LPJ - Haven: City of Bronze

[jaerdaph]

I enjoy GMSkarka's honest, in-your-face crazy attitude. He's the Robert Downey Jr. of the gaming community, IMO. Without him and his posts, I'd go into a diabetic coma from all the sugary niceness of publishers.

Heck, 63% of messageboard niceness from publishers is marketing, anyhow.

GMSkarka! Not fake. Not takin' it. Not makin' bail.

M

What he said. Unless a publisher is sacrificing babies to Cthulhu or bankrolling Al Qaeda, I could really care less.

Looking forward to the work of both publishers.

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

Unless a publisher is sacrificing babies to Cthulhu

Wait. Are we not supposed to be doing this? Well, son of a ...

NOW you tell me.

 

[madelf]

With this anti-racist "Neo-Pulp" business being brought up, I'd just like to point out something.

Pulp isn't racist. Pulp is (generally, if not exclusively) over-the-top adventure, usually (though again not always) set in a fantasized version of the early twentieth century.

Writing from the time period that pulp first developed was often racist. Not just pulp, but all of it. So singling pulp out as being particularly racist, even within its own time, is misleading. Today, it's insulting. Racism isn't an element of today's Pulp any more than it's part of all the rest of today's fiction. I'm quite certain you won't see "some silly racist sidekick saying, 'Yessur Boss Man, Imma gonna do that'" in the vast majority of pulp work being produced these days. In a modern pulp adventure, you can have all the diversity and equality you want. You can make Tarzan a black guy. You can make Indiana Jones a woman. It doesn't make it not be pulp anymore, because pulp was never about racism or inequality (that was just a symptom of the times).

So frankly I think a "Pulp but different" distinction based on the idea that you're not being racist is both pointless and a bit offensive. Not only does it not help pulp shake off the inaccurate stereotype it's burdened with, it's also a back-handed accusation that the people producing pulp material today are all racists. Not really cool.



Sorry to go off on a rant, in a thread about cool new game products (whatever they're called), but this is just one of those things that sets me off. So now I'm ready for the firing squad that's sure to be along. Just hand me that blindfold first, will ya?

 

[lmpjr007]

With this anti-racist "Neo-Pulp" business being brought up, I'd just like to point out something.

Pulp isn't racist. Pulp is (generally, if not exclusively) over-the-top adventure, usually (though again not always) set in a fantasized version of the early twentieth century.

Writing from the time period that pulp first developed was often racist. Not just pulp, but all of it. So singling pulp out as being particularly racist, even within its own time, is misleading. Today, it's insulting. Racism isn't an element of today's Pulp any more than it's part of all the rest of today's fiction. I'm quite certain you won't see "some silly racist sidekick saying, 'Yessur Boss Man, Imma gonna do that'" in the vast majority of pulp work being produced these days. In a modern pulp adventure, you can have all the diversity and equality you want. You can make Tarzan a black guy. You can make Indiana Jones a woman. It doesn't make it not be pulp anymore, because pulp was never about racism or inequality (that was just a symptom of the times).

So frankly I think a "Pulp but different" distinction based on the idea that you're not being racist is both pointless and a bit offensive. Not only does it not help pulp shake off the inaccurate stereotype it's burdened with, it's also a back-handed accusation that the people producing pulp material today are all racists. Not really cool.

Sorry to go off on a rant, in a thread about cool new game products (whatever they're called), but this is just one of those things that sets me off. So now I'm ready for the firing squad that's sure to be along. Just hand me that blindfold first, will ya?

OK I will say this on the racist and non-racist tone of Pulp, and of course it is my own opinion. I feel minorities were not well though of in the period that pulp exist, the same way as in Tom Sawyer. While for most the word, "", used in Tom Sawyer and is a debate to be spoken about its meaning by a large majority of the American population, for me it is a different meaning to ot. There is a lot of hate and violence attached that word no matter who is using, no matter the color of their skin. And that is never cool.

Maybe racist is the the right word for some attitudes in pulp, but minorites and women were not equal to white males in the genre at all. And that is not cool.

And yes there are a lot of people who go around and use it, that is their choice

 

[madelf]

OK I will say this on the racist and non-racist tone of Pulp, and of course it is my own opinion. I feel minorities were not well though of in the period that pulp exist, the same way as in Tom Sawyer. While for most the word, "", used in Tom Sawyer and is a debate to be spoken about its meaning by a large majority of the American population, for me it is a different meaning to ot. There is a lot of hate and violence attached that word no matter who is using, no matter the color of their skin. And that is never cool.

Maybe racist is the the right word for some attitudes in pulp, but minorites and women were not equal to white males in the genre at all. And that is not cool.

And yes there are a lot of people who go around and use it, that is their choice

I think I understand where you're coming from, but I believe you might have missed my point.

It's absolutely true that minorities & women were not treated very well in the period that pulp originated. But that outlook colored all media of the time, not just pulp. The world has come a long way (though it admittedly has a ways to go yet) in the area of equality since then. And pulp has been along for the ride.

Saying that the entire pulp genre (as it exists today) is racist, because of the way it was written in 1930, is as foolish as saying that coming-of-age stories written today are racist because of the way Tom Sawyer was written. It just doesn't hold up. Pulp, as a genre, is not racist just because it originated in a racist time. All genres of writing suffered from racism in those times, and they're all still legitimate genres apart from that. Pulp adventure is no different.

There is absolutely no reason that someone can't use all of the meaningful tropes of the pulp adventure genre, and do so in a completely non-discriminatory manner. (naturally all IMO)

 

[GMSkarka]

but minorites and women were not equal to white males in the genre at all. And that is not cool.

It's also not true.

Whereas the majority of pulps featured white males in the dominant role (which makes sense, given the fact that the target market was white males...we're talking about wish-fulfillment, after all, at the height of the Depression), it is flat-out false to say that women and minorities were not equal "at all." That ignores characters like Pat Savage, Nita Van Sloan, Ram Singh, etc.

And at the core, the majority of pulps are no more racist than the comic book superhero genre which has sprung from them....and yet I didn't see any particular effort made by you to address that in your M&M Superlink products, so you'll forgive me if I find that the "race card" is a particularly unpleasant way to draw a distinction between your "neo-pulp" products and others.

I don't want to raise the ire of Morrus or anybody else, so I'll drop out of this discussion....but I had to say something, because I don't like the implication that I'm somehow racist, or producing racist product, simply because I actually know what pulp is, and produce material that emulates that genre.

 

[lmpjr007]

And at the core, the majority of pulps are no more racist than the comic book superhero genre which has sprung from them....and yet I didn't see any particular effort made by you to address that in your M&M Superlink products, so you'll forgive me if I find that the "race card" is a particularly unpleasant way to draw a distinction between your "neo-pulp" products and others.

You are right M&M Superlink I didn't. But in Haven: City of Violence I did. See why we will be doing it in Haven: City of Bronze.

 

[jaerdaph]

Here's an article that I thought might be of interest to Louis:

Hip Hop Launches New Breed of Pulp Fiction

 

[Bloodstone Press]

Don't get much cheaper than less than $2 a class.

The Ninja (for d20 Modern) only $1.35.