Astounding Tales 2nd Ed

Ivn de la Osa Navarro (order #6361768)

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Second Edition

The Second Edition

Incorporating SPICY HORROR STORIES and DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE

MINIATURES RULES for FRANTIC ADVENTURE in the manner of PULP MAGAZINES, RADIO SERIALS and SATURDAY MORNING MATINEES

By Howard Masked Avenger Whitehouse (Torn Apart by Giant Apes, 1932)

...The first man he met with his bare hands was catapulted back against the wall by a straight left that packed all the fiendish power of a sledgehammer gone mad, a blow that shattered teeth in their sockets and smithereened a jawbone as if it had been made of glass."

Leslie Charteris, The Last Hero, 1929

I relived those ages of horror and torment in the green-gold room: I saw again the malignant dwarf A hashashin Weymouth had told me. They belong to the Old Man of the Mountain Sheikh Ismail. I heard the crea-tures dying shrieks; I saw the dacoit return, carrying his bloody knife.

Sax Rohmer, The Daughter of Fu Manchu, 1931

Send Lawyers, guns and money, the s$%# has hit the fan. Warren Zevon, Lawyers, Guns and Money, 1978

Astounding Tales! Second Edition By Howard Whitehouse

Layout, Covers, Editing, & Light Housekeeping by Patrick R. Wilson

Copyright 2006 By The (Virtual) Armchair General

10208 Haverhill Place, Oklahoma City, OK 73120-3922 USA Voice/Fax: (405) 752-2420

For other products and publications, visit www.thevirtualarmchairgeneral.com

Adventurously Printed by 360 Digital Books ([email protected])

Please address rules questions to [email protected] Third Printing, February, 2010


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Astounding Tales!

Contents Pages

Bar Stool Ramblings to the Second Edition 3

An Introduction To The World of Pulp 4

Gaming The World of Pulp 6

SECTION I : So How Do Ya Play Astounding Tales!?

13

Whatll I Need? Sets, Props, Cast, & Villains

14

Characters Attributes 17

Making Up Characters Rolling Up Charac-ters

18

Buying Attributes 19

Off The Rack 20

Skills Table 22

Female Characters Good/Bad Girl Skills Tables

24

Comic Characters Skills List 25

Examples Of Character Creation 27

Setting Up The Game 28

The Opening Scene 29

SECTION II : Camera! Action! The Rules of Play

30

Movement Legging It 32

Pounding Hooves Horseback Riding, Weaponry

33

Special Weapons, Exotic Skills 34

Snipers 35

Shooting 36

Wounds Lead Poisoning Table 37

Optional Wound Location Table,

Fists: Close Combat 38

Fighting Styles Tables, BRAWLING TABLE 40

SERIOUS BUSINESS TABLE, Guts: Bravery

41

Guts & Supporting Cast, Get a Grip! 42

Cut!The Do Over Rule, The Interrupt Rule

43

Orders & Communication,

Drop That Piece, Marlowe! 44

Contents Pages

Bound And Gagged, Traps 45

Snappy Dialogue 46

SECTION III : Screaming Wheels 47

Emergency Braking Table, Swerving Table 48

Automobile Crash Table 49

SECTION IV : It Came From The Sky!,

Rules For Airships, 50

Shooting Aboard An Airship Table 51

AircraftKnights Of The Air, Aircraft Crash Table

52

Shooting At Planes Table 54

Rocketmen, Untrained Rocketman Table, Bullet Hits on Rocket Belt Table, SECTION V: Weird Science

55

Zombies 56

Lovecraftian Horror 57

Robots 58

Bullet Hits on Robots Table, Nazi Science 59

Creatures! 60

What There Are No Rules For, Ending a

Scene 62

The End The Big Finale, Cheap Talk & Lies

63

SECTION VI : Sample Characters 64

SECTION VII : Scenarios,

1) The Bride of the Yeti 76

2) Biggles Defies The Swastika 79

SECTION VIII : Notes, Appendices, And

Other Body Parts, Astounding Titles!, 82

Title Generator 83

Designers Notes 83

Alternative Pulp Ideas 84

A Word On GenreRead, Watch, Websites 85

Figures And Stuff 87

Frequently Asked Questions 91

Roll of Honor 93


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Second Edition

Barstool Ramblings For The Second Edition

Its been a couple of years since the first edition of Astounding Tales! hit the news-stands, two exciting years of slugging burly hoodlums, stealing one-eyed idols from eastern

temples, and a few too many mornings waking up in Mexican jails. In that time Ive played the game more, and had people Ive never met send me letters, telegrams and occasional hired goons to let me know what they think. Since Im always interested in positive criti-cism (especially from men with automatics in their mitts) Ive made some changes. First off, some folks said that AT is really a role-playing game, and I should quit be-

ing so coy about it. Sure, its light on some of the complexities of back story, plotline and character development that Role Playing Games (RPGs) typically have, but if you want to play it that way, go right ahead. Ive made some clarifications to the character types. Second, some folks who are primarily miniatures gamers and want to play a straight-

forward shoot em up and knock em down were a little put off by the need for a Director with God-like powers and an outrageous ego. After all, if its just you and Jim playing on the dining room table, maybe you just want to take turns moving model figures and rolling

some dice. So Ive developed a card sequence system which enables all players to actually play. The Director becomes more a genial host than a megalomaniac creator in this version.

Third, Ive made some of the rules cleaner and clearer. Specifically, Ive made shooting a two-die-roll rather than three-die-roll process, which makes it even bloodier.

Hell, most of the casualties are only extras.

Fourth, Ive added some rules for things like traps, zombies, robots and snipers, air-ships, planes, etc. Gotta have em. And enough people said that, while they understand my dislike of points systems, they wanted some way of valuing the different grades of charac-

ter, and their equipment, so that Doc Savage wasnt overpowered by a busload of school kids and a stray dog.

And fifth (which is what Im swigging from right now) Ive added some extra Skills to the list, especially for our daring/cunning Heroines. And some new characters. I guess thats six. Ive added some ideas for playing pulp sub-genres, like Sword and Sorcery and comic-book WWII. Id write whole sets for them if I wasnt so busy drinking in the daytime.

Ive put in some scenarios you can play straight out of the book. And some odd little devices for making up titles,

and even whole stories, as if you have no imagination yourself.

Finally, in this Third Printingalready!some errors and omissions (bad Bourbon scented) have been corrected in

more sober moments since. The Scenario Generator rules and tables have been deep sixed from this printing as they are destined for a more suitable project soon to come.

Thats all for now. Astounding Tales! rides again.

Go play ---

Howard Whitehouse, January, 2010


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Astounding Tales!

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF PULP

I was looking at the cover of a magazine from my grandfa-

thers time. Aircraft of the First World War swirled around the sky. The Allied flyers were clean-limbed and determined. The Germans

employed a considerable number of skeletons to man the basket of

a barrage balloon.

The owner of the magazine and I agreed that there was much

about WWI that had been hushed up, and he showed me similar

covers in which Oriental Panther Men, monstrous creatures, and a

small man dressed like a banker all threatened an American pilot

known as "G-8." This was not your everyday hero of the air. I was

at something called "The Fantastic Pulps Show, money was leaping out of my pocket, and a stack of cheap novelettes written in the thirties went home with me.

Pulp. High Adventure. Men in snappy fedoras and dangerous dames, with blaz-

ing .45 automatics in one hand and a knife in their shoe. Chinese criminal masterminds and

their minions. Men of Bronze who carry small explosive charges hidden in their back teeth.

Beings who wish to destroy the Earth, or at least New York City, or subdue the populace

with mind-numbing drugs to do their fiendish bidding.

What on earth can it all mean?

Its the world as seen in cheap magazines and low budget movies from the 1920's to sometime in the 50s, when television and comic books took over. Film Noir, hard-boiled novels, Pulp magazines with Charles Atlas advertisements in the back, that sort of thing. A

world where most of Africa, Asia and South America are covered by impenetrable jungles,

where Southern California is inexplicably dark and rainy, and where most of Canada is un-

der an ice-cap year round. A world where down-at-heel private eyes fight vulgar, flashy

hoodlums, but also where heroesoften cunningly disguised by wearing a tiny silk mask, which fools even their closest friendssave the world from ambitious mad scientists, laughably inept aliens and, quite often, the Germans. A world with garish posters featuring

a lot of Colt automatics, green gripping monster hands, and women in far too much mascara

and far too little clothing for respectable tastes.

"Pulp" requires that you see the world through the eyes of a certain sort of audience.

Often its a fifteen year old American kid in 1934; at least, that was who Lester Dentthe writer of the Doc Savage bookswas aiming at. What you need are simple heroes, evil opponents, and a good deal of gee-whiz science. Geography can be vague, history ludi-

crous, but as long as it moves fast and good wins out, thats all fine. If you were a hard boiled writerDashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, for examplethe audience was older, less innocent, but still looking for a world where good people stood against evil, even if you couldnt find a doctor who wouldnt drug you and lock you up at his private sanatorium. This style demanded strongly defined heroes and vil-

lains, although the more sophisticated heroes might be fairly jaded, and have their own bad

habits. Actually, everyone has bad habits, as well as regrets, debts and losing bets.

