A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Pulp Treasures

Pulp Treasures by Allegra Van Rossum is a generic role playing game supplement published by Retromancer’s Curse.

The supplement is available as a 15 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers.

What is This Foul Book? explains that this is intended to provide loot that’s more interesting. It explains how to use it, which is to roll 1d10 to determine the table to use, then roll d10 for a result on that table. It’s advised to keep the number of unusual items a villain has, which is what this supplement generates, limited. The setting is considered to be early 20th century pulp, with occultism and weird science, with suggestions as to suitable media in the genre.

On Creating Treasures explains that these treasures can have meaning and, because they are the reward for something already accomplished, shouldn’t be protected too heavily. Should monetary reward be all that’s necessary, there are other tables to use.

The tables then follow, starting with table 0, Which Table?

Each table has ten results, each of which has a name and a description. The tables are Valuables, items of intrinsic value. Baubles, minor curiosities. People, which actually has two options; randomly generating a person using several tables, or ten specific named NPCs. Monsters, which again has two options; randomly generating a monster or ten specific creatures. Magickals, which are magic items. Scientifics, which are weird science-based items. Maps, which are actually rolled on several columns. Weapons, which are self-explanatory. Unexplainables, which are weird things. Traps, which are as they say.

Following these is Names, which is a d100 table with three columns; masculine, feminine and surname. There is a d10 table of titles.

Trinkets is a d100 table of valuable items.

Liquidate It is a d100 table of items with values, followed by a currency conversion table.

Blank Tables has four blank d10 tables.

The final page of content is essentially a letter from a villain to his heroic rival.

Pulp Treasures in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and, given the number of tables, these would have been useful. Navigation could be better. The text, bar the letter, follows a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a handful of colour illustrations. Presentation is okay.

This is a really nice little supplement. The treasures are described in a decent level of detail and are interesting, plus there are the additional tables too. Though designed for a pulp setting, the items could also be scavenged for others with variable amounts of work; some are more suited than others. Pulp Treasures is a good little supplement and it can be found by clicking here.