TIMESTORM (Part III) (spoilers)

Prior to the Battle of Antietam, Union forces obtained Confederate plans.  For purposes of Timestorm, this occurred because Union Private Leroy Elkins frightened a Confederate courier into dropping said plans.  Unfortunately for Time Corps continuity, the Time Storm has deposited Elkins into the cartoon world of Wabbit Wampage before he has a chance to make history.  (Elkins has a significance rating of 300; Robert E. Lee has a rating of only 250.)  The Player Characters are supposed to encounter Elkins after they bring back Thugs Bunny and kin from ancient Rome.  Of course, the next logical step is to return Elkins to where he belongs.  However, Demorean agents have infiltrated the Wabbit parallel.  Their purpose is to “have a source of indestructible warriors – which they could in turn unleash upon all freedom-loving creatures of the Continuum, especially Time Corps agents.”

When the Time Storm removed Elkins from Maryland on September 11, 1862, it deposited “a wizard named Thutamon and three of his warrior bodyguards.”  For reasons unexplained, Thutamon and company “began rampaging toward Washington D.C., destroying whatever they found in their path.”  One of their heinous acts was to murder an entire family in cold blood.  Union forces assume this is the work of Confederate raiders and, as a result, they prepare to retreat to the nation's capital.

Meanwhile, the player characters are suspected of being Confederate spies and are brought to a house serving as the headquarters for General McClellan.  This is where the adventure gets kind of weird.  An aspect of the Time Storm – in the form of a tornado – takes the house and everyone within it to Munchkin Land.  (Oz exists as Parallel M-491.)  The player characters arrive “just before Dorothy is due” and wind up killing the Wicked Witch of the East.  The Munchkins express their appreciation by attempting to enslave the player characters and force them to work in their “armament factories.”  You see, the vagaries of the Time Storm have caused the Munchkins to become Nazis.  Don't believe me?

The only way out of Oz is to use the witch's slippers.  Mark Acres adopts a convention of the cinematic Oz in that the slippers are ruby.  (In the book, the slippers are silver.)

Assuming the player characters manage to return to Maryland, they are obliged to stop Thutamon and his warriors and return them to their point of origin:  “Aug. 27, 10198 B.C. Earth, Parallel R-259.”  It is on this Parallel that the Demoreans initiated their master plan to create the Time Storm.  To wit, they caused Thutamon to create a dimensional hole.  Arriving on R-259, the player characters and the others find themselves in said dimensional hole and are subject to attacks by Demoreans.  One of the characters is transformed “into a man-sized toad.”  This fate cannot be avoided, it is part of the plot.  After two rounds, “The PCs find themselves falling toward a grassy plain.”  On this plain, the players encounter Merlin.  Astute readers will recall that Merlin is one of the pre-generated characters players are encouraged to play.  The pre-generated Merlin is from Parallel M-212, the non-player character Merlin is from Parallel T-1 and is referred to as Merlin T-1.  We learn, “In any critical situation, such as combat, Merlin T-1 does exactly what Merlin (the PC) does . . . [but] Merlin T-1 does these things a half second later.”  Wacky hijinx ensue.  We also learn that Merlin T-1 is part of the T-1 Time Corps and “he hopped ahead of the wave effects to 5000 A.D. and read a history book.”  As a result, he knows “that a well-organized rebellion should overthrow a wizard-king named Almarius this year.”  It turns out that Thutamon is the leader of this revolt, but the Time Storm induced amnesia in him and his bodyguards.

So, the player characters are required to assist Thutamon – a cold blooded murderer – with his rebellion.  The first step is to travel to the city of Kish where Duke Tremayne – an ally of Almarius – has imprisoned the King and his daughter.  Tremayne has jokingly stated that he “will yield control of Kish to the King [if] the King shoots an apple from his daughter's head.”  The adventure tells us, “The most likely course of action is to disguise one PC as the King and have him or her shoot the apple from the Princess' head.”  The adventure assumes the player characters accomplish this.  At this time, the Princess kisses the player character who was transformed into a toad, but to no avail.  The player characters should also be able to obtain Tremayne's flying lizards – called iglanos.

A typical iglano measures 20 feet in length, stands about 10 feet at the shoulder, and weighs about 2 tons.  The beasts are normally docile, although they are carnivorous and their bite can inflict a serious wound.  They are speedy, once airborne, able to fly and glide at up to 225 feet per round (30 miles per hour).

