Friday Filler: Go Ahead Punk!

A city under siege. The City by the Bay sits in the crosshairs of a gunsight, the scope of a sniper rifle wandering across the buildings and streets of San Francisco ready for the trigger to be pulled and another victim felled. The sniper has sent city hall demands for money and is holding all of San Francisco to ransom. Fortunately, San Francisco Police Department has assigned its finest police officers to deal with both the demands and track down the psychopathic killer before he strikes again. If that sounds like the plot of the 1971 film, Dirty Harry, starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Don Siegel, it is. However, it is also the set-up for a board game inspired by Dirty Harry and the cop cinema of the seventies. Published by Next Dimension Games, Go Ahead Punk! is a game set in the San Francisco of the seventies in which the sadistic killer known only as ‘Stinger’ stalks the streets and rooftops, looking for his next victim. Instead of the San Francisco Police Department assigning only the one Cop to the case, it has assigned three—Inspectors Katherine Lacey, Eddie Johnson, and Frank Brannigan. Stinger only needs to carry three more hits, which can be from atop a building if he can obtain a Janitor Key to its side entrance or in the city’s parks if he can find a Park Ranger uniform. Then it is a matter of making his escape from one of the city’s four port exits and the man who scared San Francisco will have eluded the law! All the Cops have to do is locate Stinger and bring him to justice, whether that is before he has made all of his planned hits or after, during his escape attempt.

Go Ahead Punk! is a classic hidden movement game of one player versus many, much in the mode of the classic Fury of Dracula or the more recent Jaws. It pitches one player—Stinger, up against one to three Cops, each with their own means of handling sadistic killers like Scorpio. Inspector Frank Brannigan always knows where to put a bullet in a criminal if he has to; Inspector Eddie Johnson’s preferred weapon is a pump action shotgun, so up close, he rarely misses; and Inspector Katherine Lacey’s knowledge of Personnel & Records means she brings police intelligence to the streets in the manhunt for the marauding murderer. When she spends cash on intel to reveal Stinger’s location, his player must reveal Stinger’s exact location, not just the district. They start with their own equipment, but can find more and make themselves deadlier in a fight. Stinger has his sniper rifle, but might find a .38 revolver, a silencer for his sniper rifle to make hits harder to detect, or even a LAW rocket launcher (useful for taking down that pesky police chopper), whereas the Cops can equip themselves with shotguns and rifles, don bulletproof vests, keep track of each other with police radios, and if they have cash, get intel from their connections on where Stinger might be. They can even get the keys to a muscle car and race across the city in pursuit of the unknown sniper.

Go Ahead Punk! is played out on a 17¼ by 28½ inch map of San Francisco, divided into its various districts and parks and crisscrossed with the major roads and freeways as well as Street Car and Cable Car routes. All players can move using the major roads and freeways, but only Stinger can use the Street Car and Cable Car routes and then only when he has a Transit Pass. There are over one-hundred-and-fifty numbered locations on the map which the Cops will move across openly, whilst Stinger will move across them in secret, his player tracking Stinger’s movement and location on the Movement Tracker sheet which he keeps hidden behind a screen. The various districts are also marked with Hit Locations—black for rooftops, green for the parks, and red for locations where a hit cannot be performed for the third and final hit. There are several hospitals, marked with ER, where both the Cops and Stinger can gain first aid, but Stinger must reveal his location if he does so and there are also four Port locations, the Stinger needing to get to one of these to escape and win the game after performing the three hits. Lastly, there is Hunch Tracker, which tracks the San Francisco Police Department’s general progress in hunting for Stinger. The net closes on him every fourth round, forcing his player to reveal Stinger’s current district, which will narrow it down to a handful of locations.

At the beginning of the game, each player receives a board for his character. This has a health Tracker and space for equipment carried—up to eight spaces’ worth of equipment can be carried in this inventory—and for the Cops, space for any vehicle currently in their possession. Each player is also given their character’s starting equipment, a set of combat dice in their character’s colour, and a reference card. Stinger’s player has access to the Stinger Deck and the Stinger Key Deck. During play, these provide Stinger’s player with key cards to particular locations, the Park Ranger uniform, weapons, and so on. In addition, the Stinger’s player also receives the Movement Tracker sheet and a screen to hide it behind. This screen has a great image of Stinger, sniper rifle in hand, looming over the city as a whole, making him a constant presence, despite everyone not knowing where he is.

The Cop players have access to the Cop Deck and the Cop Inventory Deck and together these provide the Cop players with weapons, vehicles, cash for intelligence, and more. There are some fun cards in here too. For example, ‘Complaint’ sends Inspector Brannigan straight to city hall following a claim of police brutality; ‘Donuts!’ ends a player’s turn; when ‘Car’ card is drawn, the Cop not only gets that card, but gets to pop the trunk of the car and draw another card to see what is inside it; and a ‘Hood! Fight Now’ card means that the Cop has busted down the wrong door and the occupant is not taking it lying down!

A turn consists of two phases. In ‘Phase 1: The Hunt’, Stinger acts first. He can either move, play a card from his hand, draw a new card (and play it if he wants), declare a Hit, or get some first aid at an ER. Both declaring a Hit and going to the ER reveals Stinger’s location. Next the Hunch Tracker marker is moved. If on the ‘Reveal’ space, Stinger’s player reveals the district where he currently is. Then the Cop players take it in turn to do one of five actions. This can be to move—three spaces as opposed to the four of Stinger, play a card, draw a new card to play or keep, share inventory items with another Cop if they are in the same location, or get some first aid at an ER. Play progresses through ‘Phase 1: The Hunt’ again and again until Stinger has performed three Hits. This triggers ‘Phase 2: The Escape’. However, play in ‘Phase 2: The Escape’ is pretty much the same as ‘Phase 1: The Hunt’, but without the need to perform any further Hits.

Stinger’s location can be revealed through four means. A Cop moves into the space he is currently on, Stinger’s player draws a ‘Spotted’ card, a ‘Location Intel’ card is drawn—backed up by Lacey’s knowledge of Personnel & Records or extra cash, or Stinger moves into a location with a Cop there. The latter is a possibility if a Cop has already been injured, whether due to a ‘Hood! Fight Now’ card or an earlier encounter with Stinger, and Stinger’s player thinks he can do enough damage to send him to the ER. Performing a Hit also reveals Stinger’s location, but if Stinger has the Silencer for his sniper rifle, Stinger gets another turn to act before revealing the Hit, reflecting how difficult the Hit was to detect.

Combat takes place between Stinger and the Cops when or more of them are in the same location. It involves the players taking it in turns to roll dice as determined by the weapon they are carrying, modified by combat cards, if any, aiming to inflict damage on the other. Combat continues until Stinger is killed and thus the Cops win the game, Stinger sends the Cops to the ER, or one side attempts to escape and move immediately away. In general, this requires the ‘Escape’ symbol to be rolled on a die, and if the ‘Escape’ symbol does not appear, a player can burn cards from his hand. This removes them from the game, which can be serious for Stinger if those cards are a Janitor Key card or a Park Ranger Uniform card as this prevents Stinger from performing Hits at those locations. Notably, Stinger’s play begins the game with an Escape Token. This can be used once instead of a failed Escape roll and ensures that Stinger escapes once in the game.

In addition to the standard game, Go Ahead Punk! includes rules for solo play. This plays much in the same fashion as the standard game, but the player controls Stinger only—who has been blackmailed into performing the Hits—and the Cops are controlled by the game. The token for Stinger remains on the board at all times with the Cop tokens constantly moving towards Stinger. To make an allowance for solo play, Go Ahead Punk! does feel like a more complex game in comparison to the standard rules.

Go Ahead Punk! is a nicely and highly thematically presented game. All of the components are of solid quality, including the tokens, cards, and various boards—even for a preview version of the game. (Actual figures for the Cops are included in a deluxe version of the game.) The rule book is relatively short, but includes examples of play, combat, and card clarifications. The artwork is terrific though, for example, Stinger is shown on one card wearing the same Mexican style cardigan that Paul Michael Glaser wore on Starsky & Hutch. There are lots of little references like this, and players with any knowledge of the genre will enjoy spotting them.

