Gangbusters: TSR's Best Game You Never Played

 

“Gangbusters? What now?”

I hear some of you (younger) gamers ask.

Believe it or not, there was a time before Grand Theft Auto, before Vice City, and before the immortal line, “…here we go again.” A time when games about gangsters doing gangster things didn’t require consoles, modded skins, or five-star wanted levels.

True story.

And beyond that true story sits an incredible game.

Before all that, there was a brief—but brilliant—epoch in tabletop gaming history when TSR (yes, that TSR—the company behind Dungeons & Dragons) published a slew of games that weren’t about elves, dungeons, or beholders. One of the brightest gems in that overlooked crown was a little game called Gangbusters.

Let me tell you about it.

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The Forgotten Classic 

Released in 1982 and designed by Rick Krebs, Gangbusters is one of the finest games TSR ever produced. A crime-and-corruption sandbox set in the roaring 1920s and ’30s, it offered players a world of Prohibition, tommy guns, crooked cops, backroom deals, and political ambition.

Think The Untouchables, but on your table.
Think Boardwalk Empire—decades before it existed.

At a lean 64 pages, the rules are elegant, tight, and—frankly—better than a lot of what came out of TSR at the time. While Dungeons & Dragons (in all its forms) was soaking up the spotlight and the dollars, Gangbusters quietly delivered a complete, flavorful, and intelligently designed role-playing experience.

And then?

It vanished.

Not because it was bad. Far from it.

It vanished in the whirlwind of TSR’s own making;a company rising fast, flying too close to the sun, and eventually burning itself out in palace intrigue that would’ve made Hamlet roll his eyes. In that mad scramble to expand, monetize, and outproduce the competition, Gangbusters got lost in the shuffle.

A casualty of success.
Like a corpse in a back-alley gutter in Lakefront City.

And that’s a damn shame.

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Not Just Nostalgia

You can find deep dives elsewhere—YouTube retrospectives, blog series, forum threads, even posts from Rick Krebs himself. That’s not what this piece is about.

This is about design.

More specifically: intentional design.

Gangbusters knew exactly what it was and never flinched. It didn’t try to be all things to all people. It wasn’t built to chase trends or contort itself into whatever TSR thought would sell more boxed sets that quarter.

It was clear.
It was focused.
And it was un-apologetically about one thing: Living, thriving, or dying in a world of 1920s crime and corruption.

With decades of hindsight. After wading through countless bloated systems since, I appreciate that clarity more than ever.

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Why It Matters Now

There’s something special about a game that knows exactly what it is and leans into it, hard.

Gangbusters didn’t apologize for its tone, its scope, or its play style. It carved out a corner of the RPG landscape and said:

“Here’s your world. Bootleg or bust.”

And in an era of sprawling mega-corebooks, endless supplements, and hyper-optimized character builds, there’s a refreshing honesty in that approach. It’s one I didn’t always appreciate when I was younger.

I do now.

So if you’ve never cracked the cover on Gangbusters, maybe it’s time. You might be surprised what treasures are buried in those 64 pages.

Not everything old is outdated.

Some things were just ahead of their time.

 

The Word of Hashut, The Dawn Before the Forge - Part II

Building from Part I of the series of The Word of Hashut and how it came to be. 

Before the Word of Hashut had a name, a team, or even a whisper, the fan-made ezine world was already shifting. It wasn’t a movement yet. More the tremors before the quake. Small, uneven, sometimes chaotic, but full of potential.

The first sparks came in the mid-2000s.
Druchii Herald arrived with three issues that proved what raw motivation could achieve. Soon after, the Orc and Goblin tribes launched Waaagh! Magazine. Both projects were bold for their time. The layouts were rough, the writing inconsistent, but none of that mattered. They showed something the Warhammer scene hadn’t really seen before: fans could build real magazines if they were willing to grind.

Then came the second wave — and this one changed the landscape.

From the Under-Empire rose the Skavenblight Gazette, and with it a new standard. Here was a group swinging above their weight: better structure, cleaner presentation, and an unmistakable editorial voice. It proved that a faction-focused publication didn’t have to be “good for fans.” It could be good, period.

Other armies followed.

• Bellower appeared among the Ogres.
• Citizen’s Levy came out of the High Elf tower-cities.

Suddenly, the idea didn’t seem far-fetched: a dedicated forum could support its own magazine with lore, art, tactics, and community content.

But in all that creative noise, one faction was absent.

The Chaos Dwarfs had nothing.
No early attempt. No abandoned prototype. No rough PDF hiding in someone’s hard drive. Just silence and a scattered diaspora of players keeping the army alive out of sheer stubbornness. GW had left the Dawi Zharr behind, and most of the community wrote us off as a footnote.

That silence wasn’t going to last.

In early 2008, on the newly formed Chaos Dwarfs Online forum, I posted a message. Short. Intense. Direct. A question wrapped in impatience: why did every other faction have an ezine while we had none? Why had the most forgotten army in the game not even tried?

Looking back now, the tone is unmistakable. The urgency was already there. The drive was already there. The quiet implication — if no one else is going to do it, I will — was absolutely there. It reads like someone who had already decided what was coming next.

That post became the spark.
The forge lit.

And a faction that GW had abandoned was about to create something entirely its own.