Using the iglanos, Thutamon and the player characters can travel to Thutamon's army, which is besieging Almarius' Desert Castle.  (This is where the dimensional hole is.)  Meanwhile, Thutamon regains his memory, I guess.  The conclusion of adventure indicates:

If Thutamon's army captures the Desert Castle, the PCs have restored history on this Parallel.  They may eliminate the fact that one of them was turned into a giant toad by using the anomaly field generator or looper to warn themselves not to hop to the dimensional hole.

As part of a back-up plan, the Demoreans have established another dimensional hole on a separate Parallel.  However, clues to the next adventure can found after the battle.

The Demoreans need xantium, “a rare mineral [that] powers the type of drive required to transport magical dimensional holes.”  They obtain their xantium from “the year 101 million B.C.” on Parallel R-555.  Here, the player characters can negotiate with cavemen and/or intelligent dinosaurs.  Upon capturing the Demorean facility, the PCs find out:

The xantium is being sent to the Cassandra II system on Parallel T-6 from June 2 through June 30, 3612 A.D. [sic]  A massive time travel drive is being constructed on a space station positioned outside the atmosphere of the planet Cassandra II.  The drive, which is augmented by a dimensional hole, will be powered by the energy released when Cassandra II's sun becomes a supernova on July 2, 3162 A.D. at 10 p.m.  Destroying the space station pastward of this moment will prevent the Time Storm from occurring.

I think 3162 is supposed to be the correct year.  Anyway, the final adventure consists of a single encounter; it takes up just over two pages of the book.  The player characters use their TCA-4A chronoscooters to attack the Demorean space station.  Since the Demoreans have “Advanced Space Age Fighters,” the adventure is essentially “a board-game style battle.”  The text helpfully informs us, “This combat is to the death.”  Interestingly, at the beginning of the encounter, each player rolls 3d10 to determine his or her chronoscooter's “time on target.”  Once a chronoscooter's “time on target” is exhausted, there is a ten percent chance per round that the vehicle will run out of fuel.  Fortunately, rules are provided for rescuing pilots.

I guess at some point, Merlin T-1 drops out of the picture.

Odyssey Two Adventure (spoilers)

Of course, 2010: The Year We Made Contact, will never be evaluated on its own merits.  It is necessarily compared to its predecessor and Stanley Kubrick is a tough act to follow.  Naturally, we will examine Star Frontiers' 2010 Odyssey Two Adventure in light of its predecessor.  While the 2001 A Space Odyssey module had the novelty of man-apes, lunar antics, and a seven foot tall flame that asks characters if they want to “become a higher form of life,” the Odyssey Two module is relatively lackluster.

Written by Bruce Nesmith, who would become Creative Director at TSR, and Curtis Smith, who would later work for West End Games, Odyssey Two was published prior to the release of the film.  According to the back cover of the module:

          Seven-hundred million kilometers from Earth, an alien monolith glides above Jupiter.  Thousand-meter-long plumes of flame and sulfur shoot up from volcanoes on a nearby moon, but never touch or scar the slab.  Close by, the dark and lifeless spaceship Discovery tumbles end-over-end, abandoned since 2001.
          Now in 2010, your ship arrives to complete the Discovery's mission: solve the mysteries behind the monolith.  You must also determine what happened to the Discovery's commander, who disappeared into the monolith nine years ago.  Then, if its possible, you must repair the crippled Discovery and restart HAL, the super-computer that murdered most of the Discovery's crew.
          Unnoticed, the monolith stirs.  It, too, has a mission prepared millions of years ago – about to begin.

The module allows for exactly three player characters – pre-generated Americans accompanying a Russian mission to the Jovian system.  As such, the “your ship” mentioned in the second paragraph does not indicate possession.  The three player characters are Dr. Chandra (HAL's designer), Walter Curnow (“in charge of designing and building the spaceship Discovery II”), and Heywood Floyd (scientist from the first film and representative of the authority that modified HAL's programming – resulting in HAL's insanity).

The module provides less of a plot and more of a time table.  The players are deprived of any meaningful choices; if they wander “off-script,” the referee is instructed to herd them back into place.  In contrast to the previous module's four chapters, Odyssey Two has ten.  In the first chapter, the characters are briefed, tour the Russian ship Leonov, and spend two years hibernating.

In the second chapter, the Leonov aerobrakes by passing through Jupiter's atmosphere.  With successful skill rolls, the Americans can reduce the number of problems the Leonov encounters during the maneuver and car address those problems as they occur.  Each unresolved problem causes the Leonov to expend fuel.  This would seem to be important for Chapter 8 when the Leonov leaves the Jovian system.  However, ultimately, success in Chapter 8 does not depend upon the amount of fuel.  Perhaps in an earlier draft of the module it did.