Go Ahead Punk! has a pleasing ebb and flow to its play. Primarily this is due to the Hunch Tracker, which forces Stinger’s player to reveal the current district he is currently in, tightening the noose around Stinger, forcing his player to send him scurrying away if he does not want to be caught or run into a Cop. Then loosening again, if only for a little while... This in addition to clues left behind by any Hits which can build and build as the Cop players try and work out Stinger’s movements and possible intended location as he performs more hits. Consequently, there is never really a moment after the first Hit when Stinger does not feel like he is being hunted. The Cops are always going to feel like they are responding and successfully tracking Stinger will involve deduction based on first the Hit locations and second, the ‘Location Intel’ cards, as well as a bit of luck. That is, when they are not being distracted by claims of police brutality or doughnuts! Then there is the theme. Go Ahead Punk! feels like the film it is inspired by and familiarity with it will have the players wanting to play in the style of the characters from the cop films and television series and roleplay a little as the game progresses.

Overall, Go Ahead Punk! is a solidly designed classic hidden movement game of one player versus many built around a highly appropriate theme. The combination of the two sets up a brooding sense of uncertainty, never quite knowing when the Stinger will strike again as the Cops desperately search for the deranged killer—and all under the sunny skies of San Francisco.

—oOo—

Go Ahead Punk! is currently being funded via Kickstarter and an Unboxing in the Nook video is available on YouTube.

1982: Gangbusters

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

Gangbusters: 1920’s Role-Playing Adventure was published by TSR, Inc. in 1982, the same year that the publisher also released Star Frontiers. It is set during the era of Prohibition, during the twenties and early thirties, when the manufacture and sale of alcohol was banned and criminals, gangs, and the Mafia stepped up to ensure that the American public still got a ready supply of whisky and gin it wanted, so making them incredibly wealthy on both bootlegging whisky and a lot of other criminal activities. Into this age of corruption, criminality, and swaggering gangsters step local law enforcement, FBI agents, and Prohibition agents determined to stop the criminals and gangsters making money, arrest them, and send them to jail, as meanwhile the criminals and gangsters attempt to outwit the law and their rivals, and private investigators look into crimes and mysteries for their clients that law enforcement are too busy to deal with and local reporters dig deep into stories to make a big splash on the front page. In Gangbusters, the players take on the roles of Criminals, FBI Agents, Newspaper Reporters, Police Officers, Private Investigators, and Prohibition Agents, often with different objectives that oppose each other. In a sense, Gangbusters takes the players back to the explanation commonly given at the start of roleplaying games, that a roleplaying game is like playing ‘cops & robbers’ when you were a child, and actually lets the players roleplay ‘cops & robbers’.

There had, of course, been crime-related roleplaying games set during the Jazz Age of the twenties and the Desperate Decade of the thirties before, most notably the Gangster! RPG from Fantasy Games Unlimited and even TSR, Inc. had published one in the pages of Dragon magazine. This was ‘Crimefighters’, which appeared in Dragon Issue 47 (March 1981). Similar roleplaying games such as Daredevils, also from Fantasy Games Unlimited and also published in 1982, and Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, published Blade, a division of Flying Buffalo, Inc., the following year, all touched upon the genre, but Gangbusters focused solely upon crime and law enforcement during the period. Lawrence Schick, rated Gangbusters as the ‘Top Mystery/Crime System’ roleplaying game in his 1991 Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games.

Although Gangbusters is a historical game, and draws heavily on both the history of the period and on the films which depict that history, it does veer into the ahistorical terms of setting. Rather than the city of Chicago, which would have been the obvious choice, it provides Lakefront City as a setting. Located on the shores of Lake Michigan, this is a sort of generic version of the city, perfectly playable, but not necessarily authentic. Whilst the ‘Rogue’s Gallery’ in Appendix Three of the Gangbusters rulebook does provide full stats for Al Capone—along with innumerable notorious gangsters and mobsters and upstanding members of the law, Lakefront City even has its own version of ‘Scarface’ in the form of Al Tolino! To the younger player of Gangbusters, this might not be an issue, but for the more historically minded player, it might be. Rick Krebs, co-designer of Gangbusters, addressed this issue in response to James Maliszewski’s review of the roleplaying game, saying, “With eGG and BB eager to have a background in their childhood city (if you thought Gary’s detail on ancient weapons was exacting, so was his interest in unions and the Chicago ward system), TSR's marketing research leaned toward the original fictional approach.” 

Gangbusters was first published as a boxed set—the later second edition, mislabelled as a “New 3rd Edition”, was published in 1990. (More recently, Mark Hunt has revisited Gangbusters beginning with Joe’s Diner and the Old School Renaissance-style Gangbusters 1920s Roleplaying Adventure Game B/X). Inside the box is the sixty-four-page rulebook, a sixteen-page scenario, a large, thirty-five by twenty-two-inch double-sided full-colour map, a sheet of counters, and two twenty-sided percentile dice, complete with white crayon to fill in the numbers. The scenario, ‘“Mad Dog” Johnny Drake’, includes a wraparound card cover with a ward map of Lakefront City in full colour on the front and a black and white ward map marked with major transport routes on the inside. The large map depicted Downtown Lakefront City in vibrantly coloured detail on the one side and gave a series of floorplans on the other.

Gangbusters followed the format of Star Frontiers in presenting the basic rules, standard rules, and then optional expert rules. However, Star Frontiers only got as far as providing the Basic Game Rules and the Expanded Game Rules. It would take the release of the Knight Hawks boxed supplement for it to achieve anything in the way of sophistication. In Gangbusters, that sophistication is there right from the start. The basic rules are designed to handle fistfights, gunfights, car chases and car crashes, typically with the players divided between two factions—criminal and law enforcement—and playing out robberies, raids, car chases, and re-enactments of historical incidents. This is done without the need for a Judge—as the Game Master is called in Gangbusters—and played out on the map of Downtown Lakefront City, essentially like a single character wargame. In the basic game, the Player Characters are lightly defined, but the standard rules add more detail, as does campaign play. In this, the events of a campaign are primarily player driven and plotted out from one week to the next. So, the criminal Player Character might plan and attempt to carry out the robbery of a jewellery store; a local police officer would patrol the streets and deal with any crime he comes across; the FBI agent might go under surveillance to identify a particular criminal; a local reporter decides to investigate the spate of local robberies, and so on. Where these plot lines interact is where Gangbusters comes alive, the Player Characters forming alliances or working together, or in the case of crime versus the law, against each other, the Judge adjudicating this as necessary. Certainly, this style of play would lend itself to would have been a ‘Play By Post’ method of handling the planning before the action of anything played out around the table and on the map.

Yet despite this sophistication in terms of play, the crime versus the law aspect puts player against player and that can be a problem in play. Then if a criminal Player Character is sent to jail, or even depending upon the nature of his crimes, executed—the Judge is advised to let the Player Character suffer the consequences if roleplayed unwisely—what happens then? There are rules for parole and even jury tampering, but what then? The obvious response would have been to focus campaigns on one side of the law or the other, rather than splitting them, but there is no doubting the storytelling and roleplaying potential in Gangbusters’ campaign mode. Gangbusters is problematic in three other aspects of the setting. First is ethnicity. The default in the roleplaying game is ‘Assimilated’, but several others are acknowledged as options. The second is the immorality of playing a criminal and conducting acts of criminality. The third is gender, which is not addressed in terms of what roles could be taken. Of course, Gangbusters was published in 1982 and TSR, Inc. would doubtless have wanted to avoid any controversy associated with these aspects of the roleplaying game, especially at a time when the moral panic against Dungeons & Dragons was in full swing, and given the fact that it was written for players aged twelve and up, so it is understandable that these subjects are avoided. (The irony here is that Gangbusters was seen as an acceptable roleplaying game by some because you could play law enforcement characters and it was thus morally upright, whereas despite the fact that the Player Characters were typically fighting the demons and devils in it, the fact that it had demons and devils in it, made Dungeons & Dragons an immoral, unwholesome, and unchristian game.)

In the Basic Rules for Gangbusters, a Player Character has four attributes—Muscle, Agility, Observation, and Presence, plus Luck, Hit Points, Driving, and Punching. Muscle, Agility, Observation, Luck, and Driving are all percentile values, Presence ranges between one and ten, and Punching between one and five. Punching is the amount of damage inflicted when a character punches another. To create a character, a player rolls percentile dice for Muscle, Agility, and Observation, and adjusts the result to give a result of between twenty-six and one hundred; rolls a ten-sided for Presence and adjusts it to give a result between three and ten; and rolls percentile dice and halves the result for the character’s Luck. The other factors are derived from these scores.

