GANGBUSTERS one-shot

So, while our regular CALL OF CTHULHU game is in abeyance, I got it into my head that this would be a good time to run a one-shot using the original GANGBUSTERS rules put out by TSR back in 1982 (though I don't think I ever saw a copy until I went to work for TSR in 1991).

Don't want to give away too many spoilers, but here's the playlist for the 'soundtrack' I've been listening to while rolling up the characters and making notes on things I'll need to know about when running the adventure with oldschool rules I don't know well.

'Don't Take Me Alive' (Steely Dan)
'There Goes a Tenner' (Kate Bush)
'The Ballad of Danny Bailey' (Elton John)
'Pretty Boy Floyd' (Arlo Guthrie)
'The Night Chicago Died' (Paper Lace)
'Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress' (The Hollies)
'Bank Job' (Bare Naked Ladies)
'The Pink Panther theme' (Henry Mancini)
'A Shot in the Dark' (Henry Mancini)
'Peter Gunn theme' (Henry Mancini)
'Foggy Mountain Breakdown' (Flatt & Scruggs)
'Money' (Pink Floyd)

These are mostly just to set the mood, though some of them do give clues to the adventure; the trick wd be to figure out which ones (hint: 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown' is there for getaway music, shd it be needed). The biggest clue wd be the mini-adventure's name: 'The Bank Job'.

More later when they've all chosen their characters.


--JDR
--current music: 'The Bank Job' playlist. Also Men at Work (first two albums plus lead singer's solo), who I've not listened to in a long time.
--current reading: just finished MR. PALOMAR by Italo Calvino (a gift from my friend Jim Pietrusz); just started THE FACE IN THE FROST by John Bellairs (re-reading one of my favorite books).

TSR bibliographic ghosts

So, one of the things that used to fascinate me back in the Lake Geneva days were the old TSR catalogues from earlier times. Each was a kind of time-capsule of the company as it was at the time it put out that particular catalogue. Particularly telling were the products that got announced as forthcoming which never saw the light of day.*

A case in point: a page from the 1984 catalogue features new and forthcoming adventures for TSR's second-tier games: TOP SECRET, GANGBUSTERS, BOOT HILL, and GAMMA WORLD. And in the course of a single page they announce no fewer than seven adventures that never came out.

For TOP SECRET, these were the adventures TIN MAN, about fighting off computer hacking (which still sounds timely), and WHITEOUT, set at a base at the South Pole (from which I conclude that somebody had seen ICE STATION ZEBRA, or indeed read the book).

For BOOT HILL, the promised modules were DELTA QUEEN, a riverboat full of high-stakes gambling, which sounds like it cd have been a really good BH adventure, and BARON OF SAN ANDREAS by Zeb Cook, about a local strongman, the self-proclaimed 'baron' of the title, who's set himself up as undisputed ruler of a small town.

For GAMMA WORLD, there was NIGHTWIND RIDER by Bruce Nesmith, which sounds as if it might have been a solo adventure, and RAPTURE OF THE DEEP, set on a mysterious island (aren't they all).

Finally, and to my mind the biggest lost among these might-have-beens, was the GANGBUSTERS adventure BASES LOADED: The Lakefront Mudcats Scandal) by Jeff Grubb, which wd have been GANGBUSTERS' analogue to the once-famous 'Black Sox' scandal in which one team was bribed to throw the World Series (way back in 1919). But then I always did like GANGBUSTERS, and was sorry there were so few adventures for it published (just five)

Here's the page in question, with more information about the individual intended releases.


--John R.
current listening: Leo Sayer, of all people


*most famously, perhaps, Gygax's SHADOWLANDS

P.S.: I forgot to include the scan. Here goes.

UPDATE (Th.Dec.14th)
Jeff Grubb has just posted an interesting account with much more detail of BASES LOADED (and TIN MAN as well) on his blog: highly recommended.

http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2017/12/bases-loaded.html

--JDR