Home

When designing the occupations in Kits 7–12, I kept returning to one question:

What does this character know that makes the horror worse?

That question shaped every role in the set.

A good modern pulp occupation needs to do more than provide a skill list. It needs to give the player a clear place in the fiction and give the Keeper material that can become scenes, allies, enemies, complications, and campaign pressure. The job should tell you how this person sees the world before the supernatural enters it.

For this set, the answer was expertise.

The Forensic Pathologist knows that bodies tell the truth. The Street Paramedic knows how trauma presents and what treatment should work. The Wilderness Survival Expert reads terrain, animal behavior, tracks, and weather. The Occult Antiquarian understands the difference between theatrical occultism and objects that carry real danger. The Crisis Negotiator reads fear, silence, escalation, and the cracks in a person’s story. The Maritime Professional understands the sea well enough to know when it is breaking its own rules.

That expertise becomes the Pulp Lens.

The Pulp Lens is the opening point for every occupation kit. It is not a biography. It is a way to establish the character’s world, their instincts, and the particular way the Mythos has entered their professional life. It answers a practical question for both player and Keeper: why is this person involved now?

The design process then moves from tone to pressure.

Every occupation needs relationships and obligations. A medical examiner has an office, a chain of evidence, law-enforcement contacts, professional standards, and cases that may become politically dangerous. A paramedic has partners, dispatchers, hospitals, regular calls, and neighborhoods they know too well. A crisis negotiator works inside or against institutional systems where every decision can be scrutinized afterward.

These are not just bits of background. They are story engines.

The same is true for the more independent occupations. The Occult Antiquarian has collectors, auction houses, private clients, archives, rival experts, and people who want an object assessed—or hidden. A Street Paramedic may have local community ties that are more valuable than official access. A wilderness guide or search-and-rescue specialist can be pulled into missing-person cases and remote incidents before law enforcement understands what has happened.

The goal is to make every occupation feel useful before, during, and after a scenario. The character should help the group get into places, interpret evidence, recognize danger, and keep people alive. But the same role should also create complications when a hospital administration, police department, client, crew, family, or professional rival wants answers the investigators cannot safely give.

That is modern pulp to me: competence under pressure, with the pressure getting stranger and more personal every time.

TTFN,

Keith