Jack Gallagher
Muscle 55 Agility 71 Observation 64 Presence 5 Luck 36
Hit Points 18 
Driving 68 Punching 3

At this point, Jack Gallagher as a basic character is ready to play the roleplaying game’s basic rules, which cover the base mechanic—a percentile roll versus an attribute, plus modifiers, and roll under, then fistfights, including whether the combatants want to fight dirty or fight fair, gunfights, and car chases. Luck is rolled either to avoid immediate death and typically leaves the Player Character mortally wounded, or to succeed at an action not covered by the attributes. Damage consists of wounds or bruises, gunshots and weapons inflicting the former, fists the latter. If a Player Character suffers more wounds and bruises than half his Hit Points, his Muscle, Agility, Observation, and movement are penalised, and he needs to get to a doctor. The basic rules include templates for things like line of sight, rules for automatic gunfire from Thompson Submachine Guns and Browning Automatic Rifles, and so on. The rules are supported by some excellent and lengthy examples of play and prepare the player to roleplay through the scenario, ‘“Mad Dog” Johnny Drake’.

So far so basic, but Gangbusters gets into its stride with its campaign rules. These begin with adding small details to the Player Character—age, height and weight, ethnic background, rules for age and taxes (!), and character advancement. Gangbusters is not a Class and Level roleplaying game, but it is a Level roleplaying game. As a Player Character earns Experience Points, he acquires Levels, and each Level grants his player a pool of ‘X.P. to Spend’, which can be used to improve attributes, buy skills, and improve already known skills. So, for example, at Second Level, a player has 10,000 X.P., 20,000 X.P. to spend at Third Level, and so on, to spend on improvements to his character. It costs between 2,000 and 5,000 X.P. to improve attributes and 20,000 X.P. to improve Presence! New skills range in cost between 5,000 X.P. and 100,000 X.P.

Thirty-five skills are listed and detailed, ranging from Auto Theft, Fingerprinting, and Lockpicking to Jeweller, Art Forgery, and Counterfeiting. Some are exclusive to particular careers. Each skill is a percentile value whose initial value is determined in the same way as Muscle, Agility, and Observation. When a Player Character is created for the campaign, in addition to a few extra details, he also receives one skill free as long as it costs 5,000 X.P. This list includes Auto Theft, Fingerprinting, Lockpicking, Photography, Pickpocketing, Public Speaking, Shadowing, Stealth, Wiretapping.

In addition to acquiring ‘X.P. to Spend’ at each new Level, a Player Character might also acquire a new Rank. So, a Rookie Local Police Officer is likely to be promoted to a Patrolman and then a Patrolman to a Master Patrolman, but equally, could remain a Patrolman for several Levels without being promoted.

Jack Gallagher
Ethnicity: Irish American Age: 25 
Height: 5’ 9” Weight: 155 lbs.
Features: Brown hair and eyes, crooked nose
Muscle 55 Agility 71 Observation 64 Presence 5 Luck 36
Hit Points 18
Driving 68 Punching 3
Skill: Auto Theft 89%

Rather than Classes, Gangbusters has Careers. These fall into four categories—Law Enforcement, Private Investigation, Newspaper Reporting, and Crime. Law Enforcement includes the Federal Bureau of Prohibition, Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.), and local city police department; Private Investigation covers Private Investigators; Newspaper Reporting the News Reporter; and Crime either Independent  Criminals, Gang members, and members of  Organized Crime Syndicates. In each case, Gangbusters goes into quite a lot of detail explaining what a member of each Career is allowed to do and can do. For example, the Prohibition Agent can make arrests for violations of the National Prohibition Act; can obtain warrants and conduct searches for evidence of violations of the National Prohibition Act; can destroy or confiscate any property (other than buildings or real estate) used to violate the National Prohibition Act; close down for one year any building used as a speakeasy; and can carry any type of gun. There are notes too on the organisation of the Federal Bureau of Prohibition, salaries, possibility of being corrupt, possible encounters, and notes on how to roleplay a Prohibition Agent. It does this for each of the careers, for example, how a Private Investigator picks up special cases, which are rare, and how a News Reporter gets major stories and scoops. The Crime careers covers a wide array of activities, including armed robbery, burglary, murder, bootlegging, running speakeasies, the Numbers racket, loansharking, bookmaking, corruption and more, all in fantastically playable detail. This whole section is richly researched and supports both a campaign where the Player Characters are investigating crime and one where they are committing it. Further, this wealth of detail is not just important because of the story and plot potential it suggests, but mechanically, the Player Characters will be rewarded for it. They earn Experience Points by engaging in and completing activities directly related to their Careers. Thus, a member of Law Enforcement will earn Experience Points for arresting a felon, when the felon arrested is convicted, for the recovery of stolen property, and more; the News Reporter for scooping the competition, providing information that leads to the arrest and conviction of any criminal, and so on; whilst the Criminal earns it for making money! This engagingly enforces a Player Character role with a direct reward and is nicely thematic.

Further rules cover the creation of, and interaction with, NPCs. This includes persuasion, loyalty, bribery, and the like. In fact, persuasion is not what you think, but rather the use of physical violence in an attempt to change an NPC’s reaction. There are rules too for public opinion and heat, newspaper campaigns, bank loans, and even explosives, and of course, what happens when a crook or gangster is arrested. This goes all the way up to plea bargaining and trials, jury tampering, sentences, and more. The advice for the Judge is kept short, just a few pages, but does give suggestions on how to prepare and start a campaign, and then how to make the game more fun, maintain flow of play and game balance, improvise, and encourage roleplaying. It is only two pages, but given that the rulebook for Gangbusters is just sixty-four pages, that is not too bad. In addition, there also ‘Optional Expert Rules’ for gunfights, fistfights, and car chases, which add both detail and complications. They do make combat much harder, but also much, much deadlier. Finally, the appendices provide price lists and stats for both generic NPCs and members of both the criminal classes and members of law enforcement. The former includes Bonnie Barker and Clyde Barrow, John Dillinger, and Charles Luciano, whilst for the latter, all of the Untouchables, starting with Elliot Ness, are all listed, including stats. Oddly, the appendix does not include a bibliography, which would have been useful for a historical game like Gangbusters.

The scenario, ‘“Mad Dog” Johnny Drake’, is a short, solo-style adventure that is designed to be played by four players, but without a Judge. It includes an FBI Agent and three local detectives, all pre-generated Player Characters, who are attempting to find the notorious bank robber, ‘Mad Dog’ Johnny Drake. It is intended to be played out on the poster map and sees the Player Characters staking out and investigating a local speakeasy before they get their man. The scenario is quite nicely detailed and atmospheric, but the format means that there is not much of the way of player agency. Either the players agree to a particular course of action and follow it through, or the scenario does not work. Nevertheless, it showcases the rules and there are opportunities for car chases and both shootouts and brawls along the way. If perhaps there is a downside to the inclusion of ‘“Mad Dog” Johnny Drake’, it is that there is no starting point provided in Gangbusters for the type of campaign it was meant to do.

Physically, Gangbusters: 1920’s Role-Playing Adventure feels a bit rushed and cramped in places, but then it has a lot of information it has to pack into a relatively scant few pages. The illustrations are decent and it is clear that Jim Holloway is having a lot of fun drawing in a different genre. The core rules do lack a table of contents, but does have an index, and on the back of the book is a reference table for the rules. Pleasingly, there are a lot of examples of play throughout the book which help showcase how the game is played, although not quite how multiple players and characters are supposed to be handled by the Judge. Notably, it includes a foreword from Robert Howell, the grandson of Louise Howell, one of the Untouchables. This adds a touch of authenticity to the whole affair. The maps are decently done on heavy stock paper, whilst the counters are rather bland.

