Pulp Gaming | Karavansara

27 May 2019
by Davide Mana 2 Comments

Sky Pirates of the Mediterranean

Another gift for my birthday (my brother was feeling generous), another pulp roleplaying game campaign for my collection, and one that really clicks all the right buttons. And so, after spending a few hours checking the material, why not do a proper review here on Karavansara?
After all it features pirates, biplanes and airships, an alternate history of post-WW1 Europe, and enough nifty tricks to leave everybody happy.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Scott Rhymer’s Sky Pirates of the Mediterranean.

Continue reading →

18 February 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Two relics from a forgotten era

Pulp_Cthulhu_Cover_for_Adcopy__99219.1464808396.500.659 Today I’ve been lucky – a friend sent me two games that I was missing from my collection.
In the last few years I started collecting roleplaying games with a pulp theme. Now, the definition is pretty loose – after all, a game set in Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian age would be technically pulp, because Conan debuted on a pulp magazine. The same goes obviously for Call of Cthulhu (that now has its own “pulp” subset of rules), considering Lovecraft’s presence in the pulps. And of course, a Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers influenced game like Slipstream would also be “pulp* in theme if not in substance.

So, to clarify the classification, I am collecting roleplaying games, and in particular those that are either inspired by pulp authors (like the Conan roleplaying games) or properties (like the old Masterbook Indiana Jones game), and those that are designed to play in a pulp universe, a pulp version of the 1920s and 1930s. Continue reading →

10 October 2017
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Pulp Cthulhu

Pulp Cthulhu – where has this thing been all my life?

51w9H3aTqiL._AC_UL320_SR244,320_ Now, the answer is simple – it was in a folder filled with notes on my gaming table, sitting underneath my copy of Call of Cthulhu, 3th edition.
Meaning, we always played Call of Cthulhu as a pulp game.
I played with other keepers, that were more “lovecraftian”, or maybe just more depressed, or more sadistic – in the end, adventures lost their meaning as character after character died horribly and in the end nothing hung together anymore.