Retrospective: Top Secret/S.I.

After last week's Retrospective post on the Q Manual for James Bond 007, my thoughts were starting to turn towards espionage RPGs. This inevitably led me back to TSR's Top Secret, which I loved but didn't play as often as I'd have liked. That, in turn, reminded me of the existence of its offspring, Top Secret/S.I., released in 1987, just as I was preparing to go away to college. Consequently, I didn't get a chance to look at the game until a few years later, by which point it was mostly a dead letter, despite receiving a fair bit of support over the course of its five-year run.

It's a shame, because I think TS/S.I. had a fair bit of potential. Designed by Doug Niles and Warren Spector, the game took a somewhat different approach to its subject matter than did its predecessor. Gone was the procedural, often gritty tone of the Merle Rasmussen's 1980 version. In its place was something more colorful, kinetic, and cinematic. TS/S.I. doesn't aspire to be "realistic" so much as an emulation of the larger-than-life globetrotting adventurer-cum-"spies" we saw in the action movies of the time. It was, I think, a good call and probably a better fit for the realities of most roleplaying game campaigns.

Like most TSR RPGs, Top Secret/S.I. was released in a boxed set, packed with goodies. Say what you will about TSR, but one of its great strengths was the physical production of its games. I think they may have outdone themselves in the case of TS/S.I. The company clearly had high hopes for the game. The box contained:

• A Player's Guide (64 pages), clearly written and friendly to newcomers.
• An Administrator’s Guide (32 pages), providing the referee with tools and advice.
• Maps, cardstock character sheets, reference charts, and a sheet of cardboard stand-up figures.
• Dice, of course, because no boxed game would be complete without them.

The packaging alone made it clear that this was a game, not merely a rulebook, but one that presented itself as a fun, playable experience intended to evoke a wide range of modern adventures, not just the high-tech gadgets and dangerous glamour of Cold War espionage fiction. I suspect that TSR hoped that Top Secret/S.I. would do for the present day what Dungeons & Dragons had done for fantasy: provide a flexible, accessible rules framework that could serve as the foundation for a whole genre of modern action roleplaying, from spy thrillers and paramilitary missions to pulp conspiracies and even near-future techno-drama.

In this, the TS.I. boxed set feels like a kind of Rosetta Stone for late-‘80s genre media. The core materials obviously nod to James Bond, Mission: Impossible, and the like, but the open-ended system and grab-bag of equipment, skills, and professions suggest a broader ambition. You could just as easily run an adventure inspired by Miami Vice, Rambo, or even Romancing the Stone. The structure was modular and the tone elastic. The overall design of the game hinted at a future where the spy game might grow to encompass all contemporary genre play.

TSR probably wasn’t just trying to publish a game about spies. Instead, they were trying to stake a claim on the modern era. The original boxed set suggested that they hoped to build outwards from it, creating a game that could handle every kind of adventure that could be found on video store shelves or TV Guide listings circa 1987. At least, that's what it looked like to me when I first read the game's materials during its dying days. If I'm correct, it was a pretty ambitious project to have undertaken, even if the end result didn't prove quite as successful as TSR might have hoped.

The rules of TS/S.I. were straightforward, modular, and forgiving. Characters were generated with six attributes (rated 1–100), a profession (which granted skill access), and a suite of percentile-based skills. It was a clean system, a sort of midway point between the crunch of, say, Twilight: 2000 and the elegance of James Bond 007. Combat, though potentially lethal, was far more forgiving than was the original Top Secret. Weapons and gear were detailed, but not exhaustively. The goal seems to have been clarity and momentum rather than obsessive realism. This was a game that wanted you to just dive in and play, not calculate cover modifiers for twenty minutes.

The default setting concerned the struggle between ORION (a kind of freelance intelligence agency) and WEB (a global criminal conspiracy) and was both its strength and its weakness. On one hand, it gave the game immediate stakes, a Bond-like clarity: good versus evil, gadgets versus goons. It let players jump into the world without pages of history or faction briefings. On the other hand, it lacked subtlety. There was little room for ambiguity, betrayal, or the slow-burn paranoia that often defines great espionage fiction. But for players raised on reruns of Mission: Impossible or The A-Team, this clarity was probably a feature, not a bug. There’s also an undeniable charm in how Top Secret/S.I. embraces the genre’s clichés. For example, some of the stand-up cardboard figures are depicted with trench coats and sunglasses and it’s hard not to smile at the earnest theatricality of it all. TS/S.I. doesn’t wink at its inspirations; it celebrates them without irony. Like a well-worn VHS tape of Octopussy or Delta Force, it’s content to revel in genre tropes, trusting that players will fill in the gaps with imagination and energy.