–oOo–

Gangbusters: 1920’s Role-Playing Adventure was reviewed by Ken Rolston in the ‘Reviews’ department of Different Worlds Issue 29 (June 1983). He identified that, “…[T]he model of the “party of adventurers” that has been established in science fiction, fantasy, and superhero gaming is inappropriate for much of the action of Gangbusters; private detectives have always been solitary figures (who would think of the Thin Man or Sam Spade in a party of FRP characters?) and if players variously choose FBI agent, newspaper reporter, and criminal roles, it is hard to see these divergent character types will be able to cooperate in a game session. At the very least, the Gangbusters campaign will have a very different style of play from a typical FRP campaign.” before concluding, “Gangbusters is nonetheless a worthwhile purchase, if only as a model of good game design.”

–oOo–

Although mechanically simple, Gangbusters shows a surprising degree of sophistication in terms of its treatment of its subject matter and its campaign set-up, with multiple Player Character types, often not playing together directly, but simply in the same district, and often at odds with each other. However, it is not a campaign set-up that the roleplaying game fully supports or follows through on in terms of advice or help. It represents a radical change from the traditional campaign style and calls for a brave Judge to attempt to run it. This would certainly have been the case in 1982 when Gangbusters was published. The likelihood though, is that a gaming group is going to concentrate on campaigns or scenarios where there is one type of character, typically law enforcement or criminal, and these would be easier to run, but alternatively the Judge could run a more montage style of campaign where different aspects of the setting and different stories are told through different Player Characters. That though, would be an ambitious prospect for any Judge and her players.

Gangbusters: 1920’s Role-Playing Adventure is a fantastic treatment of its genre and its history, packing a wealth of information and detail into what is a relatively short rulebook and making it both accessible and readable. For a roleplaying game from 1982 and TSR, Inc. Gangbusters combines simplicity with a surprising sophistication and maturity of design.

I Got The Altered Morphology Blues II

A decade ago, on January 12th, a plague struck the world. A flu-like plague which seemed resistant to the then available treatments. Fortunately nobody died, but eleven days later, on January 23rd, all of the symptoms vanished and everyone recovered. Only later did people realise the significance of what became known as ‘Ghost Flu’ as months later, sufferers began exhibiting powers and abilities only found in mankind’s wildest imaginings and biggest cinema screen franchise. The ability to fly, phase through walls, read the minds of others, control gravity, flatten or enhance the emotions of others, and read or even enter dreams. Literally, people had superpowers. This manifestation becomes known as the ‘Sudden Mutation Event’ or ‘SME’, and in the next ten years approximately one percent of the population will manifest SME. In response, there was no rash of costumed heroes or villains, though a few tried. The most photogenic of SME suffers became celebrities, sportsmen, television and film stars, or politicians, others found jobs related to their newly gained powers, for example, a firefighter who control flames or oxygen, a transmuter who could literally turn lead into (industrial) gold, or a healer who work as a medic or doctor, and the most popular sports found ways of incorporating them into their play. Some though turned to crime, and of course, there were criminals who exhibited SME, and whilst the Heightened as they became known were mostly assimilated into society, they could still be victims of crime and they were also victims of a prejudice all their very own. For example, the Neutral Parity League campaigns against ‘Chromes’ (from ‘Chromosome’) as the Heightened are nicknamed, often violently, whilst organisations like the Heightened Information Alliance campaigns for the protection of their rights. In general, the Heightened have become one of society’s accepted minorities and most just get on with their lives.

When one of the Heightened is involved in crime—whether as victim or perpetrator—the police will investigate and handle the matter just as they would any other crime. However, most big city police forces have established a unit to specifically deal with such cases. This is the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU), staffed by Heightened members of the police force and tasked with investigating and solving SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between the mutants and ordinary folk. The law has also adapted to take account of the prevalence of Heightened abilities. Thus investigative powers such as Observe Dreams and Read Minds require consent or a legal warrant, the use of X-Ray Vision ability must follow strict health and safety guidelines as its emits radiation and can cause cancer, the wrongful use of Impersonate is fraud, and several powers, including Radiation Projection, Invisibility, and Read Minds are deemed inherently dangerous. Such powers fall under Article 18 which regulates their use and may even see their users being monitored. The study of superpowers and SME expressives is known as Anamorphology, while members of the HCIU are trained in Forensic Anamorphology.

This is the set-up for Mutant City Blues, a super powered investigative roleplaying game, originally designed by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press in 2009. It uses the author and publisher’s GUMSHOE System, designed to play investigative games which emphasise the interpretation of clues rather than their discovery, and which has been used with another genre in a number of roleplaying games from the publisher, including horror in The Esoterrorists, cosmic horror in Trail of Cthulhu, space opera in Ashen Stars, and time travel in Timewatch. In Mutant City Blues the other genre is the classic police procedural of Law & Order, Hill Street Blues, and NYPD Blue. The combination though is specific. The Player Characters are police officers with powers, not superheroes who are cops. So not DC Comics’ Gotham Central or the Special Crimes Unit from Superman’s hometown, Metropolis, or indeed, Wildstorm’s Top 10. This is very much not a ‘Four Colour’ superheroes setting. The action and the investigation of Mutant City Blues also takes place in a real city, whether New York or Toronto, or a city the Game Moderator is familiar with. Although Mutant City Blues has the feel of a setting that is North America, it would be easy to set a campaign elsewhere, and there are notes on adapting it to the United Kingdom.

To help the Game Moderator adapt Mutant City Blues to the city of her choice, the roleplaying game comes with a number of elements which mapped onto that city. This includes a future timeline which runs from the outbreak of Ghost Flu to the present day, a guide to the future city’s politics and leading figures, as well as its new institutes and businesses. First and foremost amongst them is The Quade Institute, the world’s foremost Anamorphological research centre, run by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade. The Quade Institute is also where members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit are trained in Forensic Anamorphology. A complete Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is described, ready for the Player Characters to be slotted into. Lastly, there is a ready-to-play scenario, ‘Food Chain’, which introduces the history of the Mutant City Blues setting as well as providing a case for the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit to investigate.

In actuality that is the set-up for Mutant City Blues as published in 2009. In 2020, Pelgrane Press published a second edition, this time by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Robin D. Laws. Mutant City Blues still retains the same set-up and flexibility in terms of where it can be set, but it also introduces a number of changes, not least of which is a new scenario, ‘Blue on Blue’. The majority of these changes have been implemented to make the game faster and easier to both set up and play.

As with other GUMSHOE System games, Player Characters in Mutant City Blues are defined by various abilities, either Investigative or General. Investigative Abilities are further divided into Academic, Interpersonal, and Technical. As a superhero roleplaying game, Player Characters in Mutant City Blues also have superpowers or Mutant Powers, which are again split between Investigative and General Powers. What defines the split between Investigative and General Abilities and Powers is how they are used. In the first edition of Mutant City Blues both Investigative and General abilities are represented by ratings or pool of points. For Investigative abilities, if the Player Character has the ability, he can always use it to gain core clues during an investigation, and his player could always spend more points from the Investigative ability pool to gain more information. For General abilities, such as Health, Infiltration, and Preparedness, a player expends points from the relevant pool and uses them as a modifier to a die roll to beat a particular difficulty. This is on a six-sided die and a typical difficulty is four, but can go as high as four. In the second edition of Mutant City Blues, a Player Character still has pools of points for his General abilities, including mutant powers, but not for Investigative abilities and powers. Instead of ratings, a Player Character either has the Investigative ability or power, or he does not. During an investigation, a Player Character will always pick up a clue related to an Investigative ability. If a Player Character wants more information, he can Push.

The Push is the major rule change in the second edition of Mutant City Blues. Replacing ratings for Investigative abilities, a Push is primarily used to gain more information or overcome obstacles preventing progress in an investigation. For example, it might be used to speed up the investigative process, such as getting the results back from the laboratory quicker than usual for Forensic Anthropology or Ballistics, to add an expert in the field as a friend using Art History or Occult Studies, or even use Cop Talk to impress the media or a Player Character’s superiors. A Push can also be used to sidestep or lower the difficulty of a General ability test. However a Push is used, a player only has two to expend per session, and they cannot be saved between sessions.

To create a member of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, a player receives three pools of points to spend on his character. These are standard for both General abilities and Mutant Powers, but will vary for Investigative abilities, the value depending upon the number of players. To ease the creation process, the second edition of Mutant City Blues includes templates that model particular police departments, such as the Forensic Science Division, Gang and Narcotic, Robbery, and Special Weapons & Training. Each template has a cost in points, with any excess being used to purchase other Investigative abilities and purchase and increase General abilities.

