Finarvyn Administrator Dungeon Master member is offline
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Q&A With Rick Krebs « Thread Started on Mar 31, 2009, 3:21pm »
Since Rick is hanging out here anyway (at least at the moment), I thought it would be fun to have a question-answer thread in which he can participate or not as he wishes.
So, ask about the design process, playtest process, or anything else of interest that you want to know about Gangbusters!
Rule #1: Rick can answer or not as he chooses. If he waits weeks or months to get back to your question, that's okay.
Rule #2: Don't tick him off or he may go away, and if this happens Vito will drop in to break your kneecaps.
Marv / Finarvyn DCC playtester (2011) C&C playtester (2003) I'm partly responsible for the S&W WhiteBox Builder of the TrollBridge Master of Mutants; MA since 1976 OD&D Player since 1975
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!" - Dave Arneson
Finarvyn Administrator Dungeon Master member is offline
Joined: Jun 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 4,674 Location: Near Chicago Karma: 178
Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #1 on Mar 31, 2009, 3:24pm »
Ragnorakk actually got this process started on another thread, so I grabbed his question and imported it over here.
Wow! Glad to see you here! I got Gangbusters when it came out and thought it was a great game! Unfortunately, my players were more into elfs and such...so I never got much of a chance to play.
So, if I may ask some questions
How long of a campaign did you run with Gangbusters, when you were developing or playtesting? How many players did you have?
How long did it take a player to develop a nationwide syndicate? heh heh...
Marv / Finarvyn DCC playtester (2011) C&C playtester (2003) I'm partly responsible for the S&W WhiteBox Builder of the TrollBridge Master of Mutants; MA since 1976 OD&D Player since 1975
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!" - Dave Arneson
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 138 Location: Reading, PA Karma: 12
Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #2 on Mar 31, 2009, 5:56pm »
Quote:
How long of a campaign did you run with Gangbusters, when you were developing or playtesting? How many players did you have?
Our campaign was 2 years plus. And, at the time I was operating a game store so to have 6 to 8 players playing on a nightly basis was a possibility. It's structure allows players to come and go as they please or as they die.
Quote:
How long did it take a player to develop a nationwide syndicate? heh heh...
Some players were happy just to complete a meal. The nationwide syndicate games would have been settled at Gen Con, of course.
Rick Krebs Creator/designer of Gangbusters Contributor to AD&D DM's Guide-1st edition "D&D meets the Electronic Age" Dragon #26 "Non-Player Characters have Feelings, too" Dragon #29 Founder/owner: Original Gamer's Guild game store Designer of EAMON Adventures Pubisher/Editor: Phanta Carta
Joined: Oct 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 1,224 Location: Argentina Karma: 51
Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #3 on Mar 31, 2009, 6:53pm »
I recently got a copy of this one and it seems to be a very very good basis for playing criminal gang wars and other action adventures in present Buenos Aires (Argentina), where I live.
I think that updating the weaponry and car models, and simply changing the names on some things should do the job!
So... have you ever used Gangbusters for a more contemporary setting? Take into account that argentina is a third world country, thus, the weaponry available could be similar to that in the US some years behind or even a decade or two behind. .
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 138 Location: Reading, PA Karma: 12
Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #4 on Mar 31, 2009, 7:35pm »
Quote:
I think that updating the weaponry and car models, and simply changing the names on some things should do the job! So... have you ever used Gangbusters for a more contemporary setting? Take into account that argentina is a third world country, thus, the weaponry available could be similar to that in the US some years behind or even a decade or two behind.
I would think that Gangbusters would work fine in the situation you are proposing and with a minimum of additional research on weapons and vehicles. But, no we never did officially playtest it in a modern setting. But, that doesn't mean the playtesters, on their own, didn't create such situations and play them out. "If you build it, gamers will try and break it". Please let me know how Gangbuster works for you and your concept.
Rick Krebs Creator/designer of Gangbusters Contributor to AD&D DM's Guide-1st edition "D&D meets the Electronic Age" Dragon #26 "Non-Player Characters have Feelings, too" Dragon #29 Founder/owner: Original Gamer's Guild game store Designer of EAMON Adventures Pubisher/Editor: Phanta Carta
Joined: Jun 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 168 Location: Blackmoor Karma: 5
Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #5 on Apr 1, 2009, 9:39am »
I don't see any reason why Gangbusters can't be done with modern times. Looking at the system, it's general enough for any mid-to-high tech era. You might need to come up with a new list of weapons with damage, tweak the skills (add computer skills and others that weren't around in the 1920's) and so on.
KELT-SET =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Bishop of Blackmoor Found B/X D&D in the 1980's =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." - Gary Gygax
Finarvyn Administrator Dungeon Master member is offline
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Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #6 on Apr 12, 2009, 9:43am »
Agreed. It's one of the (many) projects I'm considering, unless Zulgyan beats me to it.
Marv / Finarvyn DCC playtester (2011) C&C playtester (2003) I'm partly responsible for the S&W WhiteBox Builder of the TrollBridge Master of Mutants; MA since 1976 OD&D Player since 1975
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!" - Dave Arneson
Stonegiant Level 5 Thaumaturgist member is offline
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Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #8 on Apr 19, 2009, 7:48pm »
I have been working on this on and off for some time but I always felt that Gangbusters would work great as the basis for a horror game (say Zombiebusters?). I was thinking of the classic horror films (Dracula, Frankenstien, etc.) and also with ideas from the Dawn of the dead, etc. I was wondering if you ever attempted such a style of campaign?