That attitude might partly explain why the game, despite its potential, never quite caught on the way its creators hoped. By 1987, the Cold War was already beginning to lose its pop culture dominance. The Berlin Wall would fall just two years later. Espionage itself was becoming murkier, more bureaucratic, and less suited to clean narratives. Furthermore, TSR was already showing signs of overstretch and its dominance in the RPG market no longer unchallenged. Top Secret/S.I. was well-supported, with modules, expansions, and genre-bending supplements like F.R.E.E.Lancers, but it never seemed to take off. As I said, I never even saw a copy until well into its run and I never owned it myself.

Despite all this, I think there's real merit in what the game tried to do. The original boxed set is well done, a terrific artifact of TSR at its peak as a producer of tactile, inviting RPG products. Likewise, the rules hold up better than one might expect, especially for pick-up play or shorter campaigns. The setting might be broad-stroke and somewhat Saturday morning in tone, but it’s also an ideal launchpad for more creative groups to riff, remix, and reframe. You could run hardboiled noir, techno-thrillers, or even supernatural conspiracy stories with only a few tweaks, just as TSR seems to have hoped to do.

In the end, Top Secret/S.I. stands as a kind of forgotten experiment: TSR’s attempt to bring modern action-adventure under the same umbrella as elves and dragons. It didn’t succeed, but it did leave behind a beautifully made game full of obvious enthusiasm and potential. For those of us who like to celebrate messier, less polished relics of the RPG past, maybe that’s enough.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Nine Hells (Part II)"

I was a huge fan of Part I of Ed Greenwood’s “The Nine Hells,” so it was almost inevitable that I’d be just as taken with Part II. Published in issue #76 of Dragon (August 1983), the second half of this magisterial tour of the planes of ultimate Lawful Evil is every bit the equal of the first, perhaps better. It’s longer, for one thing, and delves into the “deepest” layers of the Hells, including Nessus, the domain of Asmodeus. I probably spent even more hours poring over this article than its predecessor – and that’s saying something.

Part II explores the "bottom" four planes of Hell – Malbolge, Maladomini, Caina, and Nessus – ruled by the three most powerful archdevils: Baalzebul, Mephistopheles, and Asmodeus. As the Monster Manual tells us, Baalzebul commands both the sixth and seventh layers, a rare distinction that underscores his power. He rules the seventh directly, while the sixth is governed by his viceroy, Moloch, an archdevil in name, but one who holds power only at Baalzebul's pleasure. I've always wondered why Gary Gygax granted Baalzebul two layers when every other archdevil rules just one. Greenwood’s article doesn’t address this, though I suspect later AD&D material (perhaps Planescape?) might.

Each of the four planes receives a detailed write-up, highlighting notable locations like the capital cities of their ruling archdevils. This is a big part of what made this article and its predecessor so compelling. Greenwood gave each plane a rough geography, filled with distinct locales that made them feel like actual places where adventures could happen. Before these articles, the planes all seemed like vague, featureless expanses that were hard to visualize, let alone use in play. Now, there were cities, fortresses, lakes, places a referee could actually work with. That might seem like a small thing, but it’s not. Believe me.

Each plane also got write-ups for the unique devils who dwelled there, often in service to its archdevil. These included the so-called "dukes of hell," but also the "princesses of hell," the consorts of the archdevils. Even more than the dukes, this was a new concept in AD&D conception of devils, though not an unreasonable one, given their depiction as a court of ever-scheming infernal aristocrats. It also opened up new possibilities for gaming, as the dukes, princesses, and archdevils all had their own agendas, each looking to gain advantage over the others. Characters could easily become enmeshed in such gambits, whether willingly or not.

What truly set Part II apart, however, was its six-page appendix detailing how the Nine Hells distort spells, magic items, and even class abilities. Greenwood didn’t invent this approach, but he uses it to great effect, emphasizing how alien and hostile the Hells are compared to the Prime Material. This matters, especially for high-level play, where such distinctions are needed to pose real challenges. I suspect this is why Gygax became so invested in planar adventures later in his TSR career: the planes offered a new frontier to test powerful characters and keep long-running campaigns exciting.

Taken together, these two articles transformed the Nine Hells from vague backdrops into vivid, dangerous realms ripe for adventure. Greenwood’s work gave referees the tools to turn them into meaningful, playable settings, not just abstract concepts. For high-level campaigns looking for their next stage, the Nine Hells suddenly made a lot more sense. I adored these articles in my youth and still think highly of them today. They're also reminders of just how good Dragon was in the early to mid-1980s. What a time to be a subscriber!

