Having relied strictly on original source material, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the efforts others have made in uniting the genre with role-playing. My first choice was naturally GURPS Cliffhangers (for GURPS Basic Set, 3rd edition) by Brian J. Underhill. The first thing I searched for was the bibliography. It’s useful to know what resources an author has used in order to understand the angle from which he or she is approaching the subject. In this case, the angle is very different from what I expected, and it makes me wonder if we are working from fundamentally different ideas about the genre itself. For one thing, the “Movies and Television” section contains no cliffhangers. Instead, it recommends such fare as The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension and “Tales of the Gold Monkey.” There is not one example of a movie serial. Radio shows are absent from the bibliography as well, despite their overwhelming influence not only on movie cliffhangers, but on one of the movies actually listed: The Shadow. Clearly, GURPS Cliffhangers is not so much about cliffhangers, but about the pulps (or what passes for “pulp,” although whether pulp is a genre at all is a matter of debate).

To correct this omission, I offer this modest bibliography of cliffhanger movie serials, which will not remain static (since I keep watching more of them):

Cliffhanger Movie Serials

Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941)
Batman (1943)
Batman and Robin (1949)
Buck Rogers (1939)
Burn ‘Em Up Barnes (1934)
Captain Midnight (1942)
Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949)
Flash Gordon (1936)
Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940)
Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938)
The Green Hornet (1940)
The Green Hornet Strikes Again (1940)
Jungle Girl (1941)
The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935)
The Perils of Pauline (1933)
The Phantom (1943)
The Phantom Creeps (1939)
The Phantom Empire (1935)
Radar Men from the Moon (1952)
Superman (1948)
Tarzan the Tiger (1929)
Undersea Kingdom (1936)

Given that I prefer skills, they typically have several shortcomings: proliferation and overreliance. Too large a skill list encourages indecisiveness in character creation, and most such games have very large skill lists indeed. This results in character write-ups that are so long that one can have difficulty imagining the character as a whole entity. In play it can lead to delays in the action as players read through their lists of skills to determine what their options are. Skill proliferation, in other words, impairs that which it is intended to promote: a better role-playing experience. The second shortcoming shares this defect. Certain skills are a replacement for actual ingenuity on the player’s part, and many players and GMs will come to rely on skill rolls rather than utilizing the player’s own abilities. Many social skills deprive players of role-playing opportunities that truly enrich the game. How much more interesting is an actual dialogue between a merchant and an adventurer haggling over the price of some merchandise than a player just rolling his Bargain skill? How much more memorable is a soldier’s morale-boosting speech at a critical moment than a player just rolling his Oratory skill? Observational skills also lend themselves to abuse. If a character is actively searching for something and describes the methods used, why shouldn’t the effort and foresight bear fruit if the object of the search is actually there? What is accomplished by denying something to a creative player on the basis of a failed Spot Hidden roll? Why should a player be encouraged to limit his activity to merely declaring his use of a skill rather than describing what his character does? Skill overreliance stifles role-playing.

I prefer skills to classes, but I want skills that promote role-playing. What is the solution? In a way, I think the answer is a compromise, and I don’t mean classes crammed with skills and feats. Rather, I think skills should be thought of as occupations themselves. GURPS and Basic Role-Playing had occupations and professions that consisted of recommended sets of skills, but I think it might be better just to make the occupations the skills. Unlike a character class system, a character may have a varying number of occupations, some professional, some amateur, that represent how he has spent his life. Each occupation will encompass a variety of abilities that may be inferred. Anything else the character may attempt to do can be accomplished by attribute rolls, player description, or default skill rolls according to the GM’s judgement. This leaves a far greater degree of creative thought at the GM’s and player’s disposal. If, under special circumstances, a player character needs to resort to a roll for those abilities that would normally be role-played or otherwise described (in the case of equal odds, for instance), the GM could assign an appropriate attribute roll or occupation/skill roll.

I’ll try this method with some of my current Fudge projects, and if they work well enough I’ll also add it to Optimum Fudge. On the other hand, maybe I should revisit Plain Trait Fudge. The overlap bears closer scrutiny. At any rate, I think both methods preserve the style of role-playing I enjoy without overburdening the game with redundant options. Further testing, however, is in order.