Whilst choosing Investigative and General abilities is relatively straightforward, selecting Investigative and General Powers is more involved. In standard superhero roleplaying games, a player is free to choose what powers he likes, in any combination, often to model particular superheroes from the comic books and films. Now that option is possible in Mutant City Blues, but that diverges from Mutant City Blues as written. Mutant powers in Mutant City Blues are clustered together genetically, so that if a Heightened has the Transmutation power, he is also likely to have the Disintegration, Phase, Touch, Reduce Temperature, and Ice Blast powers. He may also have the Wind Control, Healing, Radiation Projection, and Self-Detonation powers, but not Pain Immunity or Gravity Control. All this is mapped out on the Quade Diagram—as devised by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade of The Quade Institute—and in addition to using it to select powers during the character creation, the Quade Diagram serves as a forensic tool in the game. HCIU officers can use it to determine the powers used at a crime scene, as many of them leave some form of residue. It can determine the involvement of one Mutant if the residue is clustered, more if there are several clusters. The point here is that mutant powers are known quantities and do not vary, and in addition, where in the comics, a superhero will often tweak or adjust his powers from one issue to the next, this is very difficult to do in Mutant City Blues.

Our sample member of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is newly appointed Grace Bruckner who transferred across from Robbery where she specialised in art theft. She has become adept at identifying forgeries from merely touch alone. Her tendency towards Disassociation means she has few friends on the force, her colleagues seeing her as cold and unfriendly. This is despite the fact they know her genetics.

Detective Grace Bruckner, 1st Grade
General Abilities: Athletics 4, Composure 10, Driving 2, Filch 2, Health 10, Infiltration 4, Mechanics 2, Preparedness 5, Scuffling 5, Sense Trouble 5, Shooting 4, Surveillance 6
Investigative Abilities: Architecture, Art History, Bureaucracy, Bullshit Detector, Charm, Document Analysis, Evidence Collection, Fingerprinting, Forensic Accounting, Forensic Anthropology, Languages, Law, Negotiation, Photography, Research, Streetwise
Investigative Powers: Touch
General Powers: Disintegration 1, Healing 3, Phase 5, Transmutation 3
Defects: Disassociation

Certain powers and clusters, however, also have ‘Genetic Risk Factors’ associated with them. For example, Heightened with the Night Vision and Thermal Vision powers have tendency for Watcher Syndrome, whilst those with Telekinesis and Force Field, suffer from Sensory Overload. As she has both Phase and Disintegration, Detective Grace Bruckner can suffer from Disassociation, which means that she has a tendency to emotionally withdraw from people, and if the condition worsens, to see the world and her actions as unreal. Genetic Risk Factors need not come into play though, but it all depends upon the mode in which the gaming group has decided to play Mutant City Blues. The roleplaying game has two modes. In Safety Mode, Genetic Risk Factors are seen as potential risks to the Player Characters and may occasionally be topics of conversation, but in the main do not enter play except when they might affect Heightened criminals. In Gritty Mode, Genetic Risk Factors can express themselves in the members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, and in play, are one source of Subplots.

Subplots are plots extra to the main investigation, the ‘B’ plot to the ‘A’ plot, and are typically personal or tied to another case. The players are encouraged to suggest them and the Game Moderator can add them, but in Gritty Mode they can also take the form of a personal Crisis which will affect a particular Player Character, and they can be triggered by the expression of a Genetic Risk Factor or an event which occurs in the line of duty. The latter can affect all police officers, not just members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, but those triggered by a Genetic Risk Factor is specific to the Heightened. Mechanically, a Crisis requires a test and if failed, earns the Player Character a Stress Card. Similarly, if a Player Character exhausts the points from a power, but manages to refresh it by testing his Genetic Risk Factor (done against its resistance ability, which is different for each Genetic Risk Factor), he also gains a Stress Card due to the strain. Mutant City Blues lists over fifty, each with a tag like Addiction or Home Life, and Deactivation or Discard conditions, these being ways a Player Character effectively forestall the effects of a Stress Card or get rid of it completely. Should a Player Character acquire three or Stress Cards, then he is forced to quit or is fired from the force due to stress and his consequent actions.

Crises and Stress Cards are obviously storytelling and roleplaying tools, but they are also ways of enforcing the conventions of Mutant City Blues’ genre. In effect, Crises and Stress Cards are a way of handling a Player Character’s story arc over the course of a campaign. Just as in the television shows which inspire it, characters in Mutant City Blues leave, resign, take a new assignment, or are killed. Similarly, the use of the two modes—Safe and Gritty—model the two types of police procedural. Safe Mode represents a police procedural which focuses on the powers and the cases, and less on the personal and home lives of the Player Characters, whereas the grimmer Gritty Mode brings into play the personal and home lives of the Player Characters as well as the dangers of using their mutant powers. Of the two, the Gritty Mode more strongly enforces its genre than the Safe Mode. And this is in addition to the grind of dealing with the bureaucracy of the job, the Player Characters’ superiors, the media, and the criminals.

The two genres for Mutant City Blues—police procedural and superheroes—will be familiar to most, but not necessarily together. The roleplaying game’s authors provide plenty of advice to that end. The rules and advice cover collecting clues and using Pushes and their benefits, action at non-lethal, lethal, and superpowered levels, including combat, shootouts, chases, and more. There is a lengthy discussion of how the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit operates, including an orientation manual (with annotations from a member giving an explanation and opinion on how things are actually done), handling interrogations and court scenes, how the presence of the Heightened has changed the law, and running cases of the week and big plots. Plus there is a guide to the future world of Mutant City Blues, its politics, cultures, sports, and notable figures that the Game Moderator can map onto the city of her choice. Plus that mapping need not be onto a city in the near future, but could be the here and now, and there is advice for doing that too. The players are not left out here with advice on selecting their characters’ watch commander, using subplots, and suggesting some interview techniques, since after all, few of the players are going to be trained police officers. Lastly, there is an adventure, ‘Blue on Blue’ which does a good job of introducing the setting of Mutant City Blues and its various elements as they are affected by the Heightened, and takes the story of SME all the way back to the beginning. That said, it very much has the feel of a North American city and the Game Moderator will need to make some adjustments to set it elsewhere.

Throughout the pages of Mutant City Blues, there is another option discussed. That is instead of the Player Characters as members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, they are Private Investigators. This gives the players and their characters greater flexibility in terms of how they approach investigations, as well as less responsibility and also less authority. However, they are still private citizens and they will need to be equally as careful, if not more so, in their use of their powers than members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit. Rather than the set-up and organisation provided by the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, the players and their characters will need to work out the details of their agency ahead of time. The scenario, ‘Blue on Blue’ does have notes to enable it to be run using private investigators, but it is really written to be played using Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit officers.

Physically, for a book published in 2020,Mutant City Blues is surprisingly done in black and white. In some ways, that is thematic, and to be fair, it does not detract from the book in any way. In general, the artwork is excellent, the book is well written, and the layout clean and tidy, and best of all, easy to read.

If there are any issues with Mutant City Blues, it is in tone and setting. Some players may well find its strongly implied setting to be too North American, but the police procedural is very much a North American television staple, which for others it is that its superpowers are too low powered, to be not quite Four Colour enough. Yet even the roleplaying game’s Safe Mode is not Four Colour, although it is much closer than Gritty Mode, and after all, it is written to be a police procedural with superpowers, rather than it is a superpowered police procedural.

The GUMSHOE System was always designed to ease the process of playing investigative roleplaying games, but its iteration here in the second edition of Mutant City Blues has gone even further, switching from the previous edition’s pools of points to a simple binary yes/no for its Investigative abilities. Combined with the equally as simple Push mechanics and Mutant City Bluesmakes investigations even easier, shifting any prior complexity to the game’s action when General abilities—mundane and mutant come into play. And really, they are not that complex.

Inspired by two genres—police procedural and superheroes—Mutant City Blues still remains underpowered for handling either separately, but merged together, the result is an appealing combination of familiar genres that are consequently easy to roleplay. And that is made even easier by the streamlining of the GUMSHOE System and the cleaner presentation in this new edition. Mutant City Blues does what it says on the badge, present police procedural and investigative roleplaying in a near future that is almost like our own world, and make it accessible and engaging. The combination is very specific, but there can be no doubt that Mutant City Blues does it very well.

