Prohibition & Powers

The set-up for Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties is really simple. It is the 1920s. It is the USA. Prohibition is in full swing and under the terms of the Volstead Act, the sale of alcohol is outlawed. Which means there is money to be made from making the stuff in illegal stills or smuggling it across the border from Canada. Which means criminals are getting rich from making people happy and officials and cops are topping up their pensions by looking the other way. However, not every cop or bureau agent is on the take. Some want to enforce the law and are brave enough to do it. Some even have the power to back it up, not just with a sense of fairness and justice and a Smith & Wesson .38 Special Model 1899 Military and Police Hand Ejector, but the ability to fly or create a stream of acid or pick up things up with their hair or manipulate probability or control small objects. Used at the right time and in the right fashion, any one of these abilities can help the law bust criminal activities or arrest a crook. However, the life of a law enforcement Caper—as these powered individuals are known—is not that easy, because just as a would-be Caper is drawn to uphold the law, another Caper is drawn to break it. There are Capers protecting gangs and syndicates, running numbers games, cooking the books, bootlegging, and bringing the number one prohibited substance into the country—alcohol.

Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties is published by Nedburger Games, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It is a super-powered roleplaying set in a Jazz Age, but not a Jazz Age that we would fully recognise. Capers are a known and recognised phenomenon, appearing in newspapers and news reports, many stories being of a sensationalist nature, whilst the Department of Justice has established a Registry of Abnormal Persons and begun tracking their locations and activities. Currently, registration is voluntary. Capers may face religious intolerance and there are doctors and hospitals who will not treat them, but the US Army is actively recruiting them and the media loves them! Elsewhere, Carla ‘Lucky’ Luciano is the right-hand-woman to New York Boss Arnold Rothstein and Al Capone’s mentor is Giada Torrio, and a broader range of ethnicities and genders are accepted at all levels of society. It is thus ahistorical, rather than truly historical and more representative of modern sensibilities. As is the feel of the roleplaying game and its look, is more akin to a cartoon show. A cartoon show that can be told from two different angles. One is with the cast of Capers as members of law enforcement and the other is with the cast of Capers as members of a criminal gang or organisation. In that, it shares some resemblance with the set-up in TSR, Inc.’s Gangbusters: 1920’s Role-Playing Adventure. However, as a super-powered roleplaying game, Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties is very much a ‘Street Level’ campaign and very much not a ‘Four Colour’ setting. Essentially, this is not a traditional cowl and capes style of superhero roleplaying game, but a setting more akin to the masked adventurers style of the following decade of the thirties—and that is even if the Caper wears a costume at all. All of which is detailed in a simple, easy to grasp introduction that explains its situation within a few pages.

A Player Character in Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties is either an Exceptional or an actual Caper. There are also Regulars, but these are normal people and so not what a player will be typically roleplaying. An Exceptional will not have full superpowers, but will instead have Perks, such as ‘Lucky’, ‘Power-Resistant’, or ‘Speciality Skill’. There are only nine Perks given in the roleplaying game, as compared to the thirty-nine major and minor powers. What an Exceptional makes up for in terms of a limited choice of Perks is having a wider choice of general abilities, whereas a Caper will have a limited choice of general abilities and more powers. Beyond a concept, such as gangster, enforcer, bounty hunter, journalist, or federal agent, a Player Character has three Anchors. Consisting of Identity, Virtue, and Vice, these define who the Player Character is, and by roleplaying them, provide a means of the Player Character regaining Moxie. He also has six Traits—Charisma, Agility, Perception, Expertise, Resilience, and Strength—which are rated between one and three for Regulars, but can go as high as four or five for Capers. Each Trait has an associated Defence value, which is sets how difficult it is for an opponent to overcome a Player Character. He will have between three and five skills, and if a Caper either one or two Minor Powers or one Major Power, whilst if an Exceptional, a combination of either Perks or Trem-Gear. The latter consists of devices, weapons, and suits powered by the previously unknown radioactive element called Trembium, which is also found in the blood of Capers. It is possible to be injected with Trembium and temporarily gain powers, but similarly, it is possible to be injected with Anti-Trembium and Powers be temporarily negated. This sets up some interesting story possibilities, whilst the quick guide Trem-Gear in the book, with careful adjudication upon the part of the Game Master, might lend itself to some possible gadgeteering.

In general, skills are fairly broad, so Conveyances covers all vehicles, Sciences all of the sciences, and so on. How they are used varies though, depending on what a Player Character wants to do. To perform an impressive driving feat, for example, a bootlegger reverse, a player might combine his character’s Charisma Trait with his Conveyances skill, whilst attempting to drive into a narrow alley at high speed would use Agility and Conveyances instead. Notably, there is no Gambling skill or Performance skill, so the Game Master and player will need to work together to get skill and Trait combinations that work.