In Chapter 3, the player characters salvage the Discovery.  It is by far the longest chapter in the module; eight pages out of thirty-two.  Given that four of the thirty-two pages comprise a pull-out with character stats, Chapter 3 represents almost 30% of the module.  The chapter provides details about the Discovery and describes the various tasks and skill rolls necessary to make the ship operational.  The most important part of the chapter is the reactivation of HAL.  The referee makes two skill rolls for Dr. Chandra so that the players don't know the results.  There is a 58% chance that either roll will fail, causing HAL to have faulty programming.  If this occurs, HAL eventually attempts to kill the player characters.

Whenever the player characters “do something directed toward the [Jovian] monolith” (such as approaching it with a pod), a roll is made on the 'Monolith Reactions' table.  There is a 30% chance of no reaction.  Two possibilities only seem applicable if one or more pods are near the monolith.  Another possibility is for “Dave Bowman in his new form, a star child,” to exit the monolith and head “straight for Earth at the speed of light.”  However, there is no way for the player characters to know this.  Why bother putting this information in the module?  Whether or not Bowman's exit is rolled as an event, Bowman appears in later scenes.

The Americans receive a warning, the source of which the referee chooses or randomly determines.  Regardless, the warning relates that the characters must depart the Jovian system in 2½ days.  The Russians, however, don't believe the Americans.  Any attempt to convince them fails.  Twelve hours after the warning, the monolith disappears; then, and only then, do the Russians believe.

The only way to escape the Jovian system in time is for the Russians and Americans to cooperate and link their two ships together.  (For our younger readers, this is what's known as heavy-handed Cold War allegory.)  Several skill rolls, player character and non-player character alike, establish how well the ships are linked.  This – and not the fuel of the Leonov – determines whether the escape is successful.  Also, with regard to the escape, HAL's cooperation is useful (but not strictly necessary) to fire the Discovery engines.  Ten minutes before the scheduled time, assuming HAL is activated (and whether or not his programming is faulty), HAL decides to forgo firing the engines.  The player characters must convince HAL to go along with the plan.  This would seem to be an important role-playing opportunity, except that if the player characters fail to persuade HAL, Bowman shows up after eight minutes and convinces HAL.  You know, star child ex machina.

Anyway, Jupiter becomes a miniature star.  Maybe the player characters survive and maybe they don't.  A message is broadcast warning against any landings on Europa.  Speaking of Europa, when the Leonov first reaches the Jovian system, it “detects strange readings” from that moon.  The type of reading is determined randomly; it is either magnetic, radio, or traces of chlorophyll.  The player characters can investigate or not; it doesn't really matter.  Information about investigating Europa is relegated to the last chapter, sort of like an appendix.  If they investigate, the player characters can opt for a manned expedition or a remote probe; it doesn't really matter.  The magnetic reading comes from a natural meteor.  The radio signals come from a crashed Japanese satellite.  With the chlorophyll option, there might be a monolith under the ice; it doesn't really matter.  Regardless of the type of reading – and regardless of expedition or probe – the player characters might see the movement of a “large gray-green mass.”  Depending on the paragraph, it could be “grey-green” and on page 30 it happens to be “gay-green” (not that there's anything wrong with that).  Just don't assume the sexual orientation of extraterrestrial life forms.

The 2001 module falsely claimed that Knight Hawks box set was required for play.  On the other hand, the Knight Hawks set is needed for Odyssey Two.  The Spaceship Engineering Skill is in play as is equipment described in Knight Hawks.  The 2001 module included the new skills of Astronomy and System Navigation.  Odyssey Two also includes Politics (“a new biosocial skill for this module only”):

This skill has two subskills: Empathy and Persuasion.  These subskills are exactly the same as the Psycho-Social subskills Empathy and Persuasion.  Politicians cannot use any other Psycho-social skill.

The only characters with Politics are Heywood Floyd and Colonel Tanya Kirbuk, captain of the Leonov.

A Space Odyssey (spoilers)

It's 1984.  You know what would be great?  Connecting Star Frontiers to a popular science fiction franchise.  This would bring attention to the game and drive its future success.  Let's see...FASA has the rights to Star Trek and The Last Starfighter.  The third film in the Star Wars trilogy was released in '83, so public interest will probably wane...  Perhaps it would be best to get in on the ground floor of an upcoming film and ride its coat tails.  How about Dune ?  It's set to be a merchandising bonanza.  Also, Herbert's series is specifically listed as suggested reading on the inside back cover of the Star Frontiers rules.  But wait... MGM is releasing a sequel to 2001.  Never mind that it's not really space opera.  Never mind that many of the game's target demographic had yet to be born when the original film was released.  Kubrick's cinematic masterpiece is timeless; surely it can be easily adapted into an engaging role playing experience.

