OSR Commentary On The Free Thundarr The Barbarian Sourcebook By Tim Snider For The Mutant Future Rpg & Other OSR Post Apocalytic Campaigns

 Let's pick this blog entry up from the last time we were working with Goblinoid Games here.  It's been a couple of years since Thundarr The Barbarian was popped in the old Blu ray player. But after a long game night tonight it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Thundarr The Barbarian ran from 1980 -1981 and was way ahead of it's time in many ways. Thundarr The Barbarian was also partially responsible for getting me into the Savage Afterworld blog back in 2009. 

In many respects Thundarr The Barbarian was hugely responsible for me getting into Metamorphis Alpha & the  Gamma World 1st edition rpg's respectively. The series ruled Saturday mornings for many years & according to the Mutant Future wiki ; "Thundarr the Barbarian is a Saturday morning cartoon series, created by Joe Ruby and Steve Gerber (of Howard the Duck fame), and produced by Ruby-Spears Productions (a studio made up of former members of Hanna-Barbera Productions). This is a show about a stubborn Barbarian (Thundarr), a know-it-all Sorceress (Princess Ariel), and a Wookiee-like Beast (Ookla the Mok) who roam the post-apocalyptic wasteland fighting savage mutants, and evil-wizards wherever they travel. The main characters are designed by famed comic book artist Alex Toth, and when he became unavailable, Jack Kirby (another famous comic book artist ) took over to design most of the villains and secondary characters." 
Binge rewatching the entire two seasons brings a few things to mind here. First there was a lot of weird technologies happening in the world of the Ancients. Did the Ancients actually summon the comet accidently or on purpose back in 1994? Looking through this Enworld thread about Thundarr The Barbarian as D&D setting from 2018 member Thomas Bowman brings up a solid point; 'A giant comet passed close to the Earth, more like a rogue planet to show the tidal effects in the opening sequence. My guess is, for the purposes of this campaign, the "comet" was no ordinary comet, the disasters shown were only the tip of the ice berg, the comet opened up a rift with other dimensions, and when that rift opened, some other creatures stepped through and magic was unleashed unto the world, this also had a detrimental effect on technology, and for a while this technology ceased to operate, this caused the death of billions of people, from which only a few survived, because without the technology and the transportation networks, most people starved to death, some of whom survived by cannibalism, and the descendants of those people still live today. Some people, such as Ariel's people learned to use magic. After a decade or two technology became functional again, but by that time it was too late, the damage was done, the World had reverted to savagery.' This really is the way I'd play Thundarr The Barbarian as a campaign. But the heavy lifting for a Thundarr The Barbarian campaign was already done by Sniderman of The Savage Afterworld with  THE WORLD OF THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN FOR MUTANT FUTURE. The free sourcebook is on the right hand side of the page with the Thundarr The Barbarian cover that looks like this. 

The Free Thundarr The Barbarian Sourcebook By Tim Snider goes into most of the major NPC characters, many of the monsters,artifacts, & more of Thundarr's world. For me the The Free Thundarr The Barbarian Sourcebook hits all of the major high points. But there's one villain that defines Thundarr's world. Gemini is a major villain within Thundarr and we almost get a sense that Thundarr & co have clashed with him in minor ways before his appearance 'In Secret of the Black Pearl.' Gemini next appears In Last Train to Doomsday, Thundarr encountered Janus and after Gemini was revealed to be alive. In between & after these episodes the other wizards in Thundarr's world seem to grow far more bold. And within Thundarr's world I believe that Gemini was a stablizing force on the wizard's council. After his defeat, North America's wastelands become open & ripe for conquest. So the wizards of North America go to war over the domains open up by Gemini's defeat. Why?! Because of the fact that wizards are insane, crave power, and Gemini's holdings  were up for grabs. Wizards probably control millions of slaves & these are held within wizard's kingdoms. Mutant mercenary forces are the norm with a mix of human & mutant slaves toiling away for the wizard masters. 
There were hardly any human settlements as Thundarr rode through the wastelands of North America. Gemini controlled the wizard's council & the North American wastes through a combination of fear, power, reputation, & magic. His defeat meant the break up of the kingdom of Manhat. But this only one of his holdings which is why he fell back to his Janus persona. Gemini needed time to heal, regroup, & deal from the shadows with his rival wizards. Gemini could only deal with his loyal hawkoid mutants. 
Reading between the lines that Gemini controlled at least three or four types of mutant mercenaries & I would almost think that it would also be ape gangsters around the Chicago area of the wastes. Here's where  Mark Hunt's B/X Gangbusters edition comes in very handy to create such gangs especially mixed with Apes Victorious! 

The kingdom of Manhat supported Gemini's manufacturing base then it's not hard to see that a group of wizards could theoritically completely transform the face of North America. And here's where Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg with it's domain play would come in handy. 
But no one wizard would help to heal the wounds of the world of Thundarr. Why?! Because almost everyone of them is utterly & completely insane.  Thundarr's world could easily connect with the Elsewhere but those wastes could be another potential source of monsters, mayhem, and insanity. 

Goblinoid Games Blues - Creating the Wretched Elsewhere campaignscape

So let's pick this right up from yesterday's blog entry here. So with Goblinoid Games almost completely ceasing operations, it was inevitable that we started talking about Goblinoid Games OSR titles. And about 90% of those titles are actually open game content. My mind drifts back to Apes Victorious. 



