The Black Campbell

This was a surprise. I haven’t had a chance to fire this, but a friend has and gave me the run down on the pistol compared to the venerable FN FiveSeven.

RUGER-57™ 5.7x28mm Pistol

Introduced in 2020, Ruger stepped in to save the 5.7x28mm cartridge, which has been limping along since the early 1990s. The caliber has a small but loyal following, but outside of a few custom offerings for rifles, the round was relegated to the overly expensive FN FiveSeven and the accompanying P90 personal defense weapon and its civilian carbine versions. Adding to the caliber’s troubles was an infamy for being a “cop killing” because of its ability to penetrate soft armor decades ago. The manufacturers of the 5.7mm cut the power of the round, dropping its speed from a blistering 2100fps from the pistol to a mundane 1600fps, placing it on par with .22 magnum. coupled with the expense of the round, this limited the popularity of the 5.7mm.

Ruger has stepped in with a similar pistol to the FiveSeven — a hammer-fired semi-automatic that has a 20 round (metal, not polymer like the FN), and with a thinner, more ergonomic grip. Unlike the FN, the safety is placed at the back of the receiver, like many handguns and is ambidextrous. The slide has a cut in the front, top-side to reduce weight and aid in function. This and the lower bore axis of the Ruger mean faster follow up shot and even less felt recoil than the already very easy shooting FN FiveSeven.

Limited commercial reloaders can reproduce the velocities that made 5.7mm a decent self-defense pistol, and Ruger is pushing manufacturers to offer more 5.7mm offerings.

PM: +2   S/R: 3   AMMO: E   CLOS: 0-8   LONG: 15-22   CON: +1   JAM: 99+   DR: 0   RL: 1   COST: $800

GM Information: Most commercial rounds for the 5.7mm have a DC: D and reduce armor effects by one. For military and specialty loads, the round halves armor ratings. Both commercial and military rounds hav a -1WL to inanimate objects.

(I carried a FN FiveSeven for years and loved it. The weight was almost non-existent, like carrying an airsoft gun. Even with an anemic round, 20 in the mag was enough to do the trick. I also had a P-90, which was easily my favorite “long” gun. But the wimping out of the round’s speed and power, and the expense of the bullets led to me abandoning it for the Walther PPQ. I’m hoping to get my grubby wee paws on this thing soon to try it out. SCR)

Quick note for the GMs out there: this is a toy you might not want your players to get their hands on unless absolutely necessary. They’re new, rare, still in testing, and expensive.

XM-25 25mm Defilade Target Engagement System (“Punisher”)

The XM-25 is a airburst grenade launcher that uses various targeting methods, including a thermal sight, and a laser aiming designator to program the internal ballistic computer onboard the round, allowing the user to program the range at which the grenade should detonate. This allows the round to be fired over an obstruction and explode above the target. They can also breach a thin barrier (like a window or door) and explode on the other side.

The 25mm × 40 low velocity grenades called high-explosive airbursting (HEAB) rounds, armour piercing explosive rounds, flechettes or canisters of lethal tiny darts for close-quarters combat, door breaching loads, anti-personnel rounds, and probably the weapon’s most lethal type of ammo: thermobaric (or fuel-air bombs [FAE]) grenades.

Here’s the US DoD description of the FAE effects: The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique–and unpleasant…. What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs…. If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as most chemical agents.

A GM can probably understand why you don’t want characters wandering about with the latter. Considering the cost of the FAE round is about $1000/shell, you have a good reason for why they wouldn’t be issued one under anything but the most extreme conditions.

PM: 0   S/R: 1   AMMO: 4   DC: see below   CLOS: 0-30   LONG: 100-210   CON: n/a   JAM: 95+   RL: 2   COST: $30,000

GM Information: The XM-25 must be aimed to use the programmable function of the grenades. The user gets the usual +3 EF modifier, but can ignore cover modifiers against them. The damage of the grenades is DC: J for the HEAB and HEAP rounds (the armor piercing rounds half the armor of a vehicle and ignore personal armor benefits.) The canister rounds do DC: I and ignore half the personal armor benefits. Door breaching rounds are area effect, but the damage if DC: H and the barrier provides double the usual damage protection, but is itself destroyed.

The FAE grenade does DC: L with a blast radius of 25′ for damage falloff. Fire damage at DC: F follows for 6 rounds, unless the fire can be extinguished. The damage is applied to any structure that the person might be in — like a small house, say. They’re incredibly destructive.

This is loosely based on the mission the group played last week. It’s for a team of four to six spy/military type characters.

Moving on intelligence gathered at Camp Delta from a Russian arms dealer, the team is being put in play to stop the sale of weapons from the bratva (Russian mob) and al-Shahab in Somalia. the method of delivery is keen: the freighter Kapitan Kurila has been “hijacked” by Somali pirates and brought into port in Mogadishu. Their mission is two fold: 1) destroy the shipping container (standard 20x8x8′) with serial number BF20389 and the armaments (including explosives, ammunition, etc.), and 2) capture/kill the arms dealer’s number two guy who is moving into the lead position, Igor Borodin. Borodin is with the deal to do a face-to-face with the al-Shahab #2 Sheik abu Yassou Rouma. Abu Yassou, if discovered, is eminently expendable.

