To let you in on how rules-light this book is, we don't see any rules or tables or anything until page 9, and on that page and the next few pages, the tables are actually just the various movement rates of different vehicles such as trains, ships, horses, etc. so you can compare speeds.įrom a pulp noir standpoint, there are tons of really fun and cool things in here that can help with a game that takes place during this era. We get pictures of various period planes and zeppelins, descriptions of fire arms, sailing ships, aircraft, and ground vehicles, and some cool pictures of various characters that you could use as PC or NPC portraits. In the Pulp Heroes section specifically, one of the things I really loved was the description of 'pulp science.' The section explains how Pulp Heroes scientists are eggheads who publish academic papers, but rather are tough adventurous inventors who test their own unproven inventions themselves to work out the kinks. Science in this type of setting is both promising and threatening, as secret societies and fascist nations also have scientists working on making giant attack robots, death rays, and super bombs.

We then get a staple of OSR games which should make a lot of you happy - the Random Table! In this case, it's really clever and fits right in the setting - It's two tables that work in conjunction to make a naming convention for 'pulp science.' Table I tells you how many Catalysts, Functions, and Prefixes the name has, and in what order, and Table II presents a column of Prefixes, two Catalyst columns, and two Function columns.

D20 modern core rulebook page 36