The Black Campbell

Here’s a stills gallery.

After a week off for the holidays, a couple of simmering plot thread finally came together tonight. Between the president having been sick and uninvolved, the interfleet gang war that left the Salamir Cartel in charge of the black market, the loss of important characters on Kobol (and the finding of Lord of Kobol — Athena — inhabiting the daughter of the heretofore unknown head of the cartel), the putting Boomer and another turncoat Cylon back in uniform, and the discovery that the fleet has been working with a faction of the humanoid Cylons running from the centurions…one of the player’s black marketeers staged a violent coup d’etat, while a simultaneous mutiny is going on aboard Galactica.

The set up involved the shooting of a well-liked madam and matchmaker on Cloud 9 (where our government resided…seriously, politicians wouldn’t live on the nicest ship in the fleet?) The investigation starts chasing the murder suspect, who is the main fixer for the Salamir, and was eliminating a person that knew their plans. The cops are sidetracked by a corrupt officer and are not there when the action goes down in the quorum chambers.

Meanwhile, Galactica‘s mutineers — led by the popular, hyper-competent, and thoroughly destroyed by the apocalypse chief engineer — get most of the pilots off the ship in a big combat exercise, sequester the ones they are unsure of, and stage a big fire by the main antenna that requires, in the engineer’s plans, the shutting down of the main power trunks to the antenna. Galactica is suddenly deaf and dumb, and the internal comms go down, as well. The warning about losing comms caused the president to call the quorum — three of whom are coup leaders — together.

While the cops are chasing down the bad guy, he is leading thugs against the quorum security, and the gangster PC, and the two other NPCs, gun down the quorum, but not before there was some serious action hero moments by the 76 year old president, who managed to stab one of the gunmen in the eye and turn his weapon of several of the others. In the end, one coup leader was dead, several of their mooks, and another leader injured, but the other nine quorum delegates were killed.

Next week, we resolve the situation on Galactica…

So I got a hold of a Rock Island 1911A2 .22TCM today and had a chance to take it straight to the range for a break in. I only got 100 rounds of .22TCM and a box of 50 9mm through the gun, but it was enough to get some initial impressions on the weapon.

First, the look of the pistol is very nice. Unlike the usual natty RIA finish (very practical for a workaday gun), the TCM is beautiful with a nice black to the receiver, the underside and the flat top of the slide. The sides are polished and look a lot like the Kimber Eclipse, giving it a nice black on silvery gray two-tone. The fit and finish are premium quality — easily on par with much more expensive guns. It is a wide-frame, double-stack 1911. More on that in a moment. There are adjustable sights that work well, but a white or red dot on the front sight would have been a plus.

The grips. I know a lot of people like the wrap-around finger groove thing — I think it sucks. And blows. At the same time. Some complain about the look, but the fit was fine — they just make the gun a bit too wide for me, and the finger groove crap always messes with my natural hold on a 1911. There are almost no options for the pistol because the grip screws are just a smidge different from the Para-Ordinance A2. You can use the P-14 grips, but you have to dremel a bit on the screw holes, apparently. There are VZ Grips for the pistol, but they are available only in black through Armscor. I consider this a bit of a “lose” for the gun, but not enough to naysay buying one.

The upside to the double stack 1911: 17 rounds of 9mm or 18 rounds of .22TCM. The pistol is heavy — it’s not a great choice for concealed carry, but it isn’t a bad choice for backpacking, open carry, or the like. The magazines fit well, and mine functioned flawlessly. Another downside — it doesn’t seem to fit in a standard 1911 holster, or at least not the SERPA I have. Weight is about 41 oz., so about a quarter again heavier than, say, the Kimber Pro Carry II’s 35ish oz.

Function: Oh, but this is a great gun. For the $600 or so you’ll shell out for the TCM, you get one of the single best triggers I’ve used on a 1911, which means better than just about anything not costing you $2000+ (and even on par with some of those.) It broke at 3.5 lbs. nice a crisply with no creep at all. Reset is quick and loud enough that if you watch some video, you will hear it. The trigger and hammer are skeletonized, and there is a nice beavertall grip safety. The weapon ran all of the 150 through it with no malfunctions, save for me accidentally putting the safety on while shooting. (Lefty…)

Accuracy: 2 inches at 15 yards, free hand, taking my time in 9mm and .22. Better at 10 yards. The groups were amazing, but I consistently shot a bit low due to the finger groove grips. (Seriously…hate these things.) I suspect I can do better in another trip or two.

Ammunition: Armscor’s the only people doing .22TCM, just like FN was humping their customers on 5.7x28mm for the longest time. Seriously, Armscor, here’s your winning friggin’ proposition — do an AR in .22TCM. Yesterday. Why, you ask? Because you get the same performance as the 5.7mm out of a standard-size grip handgun. The rounds I shot were chronographed at 2000-2060fps by one of the other shooters who frequents the range. With a 40 gr. bullet, that’s about 350 ft lbs of energy, or the low end of 9mm. With almost zero recoil — the 1911A2 weighs enough you get less recoil than the FiveSeven, and more accuracy because the weight actually make your hand move less and the trigger is lightyears better than the FN’s. (And I love the FiveSeven — carried one for a decade.)