In comparison, Perks and Powers in Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties are much narrower in scope. Perks tend to provide better protection against an Exceptional’s powers than a Regular has. Minor Powers are more tightly focused and flashier in their use, and include Acid Stream, Body Armour, Concussion Beam, Dimensional Manipulation, Force Field, Mental Shield, and more. Major Powers are broader and include Dimension Step, Elasticity, Invisibility, Mimic, Speedster, and many enhancement to Traits, like Super Expertise or Super Strength. Some Powers are simply active all the time, whilst others require a Power Check to activate. Many also provide a range of different effects or Boosts. For example, the Speedster Major Power has the Chaperone Boost, the Damage Boost, the Lightning Boost, the Speed Boost, the Water Walk Boost, and the Whirlwind Boost. When creating his character, a player selects one of these Boosts as the standard effect for that Power. He can still do the others, but they are not as easy for him to do.

Creating an Exceptional or a Caper is a matter of making choices and assigning a few points to the Player Character’s Traits. The only random element is determining his Anchors—done by drawing cards from an ordinary deck of playing cards, but even this does not need to be done randomly.

Our example Caper is Arabella Bellange. She is a former magician’s assistant who graduated to stage magician when the magician had an unfortunate accident that meant he could not perform for a few months. Not Arabella’s doing, but rather he was unlucky and she was lucky. It seems that life goes that way for Arabella. She looks good on stage or when doing close-up tricks, but things just seem to go her way—and that includes the cards. Which suits her fine. She wants fame and money and she has the ambition to drive her into crime if she met the right person. She might come out of whatever they do smelling of roses, but her friend might not be so lucky…

Name: Arabella Bellange
Type: Caper
Identity: Leader
Virtue: Moderate
Vice: Vain

Body 9 Mind 9 Hits 14
Speed 30’
Level 1

TRAITS
Charisma 3 (Defence 10) Agility 2 (Defence 9) Perception 2 (Defence 9)
Expertise 2 (Defence 9) Resilience 2 (Defence 9) Strength 1 (Defence 8)

SKILLS
Deception, Insight, Sciences, Sleight of Hand

POWER
Minor – Probability Manipulation (Rank 1)
Minor – Hypnosis (Rank 1)

Mechanically, Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties uses decks of ordinary playing cards and every player needs to have a deck of his own. Whenever a player wants his character to act, he flips over a card. The value of the card, its suit, and its colour determines the outcome and specific effects from the desired action. The value of the card determines if the action is a success or a failure, ranging from a Task Difficulty of Routine or four to Incredible or Ace. The Task Difficulty is set by the Game Master and kept secret until the Player Character succeeds or fails. The suit of the card will determine the degree of the success or failure, with Spades cards being the best and Clubs cards being the worst. So, if the value of the card indicates the action is successful and its suit is Spades, it is a ‘Success with a Boon’, but a ‘Success with a Complication’ if the suit is Clubs. Conversely, if the value of the card indicates the action is a failure and its suit is Spades, it is a ‘Failure with a Motivation’, but a ‘Botch’ if the suit is Clubs. The ‘Failure with a Motivation’ result means that the Player Character is pushed to try again and receive a point of Moxie to use on his next action. Drawing an Ace means that the Player Character succeeds with a Boon, or two, if the Ace of Spades. Drawing the red Joker will end the player’s turn and means the Player Character suffers a botch, but the black Joker means the Player Character succeeds with a boon and can take another action.

This is drawing just the one card, but a player can draw more. His Caper or Exceptional has a Card Count equal to the Trait being used. If using an appropriate skill, the Card Count will increase by one and if the Game Master grants Advantage on the action, it increases by one again. (Conversely, having Disadvantage on an action will decrease it by one and if the card Count is reduced to zero, the action cannot be attempted.) Each extra card flipped after the first replaces the previous card, the aim being to draw the best card possible, effectively turning every action into a gamble! A player’s deck is typically reshuffled after the end of a fight or significant scene.

For most actions, a player will determine the Card Count from a Trait or a combination of a Trait and an appropriate Skill if his character has one. For a Power Check, when a player wants his character to use a Power, the Card Count is equal to the Rank of the Power.

In addition, a Player Character has access to Moxie. It can be spent to increase the Card Count on an action, reduce incoming damage, gain a Boon, shape the narrative, take an extra action related to a Trait, recall a card (which must be a card used in current action rather than a previous one), reshuffle the deck immediately, and to have an Exceptional or a Caper commit an act of self-sacrifice, meaning that he takes damage from an attack rather than a colleague or NPC. Moxie is gained at the end of significant encounters, a player roleplaying his character’s Anchors—such as staying true to a Virtue or suffering a complication due to a Vice, or his character doing something cool or entertaining.

For example, Arabella Bellange is playing a high stakes Poker game. If she wins, she gets top billing at the speakeasy where she has been performing. If she loses, she has to work for the owner, Domenic ‘Peanuts’ Conigliaro, in the speakeasy for free for a year. Arabella wants to play this as straight possible, since she does not want to suffer any slight to her reputation that an accusation of cheating would cause, so is counting the cards and working the odds rather than resorting to deception. This will use her Expertise Trait, which gives her a base Card Count of two. Her Sciences skill will increase this by one to a total of three. The Game Master sets the Task Difficulty at Challenging or ten.