Traveller Distinctives: Character Generation

I've often mentioned a classic Traveller computer program that I first encountered years ago and that I use as a time waster. The program faithfully recreates the game's character generation system and I've always found it a fun way to spend a few minutes. Of course, one of the reasons I find it so enjoyable is that, like Traveller's character generation system, it's an exercise in risk management, luck, and ambition.

Where most roleplaying games treat character generation as a more-or-less straightforward process of choosing (or rolling) ability scores, picking a class/profession, and selecting skills or equipment, Traveller invites the player to step into the shoes of his character long before the campaign even begins. The character isn't just a blank slate with a sword or a spellbook. He is a veteran of one of several possible interstellar institutions: a former Marine, a merchant officer, an "Other," whatever that is, with a past. And that past is determined through a series of career terms, each one a gamble.

Do you reenlist for another four-year hitch in the Navy? Making Captain comes with a +1 SOC and those additional rolls on the skill tables are tempting. Plus, your mustering out benefits could use a boost. But there's always the chance that this time, the dice won't be so kind. You might fail your promotion roll. You might fail to get any useful skills, leaving you four years older with little to show for it. You might even die.

There it is. The most infamous and distinctive element of the design of classic Traveller: your character can die during character generation. Even people who’ve never rolled up a Traveller character have heard the jokes. It’s a legendary bit of RPG lore, often recounted with equal parts amusement and awe – and for good reason. This single, brutal mechanic has played a big part in defining the game’s reputation for nearly half a century.

Of course, not everyone finds it funny. For many gamers, the idea of losing a character before the adventure even begins feels not just strange, but cruel. Why spend time building a character only to have him die on the metaphorical launchpad? But that very unpredictability, that razor’s edge between possible glory and oblivion, is what gives Traveller its edge. Character generation isn’t just prep; it’s your character's first adventure. It’s a gamble, a dare, a high-stakes game of chicken with the dice. And that’s exactly why I love it.

You can muster out early with a safe, if unremarkable, character. Or you can go for one more term, hoping for that coveted rank, that ship benefit, that skill. But with each term comes a greater risk of injury, aging and, of course, death. And when you roll that fateful snake-eyes on the survival roll, even with the +2 DM for a high Endurance score, that's it. You're dead. Roll again.

Later versions of Traveller, beginning with MegaTraveller and continuing into Traveller: The New Era and the Mongoose editions, have sought to blunt the edges of this system. MegaTraveller, for example, included "brownie points" the player could use to influence dice rolls in his favor. Mongoose, following an option present even in the original rules, replaces death with injury or a mishap on a failed survival roll. These modifications are understandable from a certain perspective, but I think they miss the point entirely. The original system's ruthlessness is not a flaw; it's a feature.

In Traveller, your character doesn't just have a backstory – he earns one. Every skill, every benefit, every rank is the product of risk. The characters who survive are often quirky, sometimes underpowered, occasionally broken, but they're also often memorable and utterly unlike the kinds of characters I'd have chosen to make. The character generation system breeds an emergent narrative, where the highs and lows of the dice suggest a life of triumphs and setbacks, filled with enough hooks to seed a dozen adventures.

I also think this system encourages risk-taking even in players. They become gamblers, daredevils, and strategists, all before the campaign even starts. Each reenlistment roll, each attempt at promotion or benefit, becomes a choice weighed against the threat of death. Do you settle for a safe, mediocre career or roll the dice one more time for a shot at greatness? It trains players to think in terms of trade-offs and consequences, to live with the results of their choices, and to embrace uncertainty. In doing so, it sets the tone for the entire game. Traveller is not about balanced builds or power fantasies; it's about living by your wits in a vast, indifferent universe.

This, to me, is one of the glories of classic Traveller. It's a game that understands that sometimes, the most compelling stories are forged not in a carefully "balanced" system, but in the chaotic, glorious churn of a couple of six-sided dice.

That's why I keep playing that little program and continue to find it so addictive. It's also why, when I've refereed Traveller in the past, I've never considered eliminating the possibility of death from character generation. It's not that I enjoy punishing players, but mostly because I think it's fun. It's a rite of passage, a crucible that produces not just numbers on a sheet, but living, breathing science fiction adventurers in the far future. To strip away that danger, that gamble, would be to rob Traveller of one of the things that makes it truly distinctive. Why would anyone ever want to do that?

