As I probably mentioned already, I’ve been a roleplayer for the last 25+ years – having started to play seriously with Call of Cthulhu in the mid-80s.
It will come as no surprise that I like very much pulp-themed RPGs – home-brew stuff run on Savage Worlds, mostly, but also games such as Adventure!, or Hollow Earth Expeditions.
I like the genre, and I can slip quite easily into pulp-adventure-mode.
It’s fun.
My players often have a lot less fun.
Fact is – being Italian, they lack the pulp background.
They are pulp-illiterate.
And lacking the pulp culture, they have a hard time coping with the stories I pitch at them – with the characters, the situations, the mood.
The problem is similar to what would happen should I pitch one of my stories to most Italian publishers.
This is not a country for pulps. Continue reading
Tokyo, from the inside
They used to say I ragazzi di Torino sognano Tokyo poi vanno a Berlino (Kids from Turin dream about Tokyo then go to Berlin).
They even made a movie, about it.
Indeed, the kids in my generation were endlessly fascinated by the East, Asia, and yes, Japan and Tokyo – we were to the forefront of the first anime and manga invasion, after all.
Most of us dreamed about Tokyo, very few made it there for more than a quick package tour, and a lot of others went to Berlin – to this day, my brother’s favorite city.
I travel with books these days, and I had quite some fun with Micael Pronko’s Beauty and Chaos.
Continue reading
Writing Prompt – Get Creative
Yachting through the Jungle
The first thing I found intriguing, about Commander Attilio Gatti, was the fact that his Wikipedia entry quoted a birth date (1896) but not a date of death.
Who knows, I thought – maybe during his African expeditions, he discovered some strange ritual, same weird fountain of youth, maybe the eternal flame of Ayesha, and he’s still alive somewhere, approaching his 120th birthday.
Attilio Gatti was very active between the 1930s and the 1940s, but seems to have faded from the public’s memory since the 1970s, when his many popular books went out of print and became highly priced collectors’ items1. Continue reading
Waiting for the New U.N.C.L.E.
I was never a great fan of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – I liked it, I like the two leading men very much, but i grew up with The Avengers and I Spy. And yes, The Prisoner.
I came to U.N.C.L.E. too late, probably.
But I must admit I like very much the idea of a relaunch of the series as feature films, and the latest trailer seems to promise a lot of fun.
Keeping my fingers crossed…
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Changes
So, we’ve got some changes coming.
Not much, nothing too dramatic, but hopefully the readers of Karavansara will like what I’ll be doing.
First and foremost, thanks to all that answered my call early this week, both in the comments and privately.
Your suggestions have been very welcome, and quite useful.
So, what’s going to cange? Continue reading
Writing prompt – A Dialog
I’ve always been fascinated by Virginia Frances Sterrett‘s art for the 1920s edition of the Arabian Nights.
Here’s a plate illustrating Alladin‘s story, in its original Chinese setting.
But don’t think about Alladin… the exercise is – what are these two gentlemen talking about?
Karavansara 