hyper-focused at all) on something that seems genre appropriate because the genre itself focuses on that aspect of play.

What brings this to mind right now is, as I've noted in a semi-recent post, is that I'm revisiting my Ruritanian alternate history timeline of a frontier Republic of Texas, except still existing in a Ruritanian section of the US way into the 20s, 30s or 40s, roughly, model railroad plan. As I've started to make more and more specific plans of more and more specific pseudo-dioramas on the layout, it's developing a kind of weird tales, pulp vibe. No doubt, that will make my layout even more anathema to the spergy crowd to disparagingly refer to anything unlike their boring layouts as "cartoonish", but I've long ago decided that I'm parting ways with the rivet-counters and operational spergs, and that my vision of the hobby is so different from theirs that it might almost be best considered another hobby altogether.

Of course, if I'm developing all of this Ruritanian Territory, as part of a fictional "pulp modern" Republic of Texas setting with all kinds of weird supernatural elements in it; archaeologists discovering "The Mound", Nosferatu out west, sasquatches, Dark Watchers, ghost stories, a kind of frontier analog to Arkham County, etc., then whatever I do with that setting for the model railroad plans certainly are appropriate for roleplaying usage too.