Levels Are For Video Games

Today, "leveling up" is a central feature of countless video games, from sprawling open-world RPGs to mobile idle clickers. As anyone who reads this blog of course knows, levels come from Dungeons & Dragons, which introduced them half a century ago as a way to mark a character's growth in power and ability through play over time. What began as a simple abstraction to track advancement has since become a core gameplay loop in video and computer games, where clear, incremental progress has come to be seen as essential to keeping players engaged. 

As video games came to outshine the tabletop games from which they borrowed mechanical concepts like levels, it was perhaps inevitable that tabletop RPGs would return the compliment by inflecting their own designs with assumptions shaped by digital play. Over time, many adopted video game-inspired approaches to advancement: faster progression, more frequent rewards, and clearly defined “power-ups” that echo the dopamine loops of their digital descendants. The result is that some players now approach tabletop RPGs expecting the same steady drip of mechanical achievement they get from a screen, treating levels, feats, and skill boosts not as optional frameworks but as the very point of play. This feedback loop between mediums has reshaped how many people think about character advancement, often narrowing it to the accumulation of stats rather than the growth of an in-game persona, his relationships, or his impact on the wider setting. It’s also made me increasingly skeptical, if not outright critical, of levels themselves.

Before we get too far, let me be clear: this post isn’t an attack on levels. They’ve been a part of tabletop RPGs since 1974 and I'm not advocating for their abandonment. In the Gygaxo-Arnesonian conception of levels, a character can cast more spells, survive more wounds, and fight more fearsome foes as he advances. In this conception, levels bring a sense of scale and direction to campaigns and help frame a rough arc of a character's growth after the fashion of, say, Conan's rise from a young, inexperienced warrior to a battle-hardened general of Aquilonia (and, eventually, its king). It was, therefore, only natural that early computer RPGs, like Ultima and Wizardry would follow suit. Computers are excellent at tracking numbers, after all, and early video games needed straightforward mechanics.

As the years went by, the leveling paradigm took over. Players of video games came to expect a steady stream of mechanical rewards for their investment of time. Kill monsters, gain experience, level up. It’s a feedback loop as familiar and addictive as a slot machine and just as tightly engineered. With the massive success of MMORPGs and action-RPGs, the model has became entrenched and, unsurprisingly, it has filtered back into tabletop gaming. Many players now approach tabletop RPGs with the assumption that leveling up, or some equivalent form of mechanical advancement, is not only expected but essential.

And that brings back to something I've been feeling for some time: tabletop RPGs don’t need levels. In fact, they don’t need mechanical advancement at all.

Plenty of games, some of them quite old, have already demonstrated this. Consider my favorite roleplaying game, Traveller. Characters in Traveller begin the game with their skills already in place, having completed careers before adventuring begins. There is no leveling system. Characters can improve, albeit very slowly, with years of in-game training, but mechanical advancement is not central to the experience of playing Traveller. Instead, the game focuses on exploration, commerce, politics, and survival in an indifferent universe. What matters is what one's character does within the setting, not how his numbers go up.

The same could even be said for a game like Call of Cthulhu, where the main arc of a character’s life isn’t defined by rising power but by gradual decline – into madness, death, or at best, retirement from delving into the Mythos. He might get better at Library Use or Spot Hidden, but he’ll never become an investigator resistant, never mind immune, to cosmic horror. That’s not the point of the game. Even RuneQuest, though it includes skill advancement through use, eschews levels entirely. A seasoned Gloranthan character is still vulnerable, still mortal. Advancement, when it comes, is more than a matter of increasing skill percentiles, but rather one of reputation, relationships, position within the world of the Third Age.

These games remind us that the real power of tabletop RPGs lies not in mechanics, but in meaning. Unlike a video game, which must quantify progress to function, a tabletop RPG has no such constraint. The game lives in conversation and imagination. If a Traveller character becomes the right hand man of the subector duke, or earns the ire of an Ine Givar terrorist cell, or uncovers the secrets of the Ancients, those are significant achievements. No hit points were gained, no XP awarded, yet the character has advanced in ways no level system can fully capture.

This is not to say that mechanical advancement is inherently bad, because I've used to good effect for decades. Leveling provides structure and creates a sense of forward motion. These are good things. For some players, it also scratches an itch that is very real. However, when mechanical growth becomes the primary – only – form of advancement, it distorts the nature of tabletop play. Players start to see everything through the lens of optimization. They choose actions based on what yields the most mechanical benefit, rather than what makes the most sense for their character or the world he inhabits.

