When TSR broke up, the rights to Gangbusters remained with Rick Krebs. He has given permission to Mark Hunt to update the system and sell it plus new material. It's now out!

Paperback on Lulu

In about a month's time (Feb 2016) the hardback will be available through Lulu and other stores.

The pdf will be available on RPGNow/DriveThruRPG very soon.

There are also some adventures and player aids on DriveThruRPG. There will be physical printings of these soon. I'm not sure if the adventures are written for the original rules or the updated rules (I suspect the latter).

Mark's plan is to release something new every month throughout 2016.

Here's some recent reviews of the basic rules

Gangbusters is pretty old school plus a genre I really like (currently I'm involved with the Mythic BoL update of Dicey Tales).

Really excited about this and Dicey Tales. Soon there should be some more noir/pulp action gaming options!

Ugh...why did it have to go "paranormal"?

I was excited until clicking on the link and seeing that cover.

Quote from: Matt;876269Ugh...why did it have to go "paranormal"?

Gotta have POWERZ!
To be fair, the adventures look cool and seem to be free of 'weird' content and that stuff is clearly optional in the rules.

Paranormal shit was common in the pulps so it's still within genre. I imagine it will be easy to simply ignore that if you're not interested in it. For example, the new version of Dicey Tales has "magical powers" and "scientific wizardry" but explicitly as an optional sub-system.

Quote from: Stainless;876273Paranormal shit was common in the pulps so it's still within genre.

Pulp wasn't a genre, it was a medium that covered lots of different genres... many of them free from supernatural elements.
Not that I'm complaining about the supernatural stuff. This looks like another welcome source of ideas for non-Mythos/non-horror Call of Cthulhu games.

Quote from: Simlasa;876274Pulp wasn't a genre, it was a medium that covered lots of different genres...

Agreed. Sloppy terminology by me. Never the less, although not universal, paranormal stuff was definitely common in the pulps. Personally, I'll be using it (and Dicey Tales) to emulate things like Bulldog Drummond and the short stories of Louis L'Amour, so no magic/paranormal at all.

Quote from: Stainless;876275Agreed. Sloppy terminology by me. Never the less, although not universal, paranormal stuff was definitely common in the pulps. Personally, I'll be using it (and Dicey Tales) to emulate things like Bulldog Drummond and the short stories of Louis L'Amour, so no magic/paranormal at all.

That's the sort of thing I'd enjoy... but might be a harder sell to guys I play with.

Quote from: Stainless;876273Paranormal shit was common in the pulps so it's still within genre. I imagine it will be easy to simply ignore that if you're not interested in it. For example, the new version of Dicey Tales has "magical powers" and "scientific wizardry" but explicitly as an optional sub-system.

It really wasn't, though.

This site has all sorts of pulp stories

http://www.pulpgen.com/pulp/downloads/index.html

Very few were supernatural/paranormal/superscience.  It's just those stories are still popular today, at least some of them (Lovecraft and company, mostly)

This is the basic set and only covers the Detectives, it is a beginners guide for those who do not have access to the box set. It is 100% compatible with all the old rules and adventures.  Why add pulp stuff, well because it was mentioned by TSR in Polyhedron. They even went as far to create a adventure that had the players fight giant bugs. So as always when playing a RPG everything is up to the players and Judge what they want in their games.

Quote from: JeremyR;876354Very few were supernatural/paranormal/superscience.  It's just those stories are still popular today, at least some of them (Lovecraft and company, mostly)

You may well be correct, but I'd like to see a scholarly audit of this to find out just what proportion we're talking about. At the moment it seems to me the relative proportions are simply anecdotal. Supernatural/paranormal/superscience was certainly common enough to be "significant", I'm not trying to argue that it was a dominant theme in the pulps.

Quote from: Stainless;876437You may well be correct, but I'd like to see a scholarly audit of this to find out just what proportion we're talking about. At the moment it seems to me the relative proportions are simply anecdotal.

I suppose there'd be some evidence on display in the books on collecting the original magazines... going through and adding up titles devoted to particular genres.
I know things changed over time, some titles began injecting more 'weird' or 'lurid' elements later on. Something like The Shadow starts off as fairly straight mystery, then they develop the Shadow character himself... strange but not supernatural... then later on give him what are basically 'magic' powers.
Same thing with The Spider IIRC.

Quote from: Simlasa;876458Something like The Shadow starts off as fairly straight mystery, then they develop the Shadow character himself... strange but not supernatural... then later on give him what are basically 'magic' powers.

