It started with a very simple idea. I had, some years previously, published a list of my top-twenty 3.x supplements (Part 1, Parts 2, 3 and 4, Part 5) – why not do the same thing for pulp reference books?

Approach

Because I don’t consider myself an expert on the genre (even after co-GMing a Pulp campaign for over ten years), I called on my co-GM and (after discussions with him), one of our players (and a GM in his own right) to provide expert “muscle”.

Besides, they were both known to me to be collectors and readers of genre-relevant books, which meant that they could provide reviews from someone who had actually read the books being reviewed.

I would be in charge of the organization and do most of the actual writing, as usual, while they were feeding me content and expertise to write about.

Plan

The plan was simple – we would agree on a taxonomy (classification scheme), list two or three top contenders in each category, whittle those down using agreed-upon standards of price and availability, and then argue the merits of which books were really “essential” until we were down to a top-twenty, or top-thirty, or – worst case – a top fifty.

Setback

And, up to a point, that plan performed flawlessly – that point being the taxonomy, which contained some 45 categories and subcategories and – in some cases – sub-subcategories. At that point, we were looking at a top-100, dead minimum; it was anticipated that in some cases, two or three essentials wouldn’t cut it; comprehensive coverage of the “essentials” might require four or five.

Complication

But, warned my experts, a lot of the books we wanted to list would not meet our availability criteria. And so I didn’t object too loudly when they began listing eight, ten, twenty books in each category. In no time at all, we had over 1000 potentially “essential” books listed; even if only one in four hit the target, and we pruned relatively ruthlessly, we might get – emphasis, might – be able to cull it down to a top-200.

Reversal

It also transpired that in some areas, my experts’ collections were not as complete as I had thought. And there were a number of categories for which we had absolutely nothing listed.

Confusion

So we started performing searches to pad out the empty categories, and turned to discussing just what we meant by “essential” in all of this – because it turned out that we each had a different idea of the definition that would apply. Did we mean that these were the most useful whatever-number books? Or that these were the books that were essential to a reasonably-completely-prepared pulp GM? Or was this to be a list of the most useful resources in the genre, regardless of how many there turned out to be?

Decision

Ultimately, we decided that what we were listing were all the things that we felt, collectively, a Pulp GM needed to know something about, and a list of recommended resources for satisfying that need. The ambition was to be comprehensive, not artificially constrained by the need to fill out a list of any given size – or to cut back to same. The working title of the article/series was “The Essential Pulp Reference Library”, after all. What’s more, every campaign would be different; without knowing the specifics of them all, how could we know what might be relevant or irrelevant to any specific GM? Our job would be to present the options and leave it to the individual to assess merit under their circumstances.

The Long March

That was more than a year ago. As late as August, we were still tweaking categories and thinking of new things that had to be incorporated into it. Between us, more than 800 man-hours of research and writing and reviewing and revising have come and gone. And, far from being a top-anything, the list contained more than 1000 items – many more of which met our availability criteria than we were expecting (though there were some most unexpected holes and gaps that needed to plugged). The whole thing broke down most naturally into a ten-post series. Then we found more books to list….

Victory of sorts

So the research has been conducted, the reviews written, and the results vetted as having been correct sometime in the last six months – we were all very conscious of the depreciation of reliability of availability, and that if we didn’t start to publish soon, it would all be out of date.

Outcome

For that reason, we have pushed the button without even entering the “cut the list to something manageable” phase originally intended, and for the last three or four months, we knew that would be the case. It’s been a tumultuous journey, but one framed by good will and a readiness to give-and-take on all sides.

You don’t need everything on our lists to be a genre-expert GM – but you should have something from most of the categories.

Along the way, we’ve discovered books that none of us knew even existed, and we lost books that we thought we knew – there have been books making false promises, frauds, and undiscovered gems. It’s been a ride every bit as wild as a pulp adventure, in fact!

For the non-pulp GMs

One comment that was made more than once in the duration of this project was how many non-Pulp GMs would find this or that useful. Its’ not an exaggeration to state that none of us can, at this point, think of a genre that doesn’t have something of direct or indirect value listed somewhere in the series – sometimes quite a lot of somethings.

Availability Criteria

We used set criteria to say yes or no to an entry’s inclusion fairly strictly – most of the time.