I’ve seen it happen; I suspect most of us have. A party bypasses an intriguing mystery because it offers no clear reward. A player makes choices like navigating a skill tree, optimizing for mechanical advantage rather than what fits the world or character. That mindset can make sense in a video game, where content is finite and progress must be explicitly marked. But tabletop RPGs aren’t software. They aren’t bound by code or limited to scripted outcomes. Their flexibility is their greatest strength. A character can change the world – or be changed by it – without his stats shifting at all.

If there’s one thing my House of Worms campaign has taught me, it’s to lean into that flexibility. We should reward clever thinking, bold risks, and engagement with the setting over mechanical upgrades. The most satisfying kind of advancement comes from caring about a character and his place in the world, not just from tallying experience points. When advancement does happen, it should feel earned not because the rules dictate it, but because something significant has happened.

Levels are great. Experience points can be fun. But they are tools, not goals. Tabletop RPGs aren’t about reaching 10th level. They’re about entering and exploring an imaginary world through an equally imaginary character. What matters isn’t how many hit points your fighter has, but what you do with them. Success might mean founding a colony, retiring in disgrace, making a terrible bargain with an otherworldly power, or changing the course of an empire. These are the kinds of outcomes that emerge from choices, consequences, and collaboration with the referee and other players, not from ticking boxes on a character sheet. Advancement in a tabletop RPG is ultimately about meaning, not math.

Those aren’t the kinds of achievements a level-up screen can show you and that’s exactly what makes them worth chasing – or, increasingly, it’s what keeps me playing after all these years.

Campaign Updates: The Blue Room

This week, I only refereed my House of Worms campaign. That's because, as I've previously noted, the Dolmenwood campaign is on a temporary hiatus. Meanwhile, I was feeling a bit exhausted on the day I usually run Barrett's Raiders, so I took a bye. Normally, I try not to do this. I'm a firm believer in playing every week unless I have a good excuse not to do so. Building consistency is an important part of ensuring campaign longevity, after all. However, I just wasn't feeling up to it this week and decided I could do with a break. 

I was, however, very much up to refereeing House of Worms, which continues to barrel ever close to its conclusion. In the latest session, the characters decided that now was the time to reclaim Kirktá's golden disk, the one that could verify that he was indeed an heir to the Petal Throne. Having determined that it was located within Béy Sü's Temple of Belkhánu, Kirktá, Keléno, and Nebússa set out there to find a priest named Chekrásh, whom Kirktá remembered from his youth there and who, in a previous meeting, had intimated that he knew something more about his past.

Chekrásh received the trio with enthusiasm. After exchanging pleasantries, it quickly became clear that the old priest was waiting for Kirktá explain why he had come – the real reason, not some ruse. This was difficult for Kirktá, as he was cautious by nature, all the more so given the current situation in Tsolyánu. Eventually, though, he admitted that he had come for the golden disk and Chekrásh seemed pleased. He explained that the disk was in the possession of another priest named Míru and that, if Kirktá wanted it, he'd have to come with him to meet Míru.

The name Míru was quite familiar to all three characters. It was the name of a priest whom they knew back during their days in Linyaró. A priest of Belkhánu and a colleague of Keléno's first wife, Hmásu, he was also secretly a priest of the One Other. He'd been instrumental in helping them thwart efforts by the Temple of Ksárul to free their master from the Blue Room. His reappearance in Béy Sü as the keeper of the disk was thus a surprise – but also not. In some ways, it seemed almost inevitable that a priest of the One Other whom they knew well would become involved in their present struggles.

Míru didn't hesitate to offer Kirktá the disk, so that he might "take his skein into his own hands." He explained that the disk was "no mere token of clan or blood. It is a reminder of a pact, one older than Tsolyánu" itself. He added that Dhich'uné hoped not merely to subvert the original pact between the first Tlakotáni and the One Other but to unmake it. In doing so, he would throw not just Tsolyánu but all of Tékumel into chaos, which is why Kirktá and his friends have no choice but to stop him. Míru then pledged to aid them however he could.

When pressed for more details about the consequences of Dhich'uné's plans, Míru elaborated. 

“In the time before Time spiraled inward, before we lost the Sky-that-Burned, there was a great betrayal. Ksárul, the Ancient Lord of Secrets, He Who Confronts the Inner Being of Reality, looked beyond the Curtain and beheld the cold fires hung in endless darkness, shining without warmth and without mercy."