In many ways the Pulp genre began after WWI (succeeding the Dime Novels and

Penny-Dreadfuls of an earlier time) in a world that was different in many ways from the


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one that had gone before. Popular entertainment focussed on the new movie industry, and

film stars became a new royalty. Writing styles became brief, slangy, action-oriented. Pulp

sounded like Jimmy Cagney. It was flashy, garish, neon-lit. It didnt have a lot of class, but it had nerve. And Pulp Adventure Gaming is based on those premises. Its wild, frantic stuff, without a lot of concern for realism. Its only demand is to be true to the conventions

of the genre. So fire eight times with your revolver, and pass the popcorn. We may not live

to see the credits.

Astounding Tales! is a short, simple and deliberately incomplete set of rules for

mayhem, murder and Weird Horror set in the period between WWI and the end of the black

-and-white B Movie era in the 1950s. The game depends on a very fast pace, not worry-ing about details too much, and an attitude that says that heroes (and their sidekicks, dames

and others in white hats) should have an advantage over thugs, punks, zombies and other

minions of the Evil Overlords. Its more about creating scenes of frenetic action where Right Prevails than about a fair game in which the villainsthough they may have already reduced cities to ashes, etcmight actually win. You can make it fantastical, with lost cities and sinister emperors, or grittily realistic with mobsters, cops and jaded private inves-

tigators. And yes, history buffs, you can play the Russian Revolution or the Spanish Civil

War if you want, as long as you are more interested in ranting drunken commissars and

strutting-but-incompetent fascists in shiny boots than the details of armoured trains or the

organisation of the Falange in 1936. Because thats what I am interested in, and its my game. So there.

Id like to thank a whole bunch of people if I could remember their names. Matt Fritz, Nigel Clarke, Walt OHara, C.B. Stevens, Ross Maker and Dave Markley for their as-sistant directorial skills in our big games at HistoriCon. Kim Caron for her portrayal of

Roxy and Jeff Wasileski for his German movie director. Bob Murch and Mark Cop-plestone for their amazing metal figures and general enthusiasm. Bruce Pettipas and How-

ard Fielding for actual testing. Ed Dillon for his unnerving knowledge of things that blow

up or spray hot lead. Rich Johnson, Legion McRae, Roderick Robertson, Peter McDonald,

Harry Morris, Alvin Stuckenborg and Paddy Griffith for new ideas that Ive seized on glee-fully. Ed Bielcik for quotes and characterization on The Shadow and The Spider. Bill

McGinnis for his Doc Savage knowledge. Mark Mintz, Scott Crane and Mike Creek for

their suggestions on comic sidekicks. Dash Hammett and Raymond Chandler for putting

crime back on the streets. Most of all, my wife, Lori, for putting up with all this nonsense

for twenty years and more.

Frankly, that part still astounds me!

H.J.W., Big Jim's Speakeasy, 1930

All Pulp Magazine covers, photos, and any other derivative graphics appearing on the

covers and in the text are intended as a tribute to those thrilling days of yesteryear when

adventure could be had for a dime. No infringement of copyright or claim to ownership of

the original images is intended.

And no Pulps were injured in the writing of these rules or their publication.

The (Virtual) Armchair General


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Astounding Tales!

GAMING THE WORLD OF "PULP"

"Sir, I fear we shall have to sacrifice the gin."

Jeeves

(Busily fashioning a Molotov Cocktail while being menaced by a large

animated wooden Tiki statue in the jungles of the Amazon.)

Jeeves, tell me again why we're in the Amazon."

Bertie Wooster

From The Crystal Skulls of Atlantis, HistoriCon 2003

Pulp can be approached from more than one direction. You can treat it as a historical

period, with sensational overtones. You can treat it in the same way youd approach a fantasy game, with expected stereotypes, and a consistency that comes from the rules and

conventions of the genre: Private Eye, Jungle Adventure, Sword-and-Sorcery, Spicy, or

whatever. You can play it as a role-playing game, a miniatures skirmish system or any other

way that suits you.

Real Life in the inter-war period was not good for most

people. There was revolution and civil war in Russia, more of

the same in China, Spain, and elsewhere. Germanys fragile de-mocracy collapsed in Nazism. Mussolinis fascists took over It-aly, and made war in Libya and Ethiopia. Iraq and Palestine re-

belled against British administration. Most of Europe was dirt

poor after the Great War, and what little prosperity there was mostly in the USA was undermined by corruption and organ-ised crime. Then the Depression came, and everyone was in

trouble. Its not a fertile period for heroic, two-fisted gaming, youd have thought. In fact, our sources in film, books and magazine chose largely to ignore reality completely. You can

wargame the Russian Civil War, Francos attack on Madrid or the Italians in Libya, but its not likely to be Pulp. Its likely to be grim and gritty, which is fine, but, well, not Pulp.

There are some real events that offer fertile ground, however. The North West Fron-

tier of India was still ablaze with tribal risings, and the addition of aircraft and armoured

cars on one side, and magazine rifles on the other, actually gave an advantage to the tribes-

men. The French were fighting in Morocco and Syria. The US fought a lot of little wars in

the Caribbean, mostly supporting their own fruit companies against the local peasants; of

course, the spin doctors turned that around!

Sensationalism was almost the watchword of the brash 1920's when it came to what

people were interested in. Indeed, it almost surpassed itself in the dreary, hopeless 1930's.

It was a time of much publicized heroes, like Lindberg, or the traveller (it was hard to be an


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explorer anymore) Richard Halliburton. Flyers were intent on es-

tablishing records of any and every kind. Gangsters hung out with

film stars, and vice versa. They wore $1000 suits in yellow silk,

and courted the press. Colonel Fawcett managed to get himself

lost (permanently) in the Amazon. The discovery of Tut-ankh-

amuns tomband the "curse" associated with itcaused a wave of fascination with all things ancient Egyptian. Rudolph Valen-

tino finished T.E. Lawrences work of making Bedouin Arabs fas-cinating to Westerners, in an exotic, unreal sort of way. The dino-

saur hunter, Roy Chapman Andrews, managed to parlay his genu-

inely scientific expeditions into Mongolia into a money-making,

highly publicized enterprise. There were cameras everywhere.

There were movies everywhere too, and the fifteen year old kid

from Iowa could be excused if he wasnt sure why Tarzan of the Apes was not out there looking for the missing Colonel Fawcett.

Now, this is "Pulp reality, where celebrity heroes and villains engage in things that are dangerousoften pointlessly sofor public voyeurism. Everyone is bigger than life. Some Pulp reality games might involve:

1) Sidney Reilly, the "Ace of Spies" on his expeditions into Red Russia to contact

White agents, and possibly making some dodgy deals of his own. Therell be sinister Cheka agents in black leather, closed trains, and beautiful countesses who are silk-stocking-

deep in intrigue.

2) Paul Dukes, more romantic than Reilly, rescuing the same Countesses at snowy

border-crossings, pursued by villainous Bolshevik guards who shoot badly.

3) Tough-but-decent Anglos (all heroes are Anglos; well get to that later) tackle Latin American bandits, dictators and their minions, using only fists, forty-fives, and maybe

a battered seaplane.

4) An Egyptian tomb is protected against invaders by ancient sorcery.

5) Flashy gangsters shoot it out with the cops and G-men, using Tommy Guns and

fast sedans. They dont run laundry businesses and numbers rackets like real hoods, because

thats too boring.

6) Roy Chapman Andrews fights

Chinese warlords, bandits, sandstorms and

possibly plagues of insects as he does his bit

for science, and brings back crates of dinosaur

bones.


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Astounding Tales!

7 ) Decent, clean-living heroes find themselves embroiled with Nazi agents and their

sinister schemes. (Its really difficult to imagine Nazis having any other kind.)

8) A pilot crashes his experimental plane in some wilderness backwater, and must

overcome rough country, unfriendly locals, fierce animals and at least one broken leg to

reach safety.

Pure Entertainment. The next step on from "Pulp reality" is to

add those elements that, well, any fifteen year old would endorse.

Take a plot item from the list weve just looked at. Lets go with Roy Chapman Andrews, who many have identified as "the real

Indiana Jones. Reading the excellent biography, Dragon Hunter, it becomes clear that Andrews used neither whips nor dynamite as

key tools in excavation. He only shot one person, himself, acci-

dentally, in the foot. His problems with the Chinese warlords were

mostly about having the right papers, and were solved with nego-

tiations rather than gunfire. He was looking for fossils of many

kinds, most of which were not nearly as sensational as the newspa-

pers made out. So, we ask ourselves 1) Why is there no gunfire? Shouldnt there be? What sort of bandits and war-lords are these, anyway?

2) Why only fossilized dinosaurs? Arent there any live ones? This is Mongolia, for Petes sake.

3) The expedition had been provided with expensive Dodge automobiles by the

manufacturer. Would it have hurt them to put some armour on the vehicles? And mount a

machine gun?

4) The Mad Baronthe insane Baron Von Ungern-Sternbergisnt involved. Why not? Probably because hes already dead. Revise this awkward detail.

