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Old 08-05-2021, 10:49 AM   #11
Apollonian
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Shoreline, WA (north of Seattle)
Default Re: Sources for a Pulp-Sci-Fi Game

Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas View Post

There was a Disney cartoon series about air pirates in a pseudo-Caribbean.
Tale Spin, one of my fonder childhood memories. It would make a fantastic RPG framework, though I'm not sure it's exactly what the OP is looking for. Still, you have the apparently free and open city of Cape Suzette, sky pirates, tramp freighters/pilots, a bar in a volcano... What's not to love? I think it's more south Pacific than Caribbean, though.

Last edited by Apollonian; 08-05-2021 at 01:27 PM. Reason: autocorrect is mean
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Old 08-05-2021, 01:22 PM   #12
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Sources for a Pulp-Sci-Fi Game

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Originally Posted by thorr-kan View Post
T

Seas of Venus, about surface and subsurface action, instead of carrier action. But it fits the genre. Based on Clash by Night and Fury by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. Available from Baen Books.
https://www.amazon.com/Seas-Venus-Da...%2C194&sr=1-90

It appears to be free on Kindle too. I haven't read it yet and am only so-so on Drake generally but it might be worth a try.
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Old 08-05-2021, 06:20 PM   #13
Polydamas
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Default Re: Sources for a Pulp-Sci-Fi Game

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Originally Posted by PTTG View Post
Same goes for civilian and espionage at sea and in the air.

I realize this is kind of a niche genre (sarcasm), but what's the best, most authentic stuff?
As others have said, there is not a whole lot of espionage at sea or on the air (beyond the odd trawler with a surprisingly expensive radio set and habit of drifting into shipping lanes), but you could look into the various crazy people's theories that Amelia Earhart was spying on the Japanese mandates when she disappeared. There was also a case in WW II where a German merchant ship moored in Portugese Goa was transmitting information from spies in the Raj to the Reich. This lead to what Lindybeige calls the last charge of the Calcutta Light Horse: the British sent in some middle-aged militia officers to storm the ship, smash the radio, and scuttle the ship. Sinkings of Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean dropped dramatically, and the Portugese did not accuse the British of violating their neutrality in public.

Sea and air tend to be more about carrying information, goods, and people and maybe the occasional act of sabotage like whatever was happening in the Persian Gulf a few years ago. I guess sea and air vehicles can carry sensors which the government or the people surveilled do not know about.
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Last edited by Polydamas; 08-06-2021 at 12:28 AM.
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Old 08-06-2021, 02:49 AM   #14
RogerBW
 
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Default Re: Sources for a Pulp-Sci-Fi Game

Oh, of course, the excellent 1980s series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_the_Gold_Monkey . (Pre-WWII flying and spying in the Pacific.)
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Old 08-06-2021, 11:51 AM   #15
sgtcallistan
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Chatham, Kent, England
Default Re: Sources for a Pulp-Sci-Fi Game

Currently reworking my Amazing Adventures in Archaeology game with advice from 'How To Be a GURPS GM'; who knew I needed it? But I did.

Have found numerous free .pdfs of places, McGuffins and plots for pulp action games, some as simple as a shootout in an bar, some as complex as a world-spanning conspiracy, or a claim-jumper in the asteroid belt.

A number of facsimile / scanned pulp magazines are findable, some in .pdf form, and the stories can be read for atmosphere and ideas.
The Captain Future pulps I feel are the best example, they are from the later 1940s (and were translated in Japanese, adapted for animation, all that, with the pulp flavour still coming through).

A few pages from SJG's Pyramids on-line have helped, as have people writing these things for their blogs, even to the level of a pulp-action adventure generator, most useful for a plot rather than SF flavour.
SF stories are among these, often adaptable from western or exotic locales stories.

Recently ordered the short adventures in the SJG kickstarter that seem useful or can cross-over.
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