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James Bond 007: el juego de rol al servicio secreto de Su Majestad
ATRÉVETE A VIVIR EN EL FASCINANTE MUNDO DE JAMES BOND 007.
Usa tus habilidades de agente secreto para combatir los perversos planes de los más ambiciosos criminales.
Saborea las persecuciones y combates más trepidantes que tu imaginación pueda concebir.
Y no olvides utilizar los ingenios de la Rama Q.
Usa tus habilidades de agente secreto para combatir los perversos planes de los más ambiciosos criminales.
Saborea las persecuciones y combates más trepidantes que tu imaginación pueda concebir.
Y no olvides utilizar los ingenios de la Rama Q.
164 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1983
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10 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 3, 2017
This is hands down a turning point work in RPG design. In addition to being well laid out, visually appealing, easily accessible and fun to read, it's also an almost flawless design with one singular goal - to give you gaming sessions that feel like James Bond stories. I can (and do) quibble about the oh so 1980's overly cumbersome point system character builds that prevent you from jumping into play, but once you're in play everything clicks for the GM and 1 to 2 players to really catch the JB vibe.
If only we could get a second edition with modernized character creation. Sigh.
If only we could get a second edition with modernized character creation. Sigh.
November 18, 2015
Say what you like about Dungeons & Dragons (any edition), Champions, or other systems, the James Bond 007 RPG is among the best and smoothest ever created. Almost every roll refers to a single chart, with a system so elegant that players can sit down with zero knowledge and be up to speed within 10 minutes.
Chases and combat are more complex, and some people feel they slow down the game. My experience—and I have heard this from my players as well—is that it captures the essence of the movies and moves fairly well, but the gamesmaster has to know the system intimately to make it work well.
Possibly the greatest strength of the system is its plug-and-play extensibility. A gamesmaster who wants to add a car can do so with very little effort, and it work. Adding a handgun or a gadget is similarly simple: dream it up, fit it into what is there, and play. I create a new adventure every year, and I am always adding new vehicles (Skoda and Volkswagen cars, DeHavilland and Kamov aircraft), weapons (thermobaric pistol, Hashim RPG), and other gadgets (expandable, concealed parabolic microphone).
If the world of James Bond isn't for you, but Top Secret is just too technically bogged-down, change the agency to the CIA or any other. The framework functions just as well for any spy organization, whether you want fancy gadgets or a more John le Carré experience in the style of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Chases and combat are more complex, and some people feel they slow down the game. My experience—and I have heard this from my players as well—is that it captures the essence of the movies and moves fairly well, but the gamesmaster has to know the system intimately to make it work well.
Possibly the greatest strength of the system is its plug-and-play extensibility. A gamesmaster who wants to add a car can do so with very little effort, and it work. Adding a handgun or a gadget is similarly simple: dream it up, fit it into what is there, and play. I create a new adventure every year, and I am always adding new vehicles (Skoda and Volkswagen cars, DeHavilland and Kamov aircraft), weapons (thermobaric pistol, Hashim RPG), and other gadgets (expandable, concealed parabolic microphone).
If the world of James Bond isn't for you, but Top Secret is just too technically bogged-down, change the agency to the CIA or any other. The framework functions just as well for any spy organization, whether you want fancy gadgets or a more John le Carré experience in the style of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
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October 30, 2022I recently lucked into a lot of the original James Bond RPG from the 1980s, which is especially lucky since there are no _legal_ pdfs of this, due to IP licensing issues. By “lucked into,” I mean I bid on a lot way below market value and no one beat me, so now I have to find shelving for this, or pass it on.
And honestly, I’m not sure: I like Bond properties OK, but I never would imagine running a game here — and yet, I find this 1983 game to be quite modern and interesting in some ways.
Not like completely modern: the game involves a success chart that goes up to 300, which you figure out your target number on by multiplying your Primary Chance — which is related to your Skill level — by the Ease Factor of the situation, and oh my god, is this really the best way to do things? Honestly, I rolled a few times to get the hang of it, and it’s actually not that complicated, while also being significantly more complex than, say, “roll a die and add your modifier to it, try to hit a target number” style mechanisms.