5) The Tomb of Genghis KhanBig Genghis K himself. He ought to be involved. Revived, possibly. He added great charm to the 1994 movie of The Shadow.

6) Russian agents. Gotta have em. Red ones, White ones. Probably one of them countesses, too!

7) Rival parties of archaeologists/palaeontologists (who can tell them apart,

anyway?). Possibly Germans. Probably involved in that occult stuff, for Hitler. I dont care if its only 1922. Great! So you can see, weve really improved this whole "researchers from a mu-seum" thing into something youd want to read about in a 25 cent magazine with a lurid cover.


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Pulp Heroes are the next step away from dreary reality. Ordinary heroes with power-

ful fists and Colt .45's are excellent in their own way, of course, but disguised vigilantes

with secret identities, and possibly secret hideouts are better still! Think of them as being

the forebears of superheroes, with capes and masks but without the spandex and the under-

pants worn outside.

1) The Shadow, hero of print, radio, and later on, the silver screen. Black fedora

and cape, blazing automatics, dead criminals. He has a vague but immensely powerful

ability to "cloud mens minds so that they cant see him.

2) The Spider is the next step on from the Shadow, a man

whose personal demons have pretty much taken over his crime

fighting efforts. Bob Murch suggests that he be regarded like a

random artillery round; he arrives through the skylight, blasts

everyone around him, then leaves again. In one issue of his

magazine, he leads a hobo army against the evil forces that have

taken over the USA.

3) The Phantom Detective is an urbane, society man who (donning the

little black mask) fights criminals. A bit dull, really, but he remained in print

for two decades.

Gaming any of these really just involves taking a gangster game and

adding a spectacularly effective hero figure, who can arrive and leave with in-

credible speed, shoots absurdly well, and apparently receives no wounds, ever.

No problem there.

4) Doc Savagethe Man of Bronzedoes without the disguise, but (through training, exercise and really good genetics) has a mixture of super-

human skills and fantastic, self-invented gizmos. Doc also has a crack team

of five genius side kicks, whose main function is to need rescuing. They

communicate in "Ancient Mayan"wouldn't you? Doc operates world-wide, so he is an adventure hero in every possible

setting. On a scale of 1-6, Doc rates a "9" or so in most skills, so once again,

he is disproportionately powerful. However, he seldom kills anyone, prefer-

ring to knock them out and send them toget this!his private reform institution in up-state New York. It has been pointed out, however, that Docs enemies frequently end up dead in fortuitous accidents, so its not all trips to rehab.

5) "Operator 5" is Jimmy Christopher, an American secret agent who

is the key to defending the republic against the massive invasion of "The Pur-

ple Emperor, ruler of a strangely multi-ethnic, but savage, empire bent on world domination. Managing to combine "Yellow Peril" paranoia, grand strat-

egy and stupid headgear, while out in the real world were enemies that were

far more interesting than the Purple Empire.


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Astounding Tales!

What little I have read in this series is more like a military/resistance theme than the

usual crime-fighting or defeating mad villains. If you like the idea of America being over-

run by Asian Fascists (I mean "playing a game, not actually in real life) with a ridiculously effective hero leading the resistance, this might work as a spin-off variant of WWII

skirmish gaming.

6) Heroes of the Air included G-8 (a fighter pilot/spy who,

with his two buddies, defeated the Germans in 1918), Dusty Ayres,

and the really bizarre Terrence X. OLeary and his War Birds. If you think that air pulps should be relatively straight forward, with

machine guns and Immelman turns providing the excitement,

youd be wrong. In short order, there were the Kaisers zombies, leaping Chinese villains, and incredibly hokey horror and Sci-Fi

elements. What you need here is a workable set of WWI dogfight

rules, with an addition of quite absurd horror and fantasy elements.

Once you have decided that Eastern assassins can, in fact, jump

from plane to plane with knives in their teeth, its just a question of adding some extra rules. To counter this extra detail, you can ig-

nore many of the real differences between plane types, as Pulp authors had little

concept of actual technical performance.

Pulp Fantastic! Beyond the realm of the masked and

unmasked heroes, who fight for good in the same world that we

inhabit (as long as we inhabit it in 1933), there is what will

come to be called "Science Fiction" and "Fantasy. This is Buck Rogers (first seen in Amazing Stories in 1928, before he

hit the comic books), and Captain Future, who intersected with

the present day to save America (a lot) when a president who

seems very like Roosevelt calls on him. Pulp-era science fiction

is wonderful in its naivet, all bubble-helmet spacemen, babes in

brass bikinis, and monsters with huge staring eyes. Most of us

are familiar with various science fiction wargames, usually set

in techy worlds of "Hard SF or dystopian universes like War-hammer 40K. Pulp SF gamesand Im only imagining hereought to have a playful, golly-wow feel to them, with amazing

(read "completely unconvincing") scientific discoveries, aliens that we of a later time would

simply laugh at, and a good deal of fist-fighting inside glass bubbles. You have to like that.

The other direction that the wonder pulps took was fantasy, a very mixed bag of

Robert E. Howards Conan and others, Edgar Rice Burroughs various worlds, oriental tales and anything both horrific and too big to crawl out of a crypt (well get to that next). Fan-tasy wargaming flirted with the Conan-type of world in the 1970's, but somehow the savage

worlds of brawny barbarians were overwhelmed by the sub-Tolkien legions of elves and

Orcs. Time for a revival, by Crom!


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The "Shudder Pulps" were horror tales. At the literary

end, we have H.P. Lovecraft and his followers, with the well-

developed world of the Cthulhu mythos. These have survived

and been built upon to form almost a genre in itself. At the other

end, its the grasping giant hands and bottle-blondes in baby-doll nighties. (Not that theres anything wrong with that....) Horror is quite hard to game because ...er... we arent frightened. We all saw that monster come out of a box, and we

remember buying it at a toyshop and repainting it from the nasty

green plastic thing it was. My most successful horror games

have been "double blind" affairs where the players only saw

things when they jumped on their characters.

"Hard-Boiled" is pretty much the opposite to the

"wonder" pulps with their proto-SF stories. These are gritty

crime stories, aimed at an older audience, without zombies or

gripping green hands, and a fairly tight hand on the young

women in lingerie. Magazines such as Black Mask defined

the private eye/detective genre that we all immediately

connect with Bogart, trench coats and rainy nights in L.A.

Games in this genre will have a strong role-playing compo-

nent, require few figures but lots of cars, small scenes of city

streets and deserted roads through canyons. Visibility is

shockingly poor at all times, and the protagonists may well

be drunk at any time of day. Snappy repartee is crucial. I

love this stuff!

Gaming Hard-Boiled Action is essentially a variant on

the historical gangster and cop sort of game. Obviously, the

Private Eye is essentially a lone wolf, and will need a certain amount of unfair advantage

to stay alive. He should be beaten up and left in alleys rather than killed. There will be

femmes fatale, occasional friendly cops, and villains who decide they like to have him

around. We dont know why.

The Yellow Peril and other Threats to Civilisation were

tremendously popular. The Victorian fear of Chinese domination (at

a time when China was as weak as it has ever been) extended into a

world of "Oriental" super villains, and their Chinatown minions. Fu

Manchu was copied as Wu Fang and Dr. Yen Sing. The Shadow and

The Spider found Eastern adversaries in many stories. Even

Hammett had to feature an Asian villain in The House on Turk St. In

response, there came a few Asian good guys like Charlie Chan and

Mr. Moto.

For gaming purposes, the Yellow Peril offers not only

traditional Chinoiserie, with sorcerers and assassins and men with


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Astounding Tales!

really big fireworks, but a whole new generation of Tong gangsters, Eastern Science and a

real new enemy, Imperial Japan.

Western Adventure was a staple of the Pulps. This was a West that

somehow segued strangely between the 1870's and the present, so

that the whole USA west of the Mississippi featured cars, and radios,

and cowboys with six guns and Indians on the warpath. Many of the

cowboys sang, as well, and orchestras played from behind a large

cactus. My Editor, Patrick Wilson, of Oklahoma City, thinks this is

remarkable, as he recalls no rampaging Redskins during his 1950s childhood, but I suspect hes just a few years too young. A variant of the western is the North-West Romance, which features lone red-

coated Mounties taking on mixed breed villains with bad French

accents. Apparently biracial parentage was a cause for criminal

behaviour in itself.

Theres all kinds of Western gunfight rules out there. A Pulp version should simply feature more heroes shooting guns out of

villains hands, and sudden "Modernisms" like a car full of gangsters taking on Sitting Bulls feather-bonneted hordes (who may appear Italian or Mexican, as movie extras might).

The Un-Dead Arisen! Zombies, mummies and skeletons are

really central to the world of Pulp Horror. They were really ideal for

the silent cinema, of course. So, Pulp is an ideal opportunity to get

the skellies out. You really dont need an excuse.

