Saturday, April 13, 2019

The Fox Syndicate Formula of Adventure Design, Castles & Crusades, L1 The Secret of Bone Hill By Lenard Lakofka, & A Bit of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea

When it comes to Castles & Crusades last night I began the task of setting up transitioning my campaign into a more current adventure arch.




As I wrote yesterday I was sort of setting up character workshops & straightening out certain PC issues. But my week has had a pale cast over it with the death of two friends the first is the passing of friend & OSR luminary James Smith.  The second is finding out that friend &  Digital Comics Museum staff member George Robert Ferriss aka Geo has passed as well. Both men were instrumental in the foundation of their respective hobbies. My condolences & greatest respects to both of their families in these difficult & tragic times. My prayers are with the families of these noble men who were so passionate & active during their lives in our hobbies. We are the richer for having known them. Meanwhile, I tried to put this sad news behind me & get on with last night's character workshop. We may have another player joining us but that's not for a week or so. Getting folks on the same page is very important to any OSR game.  Its also the birthday of Victor Fox a New England boy who went on to found the Fox Feature Syndicate  (also known as Fox Comics and Fox Publications) in the 1930's. To say that Victor Fox was a colorful character is an understatement; "Victor S. Fox and business associate Bob Farrell launched Fox Feature Syndicate at 480 Lexington Avenue in New York City in the late 1930s. For content, Fox contracted with comics packager Eisner & Iger, one of a handful of companies creating comic books on demand for publishers entering the field. Writer-artist Will Eisner, at Victor Fox's request for a hero to mimic the newly created hit Superman, created the superhero Wonder Man for Fox's first publication, Wonder Comics #1 (May 1939), signing his work "Willis". Eisner said in interviews throughout his later life that he had protested the derivative nature of the character and story, and that when subpoenaed after National Periodical Publications, the company that would evolve into DC Comics, sued Fox, alleging Wonder Man was an illegal copy of Superman, Eisner testified that this was so, undermining Fox's case;[2] Eisner even depicts himself doing so in his semi-autobiographical graphic novel The Dreamer.[3] However, a transcript of the proceeding, uncovered by comics historian Ken Quattro in 2010, indicates Eisner in fact supported Fox and claimed Wonder Man as an original Eisner creation.[4]

After losing at trial, Victor Fox dropped Eisner and Iger, and hired his own stable of comic creators, beginning with a New York Times classified ad on December 2, 1939. Joe Simon, a former Eisner and Iger freelancer, became Fox Publications' editor."  Fox's style with characters like Blue Beetle, The Green Mask, & many others was both innovative & interesting enough to keep sales going through 1942 with the Mystery Men Comics formula.
\


What I really like though is 'the Mystery Men Comics' formula use a quick series of brush fire like adventure encounters with NPC's, get the PC  heroes involved, add on lots of Pulp violence  & simmer well with a base line ending to the action.
This is the same type of adventure set up that we see in classic Dungeons & Dragons Expert modules take for example L1 The Secret of Bone Hill. The PC's are brought into the adventure plot, they work their way through events, & finally if they survive their is a bit of leveling up.



Because of L1 sandbox nature its one of the more easily adaptable sandbox settings & can easily be modified to fit a very hard core Pulp based adventure style setting something that wasn't lost on one the module's positive reviews ;

"The module was positively reviewed by Jim Bambra in issue No. 35 of White Dwarf magazine, who rated it 8 out of 10. Bambra felt that the fishing port of Restenford and its surrounding wilderness were given "particularly colourful" descriptions. He wrote that the module provided some very interesting roleplaying situations and an excellent background for a campaign, but "provides little more than this on a long term basis".[3] He notes that some of the material would not be utilized until The Assassin's Knot (L2, unreleased at that time) was purchased, and that "trying to run this module on its own could prove to be a frustrating experience as the designer has given little indication of what L2 will contain or how many more modules there are likely to be." Bambra had hoped that the arrival of L2 would make The Secret of Bone Hill an enjoyable adventure."

This was something I found when adapting L1 The Secret of Bone Hill to U1 The Sinister Secret of Salt Mash in both Amazing Adventures! rpg & Astonishing Swordmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea 2nd edition a year ago.
Recently I was going over my notes & the AS&SH Referee's Screen was key connecting these modules with THE MYSTERY at PORT GREELY™ recently.



I used a series of rapid fire encounters in the sandbox of  L1 The Secret of Bone Hill to set up events for both the U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh & THE MYSTERY at PORT GREELY which expanded upon events in U1 to really give a very dark Lovecraftian feel to the whole mini campaign.  Stunning middle series of NPC's, rapid fire pulp violence in the center, & a final epic wrap up makes everything flow at the table nicely.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.