Gang Busters B/X Edition

Gang Busters B/X Edition 1920's Role-playing Adventure Game
by Mark A. Hunt, copyright 2019

 

Where to buy:  https://www.drivethrurpg.com

 

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

Gangbusters B/X Edition (GBBX) is a B/X reworking of TSR's 1982 Gangbusters RPG.  A player who has played the 1981 version of Dungeons & Dragons, or one of its many OSR clones will be able to play GBBX with minimal effort.  The rulebook, more or less, follows the same layout as original BX D&D.

What is called the Dungeon Master in D&D is here called the Judge, Gamemaster, Referee, or Ward Boss.

The book lays out a handful of campaign types, criminal, detective, law enforcement, reporter, or strange mysteries.  I imagine that a campaign would work really well with a combination of the above.  Having one player a G-Man and another a gangster probably would not work out that well in the long run, but having one player as an undercover agent could be all sorts of fun for a one-shot or short campaign.

Character creation is nearly identical to normal D&D and this game uses the same ability scores and bonus/penalty scheme.  The classes available are the Brutish, Connected, Educated, and Street Smart.  My first annoyance with the rules is on page GB10, where the hit dice are reversed for the Educated and Street Smart - the character creation example in this chapter has the correct hit dice.  Characters top out at 6th level, as opposed to 14th in standard BX D&D.  This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what sort of campaign the players want.  I think it is a good thing.

Each class has certain special abilities.  Some examples are the Brutes, who don't suffer the standard -4 penalty to attack rolls for improvised weapons at 2nd level and the Educated, who pick areas of expertise.

GBBX does use alignment but it is basically how law-abiding the characters are.  I feel that this could probably have been left out of the game; however, I understand that it is included to remain compatible with BX D&D.  Character type could also have been left out and left to simple roleplaying.  Character types include options such as assimilated, city slicker, immigrant, and troublemaker.  

This game uses "the common tongue" for the primary spoken language.  It could easily have been called English, since this is exactly what the "common tongue" is.  The language chart also should have been adjusted for actually spoken 1920s languages common in the USA.  According to the rules, with a random roll, there is a 5% chance of speaking German or Spanish but a 10% chance of speaking Hindi.  This is just an odd choice.  The author is presumably trying to match the 1d20 language table from BX.

My third gripe is the way Armor Class is figured.  If the character wears a 3-piece suit, he will be AC 3 (16 ascending, in more modern games), while wearing farmer's overalls gives an AC of 7 (12 ascending).  This, to me, is a mind-bogglingly bad decision.  If I ever run this game, all characters will be AC 9 (10 ascending), regardless of clothing, with a bonus for a bullet proof vest or a parka, maybe.

After character creation, we get into the meat of the rules.  The game does a really good job of detailing the life of an adventurer in the 1920s, including crime, stolen goods, police patrols, street gangs, retainers (see below on an issue with this), and starting a legitimate (or not) business.  The Competition saving throw is a really elegant way of determining how much money a business can make and avoids the minutia of counting dimes and nickles.

Retainers is an issue.  The Charisma ability score gives the maximum number of retainers allowed per character but the "Starting a Gang" chapter totally ignores this.  Assuming I understand the mechanic here, a retainer costs a number of "Influence Points" and the maximum number equals the character's Charisma score.  I think that I like this way of doing it more but if this is how the rules are supposed to work; the Charisma "Max number of retainers" should have been left out - again, assuming I am reading this correctly.  Unless, of course, the Influence Points is counted up and compared to the Maximum number of retainers?   The rules are pretty unclear.  Recruiting a thug costs .5 Influence while a femme fatale costs 3, for those who are interested.  

There is a sample city included for those who do not want to base the game in a real city.  It is called Rock Junction and is near Lake Michigan.  

The Building Adventures chapter also includes some nice random charts.

Investigations is an interesting chapter and includes this game's version of the Turn Undead table, which is used for roughing up and threatening NPCs.  A level 1 character cannot convincingly threaten a real gangster or G-Man.  I think using the NPC reaction or retainer table would make more sense but it is amusing to use a version the Turn Undead table.

NPCs, trials, witnesses, law enforcement resources, and encounters come next and are basically what you would expect.  All of it is good information.  You can tell that Mr. Hunt did his homework.

Vehicle combat gets its own chapter, which is appropriate for a game where gangsters can ride along on running boards with Tommy guns.

Adversaries gets a chapter, of course, and includes some era standards - mobs, sheriffs, moonshiners, gangsters, etc.  There is a small section on Creatures of the Night for those who want to have the supernatural in their games.  I would love to see this fleshed out with its own chapter - perhaps move all of the fantasy options to an appendix.