Judge Dredd III

Almost a quarter of century after Games Workshop published Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, Mongoose Publishing would revisit the licence based upon the famous 2000AD titular character—the third time for the licence and the second time for the publisher. Mongoose Publishing had already released The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game in 2002 for the then system de jour—the d20 System, but by 2009, the d20 System had run its course. In response, the publisher turned to another of its licences, its first edition of its version of the venerable Science Fiction roleplaying game, Traveller, to power its other licences, the results being the Universe of Babylon 5, Strontium Dog, and of course, Judge Dredd.

Like The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game before it, Judge Dredd was published as a full colour hardback which contained the means to play in its milieu. Actually, it was published as a more colour hardback, for it does not make use of the black and white artwork which long graced the pages of 2000AD. Its setting remains a future America (and beyond) after a nuclear war which irradiated much of the Earth and forced most of the world’s population to live in a number of megalopolises—or supercities. Each is home to millions and millions living in great city-blocks, most of whom are unemployed and turn to hobbies, brand new trends or crazes, or even crime to keep themselves sane. The teeming masses are difficult to police and it takes a special dedicated individual, one who has trained for nearly all of his or her childhood to patrol and enforce the law in these great cities. These are the Judges, trained to be the best, armed with the best equipment, and ready to patrol the streets as combined policeman, judge, jury, and executioner. They enforce the law and do so fairly—and none no more fairly than Judge Dredd himself, a figure who is both authoritarian and an anti-hero, the most well-known and feared Judge in Mega-City One on the eastern seaboard of what was once the United States of America. On a daily basis, Judge Dredd has to deal with litterers and jaywalkers, slowsters and sponts, robbers and murderers, smokers and boingers, illegal comic book dealers and gangster apes, and even Judge Death from a parallel earth. Over the years, the Judge Dredd comic has presented a carnival of crazy crimes and criminals, certainly more than enough to provide a rich, bonkers background, just as it did for Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game when it was published in 1985 and then again for The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game when it was published in 2002. However, Judge Dredd pushes the timeline on seven years to the year 2131 with the appointment Chief Judge Dan Francisco, a former Street Judge made famous by his starring in a twenty-four-hour reality television show following his exploits, who would reinstitute the anti-mutant acts.

Besides being from the same publisher, what both The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game and Judge Dredd have in common is that they require core rules books to play. Being a d20 System supplement, Judge Dredd required the Player’s Handbook for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, whilst Judge Dredd requires the Traveller rulebook to run and play. However, there are a number of major differences between The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game and Judge Dredd. Notably, the former allows players to take the roles of citizens and perps (perpetrators) instead of Judges, enabling a very different, crime or resistance-driven campaign in Mega-City One, whereas the latter does not. At the beginning of the game, The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game only allows players to create Street Judges and Psi-Judges, whereas in Judge Dredd, a player can create a Street Judge, a Psi-Judge, a Tek-Judge, or a Med-Judge. Where The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game uses the spells of Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition to model the psionic abilities of the Psi-Judge and threats capable of using psionics, Judge Dredd uses the Psionics rules and abilities of Traveller. Where The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game uses the skills and Feats of Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition to model both Player Character Judges and NPCs, Judge Dredd uses the skills of Traveller—though with a few new additions, and adds Feat-like abilities called Techniques. And where The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game simply has a player roll his character’s attributes, assign skill points, and choose a Feat or two, Judge Dredd has a player roll his character’s attributes, and then take along a lifepath that tracks his time at the Academy of Law. The result is a Rookie Judge with a bit of a history and a background, rather than someone faceless and anodyne, which would result from the character creation rules in both Judge Dredd and The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game.

A Judge is defined by six attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Influence (see below). Of these, Influence, the measure of a Judge’s commanding presence when dealing with the innumerable criminals and perps of Mega-City One, is something that only Judges have. Normal NPCs do not have it and instead have Social Standing as they would in Traveller. A Judge does not have the Social Standing attribute. All are initially rated between two and twelve, but can go higher. To create a Judge, a player randomly generates his Judge’s attributes—except for Education and rolls on a series of tables for each of the four terms his Judge serves at the Academy of Law. Normally four years long, one of the terms is only three years long and the Judge also has to undertake the Hot Dog Run, mandatory trip into the Cursed Earth to test the cadet’s skills, tenacity and to educate him in the hellish wilderness beyond limits of the city walls, as well as Full Eagle Day, when the Rookie Judge spends a day on the streets with a seasoned Judge to see if he is suitable for graduation. A cadet enters the Academy of Law at age five and graduates at the age of twenty.

Tek-Judge Gagarin
Judge Gagarin’s technical aptitude was spotted during his second term and he was transferred into the Tek Branch during his third term, studying the Robot War in particular. He also passed the flight simulator course. However, despite passing his Hot Dog Run, Tek-Judge Gagarin returned with a case of Recurring Radiation Sickness.

Str 04 (-1) Dex 11 (+2) End 10 (+1)
Int 13 (+3) Edu 10 (+1) Inf 09 (+1)

Skills
Athletics (Co-ordination) 1, Athletics (Endurance) 1, Combat Engineering 1, Computers 2, Drive (Lawmaster) 1, Engineer (Electronics) 2, Flyer (Grav) 0, Gun Combat (Lawgiver) 1, Jack of All Trades 1, Law 2, Mega-City One 1, Geography 1, Mechanic 1, Melee (Unarmed Combat) 1, Space Sciences (Robotics) 2, Street Perception 1, Survival 1, Tactics 1

Special Techniques
Data Access, Jerry-Rig

Rules are also provided for creating more experienced Judges, but not civilians, and the Referee is advised to use the standard Traveller rules to create them—though of course, this would be without the benefit of any of the weirdness and wackiness to be found in Mega-City One. Nevertheless, the rules are creating a Judge are undeniably engaging and a whole lot more fun than in previous roleplaying games based on Judge Dredd, plus they help a player build a rapport with his Judge. The rules add a few new skills such as Combat Engineering and its Specialities of Fortifications, Camouflage, and IEDs and Mines, Gun Combat (Lawgiver)—which a Judge trains in exclusively, Law, Street Perception, and more. All of the new skill descriptions include examples of their use. Special Techniques—essentially the equivalent of Feats from the d20 System—are talents and abilities that give a Judge the edge over a perp. So Dead Halt enables a Judge to bring his Lawmaster or other vehicle to a sharp stop safely and under control, Formidable Presence grants a Judge the full weight of the law in his stance and attitude such that ordinary citizens are rooted to the spot in fear, and Rapid Aim enables a Judge to get a bead on a perp with incredible precision.

Mechanically, Judge Dredd uses the Traveller system. In general, this is a straightforward set of rules designed to handle Science Fiction settings. Which means it can handle technical aspects, like computers and vehicles as well as the action and the interpersonal. The first mechanic that Judge Dredd adds is that for making an arrest. To do this the Judge’s player makes an influence roll, aiming to  get eight or more, modified by the Judge’s Influence modifier and the arrestee’s Desperation value. This ranges from minus six to plus six, any perp with a level of minus four or below prepared to do anything to escape, whilst at plus four and above, the perp is desperate to get arrested. The rule for handling arrests is accompanied by a guide to sentencing and the types of back-up and support a Judge can expect.

In terms of background information, Judge Dredd provides quite a lot. This covers not just the history of Mega-City One and a timeline, but also its transit systems, various types of habitat from city blocks and cardboard cities to Luxy-Blocks and the Jungle—home to genetically modified primates, and notable landmarks like the Big Smelly (concreted over Hudson River), the transported White Cliffs of Dover (complete with ‘genuine’ Brit-Citters including dancing chimney sweeps, singing academics, and Pearly Kings and Queens), and Moonray Tower from which lasers beam advertisements onto the lunar surface. Sport, leisure, and fun is also covered, as crazes, organisations, and more. Judge Dredd also provides a brief introduction to places beyond the walls of Mega-City one. Extensive equipment lists detail everything that a Judge would routinely carry on him or might have access to, whilst the rest will equip potential perps. This also includes numerous vehicles, but not spaceships, the Referee being advised to check out Traveller and High Guard for more information.

