The James Bond system has the potential for modernization, bringing the mechanics up to date with other current rules sets, without losing the flavor of the original game.  One of these things is making the weaknesses of a character more important to play.

There is very little incentive to play up weaknesses that a character is built with — for many players of JB:007 it’s simply a means to extract more points to construct the character with.  But character isn’t the numbers — that’s a simulation.  Character is in what the person is, what they do, how they react to things.  You know that Bond is going to do something non-survival enhancing at some point in the story because of a woman…that’s who he is.  You know Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead is going to try to treat people fairly and will not kill the living if he can avoid it…that’s who he is.

Weaknesses more than your attributes or skills, make the character.  There are some mechanics for weakness in the original game, most involving “distraction”, but here’s a good way to get the players to use their weaknesses…

Bribery.  Like most system, if the player has their character act to their weaknesses despite it causing them trouble, give them a hero point.  Example:  Jed is a bad ass.  He’s not afraid of anything, it seems…except heights.  So when the bad guy escapes up a rickety ladder to the top of the building, Jed is all fired up to go after him.  But a few rungs up the ladder, his acrophobia hits him like a hammer.  He gets a point if he looks for another way to chase the bad guy, or if he loses him, he gains two, perhaps.  (It also allows you to design your action sequences with a “railroading” factor — where you can make sure the situation is such that the character doesn’t catch the bad guy to early…)

Clay from The Losers has a tendency to do stupid stuff because of women.  He allows the team to be lead by the nose through Aisha’s hoops.  Why?  He likes her.  It’s just Clay.  albert Gibson in True Lies apparently blew a stakeout at some point because he was getting a blow job; once again, that’s an example of Attraction to Members of the Oppose Sex getting the better of you.  In the first case, the weakness drives the adventure and could lead to multiple instances of gaining a hero point.  Gibson’s screw up might have set the team back badly — that might be worth one or two points, depending on the impact.

Using hero point to play up weaknesses will make you Bond campaign much more rich and fun.

But that’s just my opinion…