“The other gods, even those of Change, opposed him. They knew that to follow him beyond the Curtain would be to lose everything. The cold fires heralded their own extinction. There is no place for gods beyond the Curtain. Sorcery dies there. The Pattern crumbles. Why Ksárul would want this they could not conceive."

“So they sealed him up in the Blue Room. It is his cage, a place beyond Time, where the Doomed Prince lies dreaming of escape, not just for himself but for mankind. He dreams of the cold fires and the unmaking of Tékumel.”

“For untold millennia, his priests have whispered rites in silent vaults, peeling back the seals, seeking to open the Final Door. And always, the One Other has stood in his way.”

Míru then added that, knowingly or not, Kirktá and his comrades have aided the One Other in preventing Ksárul's escape and all that would follow from it. Dhich'uné's plan would upend this. He seeks to bend the One Other's covenant with the Tlakotáni to serve his own ends, but, in doing so, he risks awakening the Dreamer, rending the Curtain that protects Tékumel from the cold fires of the void. The original pact with the One Other must remain intact and unchanged. Just as the nine gods of Stability and Change turned to the One Other to seal Ksárul away in the Blue Room, so too did the Tlakotáni do so to ensure the strength of that seal.

Míru said that Kirktá had been prepared, though he did not remember it, to be something that has been lacking for many generations: a Tlakotáni priest of the One Other, who would oversee the conclusion of the Kólumjàlim as it was meant to be concluded. This had not been done in some time, because even the Tlakotáni had forgotten the true meaning of it. Now, with Dhich'uné foolishly trying to pervert it to his own ends, Kirktá was needed now more than ever. He could not enter the Choosing as a candidate; he must survive. Of course, that's exactly what Dhich'uné seems to want as well ...

Retrospective: Q Manual

After seeing that advertisement for the James Bond 007 RPG, I found myself thinking about it, something I hadn't done in quite some time. I've been a fan of the espionage genre since I was quite young, influenced at least in part by my affection for the early James Bond films. Consequently, when the roleplaying game was released in 1983, I was an early adopter and had a great deal of fun with it.

One of the things that really set James Bond 007 apart from its competition, like Top Secret. was its remarkably elegant and thematically consistent design. Much of that is probably owed to the efforts of its lead designer, Gerard Christopher Klug, who seems to have had a rare talent for mechanical innovation in service to genre emulation. I adored James Bond 007 for its action resolution and chase systems, as well as its emphasis on style as well as substance. It was a really tight, inspiring design.

Since I've already written a Retrospective post about the game itself, I thought a good way to return to discussing James Bond 007 would be through the Q Manual, published the same year as the core rules. Subtitled The Illustrated Guide to the World's Finest Armory (not a misspelling; the 007 RPG used American spellings throughout), the book conjured images of white-coated technicians, deadly attaché cases, and Roger Moore raising an eyebrow as Desmond Llewelyn stammers his way through the latest miracle of British engineering. That’s exactly what the Q Manual delivers: an in-universe catalog of gadgets, vehicles, and weapons straight from the MI6 labs, lovingly detailed and immaculately presented.

The book takes the form of a “field guide” issued to agents of the British Secret Service, complete with an introduction by Q himself and dossiers on the equipment available to operatives in the field. That this fiction is maintained throughout the book is no small achievement. One of the many things that sets James Bond 007 apart from other spy RPG is the importance given to tone and presentation. The Q Manual, written Greg Gorden, leans hard into this, turning what could have been a dry list of gear into a flavorful extension of the world of the game. 

One of the most striking things about the supplement is its production values. Victory Games, being a subsidiary of Avalon Hill, inherited that company's penchant for clean layouts and effective use of art and typography. The illustrations in The Q Manual are clear, reminiscent of technical drawings, which only enhances the feeling that one is paging through a genuine intelligence dossier rather than a gaming supplement. Even the typefaces and formatting choices reinforce the conceit, giving it a restrained, professional look that stands apart from the appearance of most other RPG books of that era.

Mechanically, the Q Manual provides complete game statistics for each item, compatible with the system presented in the basic game rulebook. Everything from the iconic Walther PPK to rocket-firing cigarettes is detailed with both practical and, at times, tongue-in-cheek commentary. In this way, the book acts as both a mechanical expansion and a setting book, grounding its fantastical gadgets in a consistent rules framework while reinforcing the tone and flavor of the Bond universe. It’s a great example of rules and presentation working hand in glove.