• We had to be able to say why it was being included (with a few exceptions that we thought were self-explanatory).
• We deliberately excluded most space opera unless the offering was especially “Period Pulp” in nature (it just happened to happening in a strange place), and completely excluded works of pulp fiction – this is a reference list. A book about Doc Savage would have been fair game; the hundred-plus Doc Savage novels were jettisoned from consideration early on.
• We deliberately restrained ourselves in the “inspirational media” section – I still think that the Die Hard movies should have been listed, but they weren’t judged Pulp Enough.
• Books must be as broad & general as possible within its subcategory.
• Books Must serve as a pointer to more specific information.
• Books must be considered an essential reference for a pulp GM / Player by a majority of the participants.
• Books must be generally available at a reasonable price, which we defined as at least 20 copies available and the cheapest copies had to cost at most US$15 for a paperback or $30 for a hardcover. We made the occasional exception, but were careful to make a note of it when that happened. Some of the books we’ve listed have hundreds of copies available at a price of just 1 cent (plus postage and handling)!
• An e-book under US$20 counted as 5 copies. Not everybody likes e-books and not everybody has the necessary hardware.
• Where insufficient copies were the only reason for a book to be excluded, it was placed in an “Honorable Mentions” category. Contrary to the dire warnings of my co-authors, this happened a LOT less often than expected.
• DVDs were not bound by this restriction but we excluded anything that had a price-tag per disk that we considered too high. In most cases we did not include links to blue-ray editions, which may or may not exist. If we couldn’t find a DVD, we looked for a streaming service, preferably international; if we couldn’t find one of those offering the item, we looked on YouTube.

So, those are the ground rules. Like good GMs, we varied them at need – but had to convince the other two that it was justified, each time. Sometimes that was quick and easy – on other occasions, debate took quite a while. Everyone had to compromise their opinions at different times.

The Series Structure

The series is now 16 parts long, not counting this introduction. Yes, you read that right (and it will be news to my co-authors who were expecting ten). But when the counts were tallied up, that’s what came out as most practical. Each will be named using “Library Shelves” as a metaphor.

Each part will generally consist of 5 sections:

• An introduction, which will include a taxonomy of the contents;
• The Recommendations (generally 35-40 of them, sometimes more), with details, comments, and links;
• A Documentaries section (counted in the tally given above);
• A very selective “For Dummies / Complete Idiot’s” section, with a blanket caveat, the only exceptions to which we thought important enough to promote to the main list of recommendations);
• A wrap-up/afterword on each category written by one or more of the authors.

Image courtesy freeimages.com / Ove Tøpfer

The Series Taxonomy

Okay, so to the meat of what’s going to be in those 14 articles:

1. People I: PCs & Heroes
   • PC Archetypes & Heroes
   • Character Background Skills
2. People II: Villains & Notable NPCs
   • Villains & Antiheroes
   • Famous real people
3. Places I: The More-Ordinary Places
   • General/broad areas incl. Period area maps
   • Exploration
   • The USA
   • Europe
4. Places II: The Exotic Places
   • The Rest Of North America (incl. Alaska)
   • Australia
   • New Zealand
   • South America
   • The Pacific and It’s Islands (incl. Hawaii and Easter Island
5. Places III: The More-Exotic & Stranger Places
   • The Middle East
   • Africa excluding Egypt
   • Egypt & Egyptology
   • Asia
   • The Bermuda Triangle
   • Lost Cities & Civilizations
   • Atlantis & Lemuria
   • The Hollow Earths
   • The Florida Coral Castle
   • Picturesque Places
   • Strange & Exotic Places incl. Stonehenge
6. Hardware I: Weapons, Things, and Science
   • Era inventions
   • Currency & Valuables
   • Weird Science
   • Fringe Science
   • Accepted Science
   • Weapons
7. Hardware II: Vehicles
   • Cars
   • Aircraft – commercial & military
   • Air Routes & Commercial Aviation
   • Sea Power – commercial & military
   • Trade
   • Commercial Shipping & Passenger Vessels
   • Trains
   • Tanks etc
   • Zeppelins & other Airships
8. Life In The Pulp Era I: Civilian Life
   • Everyday life
   • History & Historical Events
   • Politics
   • Hollywood & Cinema
9. Life In The Pulp Era II: Courts, Police, Crime, & Militaria
   • Courts & Police & Detectives & Crime
   • Military Installations, Forces, and Campaigns
10. Mysticism & Religion I: Religion, Nazi Occultism & Cthulhu
    • General Religion & Philosophy
    • Nazi Occultism & Nazi-related Fringe Theories
    • The Spear Of Longunus
    • The Ark Of The Covenant & Holy Grail
    • Cthulhu Reference
11. Mysticism & Religion II: Ghosts, Poltergeists, and Apparitions
    • Additional Mythology and Religion Resuorces
    • Ghosts, Poltergeists, Hauntings, etc
12. Mysticism & Religion III: Superstition, Mysticism, and More
    • Vodou
    • Secret Societies
      • KGB / Chekists
      • Allied intelligence / security services
      • Kali Worship / Thugee Cults
      • Cults in general
      • Knights Templar
      • The Freemasons
    • Urban Legends & Regional Myths & Legends
    • Cryptozoology, Monsters, & Regional Cryptozoology
    • General Mysticism, Superstitions, and Other Strange Stuff
13. Odds & Sods I: GMing, Tools, & Fiction
    • Fiction & Books About Fiction
      • Steampunk
      • Pulp Fiction
      • Alternative History
      • Period Sci-Fi
    • General Books & Tools
    • Names
    • Writing
14. Odds & Sods II: More Treasures, Games, & Practicalities
    • Games & Game Supplements
    • Tactics & Techniques
    • More Treasures
15. Movies & Pulp Serials
    • Movies
    • Serials
16. Honorable Mentions