Arabella’s player turns over the top card of her deck. The card is a three of Hearts. This is not good enough to beat Arabella’s boss’ hand, so her player draws a second card, the nine of Spades, followed by the seven of Spades. Again, not enough. Arabella’s player decides to spend some Moxie. First to increase her Card Count by one. This means she can draw another card, but she spends a second to reshuffle her deck. Then she uses Probability Manipulation Power and its Control Boost to look at the top three cards of her deck and rearrange them. The cards are the ten of Diamonds, the eight of Clubs, and the Ace of Hearts in that order. Now the ten of Diamonds is enough to win the Poker game, but the Ace of Hearts is a surefire win and it grants Arabella a boon. She moves this to the top of her deck and with her last card drawn because of her increased Card Count draws the Ace of Hearts. Arabella’s boon is not only top billing at the speakeasy, but a better clothing allowance because a girl has to look her best… The Game Master agrees to this, but also because this ties in with her Vice of Vanity, awards her a point of Moxie.

Combat in Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties uses the same mechanic. Each participant will make an Agility/Sense Reaction Check to determine his place in the Initiative order, whilst Agility/Guns or Agility/Ranged Weapons are used for ranged attacks and Strength/Fisticuffs or Strength/Melee Weapons are used for melee combat. In either case, the Target Difficulty for the attacker is equal to the Defence value of the defender’s Body value. The amount of damage inflicted is determined by the Suit and Colour of the card used for the attack, Black and Spades inflicting the most damage. Damage typically ranges between one and six points, but can be higher, as the weapon used will modify this. If a Player Character’s Hits are reduced to zero, he is either temporarily removed from the story or dead, player’s choice. If a player chooses to have his character die, then he gets one final turn in which he can use all of his Moxie to affect the narrative. Similarly, if a character reduces an enemy to zero Hits, his player get to decide whether he is merely knocked unconscious or is killed.

An important or unexpected fight can be preceded by a standoff, in which the participants stare each other out and attempt to assess the abilities of their would-be opponents. Played out over three rounds, it can gain a Player Character the initiative and more cards to play on the resulting action check. Other actions include assessing an opponent, intimidating him, or using a Power to boost the Player Character.

Overall, there is pleasing depth to game play, with players not just aiming to draw cards of a value sufficient to overcome a challenge or inflict damage, but also of the right colour and suit to get a more beneficial outcome. Although a player will mainly be relying upon better Card Counts to increase the possibility of drawing better cards, the use of Moxie allows for some limited manipulation of the cards , hopefully, towards a better outcome.

In terms of setting, Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties provides a short section of goods and services that noticeably includes prices for speakeasies, breweries, casinos, and hotels for gangster Exceptionals and Capers who want something to invest their ill-gotten gains in, as well as thirteen different Backdrops in which the Game Master can set her campaign. These are the big cities of the USA, notorious for their criminal underworlds during the era of Prohibition. Atlantic City, Chicago, and New York have several pages devoted to them each, covering recent history and the current state in the city, notable organisations and places, and people of note. Plus, stats are provided for the latter as well as a map of the city and story hooks for both law enforcement and gangster campaigns. The others, including Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, and Miami, only receive a page each, so will require some development upon the part of the Game Master to bring into play, especially if she wants to base her campaign in any one of them. The main three though, are very playable location write-ups ready for a campaign.

Similarly, law enforcement is given a broad overview before the Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties delves into a toolbox containing all manner of strange elements to bring into play. These include a selection of alternative earths, like ‘Capek’s Earth’ where automata have become part of everyday society; ‘Flipside’ where anyone from Principal Earth occupies the mind of their counterpart on this openly violent world where Al Capone is already dead; and ‘Madworld’, where the Central Powers used Capers to slaughter thousands in France, Capers in the USA are hated, hunted, and outlawed. These are all given the same degree of detail as the Backdrops of Atlantic City, Chicago, and New York, and together expand the storytelling possibilities of a campaign set in the world of Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties. There is a lot here that the Game Master can play around with in combining classic superhero style stories and elements with the cop with powers versus robbers powers nature of the setting. There is even Stone Island Beach, a secure island prison off the coast of New York for Capers, much like The Raft from the Marvel Universe.

All of this supported with advice for the Game Master on how to run the game, allow scope for player agency and input, adjudicate the rules, design adventures and encounters, and even on how to give animals powers and set up ‘events’ in which more people—either around the world or in one city—suddenly become Capers and explore the consequences that ensue. It is good solid advice, but there is a certain brevity to it. What it does not do is look at long term play in any of the roleplaying game’s three genres—law enforcement, crime, or superheroes—and the differences between them. What does a campaign look like? After all, a law enforcement campaign is going to be different from a criminal enterprise gang. The first is all about investigating criminal empires and tearing them down, whilst the second is all about building criminal empires up and preventing them from being torn down. The bibliography will provide some inspiration, as will familiarity with the genres, but this is definitely where the Game Master wanting to run a longer game of Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters could have done with more help and advice.