Of course, all of this is just another way the Q Manual reinforces what makes the James Bond 007 RPG so special: its commitment to genre fidelity. Like the best RPG supplements, it doesn’t merely tack on new rules or equipment. Instead, it deepens the player’s immersion in the world of the game, reminding him that this is a game about style, daring, and cool-headed efficiency in the face of over-the-top supervillainy. Every gadget and vehicle included serves not just a mechanical purpose, but an esthetic one, enabling players to act (and feel) like true agents of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Re-reading it now, more than forty years later, I was struck by the book’s clarity of purpose and sincerity. It does not wink at the audience nor lapse into self-parody, as even the later Bond films would sometimes do. Instead, it treats the world of Bond as one worthy of exploration and emulation, not as camp, but as aspirational fantasy. I think that's a key to why both this supplement and the entire James Bond 007 game line were favorites of mine. 

No supplement is perfect. Like the game itself, the Q Manual assumes a particular flavor of "espionage" – clean, glamorous, and British to its core. There is little room here for the messy realities of the Cold War or the moral ambiguities of Le Carré. But this is James Bond, not Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The Q Manual knows what it is and does it exceptionally well. Honestly, that's what I love about it, even now. It captures a particular fantasy of espionage and invites you to step into it, martini in hand and mission dossier at the ready. It's refreshing to revisit something so joyfully committed to the escapism it's offering.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "For NPCs Only: The Death Master"

Ah, that staple of Dragon from back in the day: the "NPC only" class. One of the oddities of the magazine was that, while there was a voracious demand for new character classes, as a house organ of TSR, it could never offer up a new class for use with D&D without a formal caveat, unless it came from the pen of Gary Gygax himself. Of course, this was done with a nod and a wink, as no referee I knew back in the day ever refrained from allowing his players to use "NPC only" classes if he felt they were well done and fit the spirit of his campaign. I know I never had any problems with it, though, to be fair, I was choosy and, in any event, most of the new classes presented in Dragon were so specialized as to have limited appeal.

Still, the presentation of Len Lakofka's death master class in issue #76 (August 1983) went above and beyond those of most other classes in terms of making it clear that it was intended only for NPCs. You can see the title of the article in which it appeared above. In addition to the "For NPCs Only" phrasing, there's the subtitle that calls the class a "monster" and notes that one shouldn't consider playing as a death master. Even more notably, the article itself begins with an "Introduction/Sermon" where Lakofka opines

The AD&D game should not have assassin player characters. In fact, no player character should be evil at all unless adverse magic affects him.

This is an interesting, though not unusual, point of view, especially as the '80s rolled on. It's also worth noting that assassins were eventually eliminated from AD&D in its second edition, a point of view even Gygax toyed with on occasion, though for different reasons. In any case, Lakofka continues in his introduction to explain that he feels evil is treated too casually in the game. One of his reasons for creating the death master class was to rectify this.

As a way of putting evil in its often without enough of a penalty proper place, here is presented an evil character that makes an assassin look like the boy next door. The death master is meant as a non-player character -- one the player characters and their party have to defeat. Please use the character that way only. If I ever run into a player character death master at a convention, I may turn evil myself. . .

Again, it's an interesting point of view, especially when viewed against the changing culture surrounding D&D at that time. Naturally, Lakofka's concerns had zero effect on me at the time, since there was for a brief time a PC death master in my old campaign – brief, because he was eventually slain by the other PCs, but I allowed the class nonetheless. The PC in question was a formerly good character turned to evil by possession of the Hand of Vecna and who became obsessed with eliminating his former companions in the belief that they would eventually destroy him. He was right, as it turned out, though, ironically, his destruction was more the result of his repeated attempts to slay the other PCs than their own desire to see his life ended. In any event, I didn't heed Lakofka's warnings and I'd be amazed if I were the only one.

The death master class itself is somewhat interesting. It's basically a necromancer, with many powers over the undead and a collection of new spells. Beginning at 4th level, the class also gains the ability to make a variety of "potions, salves, and pastes" that replicate some of his spells and class abilities. At the time, I found it an impressive addition, since it spelled out a bit more explicitly the crafting of magic items than was seen elsewhere. In retrospect, I'm not sure a new class was needed, when new spells alone could have probably sufficed, but that was the style at the time. Regardless, I'm not at all convinced that the death master did anything to advance the notion that evil should be Evil and never an option for player characters.

"Experience the Life of a Secret Agent ..."

Though I played a fair bit of Top Secret in my youth, I think my favorite espionage RPG was James Bond 007 from Victory Games. Even ignoring its connection to Ian Fleming's novels and the United Artists film series, James Bond 007 was in my opinion a great bit of game design, with elegant, emulative rules and terrific graphic design. I had a ton of fun with it during the brief time when it was in production (1983–1987). 

