Very nice mini-monster-menagerie! Very evocative and creepy critters. I particularly like the greenmold bones, who graces the cover. Just the kind of monster to make your players go "What the heck!" Very nice illustrations, as well. Are we likely to see a hardcover in the future? I'd also be interested in a data set for Hero Labs.

Thrilling Tales Theatre: Undersea Kingdom, Chapter 1 is a roller coaster ride with all the expected twists and turns. As a fan of the genre, I watched the chapter with anticipation of each "new" twist. The hero is dashing. The damsel is curious. The genius professor doesn't put the obvious clues together. The fool has a side kick and his own theme music. The traitor is cowardly. And the villain wants to destroy the world. I can't wait to see how it ends. Actually, I can probably guess, but that doesn't ruin the fun of watching it. The included stats allow the devices to easily be included in a Savage Worlds game. The tips are useful for any pulp RPG. Adamant, please, make chapter two available, soon.

Originally posted on UK Role Players: http://www.ukroleplayers.com/reviews/thrilling-tales/

Thrilling Tales is a 256 page, 8.5"x5.5" paperback, pulp supplement for Savage Worlds published by Adamant Entertainment. It is available in both print ($24.95/£14.99 from Cubicle 7) and PDF ($14.95/£9.67 from DriveThruRPG and other PDF stores). This review is of the print version.

OVERVIEW The front and back covers are full-colour with evocative artwork of the genre, while the interior is black and white. Each page has a background that makes the pages appear to be from a dog-eared book, matching the cover (which hass fake creases and rips printed on the edges) and the layout is, for the most part, double-columned. The interior art comprises a mixture of, what looks to be, newly commissioned art, original art from the era, and photographs. It is all appropriate and adds to the general pulp feel very well. The content is split up into eleven chapters: Pulp Adventure; A Timeline of the 1930s; Characters; Equipment; Pulp Gaming Rules; Pulp Villains; Pulp Villains - The Nazis; Pulp Villains - The Thugee; Pulp Villains - Perils of the Orient; Adventure Generator; and The Crimson Emperor (a "Plot Point" campaign).

The Pulp Adventure chapter takes up 11 pages and starts with a short piece of fiction before delving into a brief history of pulp and the different genres within it.

A Timeline of the 1930s covers, over 5 pages, brief bullet-points of major events occurring in that decade. Any one of these could easily be used as the backdrop to an adventure - or even part of the adventure itself and serves as a good starting point for further research should the reader require it.

In the Characters chapter, comprising 47 pages, we are provided with 18 archetypes that players may wish to follow when creating their characters (ranging from Ace Reporter, through G-Man and Mad Scientist, to Trusted Sidekick). Each contains a short piece of fiction fitting the archetype as well as suggested skills, edges, and hindrances. While it appears that these are aimed at players, GMs will find them useful as well when it comes to creating their villainous NPCs (indeed, some of the archetypes aren't ones that players (as heroes) are likely to follow anyway (such as Mastermind and Mobster). Character creation rules follow this, although as this is a licenced Savage Worlds product, this is limited to stating that they follow the rules written in the Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition except for starting rank - Thrilling Tales characters start, at the minimum, at Seasoned rank and may be higher depending on the number of players and the type of game being run. As you would expect, there are some new Hindrances and Edges that fit the setting (such as Glass Jaw (which gives you a penalty to soak rolls) and Deus Ex Machina (which allows you to spend a Bennie to escape death - in keeping with the cliffhangers from the serials of old)).

Equipment provides 17 pages of statistics and information on a range of 1930s weapons and vehicles (including a zeppelin and U-Boat!) - the vast majority of which are accompanied by photographs depicting the actual items.

The Pulp Gaming Rules chapter provides in 6 pages, rules additions and amendments to better fit a pulp adventure. These include changes to the way incapacitation works, introducing stunts (whereby the player can make things, voluntarily, more difficult for their character in exchange for the chance to gain more Bennies) and story declarations (whereby players can spend a Benny to try and declare certain thins about the setting and story), adding in two more layers of NPC (Henchmen (who are Extras but with a Wild Die) and Mooks (who are Extras but without edges or hindrances and who always go "down" after being successfully damaged - no Shaken for them!), and, my personal favourite, Gloating (whereby the villain, once he has captured the players, must make a check or blurt out his entire plan).

The Pulp Villains chapter, and the following three chapters, covers the type of opposition you can throw at players in a pulp game. The first chapter provides four different villains with suitable adventure hooks for each. The following chapters go into greater detail about the quintessential pulp villains: Nazis; the Thugee; and the Orient. The real world history of each group is provided with enough detail to enable GMs to use them in their games whilst also providing sample NPCs (from Mook level and up) and interesting adventure hooks.

In the Adventure Generator chapter you will find 15 pages that provide an easy to use generator for adventures - for just that time when you're asked to run a game at short notice.