Weird Science is at the core of so much Pulp. The period after WWI provides us

with a great deal of what we think of as the ordinary devices of the modern worldcars, radios, working aircraftso, unlike the world of Victorian Adventure, you can buy a Ford rather than rely on your crazy inventor uncle to build something wacky. However, the very

ordinariness of these things means that it takes an extra level of

scientific effort to impress us. When its the heroes doing it, its "super science, with Doc Savages submarine, and the Spiders planes, which are somehow better than normal. Theres not much of the Tom Clancy tech-speak in Pulp; the writers dont (cant?) explain very much in the way of engineering detail. Villains, of course, rely on a more malign spirit of

massive devices designed to inflict death, and, of course,

conquer the world. Theres almost no limit to the scope of these machines.


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Second Edition

SECTION I : SO, HOW D YA PLAY ASTOUNDING TALES?

Who knows what evil lurks within the hearts of men? The Shadow knows! The Shadow Voice-over

We pretend that we are making a movie. We arent, of course, but its a good way of staging the event rather than saying Its like chess, but with toy soldiers and complicated rules or Its an exact simulation of real eventsyou know, the guff that has caused so many miniatures games to reek of sheer dullness.

The game is played with a Directora Games Masterwho sets up the Scene and decides who goes when, according to whatever seems right at the time.

There are suggestions for doing this. Everyone will,

however, get equal amounts of time on camera. The

players are normally all on the same sideat least notionallythough equally they may play opponents, in the traditional wargaming fashion.

The Director will operate various minions,

underlings, walk-on parts and others; hell will try to make sure that these bit-part actors dont steal the limelight from the stars, unless he is annoyed with

their egos.

Most of the game mechanisms are based on rolling an ordinary six-sided die to score

equal-to-or-less-than a particular number; sometimes the idea is that one player has to roll

to hit and then his opponent rolls to save and so avoid the hits effectan oldie-but-goody rules system from the distant past of wargaming that keeps everyone involved. The

Director will give a voice-over of whats going on, asking the players So what do you do now? and demanding instant reaction and movement. The Director will dictate that you roll against STUNTS or SMARTS or whatever, and youd best do it and no arguing, Buddy!

Its all about breathless, non-stop action, so we dont care for incidentals. Legendary detective writer Raymond Chandlerwho began in Black Mask and Dime Detectivebelieved that plots move along by introducing more dead bodies, no apology or explanation

needed.

EXAMPLE: Director Bob decides that he wants to run a game called The Curse of the Lost Golden Monkey (or, TCOTLGM, as you might). His friends Bill, Joe and Sue volunteer to play, because, Dammit, its the right thing to do. They gather at Bobs crummy apartment in a seedy part of town, bringing pints of cheap liquor and unfiltered cigarettes, dressed in

fedoras and shabby suits (well, maybe not Sue). They understand the deal; Bob will provide

an evenings entertainment, allowing their Characters to wade through other peoples blood to an exciting climax of gunplay and smart quips, and theyll go along with it, for right now.


14

Astounding Tales!

WHATLL I NEED? I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.

Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely, 1940

First off, aside from the Director and playersanything from one poor sap to maybe a dozen willing victimsyou are going to need Sets, Props, Characters, Villains and Sup-porting Cast.

Sets: A game table or board, with scenery, for each

Scene you intend to play out. For this kind of game

you dont always need whole big tables wide enough to see for miles across the Arizona desert or African

veldt; a city scene might need a foot-square board

with a seedy alley behind a dingy diner and the back

of two warehouses, while a jungle path is really just

a track with a screen of trees on either side of it. A

loan sharks office requires just an officemaybe only 2 x 3 bigwith a hallway and the hint that there might be stairs or an elevator to leave by; you dont need to show the bookstore on the ground floor, the laundry across the street, or the small-time accounting business upstairs that shares the washroom. Think

about how movie sets are constructed! You can build several quite small sets and place

them on the table as separate pieces; in the first reel the Scene is at the heros hotel in New York, when the agents of Dr, Fu Manchu try to drug him and steal the diamonds. This set is

the size of a shoebox, and might, indeed, be converted from a shoebox. In the second

Scene we are in a Cairo market (2 x 2 square), and in the final reel we are in the ruins of an ancient temple. All three sets are separate, but share space on the dining room table this

evening!

Props: These are exactly what youd expect, but in a world of miniature figures the emphasis is on things that can be used by small peoplecars, boats, aircraftand fixtures and fittings like furniture, crates and barrels, that sort of thing. We may have to imagine

diamond necklaces and letters in invisible ink,

since theyd be smaller than a pinhead in this scale. I have collected die cast cars, plastic planes, boats

that cover a wide period, and various other bits and

bobs. Many of these are fairly generica kitchen table is a kitchen tableand serve in different times and places. Likewise a 1927 Ford, a rowing

boat or a small brown dogbut a butchers van ad-vertising a shop in South London serves to show a

pretty exact time and place, along with the double-

decker bus full of un-dead Egyptians on its way to

Marble Arch.


15

Second Edition

EXAMPLE: Director Bob looks through his collection of

models, deciding that he wants three sets for TCOTLGM. He selects buildings, trees and other scenics that will allow

him to portray a New York office, a beach in Hawaii and a

jungle path in some imaginary China Seas locale. For props

he decides he needs some period cars, taxis, boats and a Ford

Tri-motor prop plane. The Lost Golden Monkey is a small

statuette, which may appear, or may simply remain, well,

lost. The players will be allowed, within reason, to pick their own cast, but Director Bob de-

cides that the villains will be a cosmopolitan art dealer, a gangster and a chief of stone-age

head hunters.

Cast: These are the actual characters of the dramaheroes, heroines, trusty sidekicks, dangerous dames, everyone who counts as a real

person. For each character, youll need a figure to portray them (to really impress, have several

matching figures in evening wear, tropical garb and

regular clothes!). Again, I have gathered a group of

28mm scale figures that can be used in different

locales, because men in fedoras and women in

period day dress fit (more or less) across the globe.

Each player will have at least one character to call

their own, possibly with some others as friends, as-

sistants, lieutenants, etc. Also included are any lesser characters that the Director may either

operate himself or hand over to the playersyou know, the amiable doorman, the drunken reporter, the mechanic who sees things he shouldnt, the cop who never believes what any-one tells him.

The four basic Character Types are as follows:

Leading Roles (LRs)Since we are going with a movie motif, these are the players own characters. Leading Roles are treated with special respect, and it is under-stood that they cannot be killed unless its an integraland previously agreedpart of the plot. They can, of course, be taken prisoner, beaten up and slung in the trunks of Buicks.

They can make two Interruptions per scene (see the Interrupt Rules, pg 43). They can re-roll when a GUTS check goes wrong. They always do exactly what the player wants,

although they take tests against Attributes as usual, and cannot be assumed to get absolutely

everything right.

Secondary Roles (SRs)The Leading Roles companions and sidekicks (the hu-morous, more inept types) operated by the players. They may have ratings as high or

higher than some LRs, but may not always do exactly as the player wishes. They take

GUTS checks, andmost importantlycan be killed off in the course of a game.

Bit Parts (BP)These are often simply promoted members of the Supporting Castdrivers, beat cops, newsboys, etcbut they have the advantage of counting as char-


16

Astounding Tales!

acters in combat, and enough HITS that they dont just fall over when a bullet wings em. In a smaller scenario its likely that youll need these BPs rather than the masses of name-less, one-hit-to-kill Supporting Cast who populate the grand epic affairs.

The Supporting Cast (SC) are the lesser mor-

tals of limited abilities, whose individual fates are of

minimal interest to us. Call em extras, minions, un-derlings, whatever. They can serve either as devoted

servants to the Charactersin the guise of cops, sol-diers, rebels against tyrannyor as hoods, heavies, and black-hats, the henchmen of evil. They have one

life to lose, which they do, easily, and simpler rules

and fewer abilities than the Characters. They tend to run around in bunches, and may repre-

sent quite a few more than are actually portrayed, because the union scale for extras means

the producers can only afford ten guys where the script calls for a regiment of Mexican sol-

diers. A player can control a fair number (10? 50?) of these figures, as we arent really concerned about what happens to them individually.

EXAMPLE: Director Bob decides that he needs figures for his Characters and villains; often

its good to let players select from several models to pick their own personal figure. For ex-tras he will provide New York cops, gangsters, some hokey Chinese and Japanese types for

the Hawaiian set, faced off with a U.S, naval shore party, and a collection of head hunters

for The Jungle Scene. He will have boxes of figures available for that surprise moment when it becomes clear that the jungle island has a convention of castaway tourists/Nazi ar-

chaeologists/vile creatures from the deepest chasms (etc, etc) which somehow never featured

in the original plans.

Villains are those cast members who aregaspenemies of all that is decent; as such they are controlled by the Director or by a player serving as Assistant Director. This is not the

same thing as when players compete against one another, since

the players are trying to win in a much more straightforward manner; we might think that Colonel Rommel is a villain by

virtue of his being a German officer, but thats not necessarily the case in the mind of the player controlling him. Besides,

everyone knows that Rommel is a Good German. Now, the Gestapo operative watching over Rommels shoulder is clearly a villain! The key thing about the villains in Astounding Tales!

is that they serve to further the plot, provide dramatic tension,

etc, but they are not intended to win at the end of the day. They

can have their moments of triumph, with much gloating, etc, but

in the final Scene, they must lose. If the Director cannot man-

age to make them loseif the players are either grotesquely unlucky or incompetentthen a sequel must occur. Note that, though defeated, a good vil-lain can often make a cunning exit to appear again in another place and time! Thats why there are so many Fu Manchu books.