Such may as well have been the thought processes of one or more persons at TSR.  Regardless, we have been gifted with 2001 A Space Odyssey – “A Special Star Frontiers® Adventure Module.”  The task of writing this special module fell to Frank Mentzer.

The module is presented in four chapters, roughly analogous to the segments of the film:  Dawn of Man, Lunar Excursion, Jupiter Mission, and Through the Star Gate.  The Introduction provides an overview of the module's narrative:

At critical points in Mankind's history, an alien device, a monolith, appears and provides a key to the future.  Through this adventure, the player characters are present each time a monolith appears.  In each case, whether or not Mankind successfully enters the future offered by the monolith depends on how the player characters react and how much they learn about themselves and their universe.

Obviously, the standard game setting is not used.  “If you put this adventure in your STAR FRONTIERS® game, place it back in time before humans contact the other races.”  However, the adventure can be modified for the other intelligent races of Star Frontiers.

For example, in a dralasite version of chapter one, the monolith might teach cooperation to primitive, independent dralasites.  In a Yazirian version, the monolith might instigate the custom of life-enemies.

We are informed, “This special STAR FRONTIERS® module requires both ALPHA DAWN and KNIGHT HAWKS box sets.”  In reality, the Knight Hawks set is only needed for the Piloting skill and to provide an assortment of counters.  “All spaceflight in this adventure takes place in chapters 2 – 4,” the Introduction states, “Those chapters explain when and how to handle the necessary spaceflight.”

North is to the right

In chapter one, player characters control man-apes in the African wilderness of four million years ago.  Each has the same ability scores.  Events occur in three phases:  Survival (2 game days), Changes (2 game days), and Conquest (3 – 5 game days).  During the Survival phase, the man-apes cope with carnivores and an enemy tribe while trying to obtain sufficient food and water for survival.  A day without water reduces Stamina by 1d10; a day without food reduces Stamina by 1d5.  In the Changes phase, the monolith appears.  On the second day, “each PC man-ape visiting the monolith gains one skill” determined on the Skill Chart (at left).  Man-apes can learn skills from one another.  Player characters achieve the goal of the Conquest phase “when (1) they have slain a carnivore, and (2) the enemy tribe has surrendered.”

Chapter two takes place in 1994 and we learn, “The mega-corporations (which will eventually evolve into Pan Galactic, of the normal STAR FRONTIERS® game setting) dominate the quality of life.”  Players create original characters that reside “on Station One, the largest of three orbital cities floating above the Earth.”  Unlike the usual character generation procedure, a player may allocate a total of twelve Skill Levels among up to five skills (“with a maximum of 5 in any one Skill”).  The Computer and Technician skills are required and “at least 2 of [the skills] must be from the character's PSA.”  Each player then distributes forty additional points among the character's abilities.  “Finally, each player should secretly choose a nationality:  American, Russian, Chinese, or Other.”  Players are informed, “there has been a standing reward of 1,000 CR for anyone able to produce an item created by an extra-terrestrial life form.”

The player characters are recruited by American authorities to locate a presumed extraterrestrial artifact on the moon.  There are nineteen magnetic anomalies on the Lunar map, one of which is randomly determined to be caused by the artifact.  (Although the module refers to squares on the Lunar map, the map itself displays hexes.)  Time is of the essence since the Chinese will arrive in sixty hours to perform their own explorations.  One player character is secretly approached by a Russian agent and another by a Chinese agent.  Respectively, the agents offer 50 credits “to openly claim [the anomaly] in the name of his country, instead of the U.S.A.”  Whether or not the characters accept this generous offer, several NPCs will be working for the Russians or Chinese.  Player characters – either individually or in teams – explore the various anomalies using provided equipment.  “After the large anomaly is pinpointed, all characters involved in the search are detained,” we learn, “The characters never learn the reason for the secrecy...”  Outside the presence of the player characters, “a group of experts and technicians excavate around [the monolith].”  Then the monolith “emits a series of five electronic shrieks.”  One wonders what the players could learn about themselves and their universe via this chapter.

The third chapter takes place on board the USS Discovery and each player controls one of the crew members from the film (Dave Bowman and Frank Poole).  If there are more than two players, one or more of the hibernating astronauts should be used (Kaminski, Hunter and Whitehead – I don't know where Whitehead came from, in the film it was Kimball).  Any additional characters should not be created randomly; we are instructed, “Design the characters to be useful.”

