Afterwords
My love of the pulps goes way back to watching movies with my grandfather on Saturday afternoons and reading through his collection of Thor, Conan, Kaliman, and DC horror comics. I transposed the battles I saw on TV to my Airfix H0/00 scale soldiers and the manly deeds to my G.I. Joe, Mego, and Johnny West figures. As I grew up, I was glued to the TV, watching local independent programming like Rat Patrol, Danger Island, and The Avengers alongside heavy doses of Sinbad and Greek myth stories at bedtime; such was my childhood.
This was all capped off by two events that shaped the rest of my life. In 6th grade, my teacher, Mr. Brown, spent the last 15 minutes of class keeping me fascinated with his reading of The Hobbit. The other was in 9th grade English class where I heard two of my friends discuss fighting a vampire the night before. I asked them what they were talking about, and one of them turned to me and said “You never played D&D?” After that I went full speed ahead. I became an RPG nut—spending many days and nights playing and tinkering with all the systems I could get my hands on to try and create my own gaming Nirvana. And as much as I loved high adventure fantasy and starfaring science fiction, my head and heart always ran hot for pulp adventures. From the original Crime Fighters game in Dragon Magazine, to classics like Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes, and Justice Inc. I loved it all—the gunfights that became fistfights, chasing the villain on the top of a train speeding through the Alps, or a dark figure breaking a tough goon using the power of shadow—ALL of it.
And finally, I’m here with the help of Simon Washbourne’s Barbarians of Lemuria game system. I have created the type of pulp adventure I love. Whether it’s clashing swords with a bandit chief, traversing a desert plain, or moving captured villagers to freedom in a South Sea’s jungle, to fighting the legions of hell itself with a .45 and a machete—you and I can now do it with Dicey Tales! It’s my wish for you all to have the best times ever playing Dicey Tales!
Jeff Mejia 2021