There are many fine amateur and semi-professional
publications out there in the OSR, but I sense there’s a niche that needs to be
filled. We need our very own “armpit slick” fanzine complete with covers done
in the style of the men’s adventure magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. Hell,
most every cover blurb for the stories inside scream to be transformed into a
roleplaying adventure (OK, maybe not “The Diet That Can Double Your Sexual
Batting Average,” but still I make a good point).
I can’t do it. I’m booked solid and I’d make a lousy
publisher anyway, but couldn’t you see a quarterly OSR fanzine done in this
style and containing adventures for Call
of Cthulhu, Weird Adventures, and
other RPGs of that ilk? Man, I’d be all over that slick, especially if it
occasionally did tell me about “The Nation-Wide Shame of Teen-Age Sin Clubs”
and where I might find one in my neck of the woods.
Ah, the same folks who brought us, and Frank Zappa, this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ManAgainstWeasel.jpg
ReplyDeleteGlorious!
Quite right. While I love Fight On! to bits, the covers are often so tame.
ReplyDeleteNot a bad idea. If someone where to kick this off, I'd be happy to join in.
ReplyDeleteI could see it being pretty popular.
ReplyDeleteOf course, part of your problem is that you're appealing to a subset of a subset of the population... a niche within a niche, if you will.
However, if I saw a magazine advertising adventures for CoC where you punched out a turtle?
I'd be all over it.
Hehe, those are great. I much prefer wild, or like HackMaster does, instead of showing the battle before a strike, but during the strike, blood flying, heads a bouncing and girdles snapping.
ReplyDeletei especially like the guy being attacked by 'giant' turtles...
ReplyDeleteI've had the same idea. If I had more time, I'd love to do something like this. Actually, I might anyway but at my rate it'd come out once every other year. Still, I'm dying to do some pulp style fantasy paintings and have been reading a lot of pulp fiction and 50's horror comics lately...
ReplyDeleteTurtles?
ReplyDeleteI'm game! I know some artists who can probably deliver that style--and there probably a lot of others who would jump at the chance to try.
ReplyDeleteThe world of these kind of magazines could be a good setting for an RPG.
ReplyDeleteDid they really have a fascination with guys fighting hordes of not-particularly-fierce creatures like turtles, or is that a result of people picking the funniest covers to display?
From what I've seen, the mags had a lot of "nature run amok" tales and you run out of grizzly bear attack tales after awhile. So it's then on to "animals you don't consider dangerous but could still wreck your day if they all ganged up on you."
ReplyDeleteYou can actually read the "giant" turtle story in its entirety by visiting this page and scrolling down a bit.
I know some artists who can probably deliver that style--and there probably a lot of others who would jump at the chance to try.
ReplyDeleteI think, in a perfect world, that everybody who contributed to a fanzine done in this style--artists and writers alike--would have to do so under a "macho" pseudonym. That way you'd have a mag featuring the works of "Dash Hammer," "Jackson Biggs," "Rocky Stone," or the ever popular "Max Powers."
Real names could appear in the table of contents or some other out of the way place.
Man, those turtles are givin' that dude the BUSINESS. And that one is vampiric, too.
ReplyDeleteI think I just found the name for my next adventure:
ReplyDeleteCHEWED TO BITS BY GIANT TURTLES
In other news, I would buy such an OSR pub.
Thank you also for giving me my next 4 character names Dash Hammer, etc.
Okay, third try is a charm. . .
ReplyDeleteCheck out the other stuff he has scanned here:
MensPulpMags.com Archive
Actually, this looks more like the sort of thing that would appeal to PCs, especially with articles like "San Antonio: Home of Texas' Love-Happy Girls", "How - When - Where You Can Fight For Fortune Under Foreign Flags", and "Skull Hunt on Pygmie Island".
ReplyDeleteHmm. I could even see the classified ad pages, with hirelings, treasure maps, and knock-off magic items for sale.
...and many of the headlines would make great entries for a random rumor table... 5 -"female skippers turn waterways into new lovers' lanes"
ReplyDeleteHehe.
Sorry for the double post, but word verification on this one...
ReplyDeletebutsec
O_O
The Evil DM has a game called Dicey Tales which is all about the pulpy "manventure" genre.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if he's got a zine for it yet, but the cover art is pretty cool.
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ReplyDelete@Rorschachhamster:
ReplyDeleteFrom the covers, it looks like there'd be two tables:
i) Where is the sex?
ii) What animals will eat you?
@Robert Parker:
ReplyDeleteI'm halfway through writing a superhero/pulp novel. There's a brief mention of current affairs magazines called Spicy Detective Stories and Weird Mysteries.
*nod BigFella* I can see an RPG article titled "Giant Weasels Ripped My Flesh"
ReplyDelete