Two new skills are described:  Astronomy (“a new STAR FRONTIERS® technological skill”) and System Navigation (“a new spaceship skill for use with this module only”).  According to Knight Hawks, the Piloting skill can only be acquired by characters with six levels of Technician and two levels of Computer.  Yet this requirement is overlooked in 2001, William Hunter has Piloting 1 but only Technician 3.

As in the film, the HAL 9000 computer works to eliminate the crew and we are advised, “Play HAL very cleverly.”  The module supplies examples of what HAL can do against the characters.  Before HAL attacks, player characters can use a Psycho-Pathology subskill to have HAL “remain calm for another 1 – 6 hours.”  Ultimately, the player characters will have to disconnect HAL.  Afterwards, player characters will need to handle the shipboard tasks manually.  To this end, ship operations and equipment repair are described in thrilling detail.  There are five paragraphs explaining how doors work.  Eventually, the characters watch a briefing tape relating that a monolith was found in the crater Tycho (or “Substitute the name of the crater in which the monolith was found in your game”) thirteen months previously (even though chapter two took place in 1994 and the Discovery was launched on May 14, 2002).  At the conclusion of chapter three, the player characters encounter a giant monolith.  They have the choice of investigating the monolith (and proceeding to chapter four) or staying with the ship (and ending the adventure).

Most of the fourth chapter consists of the referee reading about a page of boxed text.  One of the passages is:

You are above a world of incredible size – much larger than Earth.  But there must be no atmosphere; all the surface details are clear, to the remote and flat horizon.  The surface is marked in huge patterns, probably miles across, of squares, triangles, polygons...and in them, here and there, gaping black shafts, much like the chasm from which you just emerged.
The sky is disturbing.  There are no stars, nor even the blackness of space, but only a milky whiteness.  But no; there are tiny black dots, here and there, scattered across the sky.  They seem oddly familiar – and then you realize that it looks like a photographic negative of the Milky Way.

Eventually, the characters arrive “in a place nearly identical to a hotel suite in the United States of America.”  The referee is instructed to provide “map E, the Hotel Suite Layout, to the players.”  Sadly, no such map is included with the module.  “The entire hotel suite is a creation of the mind of an alien being, created to reassure, but not deceive, the characters.”  Upon falling asleep, each character has a dream wherein he encounters “an alien being – a flickering flame of light, about 7 feet tall.”  Via an undescribed means of communication, the alien presents a range of five options:

1. The character may return to the Dawn of Man, and help to teach the man-apes the basics of survival.
2. The character may return to Earth's Moon, in the year 2015, to be rescued.
3. The character may immediately return to the Discovery, to await rescue, but with no memory of the passage of the Star Gate.
4. The character may become a higher form of life, an energy being, with no use or concern for material form.
5. The character may go to an alien planet where another race faces a critical juncture, much live the Dawn of Man the crossroads of knowledge or extinction and help that race along the path to survival.

The module ends with another section of boxed text, the last line of which is:

And now it comes, and it is time to go; to take the final step on this greatest of all journeys; onward, to complete your Space Odyssey.

If you choose to lose your memory, can it really be a journey?

Hazards of Space and Subspace

Image from 2001: A Space Odyssey © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Ken St. Andre lists three 'game scenarios' for his Starfaring role-playing game:  'standard exploration', 'the planet search contest', and 'alien (or enemy) attack'.  For aliens or enemies, St. Andre suggests either “Human homeworlds...at war and...fighting it out in space,” the Robots, or the Slish.

The Slish are arch-typically B.E.M. in concept, methane breathers, tentacled, the works. They are non-telepathic and unreasonably hostile to all other lifeforms. They have a faster-than-light star drive, but it does not utilize Star Crystals; nor can the Slish enter Subspace. They do not utilize their FTL drive inside solar systems. They seem to be especially interested in gas giant planets, and are most often encountered near one. They do use energy weapons similar in effect to the Shiva beam weapons of humanity, but their shields do not seem to be as powerful as Human shields. Aside from these generalizations, Slish ships vary in quality...

Additionally, the Slish are “octopoid” and they “seem completely immune to the psionic powers of human telepaths.”  We also learn, “No one captured by the Slish has ever returned to tell the tale.”  Apparently, no Slish have ever been captured.  With regard to encountering the Slish in combat...

