The Black Campbell

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.

I’ve started working on tweaking the James Bond: 007 rules set, starting with trying to make fields of experience and weaknesses more interesting mechanically (search the site, there’s a couple of posts but it’s Sunday morning and I’m to lazy to link to it this moment) and now turning my attention toward the combat system.

One of the more interesting and fun mechanics (but also a hard one for new gamers to grasp) is bidding on initiative in chases.  It allows the players to craft more intense and dangerous chase sequences for their (and your) entertainment. I propose that bidding be streamlined (we’ve had bidding wars go from Ease Factor 8 all the way down to EF1/2…it gets a bit slow.)  Here’s the idea:  the GM sets a base bid for the NPCs, then the players respond (if there are multiple vehicles involved they may either agree to bid the same, or each bid themselves.  The NPCs get a chance to stay on their original bid or try to best the players.  The players get one last chance to underbid the NPCs.

Example:  James and John are on motorcycles, trying to catch the villain in his Jaguar XK8.  The villain has a fast car with good acceleration and decent cornering (PM: +1)  He bids a 6 (with the PM he’ll test against EF7…almost certain make the test successfully.)  James and John are on a Triumph Speed Triple and Yamaha R6 respectively — both get PM: +2 for the test — and John has a better skill in Driving (but has terrible luck rolling on tests like these.)  James bids an EF4 — he’s gunning the Speed Triple for all she’s worth and dodging traffic to get in close.  John decides to redline the R6 and wheelies the Yamaha through the traffic with an EF3.  James doesn’t really want to go that low on a two-wheeled vehicle.  The villain counters with an EF2 — he’s weaving through traffic and even goes into oncoming lanes, taking a hard left at the first light they approach.  Bikes…they don’t turn so well at high speed…

John really wants this guy — he punches it and bids EF1, but James decides to back off and let the villain go first.  John rolls his Driving with a PC18 at EF3 (thanks to the R6’s PM) and needs a 54.  He rolls a 67 — he’s going to fail.  He tests his safety roll since he failed (and would have since he was under the bike’s REDline.)  He needs a 54 and true to form rolls 78.  He weaves through traffic, guns the bike into a wheelie — and looks great! — then had to break hard for the turn as he gets alongside the Jaguar…and locks the breaks.  The R6 throws him for a medium wound to him and bike!

The Jaguar takes the turn, the bad guy gets an acceptable success and slews the car around the turn in a screech of tires and plume of smoke as he burns rubber.  James needs a total of EF6 to stay with him.  His patience, backing off a bit, letting the others get stupid, allows him to hook the turn on the Speed Triple at EF8 on his Driving of 15 (90 to succeed) and gets a 32 — a good result!  He’s closed the distance from long to close….

Now let’s extend this bidding system to initiative…there’s an old saying in the gun community: Better to be accurate than fast.  In this case, the bidding is applied to your combat tests and allows us to ditch the pesky d6 that has always been (to my eye) out of character with the percentile nature of the system.

In this case, the villain decided to do the classic jump out from behind cover, snap off a few shots and jump back to cover.  The GM decides this is an EF5 bid for the villain.  He has a Speed of 2 — if he wins, it’s an EF7 to try and hit the boys — James and John — before applying dodging mods, etc.

James is going to do the knee slide behind the nearest cover — say, a 55 gallon drum (yeah, we’re in an abandoned warehouse for the denouement) — and bids EF4 (with his Speed, it’s EF6 if he succeeds).  John on the other hand is going to haul ass into the fray, using a convenient set of pallets to leap into the air, double-guns blazing, screaming “aaah!”  That’s an EF3 John decides.  The villain isn’t going for it.

John goes first and with his Fire Combat PC18 rolls a 68 and 44 on his pair of 1911 .45s.  One shot bangs off of the big industrial-looking circuit breaker box the baddie is hiding behind, the other clips him in the slightly exposed shoulder.  James goes next — sliding across the floor to cover and rolls 90 and 81 on his Fire Combat PC17:  with the cover knocking his EF to 4, he misses.  It looked good, but was wholly ineffective.

The bad guy goes for it, jumping out from cover and snapping a few shots at the most obvious target — John sailing through the air and screaming “aaaah!”  He has an EF7 before we apply dodging mods for John — EF5.  He has a PC14 for his Fire Combat:  75 and 51.  The first shot goes high and blows out a window on the second floor of the abandoned warehouse/steel mill/whereverthehell we’re shooting this movie and the second clips John with an acceptable success.  On the DC: F of the baddie’s Glock 17, that’s a light wound.  After the bike accident earlier in the session, John’s character is getting seriously tashed up…

This is a preliminary version of the combat bidding I’ve been working on, but a more mature version of it might be coming to a blog — or possibly a game book — near you.