17

Second Edition

CHARACTERS Meet the sinister and mysterious Dr. Satan-the worlds weirdest criminal.

Cover blurb from Weird Tales, August 1935

Astounding Tales! is all about characters. Well,

that and unlikely plot twists, irresponsible behaviour

with weapons and talking in a terse, snappy sort of

way.

Characters have 6 Attributes: FISTS, GATS,

GUTS, STUNTS, SMARTS, and HITS. This list is

known in AT! as a Profile.

Each of these Attributes is rated between 2 (poor) and 5 (very good)possibly 6 for Pulp Hero types, maybe even 7 for Doc Savage, who is just one step short of the guy with

the cape and the phone booth. An average Character would be rated 3 for most things, understanding as we do that Pulp Era Characters are seldom average. For almost every-

thing, roll 1 D6, modify if needed, and equal-or-less succeeds. So 5s do very well, 2s fail constantly, which isnt very heroic, I know. Sixs can fail by rolling a six, then rolling 4-6 on a second roll. Sevens can fail by rolling a 6, then rolling a 5-6 on a second roll. (That Savage, boy howdy.) FISTSClose combat, with or without weapons. Socking em in the jaw, slapping em with a pistol, poking them with the Sword of Nemedis, secretly buried lo these thou-sand years.

GATSShooting with any weapon, including knives, rocks, bottles as well as the blazing .45s we expect for this genre.

GUTSIntestinal fortitude when faced with hideous bug-eyed monsters or ugly men with Thompson Submachine Guns.

STUNTSBecause a chandelier is not simply a lighting fixture. All kinds of leap-ing, diving, dodging, driving around flaming tankers.

SMARTSGetting wise to the game, figuring out clues and not playing the sap for anyone. This includes most kinds of charisma, observation, and anything where having a

brain might be helpful.

HITSBeing the amount of damage you can take, between 3 and 6 for a hu-man, more for robots, horrific beasts, and possibly the larger sort of German. You collect

wounds until you have no more, in which case you are out of the game, and possibly out of

everything. Some wounds are worse than others, and take away points from other Attrib-

utes at the same time as they take Hits.

In addition, some Characters will have SKILLS, like inventing amazing explosive

devices out of common kitchen items, or having really nice table mannersthats mostly the 1920s English detectives, who have no access to proto-atomic weaponry and the like, and have to fall back on the martial art of Etiquette. Being unusually ugly, or lucky or

whatever are included as SKILL as well, for convenience sake.


18

Astounding Tales!

MAKING UP CHARACTERS Sergeant Burt Moran was a tall man with hard flat features and eyes that were cold and dull, like those of a snake. He was that comparatively rare thing among cops, a man equally hated by crooks and his fellow offi-cers. Operators on both sides of the law forgot their differences and came to agreement on one point at least: that Moran was a heel by any or all standards.

William P. McGivern, Death Comes Gift-Wrapped, 1948

More often than not, you will be able to take a

basic character concept and work out some reasonable

Attributes and skills for themfor instance, a private detective should be good with fists and guns, fairly

smart and able to take a few blows, whereas a Mad

Scientist might well be weak in everything but

SMARTS, but have amazing SKILLS, and possibly a

collection of loyal minions to supply the muscle, etc.

The following section features the ideas of Roderick Robertson of California, who

gives us examples from the gangster genre. These are taken from a developing AT! Variant

known as Gangsters: Mad Dogs With Guns.

To create a cast, you may either A) roll up characters, B) buy characters off the rack. or C) purchase basic low level peoplerecruits, assorted minions, or punksand improve them (or any combination). A player may combine these methods to create his

cast (see the example, below).

Supporting Cast can simply have a single rating for all Attributes to keep it easy. A 3

would be an average gangster, Tong member, German soldier, etc. Punks would be 2,

enforcers, hard men, elite soldiers, 4. You can mix up ratings if you like, though. For

instance, sailors brawl well, Gurkhas have tremendous STUNTS skills, and all nameless

henchmen are pretty stupid, as is well known. Since any hit takes them out of the game,

they effectively have a HITS of 1 because most serious wounds would cause several

HITS, enough to make them stop harassing the characters, at any rate. You can make it

more detailed if you want, but why? Only automatons, hash-crazed Eastern assassins, giant

apes, etc, would be higher. And theyd have their own special rules. Naturally. The Budget concept is based on a gangland setting, where income from nefarious activities balances the costs of keeping a criminal organisation together. You can also think

of it as a points system, but without the dweeb factor (as Little Caesar would no doubt put

it).

1) Rolling Up A Character If you want to just make up a character randomly, roll 8 D6. For every

set of 1 and 6 that come upthats both a 1 and a 6read them as 2 and 5. Take the best six of the eight dice results and assign them to the


19

Second Edition

Attributes you wish, depending on the kind of character you have in mind. For every 6 rolled (whether you modified it or not), roll on the SKILLS Table. The only thing to ensure

is that HITS is at least 3, and should generally be close to FISTS in level, because people

with tuberculosis seldom hit like Joe Louis. Female characters cannot have FISTS above 4

(although Amazon Queens or other characters approved by the Director might). Indeed,

Female characters can use their own SKILLS Tables (below).

2) Buying Attributes A basic character has all stats of 2. From this base, you may purchase higher

Attributes and SKILLS. Bit Parts and Supporting Cast (punks, conscripts, civilians, etc)

cost $25 and all Attributes set at 2.

Only Leading and Secondary Roles may use the SKILLS Table. Leading Roles pay

$50 for each roll made on the SKILLS it, and Secondary Roles pay $25 per roll. These

characters may choose specific SKILLS from the Table, but must pay twice the random rate.

If a player rolls a SKILL he doesnt want, he may roll 1 D6: 1-3= He must keep the skill rolled; 4-

6= He may roll again, but pay an additional $25. The

player may continue to roll until he gets what he likes,

but must pay every time, like it or not!

Example: Bob rolls GUN SHY for his torpedo.

Not wanting to have one of his best figures

flinching every time hes shot at, Bob rolls to see if he can get another chancehe rolls a 5, and pays an additional $25. He rolls GIMPY,

and doesnt like the improvement. He opts to roll again, and comes up a 4, so he pays $25 more, and rolls up NOT IN THE FACE! At this

point, he decides to give up and keep this one.

The character figure has cost an additional $50

and not got any better!

Basic Character Costs By Type Character Leading Role Secondary Role Bit Part Supporting Cast

Basic Cost $400 $200 $100 $50

Plus For Each

Attribute of 3 $20 $10 $10 $5

Plus For Each

Attribute of 4 $50 $25 $20 $10

Plus For Each

Attribute of 5 $100 $50 $40 N/A

Plus For Each

Attribute of 6 $200 $100 N/A N/A


20

Astounding Tales!

3) Off The Rack To buy a gangster off the rack, just purchase one of the gangster templates below.

You may purchase additional stats or abilities as above in Buying Attributes.

All characters are assumed to possess equipment suited to their role (knives, pistols,

nightsticks, decoder rings, etc) though the Director may allow each player to select one ex-

tra item suited to this adventure. This has to make sense. (Why would the perky platinum

blonde secretary have a death-ray next to her Smith-Corona typewriter?) Given the genre,

we accept that she carries a .32 revolver in her purse at all times. Thats only sensible, and Roderick has permitted anyone with a GATS of 3 or better to have a gun for free. Note that

soldiers (Bit Player or Supporting Cast) are allowed to have rifles, bayonets, etc, and even

the most unwilling conscript has a GATS of 2, yet is issued military equipment at no extra

cost.

Roderick Robertson gives an example of creating a gang.

EXAMPLE: Bobs Gang start with a $1000 budget. First he rolls up his Boss. He rolls a 4, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 1, & 2. The 1 and one of the 6s modify to a 2 and a 5, so the dice read, in order 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, & 6. Bill needs six Attributes, so he ditches the twos. The two sixes rolled mean two rolls on the SKILLS Table. He also gets an additional $25 to spend on a SKILL or Attrib-

ute.

Type Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits Skills

Mob Boss $225 4 4 4 2 4 5 2 Chosen Skills

Accountant $110 2 2 2 2 5 3 Required to make payoffs

Gun Moll $140 3 3 3 3 4 2 Hell Cat or Nice Girl

Torpedo $325 5 5 5 4 4 4 3 Rolls on the Skills Table*

Enforcer $225 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 Rolls on the Skills Table*

Hoodlum $100 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 Roll on the Skill Table*

Slugger $45 3 2 3 3 2 3 No special skills

Punk $25 2 2 2 2 2 2 No special skills

* May choose (instead of roll) SKILLS for an additional $25 each.

Equipment Costs Item Cost Item Cost

Tommy Gun $200 Fancy automobile $500

Browning Automatic Rifle

(BAR)

$300 Grenades $25 each

Pump Action Shotgun $75 Pistol One free to GATS 3+

figures; others $20

Double barrelled Shotgun $50 Hand-to-hand weapon Free

Automobile or truck $200


21

Second Edition

He decides that his Boss Jimmy The Nose ODonnell is a scrapper, so allocates his dice as follows. He chooses REAL SCARY and BRUTAL CHAMP, spends his extra $25 on a

rolled skill, and gets SHOTGUNNER.