Physically, Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties is neatly, cleanly presented. The artwork has a cartoon style, and there is a short, but engaging cartoon strip in the middle of the book.

Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties has a setting that is actually unique and sounds cool—superheroes and supervillains in the Roaring Twenties fighting for law and order or crime and corruption. The addition of superpowers is the game changer, of course, both in terms of the setting and play, but the various abilities feel suitably low key and never like they are going to overwhelm the setting or the storytelling. This is helped by the fact that the card-based always make the game play feel as if the players and their characters are pushing their luck and gambling on the outcome. If underdeveloped with regard to long term play, Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties offers a breezy, fast-paced, and intriguingly different combination of genres in a familiar setting.

Miskatonic Monday #323: The White Circle

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: The White Circle

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jonas Morian & The Yellow Hand

Setting: St. Paul, Minnesota, 1921

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-eight page, 26.47 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes having morals extends to having a conscience too.

Plot Hook: “Out of sight, out of mind… Out of memory.”

Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, three handouts, two maps, six NPCs, one Mythos spell, and one Mythos tome.

Production Values: Excellent

Pros

# Richly detailed background

# Socially challenging to resolve

# Open-ended

# Swedophobia

# Kenophobia

# Depersonalisation

Cons

# Needs a slight edit

# Violence may be the only means of resolution

# Socially challenging to resolve

Conclusion

# Richly detail scenario of moral cleansing horror with excellent production values
# Socially challenging to resolve and the Investigators may not get away with it

Old School Cops & Robbers

Although the Old School Renaissance has been primarily driven by Dungeons & Dragons and its iterations, it has been accompanied by an interest in the other games of the period, so there have been new editions of Top Secret and Gangbusters, the latter with a Gangbusters Introductory Set and supplements such as Welcome to Rock Junction and GBM-1 Joe's Diner. Mark Hunt, the new publisher of Gangbusters has followed this with a roleplaying game which combines Old School Renaissance mechanics with roleplaying in the Roaring Twenties and Dirty Thirties. The result is Gangbusters B/X Edition.

Gangbusters B/X Edition or Gangbusters 1920s Roleplaying Adventure Game B/X Edition combines the mechanics of the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay—as seen most recently in Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy—with all of the setting elements of Gangbusters. So it is a Class and Level game with Hit Points and Armour Class set in the Jazz Age and the Desperate Decade of Prohibition, mob bosses, Tommy gun-toting thugs, flappers and floozies, speakeasies and swanky gin joints, small crimes and big crimes, ‘Scarface’ Al Capone, ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, ‘Ma’ Barker, Bonnie & Clyde, Eliot Ness and the ‘Untouchables’, and J. Edgar Hoover. This is a roleplaying game of classic cops and robbers in player take the roles of cops, criminals, private detectives, and reporters in a town where crime and corruption is rife, almost everyone is looking to make it big or get lucky, crimes and cases are solved, and more.

A character in Gangbusters B/X Edition is defined by the traditional six abilities—Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. He also has a Class and Level as well as an Alignment and Description. The four Classes are Brutish, Connected, Educated, and Street Smart and each Class has six Levels, complete with ‘Titles’ for each Level! The Brutish Class is strong and can make multiple attacks against opponents of one Hit Die or less, are more intimidating, and effective when using improved weapons. The Connected Class knows people from particular fields such as City Hall, Society, Underworld, Sports, and so on, and can gain favours from them. The Educated Class are intelligent and knowledgeable in a particular area of expertise, such as Accounting, Forensic Analysis, Gun Smithing, Safe Cracking, and so on, and also has two Vocations. The Street Smart Class has great Dexterity and has abilities like Nimble Fingers, Move Silently, Hide, and Word on the Street. Of the four Classes, the Brutish is most like the Fighter of Dungeons & Dragons, whilst the Street Smart is like the Thief, but also encompasses the grifter and the con man. 

There are a couple of oddities in the Class designs. So the Educated Class receives two Vocations, but what exactly a Vocation is, is never explained in Gangbusters B/X Edition. The Street Smart has Thief-like abilities, but does not gain access to a skill like Safe Cracking.  Alignment in Gangbusters B/X Edition is suitably updated to reflect the period—so Law Abiding, Neutrality, or Dishonest. Character description options include Assimilated, Blue Blood, City Slicker, Hoodlum, and so on.

Our example character is Dudás ‘Slim’ Henrik, an immigrant from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire who came to America following the end of the Great War. He is looking to make his way in the new country and if the incentive was right might look the other way. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army during the war and is trained to use a rifle. It has been several years since he used one though. Currently he works as an accountant for a number of neighbourhood businesses.

