Beautiful Great Britain

Arctic air is flowing over Southern England bringing frost and even a light dusting of snow.

This picture was taken by Anthony Spencer (note it is copyright), one of the finest landscape photographers in the world. It is of Corfe Castle in the Westcountry, the rural part of S. England. I used to take my girlfriend there when I was working in Bournemouth. She was a student at London University and used to visit me for the weekend. The pictgure has won the landscape photo of the year award.

See more of Spencer's amazing work here:

http://tonyspencer.wordpress.com/

Pulp Sci Fi - Heros and Heroines

English Heroines

What would pulp be without heroes and heroines. Now admittedly, heroines once existed largely to swoon and be rescued from a-fate-worse-than-death. That always puzzled me when I was a small boy. I first came across the term in a Saint novel. The heroine was delighted to be buried alive rather than suffer a fate worse than death. What was a fate worse than death? Could it be double maths followed by physics?

But I digress. Modern heroines are more in the Laura Croft variety, having only large breasts in common with heroines of old. So in that spirit, I introduce Lady Jane Wellesly (on the left), her obnoxious brat of a younger sister, the Honourable Harriet "Harri" Wellesly, and their Butler Jeeves. The ladies have ray guns, large breasts and skin tight clothes. Any villian trying to shoot them must first pass an evil test in order to concentrate and ignore their charms. I assume all villains are heterosexual, even the green ones with tentacles. Heroines are never killed. They are always captured instead for a fate worse than death until rescued by a hero.

Note also that the lady's ray guns double as portable hair dryers to deal with those complex hair dos. Great care must be taken with ray gun settings as a mistake could lead to a bad hair day, which is almost as bad as a fate worse than death.

Jeeves has adopted his No 5 body with alien and villain handling arms - snip, snip - also emploed to deal with over enthusiastic heroes who attempt to rescue heroines before they are captured. Jeeves does not die either; he is just deactivated until the next episode.

All American Heroes

Definitely heroine rescuing hero types. Note the square jaws and the pecks. I give you Captain Savage and the Lone Ranger. Heroes are also never killed. They are always captured for a fate worse than death. This does not involve homosexual villains but incarceration until the villain can devise a suitably evil and painful death, preferably involving carnivorous fish and laser beams. However, heros may, at any moment escape with a single bound. Careful observers will note that the good captain has already escaped once - he still has the manacles on from where he burst his chains - and his shirt.

Shaun's Skaven Doom Wheel

I have it on good authority (Shaun) that this is the Doom Wheel.

Life is a funny business. My most successful scientific project came to fruition after I retired.
See Nerc News

http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=867_

John

Rules for Pulp Sci-Fi

Dan Dare

Back in the '50s and early 60s, small boys such as myself read the Eagle. Its lead comic strip was Dan Dare, pilot of the future, set in the late 1990s. Dan Dare was chief pilot for Space Fleet and lived in a wonderful high tech England with monoball cars and, my favourite, the atomic hand grenade. Even London Transport had monorails.

The Mekon - sworn enemy of Dan Dare

OK, enough of nostalgia. I have been think about designing a set of 50s sci-fi rules for Dan Dare, or Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Fireball XLF or whatever.

The trick to designing a game is to decide the subject matter, and to stick to it, removing or simplifying all else. A wargame cannot be all things to all men. For example, Hammers Slammers is a platoon level modern battle cavalry combat game set in colonial warfare. All else is subsumed. You want detailed infantry combat, semi-rpg in a tank, operational warfare, high intensity armoured warfare, guerrilla warfare... - then look elsewhere.

The more you try to lever into a game, the more unplayable, and unrealistic, it becomes. Detail kills realism as well as playability. The first step, therefore, in designing a game is tot to dive into detail but to take a step back and ask - what is it about?

OK so what is a pulp sci-fi game about?

Here are a few ideas: heroes & villains, femme fatales and heroines, sidekicks, monsters and aliens, unnamed people in red shirts who dies easily, wacky technology and transport, psi-powers, alien worlds, and traditional plots.

Unimportant: plots that make sense, weapon details (all rayguns have much the same effect, range etc), and realistic military combat.

What I would like to know is – How would YOU amend my list? What would you look for in a 50s Sci-Fi game. What are the key features that MUST be included? What can be dumped for ease of play?

John

Witch of Endor

I participated in a playtest of the draft of a new set of Pulp Sci-Fi rules from Eureka Miniatures, which were rather good incidentally.

It has rekindled my urge to finish my pulp figures. Here is the finished Witch of Endor team. The witch is a psychic telekinetic. Her bodyguard conists of the Masked Assassins, led by the Thespian Assassin Simone. She can morph her face with the aid of a death mask, to resemble anybody. The assassins have energised swords that can deflect small arms fire.

Pulp Sci Fi

Prussian Marines


Prussian Aeronef


Natives


Dropped around to my friend Shaun's last night to cadge a beer. He had his new pulp figures from Ironclad Miniatures out - see above. I like them.

He also showed me something else - see below. Apparently, we lurk around the same toyshops looking for bargains.