Staked Twice, Never Bitten

There are one or two facts that you need to know about Double Tap, the first supplement for one of the best RPGs—certainly the finest espionage and finest espionage/horror RPG—of 2012, Night’s Black Agents: the Vampire Spy Thriller RPG. Written by Ken Hite and published by Pelgrane Press, the player characters are ex-secret agents who have learned that their former employers are controlled by vampires and decide to take down the vampiric conspiracy before the vampires take them. As much a toolkit as an RPG, it gives everything that the Director needs to design and create his game, allowing him to design the vampire conspiracy and the vampire threat, from psychic alien leeches to the traditional children of Transylvania, and set the tone and style of the espionage, from the high octane of the James Bond franchise to the dry and mundane grittiness of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Essentially, Night’s Black Agents is your Schweizer Offiziersmesser of vampires and espionage.

The first fact is that as the title might suggest, Double Tap is not a supplement about guns—Double Tap being a shooting manoeuvre intended to ensure that a target is definitely dead by shooting him twice in the head—although there is a section about guns in the book. This of course begs the question, “Why exactly, is this supplement called ‘Double Tap’?”. Which is a perfectly good question to which there is a perfectly good answer in the last paragraph of this review. The second is that Double Tap is not the ‘Agent’s Companion’ for Night’s Black Agents. It is instead the ‘The Night’s Black Agents Expansion Book’, because it contains information for the Director as well as the players and their characters. Indeed, it has sections entitled ‘Agent’s Companion’ and ‘Director’s Companion’. Between them, the players and Director are served up a plethora of clues, benefits, cherries, manoeuvres, rules, gadgets and (yes) guns, and more—all delivered as an easy-to-digest, no-fuss, but some frills, in-country supply drop.

The ‘Agent’s Companion’ dives straight into a re-examination of an agent’s Abilities. Each receives a new overviews and a new focus, the latter less mechanical than a new means of applying it; a ‘Tactical Fact-Finding Benefit’ that showcases how might be used to best effect; sample benefits to be gained from spending the points from an Ability’s pool; and sample clues. For example, the new focus for the Accounting Ability is money laundering. It provides a short, but detailed description of how it is done; its ‘Tactical Fact-Finding Benefit’ describes how Accounting might be used to track down and use an illegal stash of guns to gain an advantage over the opposition; and how it can be spent to gain benefits on other Abilities when they are next used. The accompanying sample clues show how ‘following the money’ can lead somewhere interesting, and like the sample clues for the other Abilities detailed in Double Tap, can either be as is and added in game, or as models to adjusted for the Director’s own game. Other Investigative Abilities also include extra details, associated equipment, and so on, such as the list of British Police Jargon for Cop Talk, the most expensive hotels in Europe for High Society, toxins for Pharmacy, and what you pack in a ‘Bug-Out’ bag under Urban Surveillance.

Then Double Tap does exactly the same thing for an Agent’s General Abilities. Again, each of these is given a new focus, for example, Parkour for Athletics and Plastic Explosives for Explosives; new sample clues, and so on. Instead of ‘Tactical Fact-Finding Benefit’, they have new Cherries, the extra special benefits that come with having high Abilities. In general, these are not quite as interesting as those for Investigative Abilities, but the point of this re-examination is to make each and every Ability interesting, useful, and evocative. It highlights how every Ability can bear upon the game and how the Director should be bringing his player Agents’ Abilities into his campaign.

Double Tap then presents a number of new mechanical options or ‘Tricks of the Trade’, that work in conjunction with a player narration. All a player has to do is narrate the action to gain the benefit of an Ability refresh with these, just as with those in the core rules. In this they work in a similar fashion to the Thriller manoeuvres, like Gear Devil or Technothriller Monologue, found in Night’s Black Agents. They also push the levels of competence, so are suited to more cinematic games. The first is a number of new Thriller manoeuvres, the majority of which these are for non-combat Abilities, such as Grease Monkey for Mechanics and Verbal Trauma Unit for Medic. These are followed by a set of Achievement refreshes—inspired by computer gaming—that push up the cinematic aspects of Night’s Black Agents that little bit more, such as ‘Lifeline’ for climbing out of a window using knotted sheets or fire hose, or ‘Mother Superior’ for impersonating a religious figure! Tricks of the Trade’ continues with ‘Adaptive Tradecraft’, which takes ‘standard’ adaptive espionage or Tradecraft techniques and suggests how they might work when hunting vampires. Rounding this chapter out is a set of standard operating procedures, the Cartagena Rules. These are not for being spies in the field—Night’s Black Agents has the Bucharest Rules for that, backed up by the Moscow Rules in Double Tap—but for playing Night’s Black Agents. Their aim is to keep the game moving and enjoyable, to avoid it stagnating and getting dull, and being a set of rules, they are short and to the point. Good advice for players and Director alike.