Initial Thoughts on Dragonbane

As I mentioned at the start of the month, my ongoing Dolmenwood campaign is on a short hiatus while one of the players is away traveling. In the meantime, another member of the group has kindly offered to run a few sessions of Dragonbane, Free League's fantasy roleplaying game, and I’ve taken the opportunity to step out from behind the screen and join as a player. I jumped at the chance, not only because Dragonbane has been on my radar for a while, and this seemed like the perfect time to give it a try.

For those unfamiliar with it, Dragonbane is the modern English-language evolution of Drakar och Demoner, Sweden’s first major fantasy RPG, originally released in 1982. That game was built on Chaosium’s Basic Role Playing (BRP) system, adapted under license and inspired in part by Magic World and RuneQuest. Over the decades, Drakar och Demoner went through numerous editions in Sweden, each refining or reshaping its rules. In 2023, Free League acquired the rights and reimagined the game as Dragonbane, distilling its BRP roots into something faster, lighter, and more accessible. While it retains the BRP hallmarks, like skill-based resolution, opposed rolls, it swaps out percentile dice for d20s and favors simplicity wherever it can.

While I’ve played my fair share of BRP-based games over the years, most of my fantasy RPG experience comes from Dungeons & Dragons and that likely shapes how I see other systems in the genre. That said, Dragonbane feels immediately familiar in all the best ways. Like older editions of D&D, character creation is fast and to the point: you choose a kin (i.e., race), a profession (class), some skills, and you’re good to go. It's more straightforward than making a character in RuneQuest and only marginally more involved than in D&D. You can feel the BRP ancestry throughout, but almost everywhere the system has been pared back to emphasize ease of play. The use of d20s streamlines resolution, and Dragonbane replaces modifiers with “boons and banes,” a system akin to advantage and disadvantage.

All of this is well and good, but what pleasantly surprised me was the combat system. I’m someone who often finds combat a necessary but uninspiring part of roleplaying games. I don’t dislike it outright, but I rarely look forward to it. In Dragonbane, though, combat has consistently been fun: brisk, dynamic, and full of opportunities for clever play. In fact, I’ve found myself anticipating combat encounters, which is not something I say lightly. It’s almost as if the Dice Gods are mocking me for having just written a post about my ambivalence toward combat mechanics. If so, I don’t mind. I’m grateful to have found a system that’s helping me understand what I do enjoy in RPG combat.

Each round, a Dragonbane can move and act. Special weapons or abilities can bend the rules in flavorful ways, but the core loop remains fast and approachable. Initiative is determined with cards rather than dice and reshuffles every round, introducing a layer of unpredictability. There are ways to act out of turn or swap initiative order, which adds some tactical flexibility. Beyond that, there are other mechanical wrinkles, such as morale checks, weapon breakage, special maneuvers, that bring the system to life without bogging it down.

That, for me, is what stands out about the Dragonbane combat system: it hits a sweet spot that’s hard to find. Too often, combat systems fall into one of two traps: they’re either so streamlined that they feel flat or they’re so loaded with options and subsystems that the pace suffers. Dragonbane threads the needle rather well in my opinion, offering just enough crunch to make combat engaging, but not so much that it becomes a slog. Whether this will remain my considered opinion over the long haul remains to be seen, but so far, it’s been a delight.

Field Assessment

DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
FIELD ASSESSMENT – SUBJECT: “NEW AMERICA” MOVEMENT
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET – EYES ONLY
DATE: 04 DECEMBER 2000
COMPILED BY: DIA FIELD SECTION 47B, MILGOV REGION 3
REFERENCE NO.: 00-FS47B-NA/337-A

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

New America (NA) is a revolutionary, ultra-populist insurgent movement that has emerged as one of the most ideologically coherent and operationally dangerous factions within the constellation of Free States groups. Drawing on a hybrid ideology of anti-elitism, apocalyptic renewal, and militarized spirituality, NA frames itself not merely as a resistance group but as the vanguard of a new American order, one that seeks to erase the legacy of both pre-war democracy and Cold War ideological systems.

Recent intercepts and recovered propaganda confirm the movement’s alignment under a codified manifesto titled "What We Believe." This document outlines a doctrine combining post-constitutional rejectionism, anti-globalist conspiracy theory, revolutionary spiritualism, and a violent commitment to social purification. The movement’s symbolic and organizational cohesion appears increasingly centered around a messianic figure known only as “The Preacher.”