#pulp serial

my players made a phenomenal crew of pulp heroes, even with none of them having a ton of genre familiarity:

Flannory "Flan" de Lèche (they/she), a veteran of the Continental War who's tall and tough - there's nothing she can't fix with her fists, shotgun, and trusty toolbox!

Hahn Von Vabel (He/Him), antisocial genius and defector from the world-dominating ranks of NACHT, equipped with an incredible brain and an array of unstable, hand-made machines

Roseline Lachance (they/she), heiress of the once-great Lachance family, has wasted away their fortune and her years chasing immortality and other scraps of occult lore

Siobhan Darkholm (She/It), "the Fox Hunter," a quick-handed historian with a heart of gold, beloved by attractive older women the world over

i explicitly did 0 prep for this session, and simply rolled on the game's random roll tables to create a Serial on the fly...

...sending our Heroes to a wandering iceberg, where a vicious blizzard hides an ancient temple full of vampires! To add a little more texture (and because punching Nazis is a genre staple), I had NACHT troopers beat them to the scene, with the over-the-top Dark Kommandant leading an excavation alongside a number of goons.

Pulp action ensued, with NACHT troopers slain in a variety of fun ways and a spear-wielding vampire bested in a bloody duel - and other than a couple minor tweaks, I'm very happy calling the game a success. 24XX stuff is just an absolute joy for throwing a fun evening of play together on short notice like this: just under 4 hours, for a no-prep session that included character creation.

No, it’s not Tony Stark in his Mark 1 armor.  Nor is it an early attempt at filming Tetsujin 28 (Ironman 28 aka Gigantor);  that would be some trick, as this film is from 1936 - twenty years before the Tetsujin 28 manga was published!  And it’s definitely not the legendary lost Japanese film Robots Need Love, Too.

This is instead the first installment of a 3-part serial, Kai-Denpa Satsujin Kosen Dai Ichi-Hen - Ningen Tanku Shutsugen (Strange Electric Death Ray 1: Human Tank Emergence). 

Not to be outdone by other countries that had pulp serials featuring robots on the loose, Japan’s Daito Eiga studio released their own version, replete with the usual suspects: a mad scientist, a damsel in distress, disfigured henchmen, a masked man, and the “human tank.”