‘Materiel’ puts gadgets, gear, and guns under the spotlight. To an extent, this section is in Q Branch territory, especially with its vehicle upgrades like oil slick dispensers and disposable car skins. Guns get the same treatment, but some of the special ammunition may have its uses in any style of game against vampires. Whilst a list of firearms is included, they are not necessarily there for the agents’ use, but rather to arm particular agencies.

The Thriller Chase rules in Night’s Black Agents turned up the action for chases by foot, by vehicle, and so on. ‘Thriller Contests & Manhunts’ does the same for Digital Intrusion, Infiltration, and Surveillance. What this means is that certain non-combat scenes—hacking attempts, stealthy break-ins and break-outs, and monitoring a suspect—can played out dramatically, even thrillingly, by making them intense contests. There are guidelines given to make each of them thrilling and how to use other Abilities during Digital Intrusion, Infiltration, or Surveillance attempts. Not every attempt or scene involving Digital Intrusion, Infiltration, or Surveillance need be run as a Thriller Contest, but when needed, now they can, and they give the player agents involved their moment in the spotlight. In similar fashion, the Manhunt rules up the ante for handling chases, especially where the quarry is trying to do more than just get away. Of course, this is all whilst the player agents are burned and out in the cold, no longer having access to the manpower or infrastructure to carry out a manhunt.

The remaining third of Double Tap is the ‘Director’s Companion’ and for his eyes only. He receives a good set of NPCs, ready to fill out cameo roles, and easy to portray and modify, that can be used as assets or clues. Accompanying these is a set of ‘Establishing Shots’, locations and scenes that the Director can set up a scene and bring it to life. Both sets are evocative and fun, as well as being easy-to-use tools. Double Tap also comes with four new monsters—the chupa, the ekimmu, the homunculus, and the penanggalan—and a complete vampire build in the form of the nosferatu, the latter being familiar to most gamers (and agents). Of course Night’s Black Agents has plenty of options when it comes to the Director creating or selecting a vampiric foe for his game, but these add more, especially given that there are notes included on how to turn these creatures of one legend into another. For the Director, a whole new story aid is provided in the form of the ‘Suspyramid’, which plugs into the ‘Conspyramid’, the structure that underpins the vampire conspiracy in Night’s Black Agents. It helps him run games in which the player agents not only dismantle the conspiracy, but set parts of it against each other. Rounding out the ‘Director’s Companion’ are notes on running Night’s Black Agents in other eras, specifically the Victorian Age, World War II, and the Cold War. These do feel a little underwritten, but they are really no more than notes. Of course, any one of these three periods would be worthy of a supplement in their own right.

Physically, Double Tap is a well-written, easy-to-read, and easily digestible supplement. Its contents are nicely supported by a good index and, for the Director, summary lists of the cherries and vampiric powers—both from Night’s Black Agents and Double Tap.

Companion volumes are not always the most interesting or coherent of reads. This is the danger of covering lots of different subjects under one cover, but Double Tap contains different things that are actually interesting. The new rules its gives are interesting and better than that, they evoke their genre and are fun in the process. If there is a downside to them, it is that they evoke the more cinematic side of Night’s Black Agents, rather than the drier grittier side. Nevertheless, Double Tap provides plenty of manoeuvres and tricks of the trade to ensure that a Director’s Night’s Black Agent is definitely fun.

