Two Fisted Tales Revised RPG
From: Precis Intermedia Gaming
Reviewed by: Ron McClung, Jeffrey Collyer
Two Fisted Tales Revised RPG is a new role playing game core rulebook from Precis Intermedia Gaming.
Four year ago (wow, I’ve been doing this that long already), I reviewed a game called Two Fisted Tales RPG.It was an impressive body of work and the game system was inspiring. 2007 marks a revised edition of this role playing game from a new publisher – Precis Intermedia Gaming (PIG) – a company with a good reputation for solid game systems and good online support for all their products. Year after year, I have seen PIG take bold risks contrary to industry trends and make them work.
Since I reviewed this game previously, I decided to approach this from a different direction. Along with my review, I have asked a friend, Jeffrey Collyer, to look at the game as well and give his opinion. Jeff is a long time pulp fan and runs that genre at my conventions often. He is also a big indie RPG fan. I felt he was a good authority on games like Two Fisted Tales Revised RPG.
From website: “Inspired by the pulp fiction of the 30s and 40s, Two-Fisted Tales lets you recreate the action and adventure of the genre.”
Two Fisted Tales Revised RPG is a role-playing game for use in any pulp fiction style setting – from fantasy and horror to sci-fi pulp, from hardboiled mystery to hero pulp. ‘Pulp’ to many means action-packed thrills with a low budget, but specifically it refers to a type of magazine, as the rulebook explains. ‘The pulps’ were inexpensive fiction magazines that were widely published from the 1920s through the 1950s, primarily. This kind of fiction is what inspired many things, including classic serial movies and some of today’s theatrical movies. Two Fisted Tales Revised RPG is a roleplaying system that can be used generically to explore any kind of pulp there is.
Content: The book opens with a simple introduction section to pulp fiction, the different types of pulp, and to roleplaying in general. Chapter 2: Heroes & Heroines dives right into it with describing what a character is composed of and character creation. More on character generation later, but this chapter does contain 21 character templates including Amateur Detective, Costumed Vigilante, Ethnic Sidekick, Flying Ace, G-man, Hardboiled Detective, Psychic Investigator as well as several others. Also included in this section is the specialties and masteries section, which basically describe the system’s skills. Following this is the Defect section, which describes disadvantages a character can have.
Chapter 3:Schticks are the strange and bizarre powers, flashy martial arts tricks, magic spells, hypnotic disciplines, and the abilities to create super-science gadgets. More of this is covered later. Chapter 4: Money & Equipmentcovers the basic equipment appropriate for pulp adventuring. It has an interesting system for purchasing equipment using the characters Wealth score. Instead of making a player keep track of the character’s current money, the Wealth score basically acts as a credit card for anything the character wants to purchase. The GM looks up the “EL” or expense level of an item, which will determine if the character can buy it or not. Comparing the EL of the item to the character’s Wealth level, the character can purchase the item if his Wealth is greater. If it is equal to the EL, then he can loose one point of Wealth to buy it. He can not buy anything larger then his Wealth.
Chapter 5: Resolving The Action covers the core system. See below for more on that. Chapter 6: Developing Charactersguides the reader through advancement through Hero Points. Chapter 7: Driving The Stories helps the GM with scenario creation system, creating NPCs and villainous templates, beasts and monsters, and a guide to pulp locations.
System: Characters are composed of Abilities, Specialties,Masteries, and Defects. There are basically eight attributes- Brains, Luck, Mind, Muscle, Reflexes, Savvy, Status, and Weird. Most are fairly self-explanatory. Muscle and Reflexes represent the character’s physical abilities. Brains and Mind are mental aptitude measures. Savvy is described as the character’s “style’ while Status is a character’s power and influence. Luck is, well,…. how lucky the character is, but it also determines how many playing cards they can have (see later). Finally, Weird measures how unusual the character is. Most of the physical attributes have a couple of tables associated to them, used to look up derived values like carry capacity, speed, hand-to-hand damage and damage resistance. Each Ability Score ranges in value with most not going over 20. However, in extraordinary cases, the value does go over 20. There are two derived ability scores: Reputation and Wealth.
As stated above, there are also 21 templates to choose from. These are NOT classes as much as starting points for your character concept. Each are given a general base ability score list as well as some other information including generic background, common quote, and a well-done artistic rendering. This section introduces the concept of Specialties and Masteries, which are explained in detail later. A player uses Hero Points to customize your character. It has an interesting system of measuring the “power level” of the game universe the GM is choosing to run in – from Lovecraftian-Gritty to Amazing like Golden Age super hero comics. The power level defines the number of Hero Points the players can use to customize their character.
As explained above, character customization is possible through Hero Points. These are also used as experience, magic points, to gain advantages, and a number of other things within the system. Hero Points, for the most part, are going to be at the core of everything the character does, from buying new specialties and masteries to acquiring new schticks. In customizing a character, one uses Hero Points to raise ability scores, buy more specialties or masteries, or buy schticks. Schticks, on the other hand, are a wide variety of special abilities, gadgets, and other things that a character can have. These include martial arts maneuvers, hypnotic skills and animal companions. Defects, as mentioned, are the disadvantages of a hero. They are the vulnerabilities and short-comings they might have. They gain the character Hero Points when chosen, but it is advised to select these sparingly because too many can really handicap a character.