Morale and combat work exactly the same as traditional BX D&D.  Guns have special rules for bursts, sprays, unloading with both barrels of a shotty, cover, etc.  Variable weapon damage is mentioned, but since the weapon tables shown previously don't mention that all weapons do d6 damage and instead have the "variable damage" listed, it is pretty silly.  I feel that the optional rule should be for all weapons to do d6 rather than the variable, which anyone reading the book in order will have assumed is how it works.  Players choosing to be "shot in the arm" is a pretty neat optional rule.  With this, players can have their characters take a penalty to attack rolls and movement in order to not lose hit points.

Healing is a bit better than standard D&D since medical care is more advanced than in fantasy land.

Saving throws work as you would expect but the saving throws are: moxie (grit, willpower, etc.), quickness, toughness, driving (this seems odd but I think it works), and observation.  Interestingly, Wisdom, which the rules note includes perception, modifies moxie but not observation.  I understand that willpower is a part of Wisdom and I assume that Mr. Hunt did not want Wisdom to be overly useful for saving throws.  If/when I run this, I might change this up a bit.

The rulebook ends with a page on Mysterious Powers (think the Shadow or the Phantom) and a page of inspirational bibliography.  There is also a standard character sheet, as most games include.

Included in the 64 pages are all that is needed for a 1920s campaign.  I would have loved to have seen a more detailed setting - say 10 to 12, or more, pages of the sample city, region, NPCs, and a sample adventure that can be used for one or two of the campaign types.  A sample city map would be nice.

One thing to note is that this game is riddled with typographical and capitalization errors.  The book specifies two individuals were proof readers and I would love to have these two gentlemen spend more time on this.  In one particular paragraph on page GB24, I count 2-3 missing commas and maybe an "and" or a semi-colon.  

 

⇒Grit:  ★★★★★  All of the rules you will need are here.  I would have liked an extra page or two of supernatural content but since this game is trying to be a standard Roaring 20s game, I won't ding it.

⇒Vigor:  ★★★☆☆ The game would probably work, as is, but with another 10 or 12 pages of setting info, perhaps a timeline of the 1920s including some tie-ins between the timeline and the sample setting, I think this game could easily be 4 or 5 stars.  As it stands, the Judge is going to have to do quite a bit of research on the 20s to make the game believable.

 
⇒Grace:  ★★★☆☆ The rulebook has a nearly perfect layout - as did the game on which this is based.  With some more art and far, far fewer typos and missing commas, and consistently using bullet points (pick all small or all large!) and tabbing indents, it would be 4 stars for sure.  The Sequence of Events table on page GB55 causes my soul to ache.

The Masters of the Universe Role Playing Game

The Masters of the Universe Role Playing Game
By Ross Babcock and Jack C. Harris
FASA Publishing, 1985

Availability is probably only through Ebay and a search of 17 May 2022 shows none available.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Masters of the Universe Role Playing Game (henceforth MOTURPG) is not a standard rpg but rather it is more of a board game with roleplaying elements tacked on.  MOTURPG came as a boxed set, including a 24-page rulebook, stand up counters for the heroes and villains, character sheets for the heroes, and a map of the dungeon, and a card explaining that some characters in the game have spells listed which are not included in the boxed set.  According to this card, the Advanced version of the game is to be released in "the fall of 1986".  I don't think it was.

The counters include characters such as Trap Jaw, Skeletor, Evil-Lyn, He-man, Orko, Teela, and the unfortunately named Fisto.  I think that Fisto must have had a rough childhood.  There are also counters for monsters and treasure, but not that many of either.

The game board is laid out in squares.  The dungeon is supposed to be Snake Mountain.  The game expects to have the characters use the game board.  With a competent Referee, the game board won't be needed, perhaps dictating that Movement Points are rather yards/meters moved per turn or something.

The character sheets are for the characters included in the game.  Each sheet includes what you would expect, such as ability scores, skills, spells, special abilities, possessions, life force, and magic points for the spellcasting characters.  Oh, each one includes a picture of the character, competently drawn.

Ability scores are rated from 11 through 66.  Poor Fisto has a Magic score of 11 and He-man, of course, has a Strength of 66.  The other abilities are Agility, Intelligence, and Life Force.  The definitions are the usual in every game; however, Life Force = hit points.  Skills are rated from 1 (basic familiarity) through 6 (master).  He-man, having paid his 30 silver to be the main character, rather than the much cooler Skeletor, has his sword skill rated at 6 and his pistol and rifle skills are rated at 3, which is higher than Man-at-arms, who one would think would be an expert at weapons, but is barely competent with a 2.  Ram-man has the animal skill rated at 3 - presumably because of his name?