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Kiss Kiss Fang Fang

Imagine if you were a former spy or intelligence officer or intelligence analyst, and you discovered a fundamental truth about the world. A truth that revealed just who was in charge of the world and might just have been in charge of the world for centuries or more… Not just mere humans of the New World Order or the Prieuré de Sion, but vampires! What if these vampires were really in charge of your former agency? Or the government? Or an international bank? Or all three? What would you do? This is the set up for Night’s Black Agents, the latest RPG to be written by Ken Hite using the GUMSHOE System, an RPG that the author pitches as “The Bourne Identity meets Dracula” or a “Vampire Spy Thriller.”

Published by Pelgrane Press, Night’s Black Agents, brings together the genres of espionage and horror in the post-Cold War period of the here and now, not in a singular blend, but as an assortment of ingredients from which the Game Master or Director, creates two dishes, tempering or sharpening them with certain flavours before intentionally colliding the two together. In other words, Night’s Black Agents is essentially a pair of toolkits, one to create the desired type of espionage, the other the desired type of vampire, backed up with the means to run the two against each other. The default setting is the “vampire spy thriller,” one of horror and shadows combined with bursts of action interspersed with the methodical processes of the espionage story. The toolkit allows the GM to model his campaign so that he can emphasise the psychological impact of being a spy, such as in Alias or Callan; the gritty, almost mundane feel of espionage as in Rubicon or The Sandbaggers; the genre’s “wilderness of mirrors” world of shifting allegiances and hidden agendas as exemplified by the best of John Le Carré’s fiction; and the high stakes patriotism of the novels of both Tom Clancy and Ian Fleming. Each of these models is a Mode, respectively Burn, Dust, Mirror, and (High) Stakes Mode, and there are indicators throughout the pages of Night’s Black Agents that point out where one rule works for one Mode and not for another.

So for example, in a Mirror Mode game, there is the possibility that one Contact per session will be flipped and work for the other side; players can choose to keep their agents’ Drives secret from each other; the Director can implement the mechanics for Trust between the player character agents; and an agent’s funding and equipment is likely to come from clandestine sources. Whereas, for a game in the Dust Mode, the players have fewer General Abilities (these being the more physical aspects and skills of an agent); no Military Occupational Speciality or MOS; cannot miraculously find high-resolution images within blurry video or pictures when using the Data Recovery Interpersonal Skill; when falling, it is not possible for a player to use either his Athletics or Hand-to-Hand ratings (if they are high enough) to ease a fall by bouncing between walls; and of course, gun fights can be lethal. These are not the only options to help a Director run a Night’s Black Agents campaign in either the Mirror or Dust Modes, but for the most part, the options and suggestions given throughout the book are all about “dialling down” the rules from its default of the “vampire spy thriller.”

Character creation adheres to the GUMSHOE System rules, with players assigning two pools of points to two types of Abilities. The smaller number of points is assigned to an agent’s Investigative Abilities, which are used to gather clues; the larger number to his General Abilities, which represent his physical skills. Apart from in Dust Mode, which does not use them, what an agent prior did to going solo or private, is represented by his MOS, his area of expertise. Several are listed, from Analyst and Asset Handler to Wheel Artist and Wire Rat. Primarily each MOS lists the minimum Investigative and General Abilities required to have carried it out as a job, but it also gives the possible positions with various agencies. So for example, an agent with the “Bang-and-Burner” MOS could have been an IRA bomb builder or a Special Branch bomb disposal expert whereas an agent with the Wheel Artist MOS could have been a Union Corse car thief, a DGSE “Action Division” driver, a Deutsche Bank-provided chauffer, and so on.  Besides assigning points to his character’s Abilities and choosing his MOS, a player needs to define more of his character’s Background, his Sources of Stability (these help keep an agent grounded when he is under stress or threatened, but can be undermined or subverted), and how he fits into the team that the player agents will form.

The sample player character agent is an ex-Stasi surveillance officer, an expert watcher turned investigator who has been unable to quite find a place in the world following the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the unification of Germany. Initially he worked as a contractor for governments in the old Eastern Bloc and the Caribbean, and then for corporations in the old Eastern Bloc, but he prefers to work for the government agencies rather than corporations. Conversely, he prefers to work for corporations in the West as their motives are purer. He is a grey haired bespectacled man who has the appearance of a bureaucrat who is perhaps a little worn down. (The agent has been designed for a Mirror Mode game with twenty-two points to be assigned to his Investigative Abilities for a four-player agent team.) 