Dudás ‘Slim’ Henrik
First level Educated (Smart)
Alignment: Neutral
Description: Immigrant
Armour Class: 5
Hit Points: 2
THAC0: 19

Strength 13 (+1, +1 Open Doors)
Intelligence 14 (Literate & Eloquent)
Wisdom 09 
Dexterity 12 
Constitution 09 
Charisma 08 (-1, Max. Retainers: 7, Morale: 10)

Languages: English, Hungarian
Area of Expertise: Accounting
Vocations: ???
Equipment: $100

Unfortunately, Gangbusters B/X Edition is rather muddled in terms of its mechanics. Now of course, Gangbusters B/X Edition is an Old School Renaissance design and there need not possess a unified mechanic, a one roll for everything, but includes several different ones for different types of actions. So for the Special Abilities of the Educated and Street Smart Classes, a player rolls a six-sided die and succeeds if he rolls three or more. If a one or two is rolled, the character fails or succeeds, but is spotted in doing so. For any action not covered elsewhere, Gangbusters B/X Edition calls for an Ability check, which presumably is to roll under the player character’s value for the appropriate Ability. Unfortunately the rules do not state this, but instead have the player roll under a number assigned by the Judge, modified by +4 or -4 depending on the difficulty.

Then there is combat. Combat in Gangbusters B/X Edition works much like Basic Dungeons & Dragons B/X of 1981, but allows for unarmed combat and the use of firearms and their capacity for burst and spray fire, firing both barrels, and rates of fire. As you would expect, the player or Judge has to roll a twenty-sided die and roll high to beat an Armour Class. That Armour Class though, is descending not ascending, from ‘9’ to ‘-3’ and thus each character has a THAC0 rating. One difference between Basic Dungeons & Dragons B/X and Gangbusters B/X Edition is the lack of armour. This is, of course, to be expected, given the historical time period, but Gangbusters B/X Edition suggests that the better or the fancier the clothing worn, the higher the Armour Class bonus, so Armour Class 7 for poor quality clothing, Armour Class 5 for typical clothing, and Armour Class 3 for luxury or thick clothing.

Lastly, there are the rules for Saving Throws. These work as you would expect in Dungeons & Dragons, but like Alignment have been updated to Moxie, Quickness, Toughness, Driving, and Observation. Moxie covers grit and willpower, Quickness covers reaction speed and agility, Toughness covers endurance and durability, Driving covers all non-combat vehicle actions, and Observation covers spotting and searching for things. Like all Saving throws, these are modified by a character’s Ability modifiers. Altogether, this feels like a clash of mechanics rather than something that is easy to learn and easy to play, but while the rules and mechanics are easy enough, they do feel as if they could be easier.

In terms of what the Judge—as the referee is sometimes known in Gangbusters B/X Edition—can run, Gangbusters B/X Edition suggests several campaign types. These are Criminal, Detective, Law Enforcement, Reporter, and Strange Mysteries. Of these, Detective refers to a campaign involving Private Detectives a la Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, whilst Strange Mysteries pushes Gangbusters B/X Edition into the realms of horror, cosmic horror, and the Pulp superheroes of the nineteen thirties. Of all the campaign concepts in Gangbusters B/X Edition, Strange Mysteries is the least supported, although Gangbusters B/X Edition does offer the option of player characters being masked crime fighters in addition to their standard Classes. Each masked crime fighter receives a random Mysterious Power, such as Bolt of Power or Obscuring Mist, but will have more if any ability has a value of eighteen. Each Mysterious Power can only be once a day. The great advantage of Strange Mysteries campaign is that it is compatible with a lot of Basic Dungeons & Dragons B/X and similar content, so that monsters can easily be imported and various scenarios might work too if the Judge picks carefully.

The other campaign options are covered by their own chapters. So for a Criminal campaign, ‘PART 3: Piece of the Action’ covers criminal activities including bootlegging and racketeering, running a gang, as well as running a normal business, whilst ‘PART 5: Investigations’ covers enquiries made into crimes and mysteries which comes about as part of ‘PART 3: Piece of the Action’. Once the police and the judiciary gets involved, then ‘PART 6: The Long Arm of the Law’ comes into play and explains arrests, plea bargains, bail, trials, witnesses, and law enforcement resources. For the Judge, scattered amongst this there is a list of adversaries and advice on handling encounters, as well as an introduction to the U.S.A. of the period and to the publisher’s default setting of Rock Junction, a steeltown in the Midwest some sixty miles from the Lakefront City of Gangbusters, as well as advice on building adventures and running the game.

What Gangbusters B/X Edition does not include is advice on running long term campaigns. Now this is in part due to the fact that player characters can only achieve six Levels and so the roleplaying game is not designed for long term play. It is really also only designed for two broad campaign types, ones in which the player characters are the criminals and one in which they are not. This is because it is hard to bring the character types together and not have an adversarial relationship.

