Gangbusters

• Title — Gangbusters • Designer — Rick Krebs and Mark Acres • Publisher — TSR • Date — 1982 (1 st edition) 1990 (3 rd edition) 2019 (B/X edition) • Genre — Historical • System — percentile

During character generation, a player randomly generates his character's abilities (such as Muscle and Luck), then chooses a career (character class) from Criminal, FBI Agent, Newspaper Reporter, Police Officer, Private Investigator, or Prohibition Agent. Each career includes a unique set of advantages and disadvantages. The player then further customizes the character by adding non-career skills, such as Auto Theft or Photography. Gangbusters uses a percentile-based mechanic for most task resolutions using two ten-sided dice. The basic chances of a character succeeding at an action are equal to the character's score in a relevant ability or skill, subject to modifiers assigned by the Judge. The player of that character then rolls percentile dice to determine if the character succeeded. The results of actions (such as the damage caused by weapons or the amount of money produced by a criminal enterprise) may be determined by further dice rolls.

Game designer Rick Krebs created a game of gangland violence set in the age of speakeasies titled Bloody 20s and sold the concept to TSR. Mark Acres assisted to develop the new game retitled Gangbusters, which was published in 1982. The boxed set contained a 64-page rulebook, a 16-page sample adventure, a game map showing several blocks of Lakefront City, some cardboard counters, and two ten-sided dice. Between 1982 and 1984, TSR published five adventure modules for Gangbusters: • Trouble Brewing by Tom Moldvay • Murder in Harmony by Mark Acres • Death on the Docks by Mark Acres • The Vanishing Investigator by Tracy Hickman • Death in Spades by Tracy Hickman Three packs of Gangbusters miniatures were also produced by TSR. In 1990, TSR released a second edition of the Gangbusters rules, but mislabeled it as a "New 3rd Edition". The 3rd Edition (as it came to be known) is a 128-page softcover book combining the text of the first edition rule book with information taken from the adventures Trouble Brewing, Murder in Harmony and Death on The Docks. Except for minor edits, the 3rd Edition Gangbusters game mechanics are indistinguishable from those of the original edition. In 2019, Mark Hunt, with permission of original designer Rick Krebs, released an updated and simplified version of the rules known as the "B/X" edition, because it was based on the game mechanics of the 1980 Dungeons & Dragons Basic and EXpert sets.