Anton Wendell
Age: 53
Nationality: German
Agency: Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS); Stasi
MOS: Investigator/Watcher
Sources of Stability: Wife’s confirmation medal (Symbol); his mentor, Hans Urner (Solace); the island of Rügen (Safety)
Drive: Nowhere else to go. 

Investigative Abilities
Academic: Architecture 1, Art History 1, Human Terrain 1, Languages 2, Law 1
Interpersonal: Bullshit Detector 1, Bureaucracy 1, Cop Talk 1, Flattery 1, Interrogation 1, Negotiation 1, Streetwise 1, Tradecraft 2
Technical: Electronic Surveillance 3, Notice 3, Photography 2, Urban Survival 1
General Abilities 
Athletics 3, Cover 10, Digital Intrusion 3, Disguise 4, Driving 4, Hand-to-Hand 6, Health 8, Infiltration 8, Network 15, Piloting 1, Sense Trouble 8, Shooting 2, Shrink 2, Stability 8, Surveillance 12
Languages: German (native); English, Russian, lip reading, ASL, Spanish

Mechanically, Night’s Black Agents uses the GUMSHOE System and therefore deviates little from the previous titles that Pelgrane Press has published – Trail of Cthulhu, Esoterrorists, Fear Itself, and so on. This has the ratings in Investigative Abilities being spent to gain extra clues during the course of an adventure or investigation – if an agent has a rating in any one Investigative Ability, then he can always gain the base clues related to that Ability, whereas the ratings from General Abilities are spent to modify dice rolls. The focus of the rules is of course on espionage and so cover chases, combat, the dangers of the espionage world (plus the dangers of an espionage world in which there are vampires), heat (that is, gaining too much attention), and spytech. Night’s Black Agents being a “Vampire Spy Thriller,” it turns up the chase and combat mechanics with the Thriller Chase and Thriller Combat rules, the former being accompanied lists of locations and potential obstacles to overcome and make the player agents look cool, whilst the latter cover just about every form of cinematic gun-fu short of the modern Wuxia genre.

One new aspect of the GUMSHOE System in Night’s Black Agents is specifically aimed at the Thriller aspect of the game – “Cherries.” If an agent has a General Ability with a rating of eight or more, he is regarded as being skilled enough to gain a special benefit. In the case of Thriller Combat, it allows an agent to conduct extra attacks, sniping attacks, purchase Special Weapons Training, and so on. Every General Ability comes with a Cherry, the benefits varying from an extra skill rating, such as the bonus from Digital Intrusion granting a point in the Cryptography Investigative Ability, to simple cool things that an agent can do, such as the “Open Sesame” aspect of the Infiltration Ability that enables an agent to bypass simple locks. Perhaps one of the coolest Cherries is the “Technothriller Monologue” for the Shooting Ability, which grants an agent a refresh to his Shooting Ability if he can narrate how he uses his guns in true Clancy-esque style. Rounding the espionage-themed first half of Night’s Black Agents is a pair of sections, one on advice for agents and the other on advice for players, covering tactical skill use and essentially how to play the game. Whilst both sections are excellent, the second shorter section is pleasingly upfront in suggesting how to play in order to get the most out of the game.

The remaining half of Night’s Black Agents is for the Director’s eyes only, presenting a set of toolkits with which to build the game’s inhuman threats, their conspiracies, their territories, and the stories that will be told through play. The first of the toolkits is all about building the required type of vampire. Instead of campaign Modes, the Director builds his vampires around one of four Parameters – Alien, Damned, Mutant, or Supernatural. Beginning with their origins and means of spreading, the Director decides everything about his vampires – their numbers, their source of food, the cure to their vampirism, their powers, and their weaknesses. If a Director does not want to design a vampire for his campaign, he can choose any one of the off-the-shelf designs included, such as the “Linea Dracula Vampire,” descended from Vlad the Impaler, or the non-Euclidean silicon-based aliens that have imprinted on human DNA. Besides these, the author draws from various real world mythologies to extend the book’s vampiric menagerie, from the Adzeh, the insect-demon of Ghana to the humble zombie. Suggestions are given so that the Director can customise these threats so that they can be reused or tweaked enough to be unrecognisable to the players. Of course, just as there is nothing to stop a Director from creating his own original vampire threat, there is nothing to stop a Director from adapting a vampire from another source, whether that is from a film (the obvious joke here being, “No sparkles”), a book, or another RPG.

