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| Crime Fighter box cover art: a policeman starts checking things, another one radioes HQ... |
Task Force Games (TFG) was mainly known as the publisher of the popular Star Fleet Battles boardgame (based on the Original Star Trek TV series), now published by the Amarillo Design Bureau, and its line of 'pocket games' where Star Fleet Battles first appeared (with great success). TFG however had various lines of RPGs and RPG sourcebooks too: Heroes of Olympus (1981 and 1983), Delta Force (1986), Prime Directive (the Star Fleet Battles RPG, 1993), the 'universal sourcebook'Central Casting series, the Lejentia fantasy game series and the Autoventures auto combat series. And of course there was Crime Fighter (1988), the 'crime fighting' (TV style) role playing game. They were not terribly successful, albeit the Central Casting series seems to have a following among collectors.
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| Crime Fighter box back, showing a criminal with a pretty girl hostage aiming the gun to... you! |
Crime Fighter is an "action packed role playing system with all the excitement and drama of the TV cop shows", a major genre in US television (and many countries of the world, Italy of course included) in the '80s with shows such as the highway patrol CHIPs, the 'classy'Miami Vice, the William Shatner starring T.J.Hooker and even the sci fi (and very short lived) Automan (a hit in the UK). The game had been designed by the late and great Aaron Allston, a very respected game designer with the Classic Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia book and Champions fifth edition among his most important credits along being assistant editor and then editor of The Space Gamer magazine.
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| Crime Fighter rulebook: it has no covers |
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| The page Task Force Games 'inadvertently omitted' from the rulebook |
Opening the box set, the game contains a 64 pages rulebook with no covers, a Player Reference Card in light cardboard, 12 geomorphic map boards (six are buildings, six are road sections), 104 counters and three six sided dice. It's possible that using counters and geomorphs strained the budget, forcing the publisher not to use a 'true' cover for the rulebook which has various other problems with missing parts... The rulebook is divided in six Sections (chapters) and the various paragraphs are numbered (for example "2.11.6 Sharp Turn") in a style similar to the boardgames by TFG (its main line of business): character creation, movement, combat, sourcebook (police and criminal guide), running campaigns and (two) scenarios. The text is dense but (of course) well written, graphics are very basic but serviceable, artwork is very scarce but of good quality. Amazingly there str no index, copyrights or credits - the publisher used a loose sheet for all of this data.
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| Crime Fighter Player Reference Card |
The Player Reference Chart contains all the tables needed for movement and combat. Usually, they are reprints from the pages of the rulebook proper but not this time: they exist only on this chart. It seems really unlikely Task Force Games 'inadvertently omitted' such tables from the rulebook proper: the most likley explanation is a "64 pages and not one more" publisher decree.
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| A sample of the building geomorphs |
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| A sample of the (very Car Warsesque) road geomorphs |
The geomorphs are of course to be used with the counters: six show road sections and six show buildings and a park. The street geomorphs seem to have more than a passing resemblance to Car Wars road sections and this is not surprising considering that Aaron Allston worked at Steve Jackson Games during Car Wars' best days and he was the designer of the Autoventures line for TFG.
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| Crime Fighter counters with a sheet for individuals and another one for vehicles and crowds (eBay photo) |
The counters for individuals are just silhouettes, the ones for vehiclesshow them on the side and not from above (like Car Wars does). Quality looks average.
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| Crime Fighter character sheet |
A Crime Fighter character is described by six Statistics (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Willpower and Charisma) with a basic value of zero (meaning average) but players get 12 points to distribute among the Statistics with no limits except that no Statistic may be more than +6, "the limit of human ability". To round up the character there are 40 Skills linked to the various Statistics, from Acting (Charisma) to Weapons (Dexterity): no Law skill - quite an astounding oversight in a police RPG. There are four Professions listed in the rulebook (Police Officer, Police Detective, Private Detective and Military or Ex Military - perhaps to be used when things get rough and overwhelming force is needed?) but a creative GM could easily design others (especially criminal ones). Skills are used rolling 3D6 plus (or minus) any modifiers from Statistics and (eventually) the ones the GM sees fit to impose on the player, with an option for a disastrous failure (rolling tre 1s) or an outstanding success (rolling three 6s). Movement is regulated by using counters and geomorphs and it has, especially for vehicle movement, overtones of a boardgame (guess what one?). Combat is of course very detailed (12 pages) and deadly. The Sourcebook section explains police procedure, organization, codes, slang, various types of crimes, sentencing, criminals and criminal activity and a complete police precinct with NPCs. Crime Fighter has not a city of its own, so players are free to choose any they would like as a setting - their own if they lived in a metropolis or the ever popular (in TV series at least) New York and Los Angeles. The book is completed by some advice on police campaigns (including suggestions on adapting a favourite TV show) and a couple of scenarios: "New shine on an old badge" (an ex cop seeks revenge against crime after his wife is mugged and stabbed) and "Edge of the knife" (a knife loving assassin is on the loose). They are very brief (10 pages total) but good.