Special Abilities are based on the character.  Orko can fly and teleport without using Magic Points, Ram-man can use his "Ram-attack", which causes 20 damage against foes but he suffers 4 points of damage, himself.  Both of these numbers are divisible by 4, which I make a point of questioning, below.

Half, or more, of the rulebook is a comic book.  Players and Referees might be tempted to skip reading the comic but a nearly all of rules are included in this section.  He-man and the Sorceress (Rawr! I always dug her when I was a youngster) explain the rules to a kid from Earth who gets magicked from home to Eternia.  The goal of the adventure is to steal the Crown Jewels from Skeletor.  I don't remember much slang from the 80s other than radical and tubular, but the He-man writers must have had a good laugh with names like Fisto and Crown Jewels!

I keep saying Referee like there is actually a player who is the Ref.  There isn't.  Monster reactions, treasure, and the like are controlled via random dice rolls.  I say Referee because one can easily be involved, and will need to be involved if the game progresses beyond the simple board game into real role-playing.

In MOTURPG, weapons do a static amount of damage, which to my minimalist thinking is a good thing.  Swords to 12 damage, pistols do 16, rifles do 24, and clubs and other melee weapons do 8.  Remember that I said ability scores can be as low as 11?  If you are so unfortunate to have Life Force of 11, any hit other than a club will end your adventuring career.  Telee has the lowest LF of 36, however, so she can soak a couple of laser pistol blasts before going down on the next hit.  A good punch lands 4 points of damage, unless you are He-man, whose punches cause 8 damage.  I can only assume they do these amounts of damage since the LF ability is actual hit points.  A smart Referee would have Life Force divided by 4, rounded, and then use that has hit points and then divide all damage by 4 (they are all divisible by 4) to make the number crunching easier.  I would.

The comic describes a handful of spells, and shows how that loser, He-man, needs the help of an 8-year old 80s kid rocking a Luke Skywalker haircut to beat the mighty Skeletor!  Spells are pretty easy to figure out, flying lets you fly, teleport allows you to teleport an enemy to any square on the board, and some spells have a range based on squares (Shield spell covers 3 squares).

The center of the rulebook has the encounter tables which are to be used, spell casting instructions, the combat table and modifiers by weapon.  Spell casting is 1d6 + skill level vs. difficulty of 3 on the chart.  Combat is 1d6+ skill level + weapon modifier vs. foe's 1d6 + skill level + weapon modifier.  Comparing the two numbers on the chart gives the final result.  The result can be anything from attacker hits foe for damage to attacker and defender hit each other to attacker misses and has a penalty next round to attacker drops weapon and inflicts damage on himself.  

Magic items can give a boost on the attack roll or have some other effect.  The Blast Jewel is a device used in attacking but it's weapon modifier is based on the user's Intelligence and Magic ability scores.

Since this game was released in 1985, it hadn't yet fallen pray to the Satanic Panic, and demons are mentioned.  Skeletor the Mighty is able to summon them - which is much cooler than having 'roid rage muscles, in my humble opinion.

The rulebook ends with character sheets for the foes and monsters.  The mighty Skeletor rocks it with a Magic ability of 62 and carries a +4 magic sword.  Each foe has a list of tactics he will use depending on which hero he faces.

There are no character creation rules in this game.  Presumably, they would have been included in the Advanced rules, which I don't believe ever were published.  This game would certainly rate higher if you can actually play your own self-created character.  The comic book part of the rules seems to imply that this was going to be the case.

➨ GRIT:  ★★★★☆ The game certainly works well as a board game with a small amount of roleplaying added.  A good Referee can take what is here and expand upon it to make a full-fledged RPG.  If rated as a standard RPG, it would be 1 star.  The game does accomplish the task it has been set.

➨ VIGOR:  ★☆☆☆☆ The game fails big time here.  Imagine playing Chutes and Ladders over and over again, but you get to pick a weapon or spell and there are enemies on the board and you won't be far off.  After playing this 2 or 3 times, I would be done forever.

➨ GRACE:  ★★★☆☆ The box is pretty, if the characters don't look exactly like their cartoon counterparts.  The contents don't look bad.  The comic book portion of the rules are well-drawn and match the cartoon pretty well.  Little Boy Skywalker Cut could easily have been me from 78 to 83.