The focus of play in Night’s Black Agents is bringing down the conspiracy that the vampires have constructed around themselves. To help the Director construct this conspiracy, he builds into a pyramid structure called a “Conspyramid,” its base containing the outer edges of the conspiracy with the very heart of it – the vampire leaders of the conspiracy – sitting atop both the structure and the organisation. The resulting “Conspyramid” contains a number of nodes, each a part of the conspiracy and serving as a certain function within it, with the bulk of the nodes at its base or outer limits. Between the nodes the Director builds connections and lays clues, in the process constructing a story map for the campaign. As a structure, this story map remains open enough that the Director can improvise and revise the nodes and their connections as the player agents begin to dismantle the “Conspyramid” and make deductions of their own. (The Director also has a corresponding “Vampyramid,” which details and tracks the possible response of the conspiracy against the agents’ actions.)

Night’s Black Agents’ focus on constructing and bringing down the conspiracy needs a stage and it provides a means to create this with a relative minimum amount of preparation. The game being one of post-Cold War espionage, naturally this setting is Europe and spies invariably having natural home in the urban environment, the setting is actually the cities of Europe. The means to create what will become the backdrop for the Director’s campaign can be as complex or as simple as the Director wants, but the author suggests a quick and dirty method involving a little research combined with determining the aims and activities of the conspiracy within the city before coming up with three hooks to pull the player agents in. The alternative “Low and Slow” method results in a more detailed city better suited to extended play and exploration. Sample cities created by both means are included, and like the sample “Vampyramid,” can easily be used as part of a campaign.

Besides a top secret appendix full of useful forms, the Director receives a scenario with which to kick off a campaign and some excellent advice. The scenario, “(S)entries,” can also be run as part of an on-going campaign, but either way, it requires some preparation upon the Director’s part. The advice for the Director is much more straightforward and concise, helpfully guiding him through the possibilities and perils of running a Night’s Black Agents campaign – the potential for an investigation to become a railroad, be prepared for the players to really use the Preparedness General Ability a lot, constructing the typical Thriller spine for an operation, letting the players contribute to keeping the campaign “cool,” and so on.

Physically, Night’s Black Agents is a well-designed book. The contents are not only well organised, but also colour-coded so as give each section its own identity. Done in full colour throughout, the artwork is never less than atmospheric. The writing is taut and never less than informed with the author’s appreciation of both genres constantly on show. A nice touch is that he even goes so far as to provide his own DVD-style commentary on various aspects of the game and the genres it is emulating and combining, allowing his voice to come to the fore.

There is so much in Night’s Black Agents that can be pulled out and used elsewhere. The Conspyramid structure can be used in any RPG with a conspiracy game, both to map out its conspiracy and thus its story structure; its city preparation guidelines to create interesting locales for any urban set RPG; and of course, the espionage rules with almost any GUMSHOE System RPG. Indeed, Night’s Black Agents already suggests how the latter can be done – presenting alternative ways of using its material. Most obviously as a straight espionage RPG sans the horror, but in gaming terms even more obviously by combining it with the source material from Trail of Cthulhu to do something along the lines of Charles Stross’ Laundry Files novels. Of course, the Laundry Files RPG already does this, but this suggestion continues to use the GUMSHOE System mechanics. The other suggestion pushes Night’s Black Agents in the direction of Brian Lumley’s Necrosope novels. Similarly, the GUMSHOE System has horror source material aplenty if the Director wants his agents to come up against foes other than vampires.

Of course, there is nothing to stop a Director from taking the more off-the-shelf elements of Night’s Black Agents – stick with the default “Vampire Spy Thriller” setting and its high octane rules, pick one of the sample vampires as his campaign’s antagonists, use the sample cities as his campaign backdrop, and start play using the included scenario. He essentially everything necessary to play, and that would be just fine. Yet in doing so, the Director would be ignoring the one thing that would really make Night’s Black Agents his game, and that is its toolkit aspect and the ability to tinker with just about every element of the game, the rules, the setting, and the campaign. Above all, this toolkit aspect means that not only is no Director’s game is going to be the same as that of any other Director, it also means that every Director has the capacity to make Night’s Black Agents the game that both he and his players want…

As good as the toolkits that Night’s Black Agents provides are, the rules and advice deliver on the game and genre that they promise. Whether it is blood pumping action or heart stopping shocks, Night’s Black Agents is probably best shaken, and definitely has the “Vampire Spy Thriller” staked.

