Commentary On Mark Hunt's Gangbuster's Rpg Adventures Welcome To Rock Junction & The Second Level Encounters "The Time A Tree Saved Me" Adventure

Mark Hunt is a veteran of the role playing design hobby and has been writing, creating, and spicing up the table top for a very long time. He's been setting the Gangbusters Rpg community on its ear with some incredible reveals for upcoming products. The man knows his material and he's been creating supporting adventures and source books for months now. This week coming he's releasing two brand new pulptastic titles for Gangbusters under the Gangbusters Weird Tales & Paranormal Investigations imprint of his. He gave me a sneak peak of them and let's dive right in. I previously reviewed  GBM-1 Joe's Diner From Mark Hunt

You Can Find More Of Mark Hunt's Gangbuster Titles HERE

First up is Welcome To Rock Junction a brand new thirteen page city location for Gangbusters featuring a whole new city and urban location for a Dungeon Master to play with in the hard boiled Twenties. You get a bit of everything you might need from central locations, NPC's, and a whole lot more. This title really straddles the line between pulp and Noir giving the DM a packed series of locations that hit the high spots of the adventure points while giving the DM more then enough encounter room to create a DYI driven campaign. This thing is packed with gams,guns, and gats driven by Twenties rip roaring period artwork. If your familiar with any of Mark Hunt's White Star or Dungeon Crawl Classics work then you know exactly what I'm talking about. The author knows how to push buttons with his covers and materials.

Everything from start to finish is here for a DM to drop "Welcome to Rock Junction"  right into the back end of their Gangbusters campaign and go! This is a great campaign for any Gangbusters or OSR contemporary gamer to use. I would remiss if I didn't mention the NPC cards that are also out for the revitalization of the Gangbusters title! These are some really nasty NPC's for your PC's to run into! Seriously bad eggs and some really desperately dangerous thugs are in the mix of a game.

Second Level Encounters "The Time A Tree Saved Me" is a go to module that puts PC's into the action fast! Seriously by the second page of the adventure your guys and gals are going to be deep into the middle of the action and investigations of the adventure's plot line. According to the intro; "This is a new city for characters to explore for GANGBUSTERS™ RPG rules. This is specially designed for the game judge who needs to get back up to speed with the system in a fresh new city.

Gangbusters is a game that takes place in the Roaring 20’s and early 1930’s, essentially the Prohibition Era, of America. The focus of the game is on the Prohibition and the police/law enforcement struggle to control the streets and the halls of power. The player characters can take the roles of law enforcement, criminals, and other types of roles"

So this adventure places the PC's in the cross hairs of local gangsters, molls, and detectives with them having to walk the razor's edge between the factions and adventure opportunities. This is a well done effort effort that brings the Gangbusters game into the modern era with retro style play with a contemporary vibe that remains true to the essence of the original game. Its well written with some solid NPC's and room for expansion in at least two directions. This adventure can be fixed into the tails of the GBE2 Mans Best Friend

This is a nice effort at reviving the Gangbusters rpg title and there's a ton of potential with these titles. Mark has created quite a buzz and there's a ton of support including a very active G+ community. There are PC's sheets that can be downloaded and worked with to create your own hard boiled campaigns. These titles could also be used for other gaming systems such as Call of Cthulhu and Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes. I think that these titles can be used for a wide variety of contemporary games. But these titles are also perfect for working into a quick pick up game of Gangbusters. 


On the whole I think that these titles are evidence of a one man third wave OSR for one of the most under appreciated TSR titles out there! I can't wait till we see more titles from the pen of Mark Hunt! Some amazing things are in the works from Mark's one man Gangbuster OSR!