I don't think that is correct. The first Shadow story, The Living Shadow included:

• The Shadow as a master of disguise.
• The Shadow's trademark cloak and slouch hat.
• His secret sanctum, messages written in disappearing blue ink, weird girasol ring, and mysterious laugh.

The Shadow starts out weird and mysterious and unlike other mundane detectives. Absent the odd ring and the mysterious laugh he might seem like a super spy, but those bits are strange and a bit supernatural.
I can't recall which story first introduced the Shadow's shadow, which is typically described as weird, frightening, and uncanny. But if not in the first novel it appears within the first few months of publishing.

I don't recall the Spider ever being as supernatural as the Shadow. The Spider seemed to have pseudo-scientific explanations for his powers unlike the mystical background that is hinted at early on and then clearly given to the Shadow. Distinguishing traits in the Spider stories were the fever dream-like fervor and brooding angst of the Spider and the extremely large body counts both of innocent victims and the criminals felled and marked by the Spider. Thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of innocent victims was a biweekly occurrence in the Spider tales. The Shadow doesn't really brood. And he seldom, if ever had anything like the Spider's high body counts for victims. Frequently the number of crooks killed by the Shadow were at most a handful with a confrontation with all of gangland (e.g. Mobsmen on the Spot) a fairly rare event and even then the total deaths inflicted weren't in the hundreds that one might see machine gunned down in a Spider story.

Quote from: Bren;876463The Shadow starts out weird and mysterious and unlike other mundane detectives. Absent the odd ring and the mysterious laugh he might seem like a super spy, but those bits are strange and a bit supernatural.

Sorry, didn't mean to suggest The Shadow himself was ever like a regular hard-boiled detective, but he did start off just introducing 'normal' detective stories, like The Whisperer and others hosts... then got a persona, still without (as I see it) true supernatural powers, just disguises and stage magic. More like he's making himself out to be supernatural, to spook his enemies.
Obviously I'm no expert, and haven't read all the stories. Including the radio shows, serial, and movies his powers kind of run the gamut between mundane and mystical.

You're right that the Spider never (AFAIK) got overt superpowers. It's just his disguise that gets a bit weirder.

Quote from: Simlasa;876487Sorry, didn't mean to suggest The Shadow himself was ever like a regular hard-boiled detective, but he did start off just introducing 'normal' detective stories, like The Whisperer and others hosts... then got a persona, still without (as I see it) anything like supernatural powers, just disguises and stage magic.

Ah, yes he started as a radio host for detective stories but popular demand ended with his own biweekly pulp.

QuoteMore like he's making himself out to be supernatural, to spook his enemies.

Its actually a bit of both. In many early stories there is clearly something abnormal in the way he moves and in the way his shadow is described and sometimes perceived in a way that is more weird tales than Batman. His unsettling laugh also can seem a bit supernatural and of course the Shadow is an expert ventriloquist who can throw his voice or his chilling laugh. You are correct that he is a master of stage magic (Walter Gibson, the author, was something of an expert). I believe that Gibson conceived of the Shadow as the pinnacle of accomplishment in multiple areas including magic, disguise, espionage, and combat.

Later in the series one of his origin stories (it is unclear who the Shadow really is, though it is revealed that his alter ego, Lamont Cranston, is actually a disguise gives him some powers of eastern mystics. There is a real Lamont Cranston who "allows" (he may not have actually been given much of a choice) the Shadow to assume his identity, live in his mansion, use his stuff, etc. He may be Kent Allard or that too may be a real person who he impersonates. There really isn't a definitive answer. All of which is one reason the Shadow is more mystical/spernatural when compared with the Spider or the Batman.

The Shadow radio show portrays a much different character and that character has "the power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him."

QuoteYou're right that the Spider never (AFAIK) got overt superpowers. It's just his disguise that gets a bit weirder.

His disguise varies. In some stories the Spider has a freakish look, an extreme hunchback, an unruly wig of hair, and fang-like teeth. In other stories he clearly doesn't have anything other than a mask and cape and possibly a stooped posture that imitates a hunchback. I'm not sure it's even an evolution so much as different house authors or just plain carelessness. Pulp authors wrote at pretty phenomenal speed and sometimes it shows in a lack of continuity. I've noticed that more in the Spider than in the Shadow or Doc Savage.

Gangbusters was criminally (Heh) underrated and ahead of it's time (Particularly the almost-storygamy experience point rules). I'm glad to see it back in print in some form.