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If you ain't got that...

An alternative title to Agents of S.W.I.N.G. from Postmortem Studios might be The Avengers RPG – and by that we do not mean the American comic series, but rather the iconic British television series, The Avengers, in which the umbrella swinging, bowler hatted John Steed investigated an array of Cold War, criminal, science fictional, and supernatural threats with a pretty and capable assistant by his side. Similarly, an alternative title to Agents of S.W.I.N.G. from Postmortem Studios might be the I.TC. TV RPG. For those of you not in the know, I.T.C. was a British television company headed by Lew Grade that during the 1960s and 1970s produced some of the United Kingdom’s most iconic television series and sold them worldwide. The Saint, Danger Man, The Prisoner, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Department S, The Persuaders! , The Champions, and Jason King to name but a few. What these series had in common, including The Avengers, was their genre and the fact that they were “Cool.” Their genre was that of the “Adventure Series” or “Spy-Fi” and their Coolness was borne not just of the fact that they were good shows, but also that they were British and the 1960s, Britishness was cool and London was swinging…!

In Agents of S.W.I.N.G., you get to be cool, suave, and sophisticated, working as an agent for S.W.I.N.G. – “Supreme World Intelligence Network Group,” an international espionage and counter-espionage organisation that deals with threats to world peace and security above, beyond, and below the global obsession with the West versus East of the Cold War. Just like The Avengers, the agents will be investigating an array of threats and mysteries, but Agents of S.W.I.N.G. has the capacity to push further at the envelope of its genres in a number of ways. First, it draws upon the equally as cool action films of the period, most notably the James Bond films, thus moving more towards the “Spy Fi” genre. Second, it follows both the Adventure Series and I.T.C.’s output out of the 1960s and into the grimmer, more cynical decade of the 1970s, best typified by series such as The Sweeney and The Professionals, so shifting towards the crime genre. Third, it can shift towards the supernatural and the outré with series such as Doctor Who and Sapphire & Steel, neither of are necessarily produced or distributed by, but are nevertheless both Adventure Series and thus not only part of the genre, but also cool. Fourth, it can do the Science Fiction Adventure Serial such as Thunderbirds or Joe 90.

If this seems like a lot of genres for Agents of S.W.I.N.G. to encompass, it probably is, but its actual genre is not many but one – the Adventure Series – and that genre can include elements of many other genres. It is up to the game’s GM or Control to decide how far he wants to go with any one genre with his Agents of S.W.I.N.G. game.

For its mechanics, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. uses the FATE 3 engine. First seen in Evil Hat Production’s superb pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century, the Fate system is a Fudge variant, one in which Fate Points play a major role. Just as in many other RPGs they can be spent to gain a bonus to a roll, but here they have a greater versatility. Like many “Indie” style games, a player can spend them to create and bring small elements into the game, what is known as “dramatic editing,” but under the Fate system, Fate Points can do a whole lot more. They can be spent to invoke a character Aspect and bring it into play, to tag another character or location related Aspect to bring it into play, to power a Stunt, or to make a Declaration, adding some small element to the story. The Fate system also ditches traditional attributes, instead defining characters by Skills, Aspects, and Stunts. It plays fast and easy – the player rolls two six-sided dice, each of a different colour, and deducts one from the other to a number from +5 down to -5. This number is added to any bonuses derived from Skills, Aspects, or Stunts to try and beat a target number, or to roll higher than an opponent in a contested roll. In a contested roll, the amount by which one side beats the other determines the amount of damage or Stress inflicted, whether Physical, Composure (mental), or Social Stress.

Sometimes though, a player will need a third die – a “SWING die.” Whenever a player rolls well, he earns one of these dice and gets to keep it in front of him. Later on in the game, the player can choose to use his “Swing die” to substitute the negative or the positive die in order to get a better result.