And the fact Avalidad makes reference to mutants as criminals & weird outcast citizens. And my mind keeps returning to the underdweller PC class. The underdwellers in Apes Victorious have it going on. They have high levels of dimensional gate technologies, energy weapons, and know how the Ancients technology functions. Underdwellers in the Mutant Future rpg according to Rpg Pub forum member Klibbix! appear as folllows:

UNDERDWELLER

Class: Mutant Human

Mutations: Albinism, Telepathy, Mental Phantasm

But what happens if we take the underdwellers out of their Apes Victorious & Planet of the Apes setting. And bring them over into Avalidad. They become another mutant faction in a world where mutantkind are a reality. But why are they so reviled?!  Because of the fact that many of the mutantkind running around the world of 2088 or so are artificially created. And this is also true of Mutant Future where over the years I've run a soft post apocalptyic landscape which feels more like Cyberpunk or Bio punk then anything else. 

The post apocalpytic world of my campaigns is called Elsewhere a place that exists as dimensional anomoly. Elsewhere is the Thundarr the Barbarian world that seems to be a wasteland of mankind's future but isn't. Instead Elsewhere is a nightmare fueled hellscape where mankind is sliding to extinction, mutantkind is on the rise, and this dimension crossover to future Earth. And the fact is that no one notices this. Elsewhere is actually one of the prisons of the Great Old Ones & the Outer Gods but it's also the source for many artifacts from Realms of Crawling Chaos. Elsewhere is also the home of wizards, warlocks, & sorcerers who make bargains with the Lovecraftian entities for occult power & ulitmately themselves mutate. 
And Elsewhere is also the home of Orcs, Elfs, etc. who cross over into the world to become gangsters, thieves, etc. all in an effort to carve out their place on Earth. Needless to say that for that we've used  Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition & the Advanced Companion . And these two Goblinoid Games titles are easy as pie to use with Mark Hunt's B/X Gangbusters edition to create the gangs to really screw with player's PC's. 

Now for the record Elsewhere has apekind as well but it's not clear who or what created them. They frequently appear within gangs, as criminal king pins, honest business men, etc. 

OSR Review & Commentary On Mark A.Hunt's B/X Gangbusters Rpg

 "Gangbusters B/X the Roleplaying Game is set during the Roaring Twenties and Dirty Thirties. It has all the usual trappings of the period: Prohibition, mob bosses, Tommy gun-toting thugs, speakeasies, big hats, big cars, big personalities, swanky gin joints, illicit booze and crooked people out to make a quick dime, and more, but what the game is about is rather simple. It is at its core just a good old fashion game of Cops and Robbers. This is because it is set during a time when America produced some of its most notorious and legendary figures.  John Dillinger, ‘Scarface’ Al Capone, ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, ‘Ma’ Barker, Bonnie & Clyde, Eliot Ness and the ‘Untouchables’, J. Edgar Hoover, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and a host of others.   Whether you join the in the crusade to stamp out lawlessness or join in on the crime spree that is gripping America is up to you."



Some days you've got to take a break from the norm & journey into the roaring Thirties. This is where Mark A. Hunt's B/X Gangbusters rpg takes center stage. Now in one form or another I've been a Ganbusters rpg fan for a very long time. This game takes the classic & twists it just enough to make it highly recommended for the D&D crowd & the GangBuster fan. This is another Mark A.Hunt's efforts & falls right into the neo clone category. This book takes the classic Gangbusters game & works its right into Basic Dungeons & Dragons style of both system & play. It does this with hard core old school mechanics & solid playable options. B/X Gangbusters has this in spades. 
B/X Gangbusters takes the players with a very interesting variation of the alignment system that works as motivator for adventure with both mobs & murders. You've got Law vs. Neutrality vs. Dishonesty. This connects right back into the six levels of the PC classes of  Brutish, Connected, Educated, and Street Smart.  This means that murder,mayhem, & gang land action are right around the corner. 
All of this in sixty four pages & completely OSR compatible! But its where Mark draws from that sets this game apart! B/X Gangbusters draws heavily from the well of the Pulps as well as the Mob movies,novels,etc.And this is a perfect game for an evening's 'who done it' or a Philp Marlowe style Private Detective walk through adventure one shot. 

Done correctly & B/X Gangbusters can take a party of outlaws & hooligans into running your favorite crime ridden city as a campaign setting in the Twenties in time! The author knows his stuff & I can't wait for the Expert version to come out. Wander adversaries & dangerous thugs make play very dangerous indeed! The thing that comes across to me at least looking at B/X Gangbusters  is how clean, clever, & compact it is! There's just enough here to do a solid six level campaign without the BS that we find today with so many OSR rpgs. Things have to tacked on with other games. Not B/X Gangbusters just the basics & that's it with enough attention to detail to serious make this a fun & solid game! 

Now what would I use B/X Gangbusters to run an OSR setting? Ready?! Well given all of its B/X 'bells & whistles' I go the OSR route. Grab a copy of Trey Causey's Weird Adventures & go to 'The City'! From molls to infernal mob bosses B/X Gangbusters  is perfect for a Weird Adventures campaign! Want even more Weird Adventure madness check out this index. 

Mark A. Hunt does a slap dash job with B/X Gangbusters taking it too another level of excellence & fun! This is one not to miss!