I’ve launched myself into a project to distract me, when needed, from the dissertation work.  That project is a revision of some of the rules from the old James Bond: 007 RPG from the 1980s.  The project has been taking on a greater life, however, as I find myself scrapping some of the old rules, rewriting others, and generally turning the venerable old standby for my espionage or modern games and turning into a new game system.

Some of the changes include new rules to emulate the change in action movies — specifically adding martial arts specializations for the hand-to-hand combat, “spray and pray” style gun fu for the fire combat, and a new initiative system that matches the bidding of the chase rules — making the action sequences consistent and ridding us of the d6 that always felt pasted on to the d100 of JB:007.   The effects of your Speed rating are being reworked, as well, to fit the modern action movie style.

Fields of Experience are being reworked to have mechanical impact in gameplay, interacting with the skills — in the original system, they were an ad-on, essentially skills that players didn’t want to spend character points on.  FOE will be more of a specialization that can impact one or more skills.

Skills:  First Aid will become a skill you buy.  Connoisseur will become a Field of Experience, as will Photography.  Skill ratings, and attribute ratings are being tweaked, as well.

Weaknesses had little impact on the character that I saw in game play with the old system.  There are now actual mechanical effects from weaknesses on the ease of tests, etc.

Hero Points — originally, the game had you earn HP for an excellent success, now you will gain HP for playing your strengths and weaknesses, for ideas and actions that help the plot along, as well as excellent results.  This will allow the character more opportunities for Hero Points.

Gear will get a face lift.  Cars are a lot more performance oriented, so the stat will be reworked to match the realities of modern vehicles.  Weapons will see changes to more accurately reflect the real world.

The goal is a modernized system that still keeps all the things that made JB:007 great, while making it a bit more robust and also backward compatible.