For example, the S.W.I.N.G. agents want to get a pass from an enemy agent, Gustav Zimmerman, which would give them access to a high security laboratory. They have followed Zimmerman to a masque ball where Claudia Romanov will engage the agent on the dance floor and attempt to distract him whilst slipping the pass out of his pocket. Control decides that this will be an opposed roll against Zimmerman’s Mental rating of +2. Claudia’s player decides to use her skill of +3 (Solid) Sleight of Hand and spends a Fate point to trigger Bump and Grind Aspect. Control agrees and allows her a +2 bonus to her roll. Control rolls +3 and -6 to get a total modifier of -3, which reduces Zimmerman’s +2 Mental down to -1 Bent. This gives an excellent target for Claudia to beat and her player’s roll of +6 and -3 gives a modifier of +3, which when added to her current Sleight of Hand skill gives a total result of +8 or Atsonishing. Since this is 3 higher than the target, Control awards Claudia a Swing Die to use later. Control also rules that Zimmerman was so oblivious that he will be delayed getting to the laboratory himself whilst he looks for it!

Characters are defined by their Skills, Stunts, and Aspects. Skills are areas in which a character is trained in, his knowledge and expertise; his Stunts are related to his Skills and grant a character small bonuses or permissions within the game; while Aspects define the character in some way, such as “You won’t break me” or “Champagne Charlie” and are the more interactive elements within the game. Sample skills might be +1 (Cool) Guns or +4 (Neat) Science, while possible typical stunts include abilities like Architect of Death and Hide in Plain Sight or possessions such as Custom Ride gives you a favoured vehicle that you have added a gadget to (tied to the Drive skill). Most Stunts do not require the expenditure of Fate Points, but those that do are slightly more powerful. A Fate Point can be spent to Invoke one of a character’s Aspects and so gain a bonus, but if Compelled by Control and brought into play, so developing complications and driving the story along, then the character earns a Fate Point. Lastly, Aspects belonging to another character, or to an object, place, or a scene can be Tagged by another character, again by paying out Fate Points. When choosing Aspects for a character, the designer’s advice is that they should never be boring and it should always be possible to view an Aspect in both a positive and a negative light. Otherwise, a character cannot participate in the game’s Fate Point economy – bring negative Aspects into the game and letting it act as a story hook, gets a character more Fate Points to spend in his favour.

At its most basic, character creation is simply a matter of choosing Skills, Stunts, and Aspects. A quick method of creating characters is provided, but of course, the game wants a little more than that from its players, asking them to create a simple background and tying Aspects to their character’s Section (the department that they work for in S.W.I.N.G.), past, and cover identity before being given a free choice of another five. A player has twenty points to assign to Skills, these ranging from +1 (Cool) and +2 (Hip) up to +7 (Far Out) and +8 (Out of Sight); four Stunts to choose; and lastly some equipment to take. It should be made clear that although Agents of S.W.I.N.G. gives detailed lists of Skills and Stunts, players are expected to create their Aspects, tying them into their agents’ concepts.

The first of our two sample characters is based on a character that I originally played in a friend’s James Bond 007 RPG campaign. She is of an impoverished White Russian noble family, who followed her father into his elicit trade of theft and burglary, stealing from the rich to support the family. She worked the high society scene around the world before being caught by a S.W.I.N.G. agent into whose room she had broken. Now she commits burglary as a S.W.I.N.G. agent herself.

Name: Claudia Romanov
Concept: Reformed Jewel Thief
Section: Section 10 – Acquisition
Cover: High Flying Photographer

Section: “In and Out Without a Trace”
Past: Nobility in Reduced Circumstances
Cover: “My camera gets me in everywhere…”
Aspects: “Looks can be deceiving…”, Takes a thief to catch a thief, Like good Russian vodka, Always dressed the part, “I did complete finishing school”
Skills: +5 (Groovy) Burglary; +3 (Solid) Sleight of Hand, Stealth; +2 (Hip) Academics (French, Russian), Photography, Social Standing; +1 (Cool) Contacts, Deceit, Fists
Stunts: Acrobatics, Bump and Grind, Network of Contacts, Unruffled

Stress
Physical Stress OOOOO Composure OOOOO Social OOOOOOO

Our second example character is based upon a friend of mine who happens to be a fan of the Adventure Series genre and uses elements of characters that he has played in the past. Doctor Exton was kidnapped whilst working in Nepal and when he returned, found that he had developed strange abilities. These were detected by other members of Section 8 who recruited him into S.W.I.N.G.