Satellite imagery puts the freighter at the wharf inbound of the southern waterbreak. There’s easy ingress from the sea, but a 50 yard area to cross that will most likely have Somali terrorists hanging around waiting to offload and take possession of the weapons. They can come in from the sea, as well and board on the starboard side, away from the wharf. (Use Google maps — they have a good shot of the area I’m talking about.)

The ship itself is a 300′ Feeder-style freighter with the cargo holds modified to take standard containers, two arranged side to side, with up to four or five stacked on top of each other. There will be a small area to maneuver around the containers to check numbers, gain entrance, etc. The gunwhales of the ship are lower than the main deck, allowing for relatively easy access (EF5 Mountaineering.) There are three holds, searching each will take about 3 minutes, during which time they should have to be careful of the crew of 14 and about 4 of Somalis. An EF6 Demolitions is needed to destroy the container, delivering a DC L to the container, and a DC H to the boat.

The team members looking for Borodin will find him on the second deck of the superstructure in the officer’s wardroom with Abu Yassou, two former-Spetnaz-types, and there is a Somali lookout in the corridor. Six of the crew are in the first level wardroom watching Russian porn and with a good Charisma EF4 can be subdued. There is a man working the ship’s crane, there are three men aiding in moving the containers, and two guards roving. The Somali guards are on the cargo deck with the loading crew. There’s about a dozen ashore waiting for delivery with a couple of pickups they are going to offload into. The sheiks old Mercedes-Benz C class is there, as well.

Any alert and they’ll have the place swarming with the Somalis from the wharf. Ten minutes after a firefight starts, they’ll have more bad guys than they can handle.

They will extract by boat to a waiting submarine.

Have fun…

This is a repost from the early days of the blog, when we had a much smaller readership. I’m looking for comments from the James Bond RPG fans regarding them, especially if you try them out. — Scott

I was reading through an article on Jerry Miculek today — he’s a shooter for Smith & Wesson in the USPDA competition.  The guy is a freak of nature, capable of accurately putting 5 rounds downrange in .45 of a second!  That got me thinking about my own effective rate of fire with a handgun, rifle, etc…even with my 10mm, I can drop with some accuracy rounds at a rate of 1.5/second.  About a round a second with a 9mm or the 5.7mm.

The rate of fire in the James Bond: 007 RPG has always seemed a bit slow to me.  Granted, that’s because the firefights in the old movies usually consisted of the actor taking aim and firing a round, maybe two, in a cautious and considered manner.  But since the likes of Martin Riggs and John McClane came on the scene, the protagonists are a bit more quick n the trigger — in line with what real firefights are like.  (Most police in shootings are surprised by how fast things happen.)

The Action Round for the game is described as 3-5 seconds.  That two second wiggle room was designed to give the GM some leeway in what to allow the characters to do, but it is a bit long for a fist- or firefight.  So I propose a hard target for the time period: 5 second, or 12 action rounds a minute.  What can you do in five seconds?

Figure most people can achieve 2-3 short actions, like shoot something, change a magazine, and maybe do some kind of shuffling movement.  The characters in the game are supposed to be trained, if not exceptional, in moments of action.  So I propose they can do up to an action an action a second.  (Just timing myself now, I was able, without moving, to dry fire three times on three different targets around the room with a handgun…in three seconds.)

Suggestion 1:  the actions a person can take in the action round are equal to their SPEED, as in the rules.  What an action entails:  movement (from shuffling (to give the opponent attempting to hit a -1EF) to running, popping up from cover and getting back down [each an action!]), changing a magazine for a weapon (with the reload time now being the number of actions the move takes; so a  tube-fed shotgun’s RL: 5 would take a character with a Speed of 2 just over 10 seconds…about right under ideal conditions), dropping an object or picking one up, taking a bead (to get the +3EF), engaging a target (so with a Speed of 2, you could engage two targets …but could not move or change mags), or do that many HTH actions (either attack or defense.)

Suggestion 2:  The maximum number of targets a character can engage with a non-automatic firearm is equal to their Speed, and they may fire a number of rounds at each target equal to their Speed or the S/R of the weapon (whichever is lower.)  If they shoot at a single target, the rounds that can use are equal to the Speedx2.  If the character can fire 5 or more rounds at a target, resolve it like burst/autofire with one roll and add +2DC to the weapon (So a Beretta 92 in the hands of a character with a speed of 3 could go Martin Riggs for 6 rounds, with the gun DC rising from F to H.)