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 138 Location: Reading, PA Karma: 12
Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #9 on Apr 19, 2009, 8:22pm »
No we never experimented with those genres, but there's nothing in the game mechanics to prevent you from doing it. As some of the inspiration for the game came from my Grandfather's sharing his love of b&w gangster movies, it is perhaps fitting that horror movies be a variant of Gangbusters. Try it, I'd love to hear how it went for you.
Rick Krebs Creator/designer of Gangbusters Contributor to AD&D DM's Guide-1st edition "D&D meets the Electronic Age" Dragon #26 "Non-Player Characters have Feelings, too" Dragon #29 Founder/owner: Original Gamer's Guild game store Designer of EAMON Adventures Pubisher/Editor: Phanta Carta
Joined: Nov 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 245 Location: Behind the Orange Curtain Karma: 10
Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #10 on Apr 20, 2009, 12:31pm »
Mr Krebs - I, for one, would enjoy hearing any stories you might have about the group you ran while developing the game. One characteristic of the 'old school' games I've noted is that the "wargaming roots" show pretty clearly. I don't know if this is what you intended, but games like Call of Cthulhu favor a tight-knit party that sticks together and works as a unit, while some of the older games like Boot Hill and Gangbusters* seem to support a style of play where the individual players are only loosely connected, and each go about pursuing their own individual goals. How did you run your games? Were all the characters members of the same gang, or did you have one player who was a PI, one which was a beat cop, one playing the cub reporter, and another who was the gang member, all often working at cross purposes?
*Yes, I know that Gangbusters came out AFTER Call of Cthulhu, but the game design of the former seems far more "old school" than the latter, ...well, at lest to me.
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 138 Location: Reading, PA Karma: 12
Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #11 on Apr 20, 2009, 5:54pm »
I will work on injecting occassional storylines in the Gangbuster (1982) subject and will try and cajole an original playtester judge&player for experiences.
An interesting and probably helpful part of the B20>Public Enemy> Gangbusters history is that this project spent 4 or 5 years in Lake Geneva. So that may help explain that GBs actual design precedes that of Cthulhu. It's correct position on the release schedule should fall after AD&D DMG. Thus, it also predates Top Secret.
There were several gangs, of various sizes and approaches. I owned a game shop, so it was very easy to say who wants to play B20s tonight, and what does everyone want to do ? Revenge was a frequent motivator. And, using my computer I could create a newspaper using headlines to suggest potential storylines and a place to help make memorable characters for all to see. Isn't that what we'd like to play a memorable character ?
I am a "free willer" in RPG games. I have played with many great players and DMs who taught me creative solutions toward any problem. Yes, we were making up the rules as we went and were encouraged to do so by the creators of D&D. Using percentage dice is important here. I believe that you can pretty accurately give odds for almost any action a game character could create. And, there is margin for error, I think something is 40% to happen and you disagree and think its 30%...we could find agreement at 35%. Poof it works. While I may be a good GM and handle this free-wheeling approach, I also discovered that other people could handle this chaos with dice rolls.
GB calls for a cast of characters to be developed. NPC stats are easily generated, but the flesh on the bones comes from the "Judge". NPC's do have feelings, too. Every character and NPC has a story, expand it, contract it. Fact or gossip it is all grist in the storytelling mill. D&D is an up and down plotline, but GB more closely follows a novel, rising to a climax... a movie, TV show, newspaper article, or novel with percentage dice.
Rick Krebs Creator/designer of Gangbusters Contributor to AD&D DM's Guide-1st edition "D&D meets the Electronic Age" Dragon #26 "Non-Player Characters have Feelings, too" Dragon #29 Founder/owner: Original Gamer's Guild game store Designer of EAMON Adventures Pubisher/Editor: Phanta Carta
I will work on injecting occassional storylines in the Gangbuster (1982) subject and will try and cajole an original playtester judge&player for experiences.
Please! Get this stuff down on paper - the 'archaeology' of our hobby.
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 942 Karma: 27
Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #13 on Apr 20, 2009, 10:25pm »
I don't remember details, but there was an issue of Dragon with a "pulp heroes" game (a la Doc Savage and the Shadow) as a feature. I think the pages are still stuck in one of my old CoC rule books.
Any way, memory suggests that those rules were pretty compatible with GB and that we used bits from GB to flesh out some scenarios.
(I happened to dig Chaosium's "Basic Role Playing" framework underlying RuneQuest a lot, so that came largely to displace more specialized games apart from D&D, Traveller and V&V.)
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 138 Location: Reading, PA Karma: 12
Re: Q&A With Rick Krebs « Reply #14 on Apr 21, 2009, 7:33am »
This n' That
Please, call me Rick. I'd hope we're all friends here. And for decades that's what the kids of my neighborhood call me.
It is all written down, just a matter of finding all the boxes and files. Have found some material such as my unpublished barebones scenario (unpublished as the new school was opposed to providing the Judge so much leeway in running their games) and additional charts for creating NPCs sort of a Rogue's Gallery for GB. Found some audio tapes which were done as radio news broadcast for GB, but weren't salvageable. I'm hoping to find scripts of that material.
Remember when thinking about running GB, think playing cops & robbers as a kid, and not playing D&D with machine guns
Rick Krebs Creator/designer of Gangbusters Contributor to AD&D DM's Guide-1st edition "D&D meets the Electronic Age" Dragon #26 "Non-Player Characters have Feelings, too" Dragon #29 Founder/owner: Original Gamer's Guild game store Designer of EAMON Adventures Pubisher/Editor: Phanta Carta
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Please let me know how Gangbuster works for you and your concept. ![[avatar]](http://www.criticalgamers.com/archives/pictures/DnD.5.6.06.jpg "[avatar]")
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Get this stuff down on paper - the 'archaeology' of our hobby.