Tropes of Pulp 2: The Ancient Ruin

"So!" you cry, "I have absolutely NO adventures to run for my game!"

First off, if you're talking about Castles & Crusades, you must be running the game every single day, because there's a shedload of adventure modules available for the game, especially when one considers all the old AD&D modules that can be run simply by flipping the AC and assigning Primes to monster stats and CLs to die rolls and ability checks.

But that's beside the point. If you're saying that about Amazing Adventures, you may have just the tiniest point, though we're planning to rectify that in the near future. Our second adventure module is in production now, and I've got plans for a series of linked modules in the future. Hopefully, as AA builds more of a following, we'll get some other authors on board to pen scenarios as well. In the meanwhile, though, I'd like to point out something that may not have occurred to you.

One of the biggest tropes of pulp adventure stories are ancient ruins, be they cities, underground tombs, pyramids, or old keeps in the Transylvanian Alps. 

So now ask yourself, what's the most popular style of adventure module in a fantasy RPG like C&C? 

If you answered, "a dungeon crawl," give yourself a prize! And really, what is a dungeon crawl, but a series of explorations into ancient ruins and subterranean caverns?

If you need something to run for Amazing Adventures, hit your bookshelf and grab any old dungeon crawl. You'll need to swap out some stuff, obviously--elves and dwarves just become humans; goblins and orcs become degenerate cave-dwelling folk. Ogres can become giant carnivorous apes. More fantastical monsters could be replaced with giant versions of bats, ants, centipedes, scorpions, etc., or can even be left as-is for a bit of extra horror.

Magic items present an issue, but these could just as easily be replaced with valuable idols, caches of coin, statuary or other artwork, ancient tomes and scrolls, etc.

There are two things that will make a typical fantasy dungeon crawl into a pulp adventure story. The first is the introduction of more modern characters carrying things like guns. You'd be amazed at how fast that changes the feel of an adventure. The second falls more into the purview of the GM. Description is paramount--you need to really hammer home the cold and dank (or hot and dry) corridors, the stench of old death, that strange substance on the walls. The more detailed you can make your descriptions, the more atmosphere you will create, and pulp is all about atmosphere.

Take, for example, the introductory C&C scenario The Rising Knight. This adventure has everything a good pulp adventure tale needs - an ancient temple dedicated to an evil deity, a cruel warlord enforcing his will on a small town, and a band of heroes to thwart the villain's nefarious plans. The biggest changes that would need to be made to run this scenario in Amazing Adventures, would be to set it in a real-world locale: somewhere in the mysterious Orient or the Middle East would work well--the setting calls for a river, so perhaps somewhere along the Nile in Uganda, or the Blue Nile in Tanzania would be ideal.

Of course, the main villain, Gritznak the Gnoll, would have to be changed to a human (though perhaps one with a hyena-like face and demeanor), and it's probably a good idea to rename all of the characters and locales to better fit your location. But really, that's only fifteen minutes' prep work once you decide where you want to locate the adventure.

Add a few guns to your villains' gear, adjust their appearance (they won't be wearing traditional armor, in all likelihood), but leave their AC intact--no need to mess with statistics, in this case.

Even the Horned God can be left alone, representative of a Cthulhu Mythos-type forgotten elder god.

Simple as that--a few surface changes, mostly in names and descriptions, and you're good to go!

So, there you have it--bet you didn't realize you already had a wealth of pulpy adventure modules on your shelf, did you?