For burst or autofire weapons, the number of rounds is the maximum number of targets that could be hit by the burst or strafing attack, minus the QR of the test (so an MP5 with a S/R of 6 could hit up to six people, but with a QR of 4, at best the character hit two targets.)  Instead of gaining negative modifiers to their Ease Factor for the number of people they are engaging  (Spray Fire rules, p.50, main book), the character gains a -1EF for each 10′ wide area.  Each extra 10′ arc also halves the maximum number of people you can hit.   So if you have to spray an area 20′ across with an M4 carbine (S/R: 2 or 10), you would gain a -2EF and could only hit up to 5 people.  Now you could mitigate this a bit by taking a number of your actions — say you have a Speed of 2 — two bursts of fire (really one long extended one) across the 20′ would be two 10′ arc attacks.

Suggestion 3: Using spray fire to do suppressive fire (keep an enemy’s head down):  You’re not really trying to hit anything, and your Ease Factor to do this is EF5.  You automatically use the maximum number of rounds you could use on a single target (for a handgun with S/R:2 and a Speed of 3, that would be 4 rounds, or an autofire weapon’s second rating [S/R: 2/6 for example].)  For each action used, you gain a +1EF for the test.  Additionally, the bad guys will keep their heads down for an extra round/extra success.

Example:  If you have a Speed of 3 and a handgun with an S/R: 2, you fire 6 rounds for suppressive fire.  The gun has a magazine with 15 rounds, so you decided to use all of your actions on suppressive fire, hoping to allow your teammate to move unseen to an advantageous position.  The total rounds fired would be 15, with a +2EF to the test.  The character gets a QR3 — the bad guys stay down not just this round, but the next.

Suggestion 4:  Hand-to-hand combat is a bit more time consuming than pumping a trigger.  You are, by necessity, moving — shuffling feet, swinging arms or kicking, grappling or otherwise engaged in multiple complex actions.  The number of actions is equal to the character Speed.  The character can use the actions for attack or defense (not in the original rules.)  Attacks are handled as they are in the original rules, but if a character chooses to, they may rather than attack, instead defend from an attack, using their HTH Combat skill in an opposed test.

Example:  Bill is in a fight with a couple of goons.  He has initiative and chooses to punch Goon 1 in the face, trying for a knockout blow, but wants to use his second action as a defense, blocking an attack from Goon 2.  He tests against Goon 1 (with a -2EF for the knockout blow) and succeeds.  Goon1 is down and Goon 2 swings a lamp at Bill.  Goon one hits him with a QR3 (Good) — Bill tests his HTH against the QR3 (that’s his Ease Factor) and succeeds.  The attack fails.

Suggestion 5:  New Speed Ratings.  No one is so slow they’ll act once every 10 seconds (Speed 0 in the original game rules.)  So here’s a more realistic Speed rating.

Speed is figured by adding DEXterity and PERception: 2-8 = Speed 1, 9-23 = Speed 2, 24-30 = Speed 3 ( An alternate idea is to expand the speed ratings: 2-6=Speed 1, 7-14=Speed 2, 15-22=Speed 3, 23-28=Speed 4, 29-30=Speed 5.) With this alternate suggestion, there’s the possibility of a character, really going super-badass.  If a GM wanted to avoid this, they might be worth it to use Draw on a firearm or melee weapon to slow the number of attacks (so a submachinegun with a DR: -2 would mean no more than 3 targets with a Speed of 5.)

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

The further we get into the 21st Century, the less need there is for fancy Q gadgets…because you can buy something better and cooler right off the shelf — which brings us to a new gadget for your James Bond: 007 campaign: the iPhone (or any smartphone, for that matter) and the SCOUT (Satellite Communications Operational User Toolkit).

Firstly, the smartphone. It is obvious how useful these things are in the field just from the number of movies and TV shows that are using them as plot elements. Having avoided the smartphone for years, I finally broke down and bought an iPad when they first came out. (Okay, not a phone…unless you drop Skype on it.) The basic features alone make them indispensable for the fictional spy: they’re a phone. They’re a map. They’re email, web access, a file storage device, a recorder, a camera…and everyone has one, so they’re not immediately suspicious.

For both iOS and Android there are easy and fast programming toolkits. Q Branch (or S&T) tweaks can give you crypto tools, R/C controls over vehicles (here’s a nice article on some of the other nasty tricks you can use a smartphone for …), etc. etc… Some hardware hacks and your phone could have IR on the camera or some other funky feature. I’ve found our characters in our Bond campaign depend on their phones more than a gun, car, or any other tool.

Add to that the SCOUT — a new device that uses your smartphone as a communications base for satellite communications, GPS, wifi hot spot, comms analysis, spectrum analyser…here’s the sales sheet for more.

From a plot standpoint, the usefulness of the smartphone was obvious in Casino Royale — bad guys, as much as good guys, live off their phones if you’re a mobile, busy henchman. They’re packed with data, even when the user is careful. There’s phone numbers, at the very least. Even if they are password locked, most people don’t realize that smartphones’ OS usually have a root password for service providers to break in and fix stuff…hacking a phone is fairly easy (especially the Androids.)