Attacking Slish ships approach on a constantly corrected straight line towards their target ship, firing at a rate of 5 times per combat turn. This means that while the human ship is making Saving Rolls to determine if it is hit by the Slish who have evolved the technique of firing randomly in the general direction of their randomly evading target, the Slish ship is on a mathematically predictable course; and though they fire 5 times for every once you fire, you will hit the Slish ship every time as long as your Gunnery computer is working.

The 'Space Hazards' chapter begins, “For each turn that a ship is in space, either Subspace or regular space, the G.M. will roll 2 dice.”  How long is a turn?  St. Andre neglects to inform us.  At any rate, a roll of twelve (i.e., 2.77%) indicates “some form of trouble.”  St. Andre supplies two tables – one for 'normal space' and and another for 'subspace' – but invites prospective Galaxy Masters “to add your own inventions to these lists of space hazards.”

The listings for the normal space table are:  Slish (~33%), Galactic Core Radiation (25%), Meteor Strike (~17%), Power Crystal Malfunction (~14%), and Supernova (~11%).  When Galactic Core Radiation is encountered, 1d6 is rolled.  The result is subtracted from Mentality, Physique, and Health; however, the result is added to “Psionic powers.”  Health can be recovered, but “Other characteristics are permanently changed.”  The 'supernova' result is only applicable to “Unstable stars of spectral classes 0, B, and A with masses greater than Sol.”  Supernovae generate a wave of radiation that reduces “the Health of all crew members” by 3d6 and “half that number from the Mentality of all survivors.”  Starships that do not promptly retreat into Subspace “will be vaporized by the expanding shell of superheated gases.”

The entries for the Subspace table are:  “Kthulhus” (~66.7%), “Derbis” (~27.7%), and “Berserkers” (~5.6%).

Kthulhus are the dominant life-form in Subspace. They exist and grow by devouring the slight energy leakage from normal space into Subspace. They are disturbed by the warping of Subspace caused by Starship warpengines, and when they detect it, they will approach and attack the source.

Kthulhus cause crew members to hallucinate; this eventually causes a reduction of Mentality.  “Kthulhus may be driven off or slain,” page 43 tells us, “by psychic blasts of hatred or aversion from a crew member concentrating on the idea of a Kthulhu, and who has a higher psi rating than the Kthulhus rating.”  Derbis is a “Subspace life-form most nearly resembling a rock with eyes.”  It's like dyslexic debris!  A Derbis “thinks, after a fashion,” and desires “to reduce itself to free hydrogen.”  To accomplish this, “they smash into [starships] with glee, [since] the energy shield will disintegrate them.”  The effect on the ship “is similar to Meteor damage in normal space.”  Berserkers are, of course, a reference to Fred Saberhagen's creation.

Hero Points in James Bond 007

The 'Glossary of Terms' in the James Bond 007 rules defines Hero Points as:

Points which may be used by a player to alter the Quality Rating of a dice result in any manner he chooses.  The use of Hero Points allows failure to become success, and certain death to become only a graze.

Although only two pages, the rulebook devotes a chapter to Hero Points, clarifying their use.  As indicated in a previous post, a task can have five possible outcomes, failure and four Quality Ratings of success.  The spectrum of possibilities can be represented thusly:

QR1 (excellent) – QR2 (very good) – QR3 (good) – QR4 (acceptable) – failure

Immediately after the dice are rolled and the result determined, a player may alter the result by one step per Hero Point spent.  The example of play includes the scene in Goldfinger where Bond is strapped to a table and threatened by a laser.  (In the example of play, the movie scene is described on the left column of a page while the right column shows the conversation between the GM and Bond's player as they play through the scene.)  Bond's player has Bond attempt to Persuade Goldfinger to keep him alive.  The player barely succeeds with his roll and the GM states it will take three Hero Points to obtain a result wherein Goldfinger is convinced (i.e., changing a Quality Rating of 4 to a Quality Rating of 1).  We see that Hero Points can cause an unlikely (yet possible) result that nonetheless accurately represents the source material.

Robert Kern, credited as “Game Development and James Bond Savant,” wrote in Heroes (Vol. 1, No. 6), “The hardest part is visualizing the varying degrees of success.”  Kern encourages developing the habit of “telling the player the possible outcomes ahead of time” (i.e., before the player rolls).  According to the rules, “You can also spend Hero Points to change the Quality Rating of a dice roll performed by the GM for any task directed against your character.”  Also, “If the GM is rolling the dice to resolve any hidden task (whether for your character or an NPC), your Hero Points can be used to improve that result as well.”  By definition, players cannot be aware of the possible outcomes of a “hidden task.”  In such a situation, a player would be spending Hero Points blindly; it is possible to waste one or more Hero Points if the hidden result turned out to be Quality Rating 1 – the best possible result.  Also, Hero Points can only be used to “improve” the result of a hidden task.