Psi Division and Psi-Judges get a chapter all of their very own. As with the rest of Judge Dredd, it expands upon rules given in the core Traveller rulebook. It adds Advanced Talents particular to the setting of Judge Dredd, for example Aura Perception and Energy Kinesis, but these are the least powerful. Dimensional Manipulation and Temporal Manipulation are powerful abilities in themselves, but they are also powerful in terms of narrative, able to affect the flow and status of a story during play far more than most other powers. However, such powers are rare and are not available during Judge generation. They are accompanied by some guidance on handling the effects and consequences of temporal travel. As powerful as psionics can be, their use is not without its consequences and psionic trauma can be suffered for overusing powers and psionic strength, and being exposed to mental or emotional stress. Suffer too much psionic trauma and a Judge may fall victim to mental instability or even insanity. The rules cover the potential effects of all of these as well the means to recover from them, plus a range of psionic equipment.

The Judge Dredd comic strip is of course known for the wonderfully weird and wacky nature of its perps, from the Angel Gang to Judge Death—and back again. Judge Dredd has rules for rolling up perps, as well as aliens and mutants, but the ‘Most Wanted’ list of classic criminals faced by Judge Dredd himself over the years is here kept to just a handful or two. And so few of them are actually illustrated. This is perhaps one of the more disappointing aspects of Judge Dredd as a roleplaying game.

For the Referee there is some decent advice on running campaigns and the types of crimes and story-arcs which work together, and in addition to the general background and the timeline, Judge Dredd includes a description of Sector 13, an individual sector of Mega-City One and its features. It pays particular attention to Sector 13’s seven major city blocks, two of which follow a heavy theme of twentieth century rock music—Jon Bon Jovi Block and Bruce Springsteen Block, both of whose citizens hate each other and typically war against the other using very loud music. The contemporary references of Judge Dredd are, of course, very contemporary to 2009, but many still work today. This takes the place of a traditional scenario in any other roleplaying game, but there are lots of details and roleplaying hooks which the Referee can develop into running a campaign of her own in Sector 13.

Physically, Judge Dredd is well presented and as expected uses a full colour artwork drawn from the comic strip. It is not always the most evocative artwork and it often feels a bit dark. The other issue with the presentation is that although there is a map of the world inside the front cover, there are no other maps in the book. So no map of Mega-City One and no map of Sector 13. To some extent, the map for Sector 13 is not quite as important as that of Mega-City One, primarily because the geography of Sector 13 is not as tightly defined, and the Referee can easily create it if necessary.

If there is a disappointment to Judge Dredd, it is in its treatment of the criminals and perps that are fundamentally intrinsic to the setting, their lack of entries just feeling mean-spirited. Similarly, the lack of illustrations for the criminals and perps who are included feels the same way and is actually unhelpful for the Referee. Yet as a consequence of using the Traveller core rules, Judge Dredd feels far more competent in handling the technical aspects of the setting—vehicles and vehicle combat, psionics, and more, than the previous iterations of roleplaying games based on Judge Dredd. Similarly, whilst character generation feels technical in nature, the process is actually fun, and it produces Judges who are both competent and possess a degree of backstory that a player can bring to the roleplaying of his Judge. Judge Dredd may not have quite the charm of Games Workshop’s Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, but it definitely has more character than Mongoose Publishing’s earlier The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game, and the technical efficiency of its design makes it playable and engaging. 

Judge Dredd II

Almost twenty years after Games Workshop gave us Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, another British publisher gave us its take upon the infamous lawman of the future from the pages of the long-running Science Fiction comic, 2000AD. The year was 2002, publisher was Mongoose Publishing, and the rules employed the then system de jour—the d20 System. The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game (notice the subtle shift of the determiner to differentiate between the two games) was the first of several roleplaying games that the publisher would bring out based on the 2000AD licence, the other most notable one being Sláine, The Roleplaying Game of Celtic Fantasy. Like that roleplaying game, The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game was published as a full colour hardback which contained the means to play in its milieu. This is the year 2124 and just like the earlier Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, this roleplaying game is set after a nuclear war which irradiated much of the Earth and forced most of the world’s population to live in a number of megalopolises—or supercities. Each is home to millions and millions living in great city-blocks, most of whom are unemployed and turn to hobbies, brand new trends or crazes, or even crime to keep themselves sane. The teeming masses are difficult to police and it takes a special dedicated individual, one who has trained for nearly all of his or her childhood to patrol and enforce the law in these great cities. These are the Judges, trained to be the best, armed with the best equipment, and ready to patrol the streets as combined policeman, judge, jury, and executioner. They enforce the law and do so fairly—and none no more fairly than Judge Dredd himself, a figure who is both authoritarian and an anti-hero, the most well known and feared Judge in Mega-City One on the eastern seaboard of what was once the United States of America. On a daily basis, Judge Dredd has to deal with litterers and jaywalkers, slowsters and sponts, robbers and murderers, smokers and boingers, illegal comic book dealers and gangster apes, and even Judge Death from a parallel earth. Over the years, the Judge Dredd comic has presented a carnival of crazy crimes and criminals, certainly more than enough to provide a rich, bonkers background, just as it did for Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game when it was published in 1985 and then again for The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game when it was published in 2002.

From the start, there is a hurdle to playing The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game. This is the fact that it uses the d20 System and so requires access to the Player’s Handbook for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition. In fact, The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game is a Class and Level, Feat and Skill roleplaying game. Now in 2002 this was not unusual and mechanically, several roleplaying games of the period were essentially supplements for the Player’s Handbook with extra rules and a background. That said, anyone familiar with the d20 System would be able to pick up The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game, roll up a character, and get playing relatively quickly and without any great difficulties. 

As per Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, what the players can roleplay in The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game are Judges, the lawmen of the twenty-second century. Two are presented as standard character Classes—the Street Judge and the Psi-Judge—with the Med-Judge, the Tek-Judge, the SJS Judge, and Wally Squad Judge presented as Prestige Classes. There are two major changes in comparison to standard Player Characters. One is that both the Street Judge and the Psi-Judge start at Third Level rather than First Level, the other is that the Street Judge rolls a twelve-sided die for Hit Points, whilst the Psi-Judge rolls an eight-sided die. As Human characters, Judges, both Street Judge and Psi-Judge, receive a bonus Feat at character creation, and they are given more Feats as they acquire Levels. They also gain more skill points in a similar fashion. These can be the Feats standard to the Player’s Handbook or those particular to The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game.

Character creation is a straightforward process. A matter of rolling dice for attributes and Hit Points, then selecting skills and feats. These are a mix of standard skills and feats from the Player’s Handbook and those new in The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game.

Judge Muller
Third Level Street Judge
STR 14 (+2) DEX 09 (-1) CON 10 (+0)
INT 15 (+2) WIS 11 (+0) CHR 13 (+1)

Defence Value: 10
Hit Points: 24
Base Attack Bonus: +3 (Melee: +5/Ranged: +3)

Fort Save: +3 Ref Save:+3 Will Save: +3 

Skills: Balance 1, Bluff 1, Climb 3, Computer Use 4, Concentration 2, Drive 2, Intimidate 4, Jump 3, Knowledge (Law) 4, Listen 1, Medical 1, Pilot 1, Ride 1, Search 4, Sense Motive 3, Spot 2, Swim 3, Technical 4

Feats: Improved Interrogation, Lightning Reflexes, Luck of Grud

Weapon Proficiencies: All

The Psionics mechanics used for Psi-Judges can be best described as being a non-Vancian spell system. Instead of ‘fire-and-forget’ spells—or Psionic abilities—Psi-Judges possess Psi-Powers and receive several Power Points per day. This is in addition to Zero-Level Psi-Powers which a character can use several times per day. A Zero-Level Psi-Power like ‘Daze’ forces the target to lose his next action and costs a single Power Point to cost, whilst ‘Augury’, a Second-Level Psi-Power enables the Psionicist to cast his mind into the future to determine the outcome of an action. It costs two Power Points to cast. The Psionic Powers are a mix of new powers, such as ‘Psi-Lash’ or ‘Detect Thoughts’, and powers which feel familiar to spells from Dungeons & Dragons, like ‘Augury’ and ‘Clairvoyance’. The Psionicist also has access to Psionic Feats such as ‘Quicken Powers’, which enables a practitioner to manifest his psionic talents with a thought; normally it takes a Round to manifest a power. A psionic power can be saved against in a fashion similar to the spells cast by a Sorcerer.