Also different weapons have damage ratings, and I’ll be honest: I didn’t run a sample combat just to see how that would work.
Also there’s this thing during character creation where you have to spend points for your height and weight and appearance that feels like a real cousin to early D&D stuff. (There is a fun thing here where you want your character to look more average so that you can blend in with a crowd, but to be more attractive so you can persuade and influence people, a la Bond.)
Also, I don’t know that this is an old thing, but it’s a weird thing: characters are defined by stats and skills (not classes), which makes sense for an espionage game, but three skills are set off and treated different: connoisseur, first aid, and photography are all lumped under the category of “Abilities” and I don’t really understand why. I guess because they have different rules for gaining skill levels, but it feels like they should just be called skills and treated as exceptions rather than literally creating another category for them.
OK, so what seems pretty modern or what did I like so much?
First, getting the target number and checking on a chart is a little awkward, but it also lets the outcome involve “degree of success” rather than just “success/fail”, which feels genre appropriate: there’s lots of time when Bond, say, does something successfully, but say not in the right time frame (someone interrupts him before he grabs all the data from the safe), so he only gets some of the info.
Second, hero points: it’s nice to see a game in the 80s talk about how your characters are heroes and how they can spend this meta-currency to keep the pacing of the game going (by adjusting rolls, etc.).
Third, I’m not sure this is modern, per se, but I really enjoyed the sample of play because they just clipped out a scene from one of the novels and then pretended that it was the narrative of a game, and said what sort of mechanics were going on underneath.
Fourth, only a few years after D&D, this game is already positioning itself as a tool with which you can tell a story with your friends. The GM is not the adversary, and if the PCs fail to go to the office where the villain keeps his plans, well maybe he keeps his plans in the home that they’ve decided to raid instead. This is a game for adjusting plot to fit behavior rather than constraining behavior to fit plot. And this goes both ways, as the book notes: if your characters are going to be captured, well, that’s a fate worse than death for players, but well within the bounds of the genre; and if you lose, well, take the L and move on.
Fifth, I like that they have special chapters for chase rules, gambling (which includes rules on poker, chemin de fer, baccarat, etc., as well as a little overview of gambling sites around the world), and interacting with NPCs (which includes the note that I’m real thankful for: torture is what the bad guys do).
Sixth — and that’s quite a lot of things to like about a book published in ’83 — I like the random NPC tables, which seem real smart for this genre.
Seventh, the book includes a little, simple adventure, that you can play as a Choose Your Own Adventure to get used to the rules. I tried it, it was very simple story-wise, and at some point I hit my limit (not gonna run any combat), but it was a nice addition.
So there’s some things that seem out of place, but a lot going for the game mechanically. The only place that this core book kind of falls down a bit for me is in the setting. For one thing, the art is all drawn illustrations, but the subject matter is all from the movies so that you can recognize, say, the car jumping across the river scene from The Man with the Golden Gun. There isn’t anything exciting and new art-wise here.
For another thing, I have no idea what the default year this game takes place in. There’s a description of MI6 and the world (12 pages of world-class cities, though almost 2 of those pages involve time zones and travel time); and a description of a new villainous organization (because SPECTRE was tied up in some legal wrangling, I think).
All of which sort of contributes to this idea I have that you can use the James Bond RPG to simulate the James Bond movies you’ve seen. I don’t mean stories like them, I mean those exact stories. Perhaps this thought is somewhat due to the fact that almost all the adventures are named after the movies/books, but I’m real curious to see how they try to give people inspiration for their own games.
Or put another way: I think the engine here seems solid for driving Bond adventures, but I don’t feel inspired by anything here to run a game.
And honestly, I’m not sure: I like Bond properties OK, but I never would imagine running a game here — and yet, I find this 1983 game to be quite modern and interesting in some ways.