The GM permitting, “you can spend Hero Points to affect the environment in your character's favor.”  Such alterations should be reasonable in scope; spending Hero Points to, for instance, “change a snowstorm into balmy weather” should not be permitted.

“Fellow Secret Agents working on the same side as the Player Characters” are also entitled to Hero Points.  Besides Hero Points, there are Survival Points, which are defined by the 'Glossary of Terms' as “Points given to Masterminds and Privileged Henchmen...which negate the Hero Points used against them by Player Characters.”  This definition does not correspond to how Survival Points are explained in the Hero Points chapter.  In that chapter, we are told, “NPCs use their Survival Points to alter Quality Ratings of any tasks directed at them, never to alter the Quality Rating of any dice roll for them.”

So how does a player character acquire Hero Points?  This is a good question.  “The rate at which you award Hero Points will affect the tenor of your campaign,” the rules tell us.  With too few Hero Points, the campaign will not accurately represent the Bond milieu ; with too many, player characters “will be able to pull off some amazing feats with regularity.”  The rules say that the process described for awarding Hero Points “is admittedly rather conservative.”  In short, every time a character rolls a Quality Rating 1 result (except combat rolls) he or she gains a Hero Point.  This means that more-skilled characters will have more Hero Points since they can more easily obtain Quality Rating 1 results.  “This is to be expected,” according to the rules.  It also means characters earn Hero Points – which can be construed as 'luck' – by making lucky rolls.  In essence, the lucky get luckier – a disparity with which I am not entirely comfortable.  Additionally, a player may be tempted to engage upon numerous, useless tasks in order to cultivate Hero Points.  Such activity (“for example, trying a Seduction attempt with every female in a gambling establishment”) should be “penalized,” the rules state.  The penalty, however, is denying “the player any Hero Points.”

Other methods of awarding Hero Points are expanded upon by Neil Randall, one of two people credited with Systems Development for the James Bond 007 game, in an article in Heroes (Vol. 1, No. 2).  Fortunately, Heroes editor William E. Peschel interrupts this article to inform readers, “This is okay.”  It's always nice when someone who had nothing to do with creating the game validates a statement by one of the Systems Developers.  Anyway, Randall indicates that, in the games he runs, “players don't roll the dice very often.”  Therefore, he allows “Hero Points for all Quality Rating 1 results, whether they occur in Combat, Chases, Characteristic rolls, Skill rolls, or Ability rolls.”  Randall includes “Characteristic rolls” even though he recognizes that “characteristic rolls don't use the Quality Rating system.”  Randall also suggests the possibility of assigning Hero Points as a reward for good role playing:

Say, for instance, the character rushes into a burning building to rescue the lovely young lady trapped inside.  Award a Hero Point or two.  Award a Hero Point for helping a fellow agent beyond the call of duty, especially if it does not impede the mission.  Award a Hero Point for figuring out a very difficult clue...

Should rescuing a homely young lady garner more or less Hero Points?  Randall notes that rewards for good role-playing officially come in the form of additional Experience Points; however, “there is no nicer feeling for the player than to be rewarded instantly for an action which is directly the result of playing within the Bond genre.”

Hooking Up With Pussy Galore

Honor Blackman as the titular Pussy Galore

As I have said previously, “A role-playing game based on a given intellectual property ought to be able to emulate situations from the source material.”  Since James Bond is famous for his womanizing, it is no surprise that the James Bond 007 role-playing game provides rules for “attempting to form an intimate romantic relationship with a Non-Player Character.”

One of the skills available to James Bond 007 characters is Seduction.  As explained in last week's post, a skill is based on one or two characteristics.  Seduction is unique in that it is derived from another skill as well as a characteristic.  The Primary Chance 'formula' for the Seduction skill is:

[ ( Charisma Skill Levels + Willpower ) / 2 ] + Skill Levels

Every player character has the Charisma skill at no cost and thus has one skill level automatically.  Charisma regards “making good impressions upon the Non-Player Characters your character encounters and convincing them that he is a great human being and deserving of their respect, love and admiration.”  Like Seduction, Charisma is based on the Willpower characteristic.  Willpower is defined on page 18 as:

The character's mental ability to control his bodily reactions to such things as pain, abuse, attacks (whether verbal or physical) and stress.  It is also a general measure of discipline.

James Bond's Willpower value is 13 and he has a total of 15 Skill Levels in Charisma.  (This is the maximum number of Charisma Skill Levels he can have – two more than his Willpower.)  Bond has 14 Skill Levels in Seduction, giving him a Primary Chance of 28.  ([(15 + 13) / 2] + 14)

The “How to Interact with Non-Player Characters” chapter of James Bond 007 explains that Seduction “is used to establish a close, romantic relationship with an NPC of the opposite sex with the intent of changing the NPC's reaction towards the character.”  Also, “The relationship will probably develop to include some kind of physical encounter.”  Nowadays, “of the opposite sex” would be replaced with a phrase along the lines of “sexually predisposed to the PC's gender.”  It's not as if Fleming excluded characters of alternative sexuality from his works; of course, his attitudes in this regard were not exactly enlightened.  Fleming stated that Pussy Galore's lesbianism was a “psycho-pathological malady” and she “only needed the right man to come along...”  Although a flawed character, Bond is nonetheless the quintessential white male power fantasy.  No woman can resist him – not for long.

There five stages in a Seduction attempt:

1.  The Look (Ease Factor 10)
2.  Opening Line (Ease Factor 9)
3.  Witty Conversation (Ease Factor 8)
4.  Beginning Intimacies (Ease Factor 5)
5.  When and Where? (Ease Factor 4)

Despite names like “Opening Line” and “Witty Conversation,” each stage is effectively a die roll.  Specifically, each stage requires the seducer to succeed with a Seduction roll at the listed Ease Factor.  The Ease Factor lowers as the stages progress – meaning the rolls become more difficult.  The Ease Factors can be modified for a number of reasons.  If the seducer previously impressed the character to be seduced with the Connoisseur Ability, the seducer receives a +1 Ease Factor.  “If the NPC is male and the Player Character is female,” there is a +2 Ease Factor.  If the person to be seduced “has a Weakness for Members of the Opposite Sex,” there is a +2 Ease Factor.  There is a –2 Ease Factor when a seducer attempts to seduce someone who has “successfully resisted“ his or her prior attempt.  As might be expected, a seducer's appearance affects the Seduction roll.  For example, a “Normal” character has a –1 Ease Factor while a “Striking” character (Bond's appearance 'level') has a +2 Ease Factor.

An NPC can attempt to resist a Seduction attempt at any stage “by making a Willpower roll at an Ease Factor equal to the Quality Rating [of the Seduction roll].”  Even if a Player Character fails a Seduction roll, the NPC must succeed with a Willpower roll at an Ease Factor of 10 in order to resist.  Player Characters can automatically resist Seduction attempts and NPCs successful in resisting can “pretend to have the Seduction continue.”

Anyway, according to the Goldfinger Adventure Module:

Galore should be played as a frigid woman.  She distrusts all men and, therefore, Seduction attempts against her will be very difficult (a –2 Ease Factor modifier) and will probably require the expenditure of Hero Points.  Because of her innate distrust of men, she gets a +3 Ease Factor modifier on her Willpower roll to resist being seduced.

Bond's first stage Seduction attempt has an Ease Factor of 10.  This represents a base Ease Factor of 10, with –2 on account of Galore's modifier, but +2 for Bond's Striking appearance.  With Bond's Primary Chance of 28, an Ease Factor of 10 means a Success Chance of 280.  For the final stage of the Seduction, Bond's Success Chance is 112.  Because of Bond's high Success Chances, he can fail only with a roll of 100.  What differs with the various stages are the rolls necessary for the different Quality Rating results.  On the first stage, Bond can achieve a “Good” result with a roll of 57 – 98; on the last stage, he can obtain the same result with a roll of 25 – 60.

Galore's Willpower value is 8.  So, depending upon the Quality Rating of Bond's  successful Seduction roll at any stage, Galore has a 32%, 40%, 48%, or 56% chance to resist.  (A woman of equivalent Willpower, but without Galore's modifiers, would have an 8%, 16%, 24%, or 32% chance to resist.)  Successfully resisting at any stage would require Bond to start the Seduction sequence again, beginning at the first stage.  The –2 Ease Factor for a repeated attempt would apply.

The 'consummation' of Bond's seduction of Galore is immediately preceded by violence.  Assaulting a woman is hardly heroic and I would not condone such behavior in the real world.  Fortunately, Bond is fictional and we need not countenance his actions as we consider them.  Bond's opportunities to succeed in his mission dwindled.  His 'conversion' of Galore was necessary in order to save the day, protect thousands of innocent lives, and prevent economic chaos in the Western world.  What would you do to accomplish the same?