Name: Doctor Simon Exton
Concept: Psychic Doctor
Section: Section 8 – Uncanny Affairs
Cover: Consultant Toxicologist

Section: “I know your body, I know your mind”
Past: It was a strange holiday
Cover: Let me through, I’m a Doctor!
Aspects: “My, that does look painful”, It’s just a scratch, Sardonic Wit, I have just the thing for that in my bag, I sense that there is more to this
Skills: +6 (Fab) Science; +4 (Neat) Academics; +3 (Solid) Fists; +2 (Hip) Empathy, Intimidation; +1 (Cool) Contacts, Mysteries, Resolve
Stunts: Cold Read, Developed Immunities, Psychic Telepathy, Sixth Sense

Stress
Physical Stress OOOOO Composure OOOOOO Social OOOOO

The setting and genre is supported with rules for equipment and gadgets, organisations, a year by year breakdown of events of the setting’s timeframe – the 1960s and 1970s, along with some notes on Superscience! and the Supernatural. If Control wants to push his game in either of those latter two directions, he might find the guidance somewhat light. Then again, both usually figure as elements within the Adventure Series genre rather than serve as its mainstay or focus. Further, the primary genre for Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is “Spy-Fi.”

Advice for Control on running Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is well done, but essentially boils down to keep the game light, keep it moving, and take your cues from the players and their agents. Agents of S.W.I.N.G. do not come with a scenario as such. Instead it includes a detailed outline that can be used as scenario, all but ready to play.

Perhaps where its Adventure Series genre is best displayed in Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is in its chapter of SWINGers. Or rather, its chapter of some thirty or so S.W.I.N.G. agents, each of them drawn from the various television series that are the inspiration for the RPG. If you know your I.T.C. and other series, then there will be certain pleasure in recognising who Cobalt and Iron, John Chain, Agent Crimson Saul Metford, Andrew Bowie and Richard Foyle, Jackson Queen, and John Swan are, and which television series that they come from. That said, there is no explicitly given use for these characters, whether as sample player agents or NPCs. The given sample “Villainous Schemers,” which include a Chinese criminal organisation, an extremist Left wing revolutionary movement, and a American neo-Nazi movement, are of more immediate and useful use, providing something iniquitous for the player agents to investigate and interdict.

Physically, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. comes as a three-hundred-and-fifty-six page black and white digest sized book. The layout is done as if from a series of report files, illustrated with silhouettes of ladies in various action poses, sometimes armed, sometimes not, but either way, reminiscent of the opening film credits of the James Bond series. The only other artwork in the book is the illustrations of the sample characters. Unfortunately, whilst Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is readable, both layout of the book and its editing are at best wanting. Some of the book could have been better organised, and whilst the choice of fount, Courier New, is perfectly in keeping with the book’s genre, its size is too large, often leading to ragged paragraphs because the column width is too short. As to the editing, the book just needed another polish, preferably from another pair of eyes than those of the author’s.

There is one last issue with Agents of S.W.I.N.G. and that is Mike Myers. Much like a game of Pendragon threatens to tip into absurdity a la the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a game of Agents of S.W.I.N.G. can easily lurch into a parody of its genre, the Austin Powers trilogy of films. Given the title of the RPG, there is certain inevitability to this, but it is certainly within the purview of both the players and Control to rein any such tendencies to “schwing” that way in their Agents of S.W.I.N.G..

Being a “Spy-Fi” or Adventure Series RPG, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is anything other than a serious treatment of the espionage genre. Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is not Ron Edwards’ SPIONE: STORY NOW in Cold War Berlin or even Crafty Games’ SpyCraft, but is rather a light, almost coy take upon the espionage genre, whilst also serving as a toolkit to do other light, almost fantastical genres. So for example, whilst Agents of S.W.I.N.G. will do The Avengers or even The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with a wink, a tip of the bowler hat, and even a cocked eyebrow, with a little effort upon the part of Control, it would also do Thunderbirds, U.F.O. , or even The Six Million Dollar Man. Overall, despite lacking something of the flair its genre calls for in terms of its production value Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is a pleasingly light version of the FATE engine that demands just enough from the players to do its genre justice.

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