Pulp Fantasy

[geoffrey]

admin said:

geoffrey said:

Ever since I started playing D&D in 1980, I've felt that (paradoxically) D&D magic doesn't feel D&Dish.

Now, that's an odd statement.

I thoroughly agree!

I thought about it last night, and here's what I came up with:

My first D&D purchase consisted of the Holmes Basic set (which had the B2 module inside) and the Monster Manual. The guys I played with had only the Holmes Basic set (while theirs had the B1 module inside).

About 2 months later I purchased Deities & Demigods. For quite some time we played with only the following products:

Holmes basic rulebook
Monster Manual
Deities & Demigods
B1
B2

We were all in the 10-12 year old range, so we ignored many/most rules and made-up most stuff on the fly. We were so benighted and ignorant that we didn't even know what a hit point was. For us, the rulebooks were mainly pictures and lists of cool monsters and cool magic items. We pretty much completely passed-over the magic spells in Holmes.

Consequently, after my childhood reading and re-rereadings of the Cthulhu Mythos section of DDG umpteen times, "D&D magic" to me felt like the summoning, banishing, and controlling of demons, devils, and Cthulhoid entities. In our games that's what magic-users did whenever casting a spell: They summoned big baddies and hoped for the best. Rules for such spells? None. We made it up on the fly. In combat our magic-users did indeed use magic items, though, especially the much-beloved wand of fireball. But even then I thought the summoning of dark things was so much cooler than shooting things with your magic wand.

It wasn't until about a year after we started to play that we started to play "right".

And that's why D&D magic doesn't feel D&Dish to me: because for the first year we played D&D we didn't use the D&D magic system but instead used our completely chaotic "system" (ha!) inspired by the section in DDG's Cthulhu Mythos on summoning the baddies.

[geoffrey]

geoffrey said:

For quite some time we played with only the following products:

Holmes basic rulebook
Monster Manual
Deities & Demigods
B1
B2

I should note that my favorite section of the above products was (and still is) the Cthulhu Mythos section of DDG. Second place went to the devils in the MM, and third place went to the demons. Nothing could even remotely compare to those three sections for me. Whatever was my fourth favorite thing, it was a very distant fourth place. (Perhaps it was the notion of cursed magic items found in Holmes. I didn't understand the mechanics of such items, but the idea of cursed items really appealed to me--curses, demons, devils, and Cthulhu! What a weird child I was. lol)

[crimhthanthegreat]

Good example of our differences , if you are summoning demons or devils or whatnot, IMC you are a bad guy and definitely Chaotic in its worst aspects.

[geoffrey]

crimhthanthegreat said:

Good example of our differences , if you are summoning demons or devils or whatnot, IMC you are a bad guy and definitely Chaotic in its worst aspects.

In our old games we were invariably neutral (selfish).

[crimhthanthegreat]

IMC the PC's are almost always Lawful with someone sometimes playing a Neutral now and then with an occasional Chaotic thrown in. Sometimes these characters are working against the party and sometimes just working for themselves. But mostly just Lawfuls, just otherwise enough to keep it interesting. The guys just seem to have an instinct of when to go there.

[doc]

Next up I was going to talk about pacing in pulp fantasy, but I just thought that I'd ask if there is any particular aspect of the genre that I haven't spoken about yet that anybody would like me to cover?

Doc

[Deleted]

Not really; I think you pretty much summed it up pretty well. Good stuff, doc.

[crimhthanthegreat]

doc said:

Next up I was going to talk about pacing in pulp fantasy, but I just thought that I'd ask if there is any particular aspect of the genre that I haven't spoken about yet that anybody would like me to cover?

Doc

Yes, I would like to read your thoughts on the obstacle that the hero has to over come. The bad guy(s), the monster, the terrain, whatever the thing or things are that the hero has to strive against and overcome.

[Finarvyn]

doc said:

Next up I was going to talk about pacing in pulp fantasy...

You might do this as another thread and leave this one open to discussion of "generic" pulp fantasy. That way the conversation can flow in both places if there is appropriate interest.