Postcards From Avalidad

Postcards from Avalidad
by Miguel Ribeiro
Postmortem Studios, 2021

Available in pdf from Drivethruprg:   https://www.drivethrurpg.com/

Available in print from Lulu:  Postcards from Avalidad (lulu.com) 

 

 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Postcards from Avalidad is a 200 page handbook for playing a retro-future noir campaign with demons and a small amount of cyberpunk and a lot of biotech.  It is based on the works of William Burroughs (whom I've not read), mixed with William Gibson's books (which I have read) and the films of Davin Cronenberg (I might have seen one or two).

If you have played Dark Conspiracy from the 1990s, and liked it, then you will like Postcards, as the two are very, very similar.

Avalidad is a city in Morocco, founded in the 1960s.  Formerly, Avalidad was the Tangiers International Zone.  It is a corporate city, owned primarily by Takeda Technologies, though there are other companies as well, many of whom are just fronts for a larger corporation.  

The setting expects that the characters will all work as troubleshooters for what passes as law in the city, called ZoneSec - not exactly cops, not exactly corporate peons, not exactly criminals themselves, but some mix of the three.  Provided the profits of the companies don't take a hit, the characters have free reign but they are expected to follow the orders of their superiors.

The first 10 or so pages of the book describe the author's inspirations, plus a very broad overview of the setting.  The book then has a few pages describing the technology of the setting, again just an overview.  In these sections you start realizing that the author is giving you a fun, pop culture wink, what with Rollerball (the 70s movie) and Leary Pharma (man oh man, have I gotten old), which continues through the book.

Following, you are treated to 75 pages of NPCs, statted for Actual Fucking Monsters (AFM) and *Punk.  I pretty much ignored the stats since I am not familiar with either game.  I did look through them and had a laugh or two at some of the skills on some of the characters, who knew that "fellatio" could have a die rating?!   Two of my peeves with the book show up in the section, however.  First, on at least two occasions, the picture of the NPC doesn't match the description (and I'm 99% sure that one of the pictures is from a British dude on YouTube who does "top 10" list and "did you know" type videos).  Secondly, the page numbers start creeping down the bottom margin until they are unreadable about halfway through the book.  I will blame this on the POD though.

Every NPC has a description, a background, and an adventure hook, which I find very useful.

The next 40 pages are people (more of them), places, and things in Avalidad.  You learn about political and social groups, as well as criminal organizations.  My third gripe happens in this section - the headings are a rust red on army green background, which is very difficult to read, but not as difficult as...

The next 20 pages are about society as a whole in the city, including psionics, mutants, and drugs.  The headings here are army green on rust red and I cannot read a single one.

Both of these sections also include an adventure hook for every entry, which again is an awesome thing to do.

Section 6 is for media and entertainment, which includes pop stars, musical genres (no heavy metal?!  What a ripoff!), virtual entertainment (I think the fleshy game controllers are based on a movie but I can't remember it's name), and Rollerball (err, I mean Rollerclash).  By this part of the book, the page numbers are now visible again.

The remainder of the book is dedicated to technology and drugs, both of which have been discussed throughout, and includes stats for a lot of the neuroware, cyberware, and drugs.  Again, I sort of breezed through the game stats - I would run the game with Savage Worlds or my own Tyndale Game System v.3.

My thoughts?  I love it!  I am a huge fan of Dark Conspiracy and this is a slimmed down version of that game.  The POD quality control on my copy is obviously missing, but this is no fault of the author.  The color scheme, except for title headings is great - the title headings, as I said in some sections, are not readable to me.  I enjoy the marbled border around the pages, which give the book a fun profile when looked at from an angle.  

What could have been better?  I wish the author included a short scenario, maybe 5 to 10 pages, to get the characters started and to include a NPC or two and some corporate intrigue.  

⇒Grit:  ★★★★☆  The setting accomplishes what it sets out to do, though it is marred in some places.  It is organized well, though some entries seem to be randomly placed, i.e. you might find technology spread throughout the book rather than in just one section.  The book has an index, so it gets a solid 4 stars.

⇒Vigor:  ★★★★★ The setting appears that it can be used for extended campaigns without any issues.  Having a plot hook with every entry goes a long way towards this.  I can see a year or two of regular games with just the Postcards book.

 
⇒Grace:  ★★★☆☆ The book is very attractive but the font colors on the headings leave quite a bit to be desired.  The page numbers wandering around like Bedouin nomads doesn't help, but I do believe this is a POD issue.  Still, I'm grading on the book I have in my hands.

I hope y'all enjoyed my very first review!