There are no real skills, so to speak, but Specialties and Masteries. Once again, the Templates start out with a set of specialties and masteries. Each specialty and mastery is associated to an ability score. Each specialty adds 4 as a bonus to the check. These act as general areas the character is knowledgeable or skilled in. However, masteries are more focused and intense areas of study. A mastery would be what the character makes a career out of and add 8 as a bonus to a check. There are several of each listed but the players are encouraged to make up their own as well. Each character can have multiple specialties and masteries for each ability score but every mastery has a specialty pre-requisite.
The core system uses d10s and playing cards. It is a “roll-high” system. In a standard task roll, the player rolls two d10 – one designated as the bonus die, the other designated as the penalty die. Both dies “explode” on a 9 (10s or 0s are treated as 0s). If a 9 is rolled, the die is rolled again. The bonuses are added to the skill total, and the penalties are subtracted. The total is compared to a difficulty. Standard playing cards can also be played to augment the total. If the player rolls “doubles,” it is considered an “automatic close call.” “Automatic fumbles” occur for people with Luck values of less than 10 when the roll is greater than that person’s luck. This seemed a little cumbersome to me but an interesting approach.
There are two sets of combat rules: Basic and Advanced. The Basic system is rather interesting and intended for fast-paced play. Cards and dice factor in. The interesting thing about Basic combat is that there is not initiative rolled. It is simply a single roll for each opponent of two dice to determine a total. After factoring in the penalty and the bonus, who ever is higher wins that round. Cards are played to reduce damage or multiply dice. This system, as the name implies, is basic and useful in a limited amount of situations.
In the Advanced Combat Rules, initiative is used – a Mind roll. Initiative is rolled once per combat, unless the player opts to re-roll initiative, which is an action that turn. A turn is approximately 1 second long. An interesting approach to initiative, however, is that declaration occurs first from the lowest person to the highest. And then the person with the highest initiative acts first, with the advantage of knowing what everyone else is going to do. Also in the advanced combat system there is a short list of special attacks, and integrated with this system is vehicular actions as well.
Scenario creation system is a very unique and handy aspect to this piece of work. Drawing from the original pulp writers’ formulas, this section provides parallels between pulp writers and gamemasters. It guides the players through the basic formulas of forming a plot pulp-style, – Determine Player Characters (PC) Motivations, Determine PC Hooks, and Describe Situations. The scenario creation system provides a means to which a GM can derive inspiration for adventures or encounters in game. After determining motivation and initial hook, one can roll on tables for Solicitation, Complications, Rumors, Treasure Location, Villain Information, and several more.
Layout: I like the layout of this one better than the fist. The chapters with subsections are so much easier to follow. The art is very well done and the editing is professionally done enough that I did not notice a lot of errors.
What makes this a revised edition, you might ask. The introduction portions containing information about the history of the pulps is new. Revised edition also has more optimized organization and editing of content, new layout, new art, new schticks, new animals/monsters rules and some minor changes to some rules. Also, in the previous version, the rules that use schticks (such as gadgets and hypnotism) were separate chapters. Now they are in the same chapter, but as separate subsections.
In conclusion, I am a fan of unique game systems that are fun to play. This has a unique mechanic that is fun to play. I have only just recently gotten into independent games in earnest and I only play pulp from the perspective of horror (Call of Cthulhu, for example). So from that perspective, this game looked fun with a solid game system. It is a game you can play as a one-nighter as well as a long term campaign. It is versatile and flexible. It is not a system that is revolutionary and industry-changing, but like I keep saying, it is fun.
Jeffrey Collyer’s report: He did not think much of Two-Fisted Tails when compared to Spirit of the Centuryor Hollow Earth Expedition. One issue was that the cards were overly complex and detracted from making the resolution system fast. Another concerned the resolution system – “The one positive, one negative die system seems ok. But I got a feeling that big positive successes had some real game impact, while big negatives were just failures. If that’s the case then just up the difficulty level 5 and get get rid of the negative die.” On the positive side, he liked the character templates and the fact that they were customizable based on the heroic level the GM had in mind, an area where he thought other games like this fell short.
For more details on Precis Intermedia Gaming and their new role playing game core rulebook “Two Fisted Tales Revised RPG” check them out at their website http://www.pigames.net.
Two Fisted Tales Revised RPG
From: Precis Intermedia Gaming
Type of Game: role playing game core rulebook
Written by: Matt Stevens
Production: Brett M. Berstein
Editing: Brett M. Berstein, Andrew Kenrick
Cover Art by: Jeremy McHugh
Additional Art by: Jeremy McHugh, Christopher Shy, Rick Hershy, Ranae De Liz, Blake Wilkie
Number of Pages: 196
Game Components Included: One core rulebook (PDF)
Retail Price: $ 14.95 pdf (US) or $29.95 soft cover (US)
Website: www.pigames.net
Reviewed by: Ron McClung