Character-A-Day Day 6: James Bond
Character A Day, Day Six
James Bond 007
No, Mr. Bond. I Expect You To Fail Your Save.
(I Don’t Know If This Game Has Saves. I Have Had This For Two Decades And Just Opened The Book Today. Box Is Falling To Pieces, But Core Book Is In Beautiful Shape!)
So, here we are, day six. I haven’t updated this site this regularly since I started in the early 2000s. While my site’s motto has always been “Free, And Worth It”, the rapid pace does mean more typos and awkward phrasing makes it to the published posts. As I spot them, I go back and do some cleanup, but that’s a random and piecemeal process.
What do I know about this going in? Very little. It got a good review in Dragon, back in the day. It had a few supplements — the Q Manual, a book of cool places to have spy adventures — Thrilling Locations, I believe — and possibly others. I have it in my collection because I’m a collector — I pretty much buy any RPG I see and can afford at the time. I’ve even got the Dallas RPG here somewhere. I’ve picked this today because my wife suggested it, and I do what she says.
Flipping through it, it seems to be based heavily on the movies, especially those of the 70s and early 80s. (Published in 1983). The blank character sheet has a large area for you to write in “Skills”, with “Driving” and “Charisma” already listed. This says a lot about the expected characters.
Right. Let’s do this!
Coming To Terms
Game terms, that is. While pretty standard (you’re a PC, not an “Avatar Agent”, the GM is the GM, not the “Master of Secrets”), another aspect of the character sheet was explained: Abilities. These are things that are like skills, but everyone gets them, and they can’t be trained/improved. These are Connoisseur, First Aid, and Photography. I guess MI6 makes sure all agents can identify fine wines, perform CPR, and post to Instagram.
The main mechanic is a modified percentile system — your skill rating is multiplied by an ease factor (the higher, the easier) to produce a success chance; rolling under that yields success, and a “Quality Results” table further breaks it down to a range from Excellent to Acceptable (the lower, the better). Failure is just failure. There’s clearly some refinements and modifiers to this, but that’s the gist of it, and the only way I’m getting these out daily is if I don’t get sidetracked by delving deep into the game.
Characteristic Behaviors
We have five characteristics: Strength, Dexterity, Willpower, Perception, and Intelligence. These all begin at 5 for PCs. James Bond’s range from 9-14. The sample “Rookie” characters go from 5-9.
Skills rank from 1-15, with higher being better.
You get a number of Generation Points to build a character. Let’s just go with Rookie, 3000 points.
“Physical Aspects” such as Height, Weight, and Appearance are chosen by the player, with the cost in Generation Points being higher the more average you are. Why? Well, the less average you are, the more “Fame Points” you get, meaning, I suppose, the easier you are to spot. I’m going for 6’/190 lbs, for a total GP cost of 360 and a total Fame Point of 5.
Appearance follows a similar pattern: I’ll go for Attractive, 120 GP, +20 fame.
Should have a name now. A quick visit to a random name generator, and I end up with Michael Cruze, leading to many possible jokes about “Cruze Control”, “Cruze-in for a bruze-in”, etc.
The upside of non-random chargen is you don’t get a pile of numbers that don’t make sense (and are usually too low, if you’re me). The downside is, you have to have a character concept to work towards. Given the “Cruze-in for a Bruze-in” slogan I just came up with, I’m going to go for a tough guy, more physical than mental (but still qualified for spy work). So, looking at the stats:
Strength: 8 (300)
Dexterity: 7 (200)
Willpower: 6 (100)
Perception: 7 (200)
Intelligence: 5 (0)
So far, that’s 1280 out of 3000.
There’s a nice section of “Fields of Experience” that shows what you did before becoming a spy, but that’s optional, and I have limited time. So I’ll stick to the basics. Ditto for the disadvantages rules — trade weaknesses for extra points, as usual.
Skills cost 100 to gain, +20 per rank. You begin, as I noted, with Driving and Charisma at 1.
Looking at the sample rookie characters, ranks of 3-5 are expected for starting characters. You follow the rank with the “Primary Chance”, which is determined by a skill formula. HTH Combat, for example, is Str+Rank.
Hand-to-Hand Combat 5/13 (180)
Fire Combat 5/12 (180)
Interrogation 4/9 (160)
Charisma 4/10 (60 — I get level 1 for free)
Driving 5/12 (80 — I get level 1 for free)
Seduction 5/10 (180)
Evasion 5/12 (180)
Torture 4/9 (160)
Doing good on points, so, let’s boost Str to 10 and add some more skills.
Strength: 10 (500)
Dexterity: 7 (200)
Willpower: 6 (100)
Perception: 7 (200)
Intelligence: 5 (0)
Hand-to-Hand Combat 5/16 (180)
Fire Combat 5/12 (180)
Interrogation 4/9 (160)
Charisma 4/10 (60 — I get level 1 for free)
Driving 5/12 (100 — I get level 1 for free)
Seduction 5/10 (180)
Evasion 6/14 (180)
Torture 4/9 (160)
Sixth Sense 5/11 (180)
Mountaineering 4/12 (160)
Pickpocket 4/11 (160)
Perfect 3000!
Now, some calculated abilities:
Speed: 1
HTH Damage: B
Stamina: 28 hours
Carrying Capacity: 101-150lbs
Field Notes
I avoided trying to min-max, but attempted to create a physically-focused but rounded character. There’s lots of skills he lacks, like electronics or cryptography, but in a real game, someone else on the team would have those. He’s also not useless out of combat, with Interrogation and Torture as kind of obvious choices. Pickpocket was added to give him an “against type” skill, something that could surprise enemies and allies who assume he’s just the big guy who hits or shoots things. (It’s also an interesting consequence of attribute + skill based systems that, unless there’s more fine-tuning than is typical, a skilled sniper or bowman (typically dex based skills) is also a skilled pickpocket or juggler. )
Tomorrow… hmmm… not sure, but my eyes just feel on the copy of The Fantasy Trip, fancy new HC edition I got at GenCon in 2019. I played plenty of Melee and Wizard back in the day, but skipped over TFT straight for GURPS. So that’s looking likely.
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