Pyramid Pick

Spirit of the Century: A Pulp Pick-Up Role-Playing Game

Published By Evil Hat Productions

Written By Rob Donoghue, Fred Hicks, & Leonard Balsera

Illustrated By Christian N. St. Pierre

420-page b&w hardcover; $50
420-page b&w softcover; $30
16mb Zipped File Containing Two 9Mb PDF Documents, One in Portrait Format, One in Landscape Format; $15

It is time to stand up and do what is right. The year is 1922, and Doctor Methuselah's time-zeppelins assemble in the skies over Europe to tear open a path to a new future. Gorilla Khan, conqueror of Atlantis, has armies ready to take Africa. Der Blitzmann, scientist gone awry, commands the forces of electricity to nefarious ends. The Great War is over, and even as the Allies struggle to recover, dark forces threaten to plunge the world back into conflict.

Between these dark forces and the world stand the Centurions, the inner circle of the quietly influential and philanthropic Century Club. Born on January 1st, 1901, each Centurion is an exceptional person: long-lived, and capable of actions nearly impossible for the ordinary man in the street. Each player takes the role of a Centurion.

This is the simple, broad set up for Spirit of the Century, arguably the best Pulp Action RPG since the Origins-Award-winning Adventure!, and regarded by many, including Adventure!'s co-designer Bruce Baugh, as being even better. And this in a year when four Pulp genre RPGs bucked the ongoing trend of re-designed nostalgia . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.




Article publication date: April 20, 2007


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