Physically, Gangbusters B/X Edition is nicely illustrated with lots of period black and white artwork. Now whilst Gangbusters B/X Edition has been proofread, it has not been edited and it very much shows. When it counts, the phrasing of the roleplaying game’s many core rules is often just odd enough to wonder what exactly the author intended, and terms get used interchangeably, such Judge, Referee, Game Master, and so on. Worse, the organisation of the book can be best described as shambolic or scattershot. Now each of the individual sections is self-contained and complete, but ordered in random fashion. So ‘PART 3: Piece of the Action’ which covers criminal activities comes before ‘PART 4: Acting as Judge’, followed by ‘PART 5: Investigations’, ‘PART 6: Long Arm of the Law’, and so on. Lastly, ‘PART 9: Combat’ comes right at the end of the book. There is just no logic to this pattern.

As a toolkit to run an Old School cops and robbers game, Gangbusters B/X Edition could have been easier to use and it could have been easier to read. In spite of this, there is no denying its scrappy charm and there is no denying that Gangbusters 1920s Roleplaying Adventure Game B/X Edition gives a Judge everything she needs to run an Old School Renaissance cops and robbers game—just not necessarily in the right order. 

Scant Treatment

For a great many, Dungeons & Dragons was their first RPG, but as popular as the game proved to be, this did not stop publisher, TSR, Inc., from diversifying and looking for potential success with other genres. This resulted in games such as Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Marvel Super Heroes, and GANGBUSTERS, which in the case of the latter three, were designed as much to be introductions to the hobby as much as they were to new genres. The Old School Renaissance has plundered many of these titles, sometimes over and over, so that there are innumerable interpretations of Dungeons & Dragons, as well as versions of Marvel Super Heroes in the form of FASERIP and continued support for Star Frontiers. With continued support for these three RPGs, it would seem that GANGBUSTERS continues to be TSR’s unloved title, but in 2015, after twenty-five years since the last release for it, GANGBUSTERS is getting some love and support again.

Originally published in 1982, GANGBUSTERS: 1920’s Role-Playing Adventure Game is an RPG set during Prohibition Era America in Lakefront City, a setting roughly based on the Chicago of the period. It has the players take the roles of crooks, gangsters, reporters, cops, private eyes, and FBI agents and depending upon the scenario and campaign, fighting crime, taking a piece of the action, getting the big scoop—and earning Experience Points for it. Beyond the core boxed set, the RPG was supported by six releases, five of them scenarios and then the misnamed third edition in 1990. Then in 2015, Mark Hunt revisited the setting and the system with a brand new release, GBM-1 Joe’s Diner and has since led to the release of GangBusters-The Blue Book Detective Agency Beginner Game, a new and introductory edition of the game that focuses on playing private investigators. This, together with a new and expanded edition of GBM-1 Joe’s Diner and Welcome to Rock Junction, formed the basis for the Gangbusters Limited Edition Box BEGINNER GAME. Of course, for professional reasons, Reviews from R’lyeh cannot review any of the aforementioned books or indeed the boxed set, but it can review other releases from Mark Hunt for GANGBUSTERS and his Rock Junction setting, beginning with GBE-2 Man’s Best Friend. He has since followed it up with several supplements, of which GBE-1 Doctors' Orders is the second.

This supplement describes a location, that of The Men’s Doctor, a clinic in Lakefront City run by Doctor Moses Levon. The obvious use of such a location in a game like GANGBUSTERS is somewhere where the player characters can go to get fixed, typically after a fight, and this is a service that Doctor Levon offers. He charges of course—$20 per gunshot wound, but he also provides another important and legitimate service. He sells alcohol. For during Prohibition, the U.S. Treasury Department authorised physicians to write prescriptions for medicinal alcohol, typically a pint per prescription. Which meant that you could get alcohol whilst avoiding both having to associate with crooks or the chance that the alcohol you just bought was ‘bathtub gin’, notorious for its ability to poison or even kill you. Prescriptions for alcohol are not cheap, but it was an easy method of acquiring booze if you had ailment that the doctor thought could be treated with it, such as cancer, indigestion and depression. Of course, it was also a regular source of income for any doctor willing to write out the prescriptions—and in the case of GBE-1 Doctors' Orders, Doctor Levon certainly is.

GBE-1 Doctors' Orders details the owner and staff of The Men’s Doctor, although only two of the four receive any real attention. Even so, both feel underwritten and there are implications and questions left unaddressed with both. For example, Doctor Levon is described as being “ a German in his heart and left after the war with one purpose to get rich in America.” With a first name like Moses and you left wondering at the exact meaning here. Neither the clinic’s nurse nor secretary are detailed beyond their mere stats and that is a shame, since there is certainly room for it. In addition—and unlike GBM-1 Joe’s Diner—GBM-1 Doctors’ Orders is light on ideas. There are a couple of hooks, but no scenario seeds.

Available as a 1.6 MB, six-page PDF, GBE-1 Doctors’ Orders physically feels as rough and unedited as the earlier GBM-1 Joe’s Diner. There is also the matter of the supplement’s title, should it refer to one doctor rather than multiple? The use of period photographs is now more or less a trademark for the line and adds a nice sense of the era. Similarly, the addition of a blank prescription adds a degree of verisimilitude to the affair.