Finally, we have The Crimson Emperor, the "Plot Point" campaign. Unfortunately, it's not a Plot Point campaign in the same sense as those found in the likes of 50 Fathoms, but five linked scenarios which are nicely put together and will provide for quite a few nights entertainment.

THOUGHTS So, that's the overview of the book, but how good is it?

Thrilling Tales is a very good genre book for Savage Worlds. There are some minor typos and editing errors (the most noticable of which is a hangover from it's d20 origins) but these do not detract from the content. Indeed, if I had to say something negative about the book, the only thing I can find is that the naming of The Crimson Emperor as a Plot Point campaign. This is just me nit-picking though and I really like Thrilling Tales. It's size is a big plus and I've found myself wishing more companies would print books at this size.

The game mechanics additions are balanced and complement the gaming style aimed for perfectly, while the pictures of the vast majority of equipment make it easy to visualise things. Likewise, the historical information on the various villain groups presented helps to ground things in reality - even if you do decide to add in weird science later ;)

My favourite part of Thrilling Tales though is the Adventure Generator. It's something so simple, yet so detailed. Throw a few options together, add five minutes of thinking and you have an adventure for a session or two. Perfect.

Overall, Thrilling Tales is one of the best Savage Worlds settings I've read so far and I'm looking forward to being able to use it in the future.

I think this is an excellent little adventure. Its just a dungeon crawl, but its easy to drop into a campaign. I found that the module was well written especially the background information and the situation.

I agree that the 'battle mats' aren't much, you may not even want to use them and wing it. Its also not a long adventure so it won't turn into a Grind for the players and the DM.

It may not be obvious, but it helps you get some use out of any pesky Skaven minis you may have (including your globadiers).

Most of the time, I try to keep my own prejudices out of the reviews I write, trying to stick purely to discussing what a product’s contents are, along with some fairly objective thoughts on them. I do so because I recognize that my opinions are just that – my opinions, which likely won’t mean much to someone else with their own opinions when they read what I’ve written. As such, I attempt (with relative success) to not let these reviews become my own personal sounding boards.

However, I find that I can’t help but do just that with Empty Room Studios’ product, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

Before anything else, though, let’s cover the book’s technical aspects. Weighing in at just under three hundred pages, the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue dedicates almost all of its pages to its contents, having only two pages of ads (one at the beginning and one at the end) and the front cover. There are helpful bookmarks that link you to each alphabetical section, and notwithstanding the covers and ads, the only illustrations here are the very light grey images of intertwined vines along the sides of each page.

The major problem I had with the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is that, strictly speaking, it’s not a dictionary; it’s a glossary. Simply put, each page has a listing of terms (spelled out in capital letters) with the definition written after it in lowercase. Rarely, a definition will have a SEE reference to another term, or even explain the term’s derivation. But for the most part there is only page after page of terms, all listed in alphabetical order, with a sentence or two explaining what the terms mean.

That’s it. There’s no pronunciation guide, no word derivation, no part of speech indicator, no alternative spellings for how the word appears as other parts of speech, no synonyms or antonyms… no anything else that you’d find in a real dictionary. Perhaps I’m being pedantic, but that undercuts a lot of usefulness here. For example, given that all of these are slang terms that people once actually used, it’d be cool to know the derivation, as well as the time and place, that they were used so that you could tailor these to similarly-themed countries in your campaign world, lending it greater verisimilitude. But there’s none of that information here, so you can’t.

Another aspect of this book that I took issue with is how you’ll quite likely want to use it in the opposite manner from how it’s laid out. That is, I found myself with a specific definition in mind, and wanted to find slang terms for it, but being a glossary, the book is laid out via the terms, making a definition-based search difficult at best. For example, if I wanted to find a slang term for “prostitute,” I’d basically just have to read through the book until I found terms that had that as part of their definition. I was able to do a word search, but my results changed depending on if I searched “prostitute,” “hooker,” “streetwalker,” or any other similar term. This product is much more useful if you have a specific word in mind, rather than a specific meaning.

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue isn’t a bad book, per se. Rather, it runs up against issues that have plagued definition-based lexicons for centuries, and these sharply limit its usefulness. More could have, and I think should have, been done here – without this extra work, the resource value of this book is lessened, to the point where I think calling it a “dictionary” is giving it too much credit. Trying to make this book return the information I wanted it to often gave me a vulgar tongue, and hence the score I gave it.

Matthew Barlow wrote an accurate and enthusiastic review for this product, and I fully agree with his assessment.

I'd like to briefly add that this adventure could be used with other game systems that have a noir / pulp feel: Malay Coins, with little effort, can be modified for use in the Eberron (Dungeons and Dragons) setting very easily, for example!