He buys an accountant Off the Rack

Every Mob Boss worth his salt needs a Gun Moll, so Sally Mae is bought off the rack and upgraded. He specifically chooses CRACK SHOT and selects HELL CAT from the two

choices given to Gun Molls.

Hed like to buy a Torpedo for his gang, but hes already spent $400 on his command structure. Instead he buys an Enforcer as his heavy. He rolls well on his skills!

He picks up some basic hoodlums for soldiers.

Finally, he rounds out the gang with some expendable punks.

Name Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits Skills Jimmy

The Nose ODonnell

Free 6 5 4 2 3 5 Real Scary

Brutal Champ

Shotgunner

Double-barrelled

Shotgun

$50

Name Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits Skills Accountant $110 2 2 2 2 5 3 Accountancy

Name Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits Skills Sally Mae $240 3 3 4 3 4 3 Hell Cat

Crack Shot

Pistol Free

Name Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits Skills Saul

The Gat $225 4 4 4 4 4 4 Two Gun

Kid

Tommy

Gunner

Pistol

2nd pistol

Tommy

Gun

Free

$20

$100

Name Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits Skills Giorgio The Shiv $100 3 3 3 3 3 3 Mack the Knife Pistol

Knife

Free

Free

Guido Fists $100 3 3 3 3 3 3 Brutal Champ Pistol

Brass knuckles

Free

Free


22

Astounding Tales!

Bob has spent a grand total of $995, and is ready to control his part of town.

SKILLS I learned much of the secrets of make-up from a clown named Ricki. To the grave-eyed man with the long black burnsides who traveled with the show under the name of Don

Avigne, I am indebted for knowledge that has made the knife one of the deadliest weapons

in my hands. Then there was Professor Gabby, who taught me the principles of ventrilo-

quism---while I was hanging around the circus I won the confidence of Marko the Magician

---- Calling the Ghost,

The Ghost Super-Detective, 1940

As weve said, for every 6 rolled in creating your character, you get to roll on the SKILLS Table. You may want to pick these skills, but its more fun to roll 2 D6, reading one as tens and the other as units.

Skills Table

2 D6 Roll Skill Description

11 Bomber Can take a second Flick when throwing Grenades (page 34) if the first lands off target. (Must Re-flick from original starting point.)

12 Pick

Pocket

+1 to STUNTS when trying to sneak anything off another

character. Failure means the Dip is caught in the act.

13 Brutal Champ +1 FISTS when hes in a public place and people are watching.

14 Acrobat +2 STUNTS for all climbing feats.

15 Cold

Blooded

COLD BLOODED--Always fires an extra round to ensure that an op-

ponent is down for good. If adjacent to a downed figure for a full

round that figure automatically takes an additional 6 wound on the appropriate table. Character is not influenced by FEMMES FA-

TALE, REAL CHARMERS, SCARY, and rolls again if another

SKILL would be NOT IN THE FACE!

16 Crazy

Inventor

+2 SMARTS when contriving device from whatever is handy (A tin can, box of matches, bottle of Moxie, ball of string, ---Yes! It will

work!)

21 Drunk/

Addict

At beginning of each Scene, roll 1 D6: 1-4=-1 each from GATS, SMARTS, & STUNTS; 5,6=+1 to GUTS.

Name Cost Fists Gats Guts Stunts Smarts Hits Skills Tommy $25 2 2 2 2 2 2

Baseball bat Free

Billy $25 2 2 2 2 2 2

Switchblade

knife

Free


23

Second Edition

22 Fast May add up to 3 when Running.

23 Flashing Blade +1 to SERIOUS BUSINESS using a sword.

24 Call Me

Sherlock

+2 SMARTS in connection with evidence, etc.

25 Gullible If told anything during a Scene by a Friend, he will believe it after fail-

ing a SMARTS -1 test. As soon as the truth is demonstrated--anytime,

anywhere--he cannot be fooled again by the same character for the rest

of the scenario.

26 Gun Shy All rolls of 1 on the Lead Poisoning Table are treated as 2.

31 Hothead Must attack nearest enemy in running range in hand-to-hand combat.

32 Just Nuts +1 STUNTS when escaping from opponents by leaping / diving / etc.

33 Lucky Cuss 2 re-rolls per scene, but only for actions by or against himself directly.

34 Mack The Knife +1 to SERIOUS BUSINESS when using a knife, and +1 GATS when

throwing a knife.

35 Mean Drunk +1 to FISTS and GUTS, but -2 to GATS when hes got a skin full (Directors call).

36 Tongue Tied Character can communicate normally, but when involved in an Action

Scene (fighting, shooting, plane crash, man-eating gerbil stampede, etc)

he can only say two words each turn to the other players.

41 Not In The Face! All BRAWLING wounds require an extra round to recover from.

42 Cracksman Can attempt to open any safe/strong box/door/gate or anything with a

lock on it by passing a STUNTS +1 test.

43 Martial Arts +1 STUNTS in close combat situation.

44 Pineapple Man +1 GATS when throwing explosives such as grenades or dynamite.

45 Exquisite Manners If a non-Leading Role enemy is about to start a fight, the character can

say just the right thing to put him off (prior to shots being fired or

punches thrown). The character tests his SMARTS +1 each turn until

he fails--then the fun begins!

46 A Real Charmer Character can get any non-Leading Role character to do anything he

asks this turn (Director's call). He must first pass a SMARTS +1 test

in order to do so.

51 Scary Opponents roll GUTS-2 when facing him.

52 Shotgunner +1 to LEAD POISONING when using a shotgun.

53 Snappy Dresser Character cuts a fine figure and when talking to characters other than

Leading Roles may add "1" to his SMARTS when telling a lie. If he

passes the test, the listener believes him--until the opposite is proved.

Costs an additional +$25 (hey, good suits dont come cheap!)

54 Spunky Kid Can re-roll 1 GUTS once per scene.

55 Squeamish -1 GUTS when rolling if you or a friend wound have been struck/

wounded.

56 Tommy Gunner +1 to LEAD POISONING using any Sub-Machine Gun.


24

Astounding Tales!

Female Characters Some of the standard Special Skills dont work too well with female characters, or at the very least some need rewording.

TOUGH SOB becomes TOUGH BROAD, for instance. Females

also have a variety of qualities specific to their gender. In the Pulp

world, women are either Good Girls or Bad Girls. Decide which your character is. For the characters first SKILL, roll a D6, either as a Good or Bad Girl. For the second and subsequent SKILL, you may choose whether to roll on the same chart, or on the

standard SKILLS Table. If the result seems absurd, try again.

Feminine Wiles Table

Bad Girls

D6 Roll Skill Description

1 Femme

Fatale

Character may make three attempts to control one or more male charac-

ters per scenario. The intended victim tests SMARTS. If he passes, he can-

not be tested again. If he fails, he must do what she wants him to do

(subject to Directors approval). Femmes Fatale are automatically COLD BLOODED and REAL CHARMERS.

2 Hell Cat +2 to LEAD POISONING and BRAWLING Tables.

3 Two

Faced

Shows all the attributes of NICE GIRL (see other table) and lasts until she

commits some obviously wicked act when he will test SMARTS to see if the

fooled party finds her out.

4 Mimic Can impersonate any voice on the phone or otherwise when out of sight.

Hearer must test against SMARTS to recognize being tricked.

5 Vamp She can attempt to make any one man become A SUCKER FOR A DAME.

This will work on a roll of 1-3, and if it works, it lasts until she is found to

commit some wicked act when he will test SMARTS to see through her de-

ception.

6 Sweet

Talker

SWEET TALKER--Can make any man test to be GULLIBLE whenever

she wants, but only three times during a scenario.

61 Tough SOB/Broad -1 from wounds against him for first two wounds.

62 Two-Gun Kid May fire with a pistol in each hand per round without penalty.

63 Wheel Man +2 to STUNTS for driving feats. Accelerate/decelerate two speeds per

action instead of one. (Applies to a Pilot as Flyin Fool.)

64 Boxer +1 to BRAWLING die rolls.

65 Crack Shot +1 to LEAD POISONING when using a pistol, rifle or carbine.

66 Gimpy -1 from all Movement, but -2 from Running.


25

Second Edition

NOTE: Some SKILLS referred to below are found under rules for COMIC CHARAC-

TERS (below).

COMIC CHARACTERS These can be either Leading Roles or Secondary

Roles. The Director may assign one or more to any charac-

ters, or one may be claimed by any player with the

Directors approval. These are SKILLS (and nowhere is that term more

out of place) primarily for Sidekicks. Since they are all negative to some degree, whenever the player rolls a 6 while creating this character, he must pick from the list be-

low. Note that the Director reserves the right to assign one

Feminine Wiles Table

Good Girls

D6 Roll Skill Description

1 Feminine

Intuition

Once per scene the character may have a free Interrupt by making any male character back up and repeat an Actionbut she gets to Act first!

