James Bond 007 RPG

[Ladonna]

Just wondering if anyone heard of (or even played) this one? It must have had a half decent audience at some stage, as it seems to have had plenty of modules brought out for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_007_(role-playing_game)

So, has anyone been 007 before?

Characters have five characteristics, Strength, Dexterity, Willpower, Perception, and Intelligence, ranging from 5 to 15, and bought at creation time with Generation Points. Remaining Generation Points are used to buy skill levels, and the physical aspects of height, weight and appearance (attractiveness). As characters are supposed to be secret agents, the less unusual a character's appearance is, the more generation points it costs; distinctive appearances stand out, and earn a character Fame Points which make others, especially villains, notice them more. There are optional rules for character Weaknesses, which gain generation points at the expense of disadvantages, usually psychological (such as Fear of <something>, Superstition, or James Bond's own Attraction to Members of the Opposite Sex), and Fields of Experience, which gains Generation Points simulating a specific prior character history before becoming an operative, at the expense of greater age, and Fame points.

 

[Rat King]

You should post this in the gazebo, that's where people discuss PnP games.

 

[DalekFlay]

Bond is perfect for point and click adventure games and it's sad we only got a half of one.

 

[Ladonna]

Bond is perfect for point and click adventure games and it's sad we only got a half of one.

There was Delphines 'Operation Stealth'. I played that, along with 'Future Wars' back in the day, but it was a bit obtuse at times regarding what you had to do. In that you were 'John Glames', Bond knockoff, though some people have said in other countries it was licensed as an actual Bond game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Stealth

Is this the one you were referring to? Or is there something else.

Right, so in the US it was licensed. Weird.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

There was also some old Bond text adventures. I'm sure they're average for the time...which is to say, everything that wasn't Infocom was usually crap.

 

[FritzedProcess]

Just wondering if anyone heard of (or even played) this one? It must have had a half decent audience at some stage, as it seems to have had plenty of modules brought out for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_007_(role-playing_game)

So, has anyone been 007 before?

There were a few movie or comic licensed games back in the 80s (a rare thing back then), mainly James Bond, Ghostbusters, Prince Valiant (what were they thinking!?), and Star Wars (WEG's). You can probably guess that West End Games' Star Wars sold like hotcakes (and the sourcebooks were awesome).

In regards to the other three, at least in Spain, you could find them with a generous permanent discount even in the most penny-pinching game stores, and after the mid-90s, when the company printing them went under, in bargain bins for less than 1500 pesetas (usual price in the same range was 2500 Pta or thereabouts), and after the Euro for 3-5 EUR apiece, with Ghostbusters and Prince Valiant still being easy to find in gaming and comic cons on the bargain bins, at least 5 years ago.

I can tell you that Prince Valiant was a shit game for children using coin tosses instead of die, Ghostbusters was pretty awful from what I can remember, and I have no first hand experience with James Bond, but members from one of my local RPG clubs have told me it wasn't any good. It is pretty telling that the magazine by the printig house with the license for that game very seldom published adventures for it (and even less often if ever for Prince Valiant, for that matter).

Edit: I looked a bit into it, and apparently the James Bond RPG sold quite well in the US until the license deal expired. The Spanish editor licensed the text, but not the images (a common practice back then) and had the illustrations made in-house and on the cheap, with a usually inferior result, which impacted sales (also, fans of the game tended to import US copies), so only two adventures were published over here, "A View to a Kill" and "Goldfinger".

 

[deuxhero]

FritzedProcess
There's two versions of the Ghostbusters RPG. Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Role-Playing Game and Ghostbusters: International. The first half wanted to be a boardgame (the biggest sign it was the first is the equipment cards), but the second is actually held in high regard.

edit:
According to 1d4chan, the James Bond RPG is the first RPG to have hero points that could modify rolls and "Mechanics for social resolution" (not sure exactly what this means. It has to be something more than just a Charisma stats since that already existed).

 

[Bigg Boss]

God why is this in the Gazebo? Why don't they make video games like this? So many why's.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Prince Valiant (what were they thinking!?)

Wow...that's some strange choice of license. Was that popular at one point in time? Because as far as I know that comic strip was about as beloved as Suzette of the Silver Sword.

God why is this in the Gazebo? Why don't they make video games like this? So many why's.

The closest thing to a Bond video RPG is Alpha Protocol...which is more of rough-n-tumble post 9/11 kind of spying. I think From Russia With Love on the PS2 tossed in a few RPG elements, just upgrades IIRC.

 

[FritzedProcess]

There's two versions of the Ghostbusters RPG. Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Role-Playing Game and Ghostbusters: International. The first half wanted to be a boardgame (the biggest sign it was the first is the equipment cards), but the second is actually held in high regard.

Actually, it was "International" but with the first edition's title (and a botched translation job, mix-and-match art, a lazy editor, and no quality control, judging from the amount of typos and ortographical errors... and allegedly there were entire sections missing from it, something the printing house did again for "In Nomine Satanis: Scriptarium Veritas", so that they could sell the missing content as a separate book). I could go on at length about fucked up translations in Spanish RPGs, we even called it "High Devirian" after a certain company prone to fanciful translations, but Ediciones Martínez Roca was the most egregious and shameless culprit (and predated Devir by more than a decade, although their name doesn't sound as good for naming a fake language).

The game wasn't liked very much here because it was one of the early narrative games (by none other than Sandy Petersen and Greg Stafford!) and lacked crunch, and back then we were all grognards, but I suppose the game sold well enough to warrant the release of 3 supplements.

In regards to the social conflict resolution thing in James Bond, it had rules more involved than a CHA roll, notoriety rules, etc. (a spy game ought to have more to it than that).

Wow...that's some strange choice of license. Was that popular at one point in time? Because as far as I know that comic strip was about as beloved as Suzette of the Silver Sword.

It wasn't popular at all. In fact, I hardly know anyone that read the original comic, and the extremely light and casual ruleset didn't help, making Apocalypse World look like Rolemaster in comparison. The game was narrative to a fault, there was no crunch at all. One of my friends owned a copy of the book, and he ran a campaign in which I played that started out with the goody-two-shoes theme of the setting, but ended up as a Machiavellian struggle for the conquest of England after the first session (which is when we all decided the default setting was too boring).

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Perhaps worth mentioning that TSR published its own espionage RPG in 1980 under the name Top Secret:

The original versions of the game (a slight revision was made in 1981) had 7 adventure modules, and TSR thought it held enough promise to launch in 1987 a more heavily revised version, which had another 4 adventure modules published before TSR ended the product line.

 

[Grandlion1981]

I used to have all the books for this game in French, maybe I still have them somewhere. They were sold at a major discount when the company owning them closed or something.