I should preface this by stating for the record that I’ve never actually had the opportunity to play through a proper session of James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I have, however, played through the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service module, which was designed to be played as a solitaire adventure without the need of a GM. I have also blatantly stolen bits and pieces of this game for usage in other spy games. So while I lack some practical experience with the game, I at least have a small amount of first-hand knowledge of how the system works.

The reason I never really played it? A combined lack of interest from others in addition to the fact that I myself was always more interested in playing old favorite Top Secret. All the themes, characters, and crazy plots from the Bond series could just as easily be adapted to the Top Secret world anyway. I never knew anyone who played TS without acknowledging MI-6, the branch Bond supposedly worked for, and everyone had a Q-Branch, or the American/French/German/etc equivalent of it to provide gadgets, tricked out vehicles, and ridiculously overpowered firearms for their field agents.

The Bond RPG was a game I came across sometime in the early to mid 90’s, somewhere in that six year long gap between License to Kill and GoldenEye. This was just before the rise of the Web, when most folks who didn’t follow the movie industry all that closely thought that Bond was pretty much dead for good. The price for used role-playing books and boxed sets at Half-Price Books is usually always right for the cheap pre-teen gaming nerd, so I went home with the game that afternoon and tore through the rules in no time at all.

I wasn’t familiar with Fleming’s work at that point – just the world of 007 in the films. In retrospect, I’ve realized that the game combines quite a bit of the literary Bond and cinematic Bond in an attempt to please fans from both camps. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. You can’t reconcile the events of the novel Moonraker with the film version, for instance, apart from the name of the villain. When in doubt, the designers seem to have favored the films, which seems like a sensible idea, considering the films have always had a larger fanbase. At the same time, the game seems like it was also catered to younger newcomers to role-playing games, who may not have been all that interested in fantasy or science-fiction, the two genres that have dominated the RPG market for its entire lifespan thus far. Perhaps this was a smart move, yet I can’t help but notice the negativity towards other RPG’s within the text of this game. No names are dropped of course, but there are some fingers pointed in vague directions at the ‘overly complicated’ rules of other games. Apparently, lead designer Gerard Christopher Klug felt that RPG’s at the time were relying too much on ‘wargame’ like systems, and deliberately went out of his way to craft a much more simpler game that was easy to learn and become involved with.

In some ways, Klug succeeded with this goal. The James Bond RPG has a custom system that only requires the use of D6’s and D10’s. Most of the rolls are percentile dice, where the goal is to roll as low as possible for success. However, your chances of success can be modified by something known as the ‘Ease Factor’, which I do not care for. Basically, the GM assigns the Ease Factor for the particular situation, which starts out at 5 but can be modified up for easier tasks or lowered for more difficult situations. I’ve personally never been a fan of systems that rely on arbitrary numbers assigned by the GM on a whim, because it’s very difficult to achieve any sense of consistency. There’s a decent skill system, which works because it doesn’t overload the players with too many options to pick from. You can pick from general things such as science, boating, gambling, interrogation, disguise, hand-to-hand combat, etc. Each skill has a modifier appropriate to the ability score it falls under (ability scores are always referred to as ‘characteristics’ in this game), much like the non-weapon proficiency system in AD&D 2nd edition.

Speaking of the abilities, there are five in this game – Strength, Dexterity, Willpower, Perception, and Intelligence. For whatever reason, charisma is considered to be a skill you can opt to take instead of a prime characteristic. There are also a few sub-characteristics to determine – the total of your DEX and PER scores makes up your Speed score, WIL determines what your Stamina score is (based on a chart), and your STR score will determine which Damage Class you fall under in hand-to-hand combat. There are Fame Points to worry about, which help determine how renowned or notorious your character is. There aren’t really any levels to shoot for per se, rather three ranks for your character to rise up through – Rookie, Agent, and finally “00″. Character generation is done through a point buy system, which seems to be fairly reasonable without overpowering your character too much at the rookie stage (you can choose to start out at a higher rank if you and the GM so desire).

But here’s the thing – the game gives all the information about creating your own characters, but it doesn’t really encourage it over playing Bond or one of his allies instead. There are stats given for characters like Bond, Felix Leiter, Lt. Hip (from The Man With the Golden Gun), and Kerim Bey. I suppose it was left up to the players and GM to decide which option they would prefer, but for me, much as I like Bond, I would much rather make my own characters and use 007 and his allies (or enemies) as background NPC’s.

The main rule book itself features more than enough for you to play around with (or steal for your Top Secret or Spycraft games) for a very long time. Although SPECTRE was off-limits at the time (due to more Kevin McClory drama), the designers included an organization called TAROT, naturally utilizing a tarot card theme for all the members of the gang. In addition, a number of ‘thrilling cities’ from the films are featured, with maps and interesting and exotic areas of note to base adventures or encounters around. Places like Nassau or Rio are ripe for espionage scenarios, yet since this was published in the early 80’s, much of the information is woefully out of date. Hong Kong, for instance, is still a part of Great Britain. You can get around this by simply setting the game in the 80’s. Bond works better before the fall of the Berlin Wall anyway.

However, there were a ton of supplements and adventure modules published over the game’s rather short four and a half year lifespan, some of which I was also able to snag from Half-Price Books back in the day. The aforementioned On Her Majesty’s Secret Service could be played without a GM, and included a few surprise diversions for those who had seen the film or read the book to keep the player guessing. Modules based on some of the films were also released – Goldfinger, Octopussy, Dr. No, Live and Let Die, You Only Live Twice, A View to a Kill, For Your Eyes Only, and The Man With the Golden Gun all saw the light of day. In a really neat twist, the authors also came up with sequels to some of the Bond adventures, including You Only Live Twice II: Back of Beyond and Goldfinger II: The Man With the Midas Touch. The supplements included the Gamemaster Pack, which had a ludicrous amount of charts, tables, and the always handy GM screen, the Thrilling Locations handbook, which was packed full of casinos and hotels to drag your players into, and the irreplaceable Q Manual, which had all the sweet gadgets and equipment that would make being a “00″ agent worthwhile.

I’m uncertain if anyone actually still plays the game these days, but for nostalgia freaks like myself and fans of out-of-print games, here are a few working links of interest to check out for further information on the game…

The Games of James Bond 007 – is a site created by a Mr. Paul Kasper that features content on both the 007 RPG and the CCG. Although the last site update was in 2002, it still features plenty of handy information regarding the game, including some interviews with Mr. Klug, the lead designer of the game.

James Bond 007 RPG – is a site authored by John H. Kim, also no longer updated. This site features information about a campaign the guy was running, and although the game only ran for four sessions, there’s some juicy tidbits for would-be gamemasters looking to run a session. Also features some info on setting your games in the 1980’s, as I suggested above.

Absolute James Bond – thread from one of the top three Bond forums (CBN has to be number one, no?) on the Web discussing the game.

Retro Review – on LesbianGeek.com from a few months back. Plenty of praise for the game.