Again, as with GBM-1 Joe’s Diner, it is easy to drop GBE-1 Doctors’ Orders into a GANGBUSTERS campaign or indeed any campaign set within the Prohibition Era. Yet unlike GBM-1 Joe’s Diner, this supplement lacks charm and a sense of engagement, both of which did a great deal to assuage its rough and ready production values. Without either, the production values of GBE-1 Doctors’ Orders are more obvious and thus much more of a distraction. Underdeveloped and underwritten, GBE-1 Doctors’ Orders is a disappointment after the engaging pleasure of GBM-1 Joe’s Diner.

Not Quite Out of the Gate

For a great many, Dungeons & Dragons was their first RPG, but as popular as the game proved to be, this did not stop publisher, TSR, Inc., from diversifying and looking for potential success with other genres. This resulted in games such as Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Marvel Super Heroes, and GANGBUSTERS, which in the case of the latter three, were designed as much to be introductions to the hobby as much as they were to new genres. The Old School Renaissance has plundered many of these titles, sometimes over and over, so that there are innumerable interpretations of Dungeons & Dragons, as well as versions of Marvel Super Heroes in the form of FASERIP and continued support for Star Frontiers. With continued support for these three RPGs, it would seem that GANGBUSTERS and Top Secret continus to be TSR’s unloved title, but in 2015, after twenty-five years since the last release for it, GANGBUSTERS is getting some love and support again.

Originally published in 1982, GANGBUSTERS: 1920’s Role-Playing Adventure Game is an RPG set during Prohibition Era America in Lakefront City, a setting roughly based on the Chicago of the period. It has the players take the roles of crooks, gangsters, reporters, cops, private eyes, and FBI agents and depending upon the scenario and campaign, fighting crime, taking a piece of the action, getting the big scoop—and earning Experience Points for it. Beyond the core boxed set, the RPG was supported by six releases, five of them scenarios and then the misnamed third edition in 1990. Then in 2015, Mark Huntrevisited the setting and the system with a brand new release, GBM-1 Joe’s Diner and has since led to the release of GangBusters: The Blue Book Detective Agency Beginner Game, a new and introductory edition of the game that focuses on playing private investigators. This, together with a new and expanded edition of GBM-1 Joe’s Diner and Welcome to Rock Junction, formed the basis for the Gangbusters Limited Edition Box BEGINNER GAME. Of course, for professional reasons, Reviews from R’lyeh cannot review any of the aforementioned books or indeed the boxed set, but it can review other releases from Mark Hunt for GANGBUSTERS and his Rock Junction setting, beginning with GBE-2 Man’s Best Friend.

Written for use with Second Level characters, GBE-2 Man’s Best Friend describes a location and its staff, that of Vickers’ Race Track, a dog track owned and run by dog enthusiast, Margaret Vickers. Other notable characters include a rich young investor with a penchant for putting money on the dogs, plus his staff; a rich old lady whose dog—and the key to her lockbox on his collar—have gone missing, plus the private eye hired to find the animal; and a vet and his faithful companion. A number of punters that might be found at the Vickers Dog Track are also listed, though they are little more than stats. One NPC, the reporter Kit Baker, reappears from GBM-1 Joe’s Diner.

Unfortunately, neither the dog track or its operation are described beyond cursory details. Nor is there a map of the dog track and its facilities. All of which will be a problem from anyone who is unfamiliar with such places in the here and now, let alone in the Prohibition Era. What this means is that the Judge—as the Game Master in GANGBUSTERS is known—will have to do a fair amount of research of his own if he wants to get the most out of GBE-2 Man’s Best Friend. Further, there is not the wealth of detail and scenario ideas and hooks to be found in GBE-2 Man’s Best Friend as there was in GBM-1 Joe’s Diner—both the original version and the new version, again leaving the Judge with more to do.

What GBE-2 Man’s Best Friend does do is add rules for dogs in GANGBUSTERS. Whatever the size of dog—small, medium, or large—they all share the same stats as humans do in the game, but with Driving being replaced with the new Loyalty stat. This is a measure of a canine’s devotion to its master and how well it will obey his orders, whether that is running away or staying with him, or simply learning tricks. This enables a Judge to create dog companion for his NPCs as much as the players create them for their characters. They can also spend Experience Points to increase a dog’s Loyalty. These rules are supported by the inclusion of the Veterinary Medicine skill.

In terms of presentation, GBE-2 Man’s Best Friend is disappointing. It does not feel as it has been edited at all and this detracts greatly from the supplement as does the inconsistent layout. As with other supplements for GANGBUSTERS from Mark Hunt, GBE-2 Man’s Best Friend does benefit from the use of period photographs, but this cannot wholly address its presentation problems.