Even better, if you can’t find .22TCM (as low as $17/box online, usually $22-25 in town), you can swap the barrel and recoil spring with ease in about a minute, and shoot 9mm. I did not try hollowpoints this time out, just crappy Federal 115 gr. white box stuff. No issues. It shot well with little recoil. Armscor — make some kind of AR or carbine that uses the pistol mags and a swappable barrel and you have a winner. Just do it. Yesterday!

The two big complaints I have are the obvious grip screw, hard to find alternate grips thing, and the lack of an indicator dot on the front sight. Otherwise, this is a better functioning 1911 than the two Rock Island .45s my ex-wife had, better than the CDP 9mm and the Stainless Pro Carry II from Kimber, better than the Springfield Armory 1911s I’ve shot (with the exception of a friend’s Yost-Bnitz modified Springfield.) It’s got a superb stock trigger, good sights that a bit of paint on the front post would make great, CZ levels of ammunition in the magazine, and comparable accuracy to my CZ-85 (which is excellent.) Fit, finish, and frills are all high quality for budget 1911 prices. And you can shoot two different calibers.

So is it worth it? Not just yes, but hell yes.

Here’s a website with a nice set of utilities for the Firefly RPG. There’s a probability generator for the dice pools, starship complications charts, travel time calculator, an interactive map that’s a bit twitchy, and a name generator.

Have at!

I’ve been toying with an idea for a late ’40s/early ’50s spy game of late, and have been trying to decide if i want to do the heavy lifting to write up cars, etc. for the James Bond: 007 RPG, or try something with a different flavor, like Ubiquity (Hollow Earth Expedition). I opened up the Leverage RPG — Cortex Plus — and had a shufty around the rules.

At their heart, con/thief settings are very comparable to the espionage genre. There are certain archetypes that are used that cross the two genres — the thief, the “face” or grifter, the assassin or thug. The hacker is present in the new spy-fi, but prior to the 1980s, it’s more likely they would be some sort of tech.

The main thing to do to turn Leverage into a spy-fi game is sort the “roles.” In the game, these are Grifter, Hacker, Hitter, Mastermind, and Thief. But these don’t quite match a classical espionage setting, so here are the ones I propose:

ANALYST: This is sort of the hacker of the pre-computer age. They know how to look up and find information, analyze it, and aid the team with the information.

HITTER: Pretty much the same as Leverage, this is the two-fisted man of action or the cold shooter.

RECRUITER: This is the “face” — part grifter, part diplomat, part “mastermind” from the game. They known how to manage assets, bureaucracies, and how to get people to do what they want.

TECH: This is the gadgeteer or the “McGuiver” trope — the guy that knows how to build/destroy things with Science!

THIEF: the classic second-story man (or woman).

WHEELMAN: This is another classic trope from spy-fi — the guy that can drive like the devil (The Transporter), the race car driver turned operative, the “guy who can drive/fly anything.”

To reflect the wider skill set usually given superspies in this genre, you might want to account for the extra role by having characters take the usual primary role at a d10, secondary at d8, but increase the tertiary from one to two d6s, with the rest being d4. A more realistic campaign might stick to the d10/d8/d6’everything else d4 of Leverage. 

One of the reasons I’ve been considering Leverage is to increase the speed of play — combat is resolved like any other action, instead of a series of action rounds. The other is laziness — I can run a game in the system without having to stat out the Ferarri barchetta the character happens across, or figure out the specs on a particular airplane. The issue I could see is you lose that “brand name” quality that the Bond movies brought with them and James Bond: 007 captured so well — the specific gin, the Aston Martin, the Walther, the Beechcraft airplane, the Brioni suits and Omega watches, etc.

I’m supposed to be trading my .45 1911 for one of these this weekend, so the specs might change once I’ve had a chance to shoot it.

ROCK ISLAND .22TCM 1911 Fullsize

There are currently a few versions of the 1911 Fullsize for .22TCM, and a commander-sized “Midsize”, but they are exclusively manufactured by Armscor (as is the ammunition.) The idea is similar to that of the 5.7x28mm cartridge — a light, fast bullet that minimizes recoil, increases accuracy and armor penetration, and give a large magazine capacity. The .22TCM uses a 40 grain bullet moving at between 1900-2100fps with a muzzle energy between 312-375 ft lbs. (I chrono’ed the stuff I shot at 2050 average.)

The platform is a double stack (although there is a single stack available) 1911-style pistol. The quality of manufacture is very high, although the standard grips are awful (at least the ones with the finger groove, but some folks like those), and has an excellent trigger, which aids in the accuracy of the gun. The .22TCM and 9mm barrels can be swapped quickly, and gives the shooter the ability to use different ammo; the magazine used is the same 18-round double stack. There are reported issues with the last round of the magazine “jamming” because the slide stop engages early, but I had none of that in my original magazine. The new one I bought, however, did, and the culprit is the follower is not shaved appropriately. Ammunition availability for .22TCM can be problematic, but it’s plentiful online.

The handgun does not fit standard fitted 1911 holsters like the SERPA, etc.

PM: +1   S/R: 3   AMMO: 18 (17 in 9mm)   DC: F (G in 9mm)   CLOS: 0-7   LONG: 12-20   CON: +1   JAM: 99   DRAW: 0   RL: 1   COST: $700

GM Information: The .22TCM ammunition will reduce personal armor ratings by a DC step, but the DC against inanimate objects (cars, etc.) is reduced one. The barrels can be swapped in about a minute. The 9mm barrel does not give the armor bonus, nor does it lose DC against inanimate objects.