Not like completely modern: the game involves a success chart that goes up to 300, which you figure out your target number on by multiplying your Primary Chance — which is related to your Skill level — by the Ease Factor of the situation, and oh my god, is this really the best way to do things? Honestly, I rolled a few times to get the hang of it, and it’s actually not that complicated, while also being significantly more complex than, say, “roll a die and add your modifier to it, try to hit a target number” style mechanisms.
Also different weapons have damage ratings, and I’ll be honest: I didn’t run a sample combat just to see how that would work.
Also there’s this thing during character creation where you have to spend points for your height and weight and appearance that feels like a real cousin to early D&D stuff. (There is a fun thing here where you want your character to look more average so that you can blend in with a crowd, but to be more attractive so you can persuade and influence people, a la Bond.)
Also, I don’t know that this is an old thing, but it’s a weird thing: characters are defined by stats and skills (not classes), which makes sense for an espionage game, but three skills are set off and treated different: connoisseur, first aid, and photography are all lumped under the category of “Abilities” and I don’t really understand why. I guess because they have different rules for gaining skill levels, but it feels like they should just be called skills and treated as exceptions rather than literally creating another category for them.
OK, so what seems pretty modern or what did I like so much?
First, getting the target number and checking on a chart is a little awkward, but it also lets the outcome involve “degree of success” rather than just “success/fail”, which feels genre appropriate: there’s lots of time when Bond, say, does something successfully, but say not in the right time frame (someone interrupts him before he grabs all the data from the safe), so he only gets some of the info.
Second, hero points: it’s nice to see a game in the 80s talk about how your characters are heroes and how they can spend this meta-currency to keep the pacing of the game going (by adjusting rolls, etc.).
Third, I’m not sure this is modern, per se, but I really enjoyed the sample of play because they just clipped out a scene from one of the novels and then pretended that it was the narrative of a game, and said what sort of mechanics were going on underneath.
Fourth, only a few years after D&D, this game is already positioning itself as a tool with which you can tell a story with your friends. The GM is not the adversary, and if the PCs fail to go to the office where the villain keeps his plans, well maybe he keeps his plans in the home that they’ve decided to raid instead. This is a game for adjusting plot to fit behavior rather than constraining behavior to fit plot. And this goes both ways, as the book notes: if your characters are going to be captured, well, that’s a fate worse than death for players, but well within the bounds of the genre; and if you lose, well, take the L and move on.
Fifth, I like that they have special chapters for chase rules, gambling (which includes rules on poker, chemin de fer, baccarat, etc., as well as a little overview of gambling sites around the world), and interacting with NPCs (which includes the note that I’m real thankful for: torture is what the bad guys do).
Sixth — and that’s quite a lot of things to like about a book published in ’83 — I like the random NPC tables, which seem real smart for this genre.
Seventh, the book includes a little, simple adventure, that you can play as a Choose Your Own Adventure to get used to the rules. I tried it, it was very simple story-wise, and at some point I hit my limit (not gonna run any combat), but it was a nice addition.
So there’s some things that seem out of place, but a lot going for the game mechanically. The only place that this core book kind of falls down a bit for me is in the setting. For one thing, the art is all drawn illustrations, but the subject matter is all from the movies so that you can recognize, say, the car jumping across the river scene from The Man with the Golden Gun. There isn’t anything exciting and new art-wise here.
For another thing, I have no idea what the default year this game takes place in. There’s a description of MI6 and the world (12 pages of world-class cities, though almost 2 of those pages involve time zones and travel time); and a description of a new villainous organization (because SPECTRE was tied up in some legal wrangling, I think).
All of which sort of contributes to this idea I have that you can use the James Bond RPG to simulate the James Bond movies you’ve seen. I don’t mean stories like them, I mean those exact stories. Perhaps this thought is somewhat due to the fact that almost all the adventures are named after the movies/books, but I’m real curious to see how they try to give people inspiration for their own games.
Or put another way: I think the engine here seems solid for driving Bond adventures, but I don’t feel inspired by anything here to run a game.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews