Today's column was going to be a different thing. I had planned another look at some super-hero role-playing games, continuing what I had talked about over the last few weeks, but when I awoke to news that British actor Roger Moore had passed away I decided on a change of topics. Instead today I am going to talk about the classic Avalon Hill/Victory Games RPG, James Bond 007, the Classified retroclone and why espionage games are a seemingly dying art that are still needed.
I grew up while the Cold War was still an active concern. I was already in college by the time the Berlin Wall came down, so espionage played a role not only in the society that helped form my sensibilities, but it was also an active part of the popular culture of the time. I remember Alec Guinness as much for his role of George Smiley in such television shows as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People as I do for his part in the Star Wars franchise. Spy novels and movies like Day of the Jackal drew the outlines of a semi-secret world that lurked just beneath the surface and informed the actions of the world's governments. It could be a scary time. I remember conducting nuclear attack drills when I was in elementary and middle school.
Espionage is making a comeback into the consciousness of the world, but the war isn't as Cold as it was in my youth. In addition to the news of Moore's passing, another terror attack has happened, and we can't go a day without the news talking of some cyberattack or another.
Contemporaneously, there really aren't a lot of pure espionage games or settings out right now. Being that a lot of game designers are of the same age group that was shaped by the world of the Cold War, this is surprising. In the pure category we have games like the aforementioned Classified from Expeditious Retreat Press, White Lies and Covert Ops from DwD Studios, Spione from Ron Edwards' Adept Press and of course Spycraft from Crafty Games. There are probably others that have flown under my radar like Francis Gary Powers flying a U2 plane, but these are the ones that I have seen, read or played over time.
These games are split between a "classic" approach, being set during the heights of the Cold War and being set in the more or less here and now. While Classified, for example, does make some efforts to update the rules from the time period of the original James Bond 007, there is still no skill for computer operation or hacking and the electronics skill is still very much a reflection of the 1980s. However, if you are looking for a more contemporary experience in your espionage role-playing, using this system will take a bit of work on the part of the game master.
Edwards' Spione is also a game about the Cold War, and it is the only storygame on this list. The game is set in Cold War-era Germany, and draws heavily upon the thematic ideas of John le Carré novels and the various media adaptations. Spione is also very heavy on the facts of that era, and the Germany of that era, and looks at them unflinchingly. This is not a cinematic game, and it deals with a lot of the more mundane practicalities of espionage of the era. Like many wars, both hot and cold, of that era, the actions of American, British, Soviet and German espionage of that time and place still have repercussions on our world of today.
Where White Lies uses Matt Finch's White Box variant of the Swords & Wizardry rules as it's basis, Covert Ops uses a percentile-based system that is unique to DwD Studios. Both of these games are very cinematic and are based more on the sensibilities of movies like the Mission Impossible franchise than actual, real world espionage. This isn't a knock on those games, because frankly that style of espionage is a lot more "fun" than slouching in a dirty alley in Berlin while you wait and watch to see if that apartment light goes out so you can search it. Both of these styles have their pluses and minuses, and appeal to different types of gamers and games.
Spycraft has been promising a streamlined third edition for a long time, and I fear that the tides of gaming may have passed Craft Games by. I hope not. The second edition of the game was fun, albeit very crunchy, and built itself upon many of the strengths of the 3.x OGC rules. In some ways, some of the rules like how Spycraft handles chases, harkens back to the inspiration of the seminal espionage RPG James Bond 007. I would really like to see the third edition get released so that I can play it. Their FantasyCraft game hinted at the direction that the new edition would take, and until the prominence of OSR games, FantasyCraft was my preferred simplified 3.x OGC variant.
I should probably again mention the Ninjas and Superspies game by Palladium Games. I talked about it and Heroes Unlimted last week. The Ninjas and Superspies is very much the Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD role-playing game. It draws upon the comic sensibilities of the 80s and 90s (when there was actually a pretty good Nick Fury comic being published by Marvel Comics). It is a game that is very much as it says on the tin. You play high tech superspies, private detectives and a slew of different sorts of martial artists in a world of conspiracies and espionage. It is a cinematic game like many of the other examples, but at the same time the Palladium system creates characters that are fragile, so a Ninjas and Superspies character is the most likely to face a fatal outcome of these games (except, of course, Spione, which is strongly rooted in the "real world").
People would ask, "Well, isn't that enough to scratch the itch of espionage role-playing?" Yes and no. Movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the Mission Impossible franchise, and TV series like Agents of SHIELD or The Americans show that there is still an interest in the various forms of espionage, from mundane to cinematic, in the world, and it is unusual for role-playing games to not chase after that zeitgeist. Where is the Modern AGE setting that deals with espionage and technothrillers? Where is the GUMSHOE hack that deals with real world espionage and international intrigues? Sometimes gaming's emphasis on "genre plus kewl powerz" can cause it to lag behind the rest of pop culture. I'm a big fan of urban fantasy, but I don't think that every modern setting has to have supernatural elements in order to work. Night's Black Agents is a great game, but sometimes human don't need outside help to create great evils.
So, let's touch upon James Bond 007, a bit now. For many, this is the seminal espionage role-playing game. I know of designers for whom this game was their entry into role-playing games. It was a seminal game that was ahead of its time in a number of ways. Rules like the chase rules were ahead of their time, and one of the earliest examples of using game mechanics to more closely approximate the tropes of a game's genre.
Unfortunately, despite its seminal nature and being incredibly innovative at the time, it has not aged well in a number of ways. For example, computers are mostly skipped over by the game. It makes it more difficult to adapt the game to a more contemporary era, but if you look at games like Classified, you can see how you can move in that direction. However, this doesn't mean that you can't use James Bond 007 or Classified for gaming in a historical era (yeah, referring to an era when I was alive as "historical" is weird for me, too), and in fact the system is one of the best for a cinematic espionage game set in a period from the mid-1960s up through the 1980s and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Classified demonstrates that there is an audience for these sorts of games, and stories.
The Thrilling Locations supplement, based loosely upon Ian Fleming's non-fictional book of the same name, has long been one of my favorite location-based supplements for any game. It highlighted a lot of things that many gamers wouldn't have had firsthand knowledge about: jet-setting high end international hotels, casinos and private jets and trains (yes, trains!). I would have liked for it to have had more information about some of the cities that Fleming wrote about in his original book, like Las Vegas or the French Riviera, because I think that would have helped out on games at the time. The information itself hasn't aged well, for example many of the hotels are no longer in existence, but the book is still an informative look at the time.
What will be the next great espionage role-playing game? Will the renewed interest in spies and spycraft in the real world, as well as in the zeitgeist of popular culture lead to a new and dramatic espionage setting or game? Time will tell.
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Be sure to leave a martini, untouched, at the table in his honor.