- Michael

Games I Like

 I was in the gym last night and realized that it might be useful for folks if I gave a short list of games I like and why I like them.  This might help folks decide if they can trust my ratings.

My three favorite role-playing games:

1.  1981 Moldvay-Cook version of the Basic and Expert Dungeons and Dragons sets (henceforth called BX).  This is probably the most versatile D&D rules sets ever printed.  Anything can be removed from the game without breaking anything else and Referees can add whatever they want to the game and it won't break.  Don't like percentage thief skills?  Replace then with x-in-6, d20 vs. target number, or any other mechanic.  Since every mechanic in the game is a separate entity, they are all replaceable or adjustable and won't have an effect on other mechanics.  Versions of D&D with feats, skills, backgrounds, etc. are all designed to have all parts work together, causing more difficulty when excising bits that you do not like.

2.  Star Frontiers.  Star Frontiers is a dead simple, percentile-based game of space opera.  It was the first science fiction game I owned and it is still my favorite.  Dralasites, Yazirian, and Vrusk were so cool that modern versions of D&D have stolen them wholesale.  If I run a one-shot for people who have never played a RPG before, Star Frontiers is my go-to game.

3.  Savage Worlds.  SW is basically the exact opposite of what I like about BX D&D.  It is fiddly, rules heavy, especially during character creation and advancement, has an off-the-wall initiative mechanic (playing cards), it uses advantages, disadvantages, what in modern D&D are called feats, skills, but for all that, I really love this game.  The game is generic and can theoretically be used for any genre.  The tagline "fast, furious fun" isn't 100% accurate but it is close enough.  If I want to run a skill and feat style game, SW is my choice.

Honorable mentions:

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 1st edition.  I don't care for the rules but I love, love, love the setting.  One of my homebrew fantasy settings is a complete ripoff from WFRP's Old World.

Blueholme.  This is an OSR retroclone of the Holmes version D&D basic set, modified to allow 20 levels.  If I started playing D&D in 1979 instead of 1981, this game and BX would no doubt be swapped.  

Buck Rogers XXVc.  Everyone else dislikes this game and/or makes fun of it.  Like WFRP, the rules aren't great (in this case, it is based on AD&D 2nd edition) but I adore the setting - solar system bound space opera. 

Gamma World.  I always enjoy getting to play this game but rarely do.   Rolling up a character that is riddled with defects can be a lot of fun.  I am also a big fan of post apocalyptic fiction and I am pretty sure this is the game that got me into it.

My Inital Review Rating System

Hello!

My initial blog post is to explain the rating system I intend on using for RPG products.

I intend to rate products on three metrics with a rating of 1 to 5 stars on each.  The metrics I will use initially are:

➽ Grit:  Grit is my rating for how useful the game or supplement appears to be.  Games, supplements, and modules which I find to work really well will get higher scores.  A module that works as is will be rated higher than one which requires a lot of work from the Referee to be useful.  This rating will not be based on the number of rules in the product.  A Free-kriesgspiel Revolution (FKR) product with one page of rules will be judged on that one page and won't be compared to whatever new-fangled, three rulebook system is currently in vogue.  Conversely, a 400-page rules tome will be rated on the rules tome itself and not compared to a 32-page game.  Comparisons might certainly appear but the judging will be apples-to-apples, to the best of my ability.

➽ Vigor:  Vigor is my rating for how much longevity the game, supplement, or module will provide.  A setting that I find has unlimited potential will rate higher than one which seems like it would work well for a one-shot.  A boxed set with 200 pages of text and 20 maps may not be any more useful than a 32-page setting book if the boxed set digs way down into the nitty gritty that will very unlikely to come up in a campaign.

➽ Grace:  Grace is how beautiful I find the product.  Artwork, layout, and general usability will be judged.  A module with tiny and tight text will rate lower than one with a clean layout and lots of breaks to rest the eyeballs.  If I rate something that is a Print-on-demand (POD) product, I will try to separate flaws in the physical product due to printer error from defects caused by the author.  Books that have a usable index and easily determined page numbers will rate higher than a manifesto written on a stenographer's pad while hiding out in a Montana cabin.

I might change my rating system if I think of one better.  

Since people are insane, I suppose I should mention that my ratings are 100% subjective.  You might very well find that you love something I dislike and you dislike something I love.  This is how the world works and there is no need for you to have hurt feelings.

I intend to mostly rate products that are not mainstream or are out-of-print.  You probably won't find any reviews of currently in-print D&D products.

I also will endeavor to leave links where a project might be purchased, if it is currently in print.