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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 9119084" data-attributes="member: 177">It is "meant to be"?   By whom?  A pejorative is an insult.  So, in this case, who was offering the insult? Pulps, the successors to dime novels, were popular competition for other forms of literature, before the rise of the paperback novel.  The pejorative thus isn't based in unbiased assessments.  While, yes, the original pulps were mass-produced, for mass consumption, without a lot of what we might consider much editorial effort by today's standards, that doesn't mean it has no redeeming qualities that we can now take as the focus of the work."Pulp writing tends to aim for visceral reactions. There are contemplative, even insightful, pulp stories, but pulp as a label tends to apply to stories that are trying to elicit excitement, horror, or even arousal – primitive, instinctive responses that get the heart racing."-Robert WoodWhich sounds like good stuff in an RPG context.  Excitement?  Visceral reactions?  Melodrama?  All fine tabletop RPG fodder, and all pulpy goodness.[spoiler="More from Mr. Wood on pulp writing..."]Pulp writing was usually some form of short genre fiction, with its legacy most defined by lurid horror, crime, war, sci-fi, fantasy, and Western stories. Though eventually killed off by rising costs and competitive media such as comics, paperback novels, and television, the pulps were vastly influential in their day.Pulp characters include Flash Gordon, Zorro, Conan the Barbarian, Buck Rogers, and John Carter of Mars, while writers as illustrious as Arthur C. Clarke, O. Henry, Agatha Christie, Joseph Conrad, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett, Isaac Asimov, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, H.P. Lovecraft, Upton Sinclair, and Tennessee Williams all saw print in pulp magazines.Pulp magazines were publications in which you’d find a range of stories that tackled wild ideas as penned by some of the most skilled and imaginative writers of the time, but they were also a business. Author Kurt Vonnegut lamented that the quality of pulp stories (and thus the reputation of certain authors) was often lessened by the writer’s knowledge that editors would be as likely to accept their first draft as their eighth, and there was little reward for developing an idea that already had a story in it.Pulp writing, then, is writing emblematic of pulp sensibilities; writing which is visceral, imaginative, and unafraid of mass appeal, but also writing which is disposable, sometimes under-baked, and often repetitive in its approach....It’s this aspect of pulp writing that pairs so well with frequent publication; craft has merit, but if you’re aiming for simple thrills, there’s more to be said for choosing ‘good enough’ over endless polishing. This can also be seen in pulp’s fondness for archetypes and even clichés.[/spoiler]So, another aspect of this is that the form is designed for sustainable volume - like frequent game sessions.  Polished art and complex plotting are great, but you've got folks around the table tomorrow night.  What are you going to do?  Give them some excitement!</blockquote>

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