2 Doll Face All men become TONGUE TIED and CLUMSY in her presence until

actual violence breaks out. She is also a REAL CHARMER.

3 Nice

Girl

Friendly characters must always tell the truth and cannot break any

laws, promises, or confidences in her presence. Opponents 1 to GATS and FISTS against her.

4 Packs A Punch +2 to BRAWLING die roll.

5 Ingnue -1 to her SMARTS when being persuaded or conned until deception be-

comes clear, the +1 on any roll that helps her get revenge.

6 Heroine

Scream

Can choose to scream at times of crisis, summoning friendly male char-

acters within 24 who must make a free RUNNING move to reach her side, and will continue until reaching her in as few turns as possible.


26

Astounding Tales!

or more of these SKILLS as part of his scenario.

BraggartClaims skills he may not actually have. "Sure I can fly a plane/drive a car/ operate a submarine/ make a fire without matches/etc." Players may believe him or not--

they havent seen his Profile.

Wrong-way CorriganNo sense of direction. If he goes to get help (for example), or does anything relating to direction, test his SMARTS -2. If he fails, randomly determine

the direction he will take or indicateso long as its wrong!

"Errant Knight"The character will accept such challenges as to "Throw down your gun and fight like a man!," or similar acts of ill-considered chivalry if challenged. Test versus

SMARTS -2.

Totally Oblivious--Subtract 2 from the character's SMARTS whenever his observation

skills are needed.

"Stutters"--Can't relay information for a turn after any exciting activity or narrow escape

(Directors call).

Unlucky--Director or opponent may demand this character re-roll one successful (but non-

fatal) die roll per scene in the hope of failure.

BaffledConfused character must spend an Action simply reacting whenever a new ele-ment appears in a scenario.

Clumsy (Character must have STUNTS of 3 or less)Director or opponent may demand STUNTS test once a scene for tripping, dropping things, etc.

Technically IneptWhen working with any sort of technology, a failed roll leads to the worst possible (non-fatal) outcome (What do you mean the bomb's timer sped up?!)

Absentminded Professor--Curious about everything to the point of ignoring the business at hand. Always wandering off

chasing a rare butterfly, poking around the mysterious but very

dangerous equipment to see how it works, always touching the

"Wet Paint" sign to see if it is, etc.

A Sucker For A DameWill let any woman talk her way out of the room, get him to put down his weapon, remove her hand-

cuffs, etc, if he fails a SMARTS -1 test.

Ugly MugWomen and children test GUTS on first sight.


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Second Edition

EXAMPLES OF CHARACTER CREATION Director Bill now starts to provide his players with their characters for his scenario.

He chooses not to buy his characters, but to roll them up, so he rolls the necessary dice be-fore he decides what sort of characters he has.

For the first, he rolls 4, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 1, 2. The 1 and one of the 6s modify to a 2 and a 5, as per the rules, so the dice read, in order, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6. Since only six Attributes are necessary, he can ditch both of the low 2s. The pair of sixes means two rolls on the SKILLS TABLE. These result in CALL ME SHERLOCK and

LUCKY CUSS, leading him to create as a Primary Character Private Eye Pug Roscoe. Thus, he decides being able to fight and to figure things out are both necessary, so this is the

resulting Profile.

He is armed with a .45 automatic and a lead-filled sap. He asks for a seaplane, which

would be useful but not the sort of thing that a PI can expect to have. The Director denies

this, but allows him a roadster for the New York Scene.

In contrast, Sue decides that she will be the Countess DOrdonza (born Millie Schwarz), an adventuress desired by millionaires and wanted by authorities from Kowloon

to Kansas Citydecidedly a Bad Girl. So shell be looking to place her dice to fit this Pri-mary Role. She rolls 2, 3, 2, 6, 5, 4, 4, & 6 giving her two SKILLS. She rolls up FEMME FATALE and HELL CAT and ditches her pair of twos. She then sets up her list

as follows:

She tells Director Bob that she carries a small automatic pistol and a stiletto, which

he accepts, and a vial of arsenic, which he denies. You cant allow just anyone to have a con-venient poison in her purse!

The third player, Joe, decides on an international playboy Character, Race Kennedy. His profile sets up this way: He claims a silver-plated revolver, a Duesenberg touring car,

and the seaplane that Bill was refused. All this seems reasonable to Director Bob.

The Director also decides that each player

will get an additional Character for the gamea secretary for the PI, a manservant/bodyguard for

the Countess, and an old pal from the Lafayette

Escadrille for Kennedy. The players then create

them by rolling them up, or buying them as they may prefer.

FISTS GATS GUTS STUNTS SMARTS HITS SKILLS

3 5 4 4 6 Femme Fatale, Hell Cat 3


5 3 4 6 3 Wheel Man 4


5 3 5 3 6 Call Me Sherlock, Lucky Cuss 4


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Astounding Tales!

SETTING UP THE GAME A valley of life in a land of frozen death. A golden-haired goddess in an Eden of a savage, lost race. Through screaming blizzards Corporal Peters sought them-his only signposts a mad-mans ravings and a skeletons long-stilled boast!

Roger Daniels, Spoilers of the Lost World, 1938

So, weve got sets, weve got figures, weve got players equipped with heroes, side-kicks and underlings. Were ready to shoot that first reelbut wait! Wheres the script? Whats the storyline?

This is up to the Director to provide. Now, since this isnt a complicated Role Playing Game (or RPG), and we dont need to know the name, charisma rating or armour class of the dishwater-blonde waitress at that crummy all-night juke joint where Phillip Marlowe is

nursing his hangover. This can be pretty loose. Hell, if we dont like where its going, we can always cut and re-shoot. But it is a good idea to have some unifying theme to an adven-

ture, even if it does move locations between San Francisco, Istanbul and the Upper Amazon

as the tale unfolds.

Kidnapped heiresses, stolen gems, Nazi plots to control the world, The Purple

Emperors wish to destroy it, these are classics of their type. For instance, in my Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu adventure, which has several unconvincing-yet-appealing story lines tied together in an unlikely (yet appealing) stream of cuts, clumsy changes of location, fail-

ures of continuity, snappy dialogue, there is a running thread of a mad archaeologists kid-napped daughter and the exciting, though generally incompetent (in all games played so far)

efforts of her father and her fianc to rescue her from a fate worse thanwell, no actually, just death. She always escapes by her own efforts, youll be happy to know. Theres a starlet called Roxy who chews up the scenery when shes on camera, too.

EXAMPLE: Director Bob decides that the plot involves the theft of an idol known as the

Golden Monkey by an international art dealer with mob connections. The PI is hired by a

briefly-appearing client who wishes him to regain the Monkey and return it to the shrine on

the island of Pongo-Pongo where it rightfully belongs.

The Countess appears with offers of helpbut secretly wishes to steal the idol her-selfwhile the international playboy is simply looking for an adventure in the tropics while the winter weather closes in around his palatial Manhattan home.

There will be a Scene in New York where the Duchess steals the idol from the art

dealer, Lardache, one in Hawaii where the dealers minions try to wrest it back, with some Opium smugglers and Charlie Chan involved, and one in the jungles of Pongo-Pongo where

the head-hunters (enemies of the gentle and peaceful villagers of Pongo-Pongo) try to prevent

our Characters returning the idol. Is this corny or what?

Of course, this plot will not survive contact with the players! Director Bob remembers

that the word Curse appears in the title, but hell figure that one out later.


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Second Edition

THE OPENING SCENE Over New York fell the murderous spell of Deaths burning stare-and men died in the throes of some terrible, secret, inner fire! Richard Wentworth, alone as THE SPIDER, dared challenge the astounding attack by a modern Genghis Khan gone mad.

Blight of the Blazing Eye, The Spider Magazine, April 1939

Here are some classic, not to say corny, places to start:

1. In a darkened alleyway, three thugs attack our hero as he makes his way through

the shadowy world of the city at night.

2. Inside an Egyptian tomb, a party of explorers is shocked by mummies rising from

sarcophagi, skeletal bodyguards and a beautiful woman in the diaphanous robes of a priest-

ess of Isis. 3. A nightclub, a torch singer, a backroom gambling game, illegal drugs and

prostitutionand then the lights go out. 4. A closed train, guarded by brooding men in uniforms, steams across the open de-

sert. Suddenly there is an explosion as the tracks ahead are blown, and the cry of mounted

tribesmen galloping forward pierces the air!

5. The jungle path, the creaking bridge, the howling of monkeys ceases and the si-

lence tells of some unknown peril.

EXAMPLE: If this were a traditional RPG wed have a lot of scene-setting stuff, or at least an elaborate review of the penthouse suite where Lardache keeps his stolen loot. However,

since weve determined that stealing the Monkey back is the key to starting the plot, well begin with asking the players to come up with a scheme to do this. They decide that the

duchess will persuade Lardache to show her the idol, that Roscoe should come in to show

some muscle, and that Kennedy will have the Duesenberg ready at the back door for a get-

away. But we need to get the thing started. Director Bob decides that this is a workable

scene, and decides that the Action

begins when the duchess saps

Lardache with a genteel bag of lead

shot and grabs the monkey. So In the penthouse suite of a five-star hotel in Manhattan, a

crooked art dealer shows his latest ill

-gotten treasure to a beautiful

woman. He plans to impress her: her

plans are rather different.