Some items could get placed in multiple possible locations within that taxonomy – for example, you may find one or two books about the Mafia in the “Villains” section, but most will be in the “Crime” section. We’ve always attempted to choose the best location given the content of the item and the usage we expect a GM to get out of it.

While most of the categories listed have been consistent since the beginning (with a couple of minor revisions, like moving Egypt out of the ‘Elsewhere’ section and into “Egyptology’) there have been last minute tweaks right up to publication, so there may be some minor variations when each part actually appears. These are most likely to involve the addition of new subsections (there are still a few hours of research left to do).

Afterword – by Mike

If these are going to be included in every part of this series, I may as well get in the habit now.

Based on my experience with the series that I linked to at the start of this introduction, there is no way in god’s green heaven that I would tackle anything involving 40-or-so recommendations in each and every article if most of the text hadn’t been done in advance. I’ve clocked it – it takes fifteen-to-twenty minutes or so to write each descriptive paragraph. For 40 recommendations, that’s about 700 minutes. Except that it requires such intense concentration that after about 4 hours, I’m completely stuffed, to use the Australian vernacular. Plus there’s all the framing text to write – another hour or so (less I hope). And a lot of formatting (probably another 4 or 5 hours of work).

Put it all together, and I’d be lucky to get one done a week – doing nothing else.

When doing those articles on d20 supplements, it took twice as long to do ten reviews as it did one “ordinary” 4,500 word article. Doing four or more times that much? Every week? Not going to happen.

Fortunately, the collaborative approach to this series mandated that the text be prepared in advance for my co-authors to review and – from time to time – amend. That’s what has made the series possible at all, never mind infinitely better than I could manage on my own. All credit to my co-authors!

Who are they? When they contribute to an Ask-The-GMs item, I run a capsule bio. I’m not going to do that for every part of this series (it’s going to be more than long enough as it is), but for this introduction, I thought I would include it.

One final note

Before I get to that, I should add that this series is NOT going to completely take over Campaign Mastery. My schedule calls for three “shelves” a month to be published. Parts 1-3, September; Parts 4-6, October; Parts 7-9, November; Parts 10-12, December; and Parts 13 and 14 in January. That leaves about 27 other articles to appear over those 5 months, so even if you aren’t a pulp GM and don’t find anything of use to you in one of the parts, there will be plenty of other material to keep the diversity level rich. But I would hope most people will discover something of interest!

Meet The Co-Authors

	Mike: Mike is the owner, editor, and principle author at Campaign Mastery, responsible for most of the words of wisdom (or lack thereof) that you read here. You can find him on Twitter as gamewriterMike, and find out more about him from the “About” page above.
	Blair: Blair Ramage was one of the first players of D&D in Australia, using a photocopied set of the rules brought over from the US before they were on sale here in Australia. When the rulebooks finally reached these shores, he started what is officially the fourth D&D campaign to be run in this country. He dropped out of gaming for a long time before being lured back 15 years ago or thereabouts. For the last nine years, he has been co-GM of the Adventurer’s Club campaign with Mike.
	Saxon: Saxon has been vaguely interested in gaming since the early 1980s, but only since going to university in the late 1980s has the opportunity for regular play developed into solid enthusiasm. Currently he plays in two different groups, both with alternating GMs, playing Dungeons and Dragons 4th ed., the Hero system (Pulp), a custom-rules superhero game (also based on the Hero System), Mike’s “Lovecraft’s Legacies” Dr Who campaign, WEG-era Star Wars, FASA-era Star Trek, and a Space 1889/Call of Cthulhu hybrid. When it’s his turn he runs a Dr Who campaign. He cheerfully admits to being a nerd, even if he’s not a particularly impressive specimen. He was a social acquaintance of both Mike and Blair long before he joined their games.