World-spanning Pulp

In the Northern Hemisphere, as the nights draw in, the aged gamer’s thoughts might turn to adventures in more exotic climes.

When not engaged in Proustian reverie, The Project likes to offer solutions. This, however, is more a meditation on an issue yet to be resolved.

Weird Pulp is based in New York, 1930 because much of the world can be encompassed in a world city (and since Wall Street had just disrupted the globe we can certainly accord NYC that status). However, the NYC background is still quite a heavy lift and requires some definite design techniques to prevent information overload.

It’s at this point that one has to recognise the genius of the dungeon as the core of RPGs. They are enclosed environments, obeying physical laws that constrain choice organically. Dungeons possess the Aristotelian unity of character, time and space. Yet gamers, being gamers, always want to spread their wings. The same was true of pulp fictioneers before them.

There appear to be two main extant approaches to the disunity of space in world-spanning pulp campaigns.

Approach One might be described as the “Dent Method”. Nearly all pulp rules seem to include pulp guidelines or even a random generator. All such exercises trace their ancestry back to the author of the Doc Savage stories, Lester Dent. Dent proposed the “Pulp Master Fiction Plot”. The Plot needed five elements.

1. Villain

2. Something for the villain to seek

3. Murder methods for the villain to use

4. Locations in which the protagonists and the villain operate

5. Menace to hang over the protagonists

However, Dent-derived guidelines are somewhat lacking when it comes to locations. That’s because the author/GM has to provide all the detail from his own imagination. Indeed Dent’s advice was to avoid world-spanning pulp. The creator should choose a locale that was familiar, “a place where you’ve lived or worked.” “So many pulpateers don’t,” he lamented. The result was often “embarassment” because it was obvious to editors that the authors who used exotic locations were complete bull*******s. They were too ignorant to achieve a suspension of disbelief and thus unfit to be published.

Dent suggested that if the author must globetrot he should acquire a children’s guide and a phrasebook. A few palm trees and some cod Arabic and the reader is transported to Egypt – it might be enough to secure publication.

Approach Two could be described as the “Masks Method”. Starting with Masks of Nyarlathotep Chaosium tried to get Cthulhu out of Arkham, Mass. It’s notable that the co-author of Masks was a professional screenwriter, Larry DeTillo.

The Masks Method, used in many RPG publications since, creates a dramatic opening scene in which the characters must participate, then offers them clues to a range of exciting locations which they can visit in any order. Within these locations are one or more adventure sites. However, all this criss-crossing of the globe leads to one Final Destination where The Grand Finale takes place.

The usual criticism of the Masks Method is that it creates a one-way trip to railroad city. Characters absolutely must be kept on the straight and narrow by invisible walls. They are still in the dungeon but with none of its “authenticity”, constantly ambushed by the Quantum Ogre.

However, that’s not the main problem for anyone who wants to have fun designing a world-spanning campaign. Their problem is that The Masks Method requires a ****ton of work. Even with the aid of Wikipedia, and red-lining travel a là Indiana Jones, it’s not a task to be tackled lightly. Indeed the baroque Masks Method campaigns of recent years remain heavy on storytelling – cheap, linear text – but light on useable resources, too many gimmicky handouts in Sanskrit, not enough maps and floorplans. Rumour has it that the next Kickstarter for Horror on the Orient Express will include a 1:1 scale model of the train as a stretch goal.

Where does the solution lie?

Don’t be so fussy: break out all the available Cthulhu campaigns – that’s probably about thirty major locations – and repurpose the resources.

Turn to the design genius of GDW; get a 14×8 hexmap [brickmap in our case], five of which combined become the geodesic world grid covering the globe. The hexmaps are aligned on a NE-SW axis. Devise a UPP to code up locations.

To be given some more thought.