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Astounding Tales!

SECTION II : CAMERA! ACTION! THE RULES OF PLAY It is written, Wu Fang cooed through his thin, cruel lips, that defeat is often nearest when victory appears to come.

The Case Of The Hidden Scourge, The Mysterious Wu Fang, 1936

There isnt much you need to know! Deliberately so.

A. If you are playing in RPG style, with the players

acting as a group:

First of all, decide the sequence of action. The Director will

ask the players what they want to do (Whats my motivation?) either as a group or indi-vidually, starting with the character in most immediate danger of something bad happening

real soon. If the group is fussy about who acts when, get each to roll a D6 and add the

score to either SMARTS or STUNTS, depending on whether its a Spot that poisonous snake moment, or time for leaping across a gorge. The Director may choose to move the villains and their minions at whatever time

seems appropriate in the turn. Since we instinctively know that the higher grade of evil-

doer likes to explain at some length what act of devilry hes about to perform next, its not a bad idea to let him talk first but act last. Most of the time, anyway.

Each turn each figure can perform two Actions: These include moving, shooting,

fighting hand to hand, and the various swinging-from-ropes, leaping-from-cliffs, using-the-

explosive-charge-hidden-in-the-signet-ring sorts of things that youd expect. These can be done in any order you like. You can shoot while movingeven runningbut not well. If things get tightand they willthe Director can cut the play down to one Action at a time, but (to even things out) let the heroes have an extra Action when they need one.

If its not your turn, you still dont have to stand like a dummy. If someone shoots at you, you can shoot at them. If he swings at you and misses, you get to hit back. If you are

waiting to jump out of a dark alley, you get to do that at the right moment rather than after

they move 4 past your hiding place. Likewise, you can shoot at an enemy when his sil-houette moves past the neon-lit sign, not when his movement takes him into the shadows.

You do this by means of the Interrupt mechanism, which well get to.

B. If you are playing in the orthodox miniatures game manner:

This will vary a little depending on whether the Director is actively playing God,

controlling hidden traps, stray dogs and sudden arrivals on the board, or if he is simply

playing the affable host and letting the players know all that is to be known. Traditionally,

most miniatures games have been like this, and often players are most comfortable in this

context. It does, however, pose problems in that everything is clearly set out on the table-

top, and so the level of secrecy and surprise is low. Id suggest that players take a collabo-rative, story-telling approach to this, rather than view the games as a desperately


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Second Edition

competitive exercise.

The simplest way is to alternate turns on the I-go-U-go principle. If there are several players, simply go round. A vari-

ant on this that I like in multi-player games is for the current

player to decide who will go next, until all have gone (and

theyre not likely to pick anyone they are actually fighting them-selves). Then the nominated player can begin moving while the

current player finishes his turn.

A more interesting method is The AMAZING WIZZO

CARD SEQUENCE

How It Works: Each player is dealt seven cards of the same suitthe ace, two and three (which permit one figure to act), the Jack, Queen and King (which permit all your figures to act) and

the tenwhich well get to later. Each players cards are shuffled together into a single deck, and both Jokers inserted. Use Hearts and Spades for two sided games, with diamonds

and clubs for multi-faction affairs. All the other cards in the pack are discarded. The cards

are turned over one at a time, and whenever it's your turn, your band of banditos, zombies or

Chicago cops get to move, shoot, hit each other with chairs and talk bigpossibly all at the same time.

If you have more than four factions, you can simply give each player seven plain in-

dex cards, to mark each one with his identifying name and either one figure (3 cards) all

figures (3 cards) and civilians (1 card). Shuffle all the players cards into a deck, with two additional index cards as jokers. However, Id say that multi-faction games using a card se-quence and interrupts can slow down a lot; it may be better to put extra players into teams

rather than allow them independent commands.

When a card only allows one figure to act, well allow any of his friends within 2 to act as well. That way he can drive a car, or bust in a door. So, effectively, its a one small unit move.

Each card allows the figure(s) to take two actions if used right away, but only one if

used as a Hold Card. The actions allowed are: MoveEither creeping, walking or running. You can shoot, but not well ShootEither with a single shot, or blasting away pretty wildly Aim (in case you really want to hit somebody in particular)

Slug somebody hard, with fists, furniture, gats or bats.

Recover from your natural reaction to a near-miss shot.

Test vs. SMARTS to spot hidden enemies.

STUNTLeap through a window, climb into a car, draw a gun, that sort of thing.

Talk big, crack wise, make threats. Real tough guys can give The Look (see

GUTS)

You can do these things in any order you like, as long as it makes senseyou cant slug someone with a bat and aim a pistol at the same time. And if you run into somebody on


32

Astounding Tales!

your second Action, well let you hit him for freewere swell guys that way. If you dont want to act right now, you can HOLD up to two cards, to play when you need. You use a Hold Card to interrupt another players turn with one Action of your own. If he has a Hold Card, he can interrupt your interrupt. If you play a second Hold Card, you

trump him and go first! Hot Damn!

The first jokers just a warning; when the second joker comes up, the turn ends and all Hold Cards are thrown in unused. This means that no players can ever estimate exactly how

the cards will fall. The deck is reshuffled and a new turn begins.

If the second joker comes straight after the first, sirens are sounded. In the next turn

all figures must be off the board before the first joker comes up, and hordes of cops arrest

everyone without a badge.

Civlians: When your 10 comes up, make one Action for all civilian figures. You cannot use them to help criminals, but you can order them to Hand over the money or get in the way of other criminal groups. Optionally, you can roll vs. GUTS once for the bravest

citizen to see if they try to fight back, and if they do, for all the other Civilians. From then

on, they will attack the villains in question, although most will be unarmed.

Hidden Characters: These will be revealed if they move out of cover, make loud noises, or

are spotted by enemies listening and watching for them. Use common sense about this.

Note that if you are playing with a Director, you can use the Amazing Wizzo Card

Sequence but that it makes sense to let him run all civilians, hidden traps and tomcats

knocking over garbage cans.

Keep it loose, keep it fast, dont sweat the details.

MOVEMENT Sprawled on my belly, one of Goosenecks guns in each hand, I wormed my head over the edge. On all fours, the Englishman was scrambling out of the way of the car.

Dashiell Hammett, The Golden Horseshoe 1924

Legging It On Foot Characters moving on foot can do one of these things in any given

Action:

1. Creep up to 2; they may not be detected by nearby opponents who fail SMARTS (modify for darkness, etc)

2. Walk 4; they can shoot at same time, possibly well. 3. Run 4 + 1 D6; they can shoot but dont expect to score any hits.

4. Lose distance for crossing rough ground or significant obstacles. More minor

stuff we wont worry about. EXAMPLE: Pug Roscoe is creeping up the stairs to Lardaches penthouse at 2 per Action. At one point there is a mop and bucket cunningly placed on the stairs, counting as an obsta-

cle (1/2 speed that Action). There is a gangster standing guard at the top of the stairway,

who may not notice the PI (test vs SMARTS).


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Second Edition

Pounding Hooves Horseback Riding 1. 6 per Action at the walk 2. 9 at the trot, lose 1D6 for rough ground 3. 12 at the gallop, no movement over rough groundif you do, lose 1 D6 and test vs STUNTS to see if you take a fall. If you do, count it as if you were wounded in the usual way (see Wounded Characters). 4. You can make up rules for dog-sleds, pack camels and amazing

zippy inventions as suits your taste.

5. Supporting Cast move as groups, so where there is a die roll, it

counts for the whole group rather than roll for each figure. We really

arent much concerned about them.

WEAPONRY ( For the fully dressed man.) Roscoe. Chopper. Barking Iron. Betsy. Bean

Shooter. Cannon. Heater. Rod. Chicago Piano.

Almost as many monikers as there were types,

Firearms are the one indispensable item in the hands

of any Pulp character. But Astounding Tales! wont give you a lecture on their history or designjust a down and dirty means to find out if the Mug at the

business end of your piece will be around for the

next chapter after you drop the hammer.

The following table lists all you really need to

know about the types of weapons youll most com-monly meet up with, or carry under that topcoat.

Weapons Data

WEAPON RANGES Number Of

Dice Per Shot

SPECIAL MODIFIERS

Short Long

Pistol 8 24 1 None

Pistol (blazing way) 4 12 3 -2 to GATS at more than 3 *

Broom Handle

Mauser

4 12 4 -2 to GATS at more than 3 *

Shotgun 6 18 3 per barrel -1 to GATS at more than 3 *

Tommy Gun 8 24 6 -2 to GATS at more than 3 *

Carbine 12 36 1 None

Rifle 12 48 1 None

BAR* 12 48 5 -2 to GATS, -1 to GATS if on Tripod

Light Machine Gun* 12 48 9 -3 to GATS (-1 if on Tripod)

Heavy Machine Gun* 12 48 15 -4 to GATS (no modifier if on Tripod)


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Astounding Tales!

Special Weapons/Exotic Skills Grenad

Documents

Astounding Tales 2nd Ed