Eberron...pulp fantasy?

[gizmo33]

gizmo33 wins the thread!

Wooohoo! I've lost so many threads, I never thought I'd win one. Thanks. I'd like to thank my parents for buying me my first Conan book...

 

[The Shaman]

I think part of the issue is that, in general, when you say something is part of the pulp genre people don't think of Robert E. Howard and the like. They think of the pulp heroes and the pulp detectives. They only think of that genre when specifically refering to "pulp fantasy" (and usually you hear Sword & Sorcery more, since a bulk of pulp fantasy was Sword & Sorcery). Eberron isn't pulp fantasy, it's fantasy in the style of pulp fiction.

That makes sense, too - when I think of pulp fantasy, Howard is the iconic author to me - I can see where others might not make that connection, though.

That fits in very well with what Abe.ebA wrote, too. The description of how the setting is designed to create certain adventure opportunities is exactly how I craft my homebrew settings - I need empty coasts for pirates and cities for intrigues and steppelands for beastriders and mountains for giants and glaciers for ice wyrms and jungles for only the deities know what horrors. I'm not concerned with trying to create a world that is "different," as I've found to be true of many homebrewers, but rather one that is diverse, so that the range of adventure possibilities can be equally varied.

Once again, some really helpful replies - most appreciated!

 

[The Shaman]

Compare LOTR with Indiana Jones. LOTR they spend three books walking to get to the main target (Mt. Doom). Indiana Jones has a scene where they talk about what they have to do, then they "red line" it to the final locale and do most of the story there.

Fafhrd and the Mouser spend four stories travelling to the Bleak Shore and then back to Lankhmar - do you not consider this to be pulp fantasy?

 

[Hammerhead]

Fafhrd and the Mouser spend four stories travelling to the Bleak Shore and then back to Lankhmar - do you not consider this to be pulp fantasy?

It's really only one story to GET to the Bleak Shore though.

 

[The Shaman]

It's really only one story to GET to the Bleak Shore though.

The story arc, the whole of the journey, takes four stories, and the sea voyage to the Bleak Shore is half of that first story, including the loss of one or two of the Mingols (Ourph would probably be able to tell us for sure!) along the way - it's not, "Okay, you ride the magic TGV to Where'everville - here's your adventure."

 

[Faraer]

The recent idea of 'pulp fiction' is a nonsense, reducing a huge range of fiction into a small stereotype. 'Pulp' is no more a genre than manga or, most precisely, 'slick'. As far as fantasy published in the pulps, that's at least as big an influence on the Forgotten Realms and the World of Greyhawk as on Eberron. Eberron seems to have something of an influence from pulp SF and modern adventure stories, and perhaps from the (largely imaginary) 'pulp fiction' too.

 

[JohnSnow]

Fafhrd and the Mouser spend four stories travelling to the Bleak Shore and then back to Lankhmar - do you not consider this to be pulp fantasy?

See, this is why it's hard to get a handle on. Fafhrd and the Mouser are definitely pulp fantasy - a particular genre of it that Leiber himself coined as "Sword & Sorcery" fiction. They're less over-the-top than Conan is (although Howard's mighty-thewed one is definitely ALSO a pulp hero).

The best way to think of "what's pulp" is to consider some of the examples. I like the Indiana Jones movies because they're pulp entertainment produced from a reasonably modern frame-of-reference. Indy is without doubt a pulp hero: Dr. Henry 'Indiana' Jones, Jr., Professor of Archaeology, expert on the occult and "obtainer of rare antiquities" as they put it in Raiders.

When Indy needs to be somewhere and the journey is uneventful, he "redlines" it there. When the journey is the adventure (getting the Ark BACK from Cairo, getting to Delhi, etc.), more time is spent on it. That's what happens in pulp. The pieces of the journey that are eventful get "screen" (or page, or play) time. But if the "real adventure" instead occurs at the end of the trip, then you redline it from point A to destination B. However, with pulp adventure stories, you never know when you board your transportation whether you're going to get a nice uneventful redline...or something a bit more exciting.

While there have always been "pulp" elements in D&D, Eberron takes the Pulp elements further by making possible some of what were, at the time pulp was written, more "contemporary" stories. Back then, fantasy didn't have airships, trains, and so forth, but contemporary adventure fiction DID. Eberron makes 1920s contemporary adventures possible in a fantasy setting, by covering the same "bases" with magitech. So it's really a pulp fusion setting combining EVERYTHING from the pulp magazines. It's a world where Sam Spade, the Phantom, Allan Quartermain and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser get to meet because they ALL fit.

 

[Desdichado]

The recent idea of 'pulp fiction' is a nonsense, reducing a huge range of fiction into a small stereotype. 'Pulp' is no more a genre than manga or, most precisely, 'slick'. As far as fantasy published in the pulps, that's at least as big an influence on the Forgotten Realms and the World of Greyhawk as on Eberron. Eberron seems to have something of an influence from pulp SF and modern adventure stories, and perhaps from the (largely imaginary) 'pulp fiction' too.

While of course it's not a genre (and I don't recall anyone claiming that it was? ) it's a recognizable style. Your dismissal of it as 'imaginary' is more nonsense than to claim pulp as a genre anyway.

 

[Odhanan]

"It's a world where Sam Spade, the Phantom, Allan Quartermain and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser get to meet because they ALL fit."
That's a great way to put it, indeed.

 

[Glyfair]

While there have always been "pulp" elements in D&D, Eberron takes the Pulp elements further by making possible some of what were, at the time pulp was written, more "contemporary" stories.

One thing I think that gets lost is that no one is claiming that Eberron is doing anything that's completely new. It's just the emphasis on certain elements that are different than in other D&D campaign settings.

For example, I don't think any other setting has the same emphasis on psionics as Eberron has. Dark Sun has more, the other settings tend to have them as very rare when they appear. Eberron has psionics as being somewhat common within certain areas (specifically things tied into the Quori & the Dragon Below).