Judge Garcia
Third Level Psi-Judge
STR 09 (-1) DEX 13 (+1) CON 12 (+1)
INT 16 (+2) WIS 15 (+2) CHR 18 (+4)

Defence Value: 11
Hit Points: 15
Base Attack Bonus: +3 (Melee: +4/Ranged: +2)

Fort Save: +4 Ref Save:+4 Will Save: +5

Power Points: 5
Psionic Talents: Zero-Level—Empathy, Missive; First-Level—Demoralise, Psychometry
Psionic Save: 14+Power Level

Skills: Balance 3, Bluff 6, Climb 0, Computer Use 3, Concentration 5, Drive 2, Intimidate 5, Jump 2, Knowledge (Law) 3, Listen 3, Medical 3, Pilot 2, Ride 2, Search 4, Sense Motive 4, Spot 4, Swim 0, Technical 3

Feats: Inner Strength, Psychoanalyst, Psychic Inquisitor

Weapon Proficiencies: All

Unfortunately, the mechanics for psionics are not very interesting, primarily because they are mapped onto the spell mechanics of the d20 System. This does not mean that they are unworkable, but rather that the results do not feel quite in keeping with that portrayed in the comic. The choice of Judges to play is also a potential issue, in that because Psi-Judge is a starting option, a team of Judges could conceivably consist of too many of them, their being weaker than Street Judges and less suited to street investigations. That said, an all Psi-Judge option is explored in the Game Master’s section. Another issue with the Judges as a play option is that a player cannot be a Med-Judge or a Tek-Judge right from the start rather than having to take a Prestige Class later on.

As well as presenting Judges as a play option, The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game also offers another Class, not as a play option, but rather a campaign option. This is the Citizen Class, which notably lacks the training or abilities of the Street Judge or Psi-Judge, and starts at First Level rather than Third Level. To counter this, the Citizen is given a Prior-Life, such as Agitator, Cit-Def Soldier, Failed Cadet, Goon, Jetball Player, Juve, Mo-Pad Driver, Neo-Luddite, Punk, and more. The choices all neatly fit under the umbrella of the Citizen Class, whilst characters can aim for Prestige Classes such as the Assassin, the Bodyguard, the Citi-Def Officer, the Hunters Club Member, and more. This is potentially a fun idea and would make for a very different campaign to that of playing Judges.

Norma Trang
First Level Street Citizen
Prior Life: Agitator
STR 08 (-01) DEX 14 (+2) CON 08 (-1)
INT 12 (+1) WIS 12 (+1) CHR 16 (+3)

Defence Value: 12
Hit Points: 4
Base Attack Bonus: +0 (Melee: -1/Ranged: +2)

Fort Save: -1 Ref Save:+2 Will Save: +1 

Skills: Bluff 6, Craze (Compulsive Eating) 6, Intimidate 6, Knowledge (Law) 6, Sense Motive 5

Feats: Iron Will, Fool Birdie

Weapon Proficiencies: Grenades, Pistols, Melee Weapons

The two character types—the Judges and the Citizens—lend themselves to very different campaign types. A Judge focused campaign will be about patrolling the streets, investigating crimes and mysteries, and apprehending perpetrators, and so on. It does not matter which roleplaying game you are playing based upon the ‘Judge Dredd’ comic strip, this is the default option. The option to play Citizens enables a campaign to become involved in Mega-City One daily life, for the Player Characters to get involved in and enjoy the rash Crazes which sweep the megalopolis, and then to go get involved in and commit crime! Initially though, this has to be on a small scale, to not come to the attention of any Judge, at least until they have acquired a few Levels, given the fact that even a basic Judge will be at least Third Level.

Another reason that Citizen characters will be at a disadvantage when facing any Judge is that the Judge will be superbly equipped, most obviously with the Lawgiver pistol and its wide range of ammunition types, and the Lawmaster motorcycle. To this are added further Judge equipment, such as the Birdie Lie Detector, Override Card, and Pollution Meter. A Citizen, or a Perp, might have a Double-Barrelled Stump Gun, General Arms Sg-1 XX, smoke bombs, lock hacker, and more, though unlike a Judge, a Citizen will have to pay for his equipment.

As with Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, in terms of roleplaying, the Judges in The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game are a bit one note, but then they are meant to be. That said, they are more skilled and capable, and focusing on different skills and choosing different Feats allows for some customisation and ensuring there are differences between Player Characters. That said, although they are neither as well equipped or as capable, Citizens can be anything and allow a player to roleplay free from the constraints placed upon a Judge.

Mechanically, The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game uses the d20 System. So roll a twenty-sided die for any action and roll high to beat a particular Difficulty Class or Armour Class, that really is about it. The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game of course includes rules for firearms combat and vehicle chases, and so on. Really, the only new mechanic in The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game is that for a Judge making an arrest attempt and a perpetrator resisting the attempt with opposed Charisma rolls.

In terms of background, The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game provides details about the Justice Department, which includes the resources and back-up a Judge can call upon, sentencing guidelines, stats and descriptions of Justice Department equipment and robots, and stats for sample Judges. Similarly, the ‘Life on the Streets’ chapter gives support for campaigns involving just Citizens, to be fair, primarily a number of Prestige Classes, but there are rules too for running street gangs, useful for a crime campaign. Both are supported by a guide to Mega-City One which covers its geography, government, habitats, infrastructure, sports, hobbies, crazes, and organisations, as well as regions beyond its walls. It is decent enough, though the selection of NPCs and perps is intentionally generic, so none of the Angel Gang,  the mobster Uggie Apelino and the Ape Gang, the vigilante Blanche Tatum, the infamous Judge murderer, Whitey, or Judge Death. Such characters and criminals would of course be saved for the supplement, Mega-City One’s Most Wanted. On the plus side, this does mean that the Player Character Judges will be investigating and arresting perps of the Game Master’s own devising and building their own legends instead of emulating that of Judge Dredd himself, but on the downside, The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game loses some of the flavour of the setting without them. A nice touch is that it is possible to play Ape characters, although they do not necessarily have to be gangsters.

Unfortunately, there is no beginning scenario for The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game in the core rule book. That said, there is advice for the Game Master on running both Judge and Citizen campaigns, along with scenario ideas and campaign variants. This is decent enough and the Citizen campaign is certainly supported with supplements such as Rookie’s Guide to Criminal Organisations, Rookie’s Guide to the Block Wars, and The Rookie’s Guide to the Crazes.

Physically, The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game is reasonably well written and comes as a full colour hardback, though calling it that is a slight stretch. Yes, colour is used throughout, literally just on the header, footer, and outside margin of nearly every page. And whilst there is artwork throughout taken from the comic strip, it is all black and white, all taken from the classic strips of the seventies and eighties, and much of it presented in too small a fashion to read with any ease and just so ever so slightly fuzzy. In all too many cases, when the artwork should pop out from the page, it simply fails to do so. That said, there are fantastically good full colour full page pieces in the book, though being towards the back of the book, do not really do a lot to support the game. For example, why are full colour illustrations of Justice Department equipment over a hundred pages away from their descriptions in the text?

So the question is, is The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game any good? Well, simply put, no, it is not any good, but then neither is it any bad either. It could have been better facing towards the players and their characters by having the details about the Justice Department more upfront for the Judges, giving their players access to information about the back-up they could request and what sort of sentences they can hand out. It does give an alternative to Judge campaigns, the Citizen campaign, which could be a lot of fun. It does produce Judge characters who are at least competent and have skills and abilities, and the roleplaying game would go on to be supported by numerous supplements and scenarios. And yet, there are the mechanics. The problem is simply that The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game uses the d20 System and whilst that works, it is just not that interesting. It definitely feels more as if the Judge Dredd setting has been shoehorned on to the d20 System and it does not feel quite like a natural fit.

There is no denying that a good game could be got out of The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game, but in comparison to Games Workshop’s Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, it lacks character—even though the Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game is not a great design mechanically—and feels as it demands more effort upon both player and Game Master. Overall, The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game is solid, serviceable, and supported, but its inherent blandness means it lacks that certain something which makes you want to play it.