Game: Seeds: Pulp II
Publisher: Expeditious Retreat Press
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 5th, December 2004
Reviewer’s Rating: 4/10 [ Just shy of the mark ]
Total Score: 5
Average Score: 2.50
There’s a mass of seeds from Expeditious Retreat Press and each one picks a genre and attempts to offer some inspiration. We’ve previously looked at horror and this review is a brief look at Pulp II.
“Brief” is a good word to use here. Seeds: Pulp is only a 6 page PDF. As this is nominally a d20 product we loose a page to the legal license. So it’s five pages then. If you discount the introduction then it’s 4 and a half pages long – but it’s only US $1.35 and has a print friendly version.
I wonder why this is a d20 product at times. There’s no d20 information here. As is standard for the Seeds series we’re only given a paragraph or three of introduction for each suggestion and no more. There are neither stats nor mention of game mechanics here. I suppose the d20 logo is a selling point and that Expeditious Retreat Press is a d20 publisher and they’re good enough reasons to have the logo. I’d rather have had the 6th page of adventure seeds than the legal foo though.
Sample seeds include dealing with apparently bullet proof men or working out whether there really is a “swamp thing” in the nearby swamp and whether it is friend or foe. I can’t go on with any more samples least I’ll include the entire product in the review!
Pulp can be a tricky setting at times; especially if you’re looking at adventure seeds rather than campaign ideas. That’s one of the issues here in Seeds. Another twist is the set up. Many of the Seeds have pretty hefty prerequisites – one of them requires the PCs to be onboard an ocean crossing ship! That’s quite hard to engineer – especially if you’re in the inspiration low which necessitates the purchase of something like Seeds: Pulp II.
There’s nothing wrong in Seeds: Pulp II. There’s just nothing to shout about in it. It just about copes with the Pulp genre but doesn’t really shine. The cost of the PDF is nothing. It’s something that should (and can only really be) bought as a top up for some other PDF order. The main threat to Seeds comes from free RPG forums, chatrooms or blogging communities where you can just ask for inspiration and get adventure ideas tailored to your exact requirements for free.