It's an inexpensive and well-written adventure with suggestions for expansion/modification at the end of each section--you can't go wrong with this scenario!

I've yet to find the right pulp game, although Hollow Earth comes close. The problem with it is its intended focus on certain aspects of the era. Thrilling Tales falls in on the positive side of "eh."

Although not exclusively, or even primarily, a 'Pulp' games system, Savage Worlds does work well with that genre. Adamant's Thrilling Tales supplement is an excellent resource for those who want a bit of two fisted action adventure, and The Malay Coins is the latest adventure. The story unfolds in two parts. In the first, the players must track down the mysterious coins of the title, whilst in the second they go searching for hidden treasure.

The adventure as presented is quite a simple one, ideal for beginning players. For those who prefer more of a challenge, there are numerous suggestions throughout for extra complications. This allows the GM to fine tune the adventure for the players with a little bit of effort. The illustrations are, for the most part, reproductions of images from previous AE products, however the titular coins are shown in colour. Printed out on card and carefully cut out, these would make useful player props. A nice touch.

Its a good book with the conversion of the almost all the stuff found at the d20 products line.

Although I liked the base classes and some of the content, there is a lot in need of fixing. I can stand typos and such, but I really feel too much of this is still stuck in 3.5 edition. I was most excited about the million item list (3 d100 lists) as the Diablo II: Awakening book from 2nd ed had this, and I liked it there, but there really isn't 1 million items. It felt a little ripped out of the diablo list without much change (which I kinda liked), but in the prefixes alone are missing entries 18 and 42, and the +1 to attributes are repeated, making the list feel a little underdone. I don't care that this list is unbalanced, but I got annoyed having to reroll this. I'm giving it 3 stars because I happened to get it on sale really cheap, which made the price an okay trade-off. This book came out around the time the final rules did and was one of the first third party to give something substantial. I just caan't understand with all these errors and reviews pointing it out why there iesn't an updated file.

Pros: The adventure generator is awesome. Just so, so much fun. The art felt very evocative. Whole pages spent defining pulp archetypes, in game terms, which is very useful. Plus, new edges and hindrances.

Cons: I didn't care for some of the art. As well, there were references to "Advanced Classes" in the book, which I assume were left over from the conversion from the previous version of the game.

Overview: I bought Spirit of the Century, and really wanted to like it for my pulp fun...then I fount Two-Fisted Tales from Precis Intermedia Games, and found it to be way more to my taste. I bought Thrilling Tales on a whim, mostly because it was $1 (during a sale) and uses Savage Worlds, which I love...wow. I hope to use this book a ton over the next several years.

I'll keep it short. I really liked this product very much, when you consider how long it can take to roll-up npc's for d20 Modern, this is a really good way of doing so quickly.

I have been getting a great deal of use out of this product since i purchased it.

Here You get the bones to built a monster of a campaign that will keep a group of gamers busy for quite a while. The suggestions for fleshing out the core adventure can easily be converted to new or further adventures. The NPCs provided can also be used for similar adventures. Personally I would have preferred some statistics for the other coin-bearers. But since they are introduced as plyable templates others might prefer to make up the statistics for themselves. Statistics are supplied for the main adversary though and Li-Ming Jade is worthy of being made into a recurring threat to any PC-group venturing into the asian seas. So what is the downside? No flying boat! How can You have an international pulp campaign without a flying boat? But I'm pretty sure there will be a supplement in 2010 featuring a flying boat! Still even without a flying boat I heartily recommend this product and suggest You consider joining the... (well it's secret so I can't name it)

A great book. A can't miss for anyone looking to add something different to their game. 3 new races and 8 new classes. The classes are for the most part variants on other classes. In a good way though. If you want to play a knight you have a better, more flavorful option here, than just say making a fighter and choosing the options you think a knight should have.

I primarily bought this, because it was recommended to me for the chase rules, and I was not disapointed. The chase rules are rather complex. That is a good thing as it covers any eventuality that could arise. But you can just use the parts that apply to your situation at the time. Players don't even need to know the chase rules at all. If they are involved in a chase, they just need to tell the GM what they want to do and the GM finds the manuever that fits.

I purchased this book after receiving a recommendation from one of our podcast's listeners.

I'm preparing to run a Savage Worlds pulp-era game, and was unfamiliar with the genre.

It is a very complete source book for the pulp era. Lots of adventure ideas, bad guys, monsters, etc.

One of the best features is the chapter on the formula of pulp stories. It divides the typical pulp adventure into four "acts," and describes what sorts of things happen in each act. Additionally, it includes several tables to come up with villains, their nefarious plots, plot twists, etc.

It sounds little goofy to randomly roll up your adventure; however, I tried it for my first adventure, and the results I got gave me all sorts of ideas I wouldn't have come up with otherwise. It really is a valuable resource for GMs, and it's applicable to other genres and other systems.