Note: The following excerpt appeared in theJune 2004 of the APA "Alarums and Excursions" in my zine "Age of Menace" #71

::Brian Misiaszek::

Resources for Modern Adventure RPGs

Someone recently on RPG.net (where I erratically post under the nom-de-plume “Doc Menace”) was plaintively asking about resources for “Modern Pulp”(1). I wrote back, and thought I would also share some of what I said here in A&E, as some of my commentary touches a little on this months IgTheme.

Fiction:

Dan Brown: Extremely successful (and controversial) writer, most famous for the bestseller The Da Vinci Code, where Brown’s hero, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, uncovers the existence of an ancient religious conspiracy beginning two thousand years ago, and chases down a solution to the mystery via clues hidden in a series of works by Leonardo Da Vinci. While I haven’t read the above, I am currently reading Dan Brown’s first book, one also starring his symbologist hero Langdon: Angels & Demons is a prequel thriller featuring such things as the “real: Illuminati”, Vatican politics, mysterious Hassassins, and the deadly stolen technological secret of a CERN researcher/Catholic priest that could tear apart the social and moral fabric of the world. A little pedantic in some places (i.e. who really needs an explanation what a Mobius strip is?), A&D is nonetheless a recommended and relentless page turner.

Clive Cussler: Highly successful adventure franchise that began in 1973 featuring the virtually indestructible Dirk Pitt is still going on strong today. I understand that some bowdlerized versions of his stories appear on the teen shelves of many bookstores sans the sex. Example stories include Pacific Vortex, Sahara, Dragon, Inca, and many, many others. Dirk Pitt Revealed includes a concordance of all the published stories that covers characters, weapons, and the vehicles that Cussler loves so much. Cussler also has two volumes of his real –life personal experiences with NUMA exploring historical shipwrecks, these being The Sea Hunters, volumes I and II, respectively.

Jack Du Brul: Philip Mercer series (Vulcan's Forge, Pandora's Curse, etc.). Du Brul is developing into a very slick modern adventure-thriller writer, one who works and writes with the same territory as Clive Cussler does. His hero is Philip Mercer, a highly sought after geologist of often ends up in strange unworked corners of the world. Du Brul’s stories have real science and cutting edge technology behind much of his plotting, and his prose blurs the boundaries between traditional Adventure and SF genres. His most recent paperback, Deep Fire Rising darts from Area 51, to the bottom of the ocean, to a secret Tibetan monetary, to the greatest potential natural threat to Western civilization in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

Matthew Reilly: Temple; Australian Reillly is a fairly new adventure writer with a vivid imagination whose work positively screams “screenplay-wannabe”. Jam-packed adventure story complete with the writings of renegade Jesuit priests, Incan temples, “monsters”, modern day Nazis, and enough betrayals and back-stabbings to satisfy the average D&D thief. The novel features a search for an Incan artefact carved from a meteorite with mysterious physical properties for which others will kill for, and there are many different groups on the hunt; PhD Columbia University linguist William Race is caught up in the chase as only he can translate a manuscript needed for this treasure hunt. As typical first novel, it’s very little weak on characterization, but there’s tons of stuff for the average gamer to steal from. Other books by Matt Reilly include Ice Station, Contest and Area 7, none of which I have read.

James Rollins: Subterranean, Excavation, etc. Highly inventive and relentlessly paced adventure novels. I’ve provided reviews of some of his stuff in earlier A&Es, with the former story featuring mysterious tunnels and caverns under Antarctica, the second being an Amazonian temple with a highly improbable trapped temple. Other books by the same author include Amazonia, Deep Fathom and Ice Hunt.

Non Fiction:

CIA World Factbook: available online as a free download, and updated often. Google for it.

National Geographic Magazine. No need to describe this one. Now available the entire run on CD-Rom, with the wonderful maps also available sold separately on another CD-ROM

Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places (5th edition). I’ve reviewed earlier editions of this before here in A&E. The book is literally a gold mine for ideas for real life villains and adventure in some of the most rugged and lawless and war-tarn parts of the real world. Bargain priced, too; earlier editions cheaply purchased in used bookstores may suit you perfectly for the era you want to capture.

Inspirational films for Modern Adventure

• The Abyss
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
• Air Force One
• Armageddon (hoky SF/Adventure thriller, only a little better than Sudden Impact)
• Big Trouble in Little China
• Black Hawk Down (grim and gritty)
• Castaway
• Cliffhanger
• Congo (modern day safari into darkest Africa)
• The Core (corny fun; world threats, secret government projects, desert inventors, plot and counterplot)
• Darkman (several sequels, this is the best)
• Die Hard (and sequels]
• First Blood (first Rambo movie, only one recommended)
• The Fugitive
• Goldeneye (one of the better of the recent offerings of the James Bond franchise)
• Jurassic Park (and sequels)
• Romancing the Stone (sequel ho hum)
• Speed
• The Thing (John Carpenter for modern, and Howard Hawks version for the 1950s)
• Three Kings (caper set against Desert Storm 1)
• Tomb Raider (and sequel)
• The Usual Suspects (quirky fun and surreal)

Many of the above films range from gritty to cartoony; your mileage may vary.

Inspirational TV

• Adventure Inc.
• Alias
• McGyver
• Relic Hunter
• Scooby Doo, Where Are You? (first two seasons now on DVD)
• Johnny Quest (all 26 episodes in gorgeous colour now on DVD!)
• Finally all those adventure-travel shows, including Michael Palin’s Around the World in 80 Days, and sundry others.

Random Thoughts

As for minimizing the effects of our modern world (cell phones, Internet, modern medicine, etc.), these things are less useful or available once you hit the Third World. Electricity is unreliable (or the wrong voltage with no handy adaptors), satellite coverage is scanty, cell phone coverage non-existent (or worse, monitored by the local "police"), and would you trust that box on a shelf in the local version of the general store with the label "Penikillin" on it? Plus, rough travel can damage many delicate electronic goods (wet, salt, cold, heat) making that PDA or cell phone pretty flakey.

Even in North American you can have power failures, solar flares disrupting communications, or be stuck in the boonies where these things are not readily available because of distances involved and rugged terrain. Extremes of temperature or weather can also ruin many technological goodies.

Travelling to many foreign places through official gateways means running the gauntlet where you have to pay hefty "import tax" (i.e. bribes) to keep this equipment, or simply have it confiscated, or perhaps broken by some curious person, or by a malicious custom's official who doesn't like Westerners and "gringo's." Additionally, those wealthy enough to own such objects are also very likely to attract thieves and thievery, and those pretty technological toys may simply disappear or be violently extracted.

(1) First, a rant: when most persons talk about “modern Pulp” they are more often than not referring to that orphan category of fiction and gaming called "Adventure". Why not leave the term "pulp" for what it was intended, stories based on the sensibilities of the both the pulp magazines and the era they came from? Calling everything "pulp" or "pulpy" dilutes the term, rendering it entirely meaningless as a term for accurate description.