There is plenty of potential in GBE-2 Man’s Best Friend. After all, a dog track should be rife with dramatic tension—gambling, fixing races, stick ups and punch ups, money laundering, and much, much more, but none of this is brought out in the supplement. It should tell us what goes on at the track and what should go on at the track, but it never does. Whilst a better, cleaner layout would do much to make this a more professional supplement, it would not be enough to bring out the full potential of the underdeveloped and underwhelming location. Simply, GBE-2 Man’s Best Friend should be brimming with potential and possibilities, but sadly it falters long before it reaches the finishing line.

Gangbusting back!

For a great many, Dungeons & Dragons was their first RPG, but as popular as the game proved to be, this did not stop publisher, TSR, Inc., from diversifying and looking for potential success with other genres. This resulted in games such as Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Marvel Super Heroes, and GANGBUSTERS, which in the case of the latter three, were designed as much to be introductions to the hobby as much as they were to new genres. The Old School Renaissance has plundered many of these titles, sometimes over and over, so that there are innumerable interpretations of Dungeons & Dragons, as well as versions of Marvel Super Heroes in the form of FASERIP and continued support for Star Frontiers. With continued support for these three RPGs, it would seem that GANGBUSTERS continues to be TSR’s unloved title, but in 2015, after twenty-five years since the last release for it, GANGBUSTERS is getting some love and support again.

Originally published in 1982, GANGBUSTERS: 1920’s Role-Playing Adventure Game is an RPG set during Prohibition Era America in Lakefront City, a setting roughly based on the Chicago of the period. It has the players take the roles of crooks, gangsters, reporters, cops, private eyes, and FBI agents and depending upon the scenario and campaign, fighting crime, taking a piece of the action, getting the big scoop--and earning Experience Points for it. Beyond the core boxed set, the RPG was supported by six releases, five of them scenarios and then the misnamed third edition in 1990. Then in 2015, Mark Hunt revisited the setting and the system with a brand new release, GBM-1 Joe’s Diner.

Designed to be used with First Level characters, GBM-1 Joe’s Diner is a seventeen-page 3.52 MB PDF that describes a location in Lakefront City and the NPCs to be found there before providing the Judge with some situations that the player characters can get involved in. The location is the eponymous diner, a place where the player characters can drop by, get to know the locals and the regulars, and then perhaps get pulled into an adventure or two. The diner’s location is given as a busy one across the street from a railway station and some warehouses, and given the number of dockworkers that appear in the area, not far from the docks, giving it plenty of footfall and thus customers of a diverse ethnicity. The establishment itself is not described, the presumption being that both Judge—as the Game Master in GANGBUSTERS is described—and his players will be familiar with such establishments, the supplement instead focusing upon its owner and its staff, each of them receiving a thumbnail portrait and description.

A number of the diner’s customers are accorded a similar treatment whilst others form the basis for certain scenarios and situations. There are opportunities to make some money, whether through honest investment or through simple theft; a murder to prevent (or perhaps carry out!); and rumours aplenty to follow up on. Two scenarios are given in some detail, but there are plenty of one line hooks scattered throughout the supplement. Getting the player characters involved in any one of these scenarios or hooks is relatively easy, but several suggestions are given. A cop might be introduced to Joe’s Diner whilst a veteran cop shows him his new beat; a gang might move into the district looking to stake out its territory in a Ward relatively free of gang activity; law enforcement could be looking to crack down on criminal activities; and perhaps a reporter might just be looking for a good story. These suggest possible campaign types, but of course, there is nothing to stop an ambitious Judge letting the players create the characters they want and rather than run a party of characters, run a game in which they have their own aims with their paths crossing occasionally—perhaps at Joe’s Diner—and sometimes even be at odds with each other.

GBM-1 Joe’s Diner is a first product and it shows. The editing and formatting is inconsistent and rough around the edges. Nevertheless, the supplement is an easy enough read and really benefits from a well-used selection of period photographs to illustrate the various NPCs and possible locations. 

GBM-1 Joe’s Diner does not have to be used with GANGBUSTERS, something of problem given that the game has long been out of print. The fact that it just lists the game stats for its various NPCs and that these are essentially percentages means that the game is easy to use with any RPG that uses percentiles as its mechanics, for example, Call of Cthulhu. Then again, the setting is simple enough and the Prohibition Era familiar enough that almost any set of rules could be used to create cops and robbers, gangsters and G-Men, private eyes and reporters would work in this milieu and in this setting. Similarly, it would be just as easy to move the location of Joe’s Diner to wherever the Judge is running his campaign.

GBM-1 Joe’s Diner is published under the banner of ‘From the Case Files of the Blue Book Detective Agency’, though that location is itself not detailed in the supplement. Perhaps it might be at a later date, should the author collect other ‘Case Files’ into the one supplement? As rough and ready as GBM-1 Joe’s Diner is, there is no denying the charm of the piece and the able support it gives to the Judge. GBM-1 Joe’s Diner marks the addition of GANGBUSTERS to the fold of the Old School Renaissance and a very welcome addition it is too.