Volunteers stepped forward. Sketches arrived. Drafts, concepts, and templates followed. Even before a single page of Issue #1 existed, momentum had started gathering around it. The other armies had shown what could be done. Now the Chaos Dwarfs would show what happened when a determined community decided to outwork the odds.

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Reflection: The Shape of the Hammer

Looking back on that 2008 post now, I can see it with a clarity I didn’t have then. I didn’t know a thing about DISC types or what “High D” and “High C” meant. I only knew how I naturally operated: fast, focused, structured, and already mapping out the end before anyone else had agreed to the beginning.

Reading that old thread today, nothing about it feels strange or exaggerated. It feels exactly like I’ve always been. Direct. Driven. Already building the framework while others were still floating ideas. It was normal then, and it’s normal now.

What I recognize in hindsight is how that style probably landed for others — especially people wired differently. The intensity, the expectation of movement, the clarity of direction. For me, it was simply stating what needed to be done. For some, that kind of certainty can feel like a lot.

But that mix of High D and High C wasn’t a flaw. It was the reason Word of Hashut existed in the first place. The drive pushed the project forward. The structure and standards gave it shape. Without one, the ezine never would have started. Without the other, it never would have reached twelve issues and become something people still mention fifteen years later.

At the time, I didn’t know any of that. I only knew the Chaos Dwarfs deserved better, and waiting for someone else to make it happen wasn’t an option. Years later, I can see the wiring behind those decisions, but it doesn’t change the conclusion.

This is simply the way I’m built.
And for that particular moment in the hobby, it was exactly what was needed.

The next part will cover the early days of the ezine and also in a fit of insanity also producing Gold and Glory. The ezine for the Dogs of War.

 Looking back? That is the right word: insane. 

Stranger Things: The Echo of a Generation

 

To say that Season Five of Stranger Things has been mixed would be an understatement. It has been that and more. I'm not wading into any of that today, but focusing more on the feel of it. Especially for a Gen Xer. You know, the generation that always seems to get overlooked.

But not this time. This time, it was about us. And yes, sorry Boomers — not everything revolves around you. The Wonder Years hearkened back to your childhoods. This recalled ours.

Regardless of which season — One through Five; it was, it felt as if a teleport without error spell was cast and bam, there we were once again. The 1980s all over again.

It’s about a place and time. A feeling, however fleeting, of our childhoods before we got overwhelmed with life. That’s not to say other generations didn’t experience childhood, rather, the one depicted here was ours.

Despite not being Gen Xers themselves, the Duffer Brothers tapped into the zeitgeist of Gen X memory and did it well. As I noted previously, I'm likely not alone in this: Stranger Things very much represented our formative years — or at least a very good approximation of them.

• The dawn of the personal computer age
• BMX bikes
• The end-stage of the Cold War
• No cell phones, no internet
• A freedom almost no generation before or since has had

Playing D&D in wood-paneled basements? Campaigns that seemingly lasted forever? The anticipation of going on adventures with your friends?

The feel.

But layered over all of this was simply not knowing how fleeting it would be. All too soon, life would change: obligations, jobs, cars, driver’s licenses… girls.
 

And D&D would recede.

A Quick Note on D&D and Generation Jones

Now, it can be argued that D&D was experienced by Generation Jones (aka the later Boomers), especially when you look at the age cohort of those who created the game. But that’s not the point.

For a certain segment of us in Gen X, it was smack dab in the middle of our adolescence.
I’m a perfect example: born right at the halfway point.
And I suspect, like a lot of us, I never gave that look back much thought — until Stranger Things came along.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see why.
As Xers, we’ve never been a generation that has really been pursued.

This Isn’t About Attention. It’s About Recognition.

So in a sense, this isn't about attention: it’s about being pleasantly surprised, maybe even shocked, that media was aimed directly at us.

Sure, call it dangling key-chains, memory berries, or whatever.
Whatever it was though? It worked.

And as I noted in a previous post, the thing that's landing the hardest?
It’s the finality of goodbye... again.
It was a return, yes; but a fleeting one.

While it’s true the show lasted for nine years, it’s only 34 episodes in total.
Some might say not enough.
Some will say it should’ve ended after Season One.

I’m not here to argue that.

What I don’t think anyone will argue is the effect. Forget the controversies or the actors themselves and simply ask:

“Can you see yourself here again, in the 1980s?”

I think if anyone is honest with themselves, the only answer is: yes.

The Double Goodbye

With the close of the series, we say goodbye to Hawkins, Eleven, and the party.
But at the same time? We say goodbye again to that piece of childhood we never expected to feel so vividly.

And that’s likely why it’s hitting so hard.

It dropped on New Year’s.
Out with the old, in with the new.

And doubly so for my daughter and I. Every holiday we watch all six movies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In our yearly re-watch, we only have Return of the King left, the most emotional of the six (I mean, Sam, c'mon!") and it hits directly in the feels.

And perhaps that’s why this one’s hitting unexpectedly hard too.

Maybe,just maybe, under our Gen X exterior is something besides nostalgic.
Something that is not so stereo-typically “us” in these moments.

Just don’t tell anyone. We won’t admit to it.

The Grey Havens

So as a door opened… and then closed again…
I'm left simply with one saying I’ve heard and used myself:

“Don’t cry that it’s over, smile that it happened.”

Sure, it’ll linger like something melancholy. But like Frodo and Gandalf saying goodbye at the Grey Havens…So it is with Stranger Things.

Until we meet again.