Ninjas & Superspies: Rapidstrike

 

We loved the old Operation: Rapidstrike module for TSR's Top Secret game as kids. The tournament characters went on to be some of the best NPCs we had in one of our long-running games, so it is fun to pull my copy of this out and reminisce.

And since I am currently on a Palladium nostalgia kick, would it be fun to spin up these characters in Palladium's Ninjas & Superspies? I was thinking of doing a fun conversion, maybe playing through a little of the module and seeing how different it comes out.

And I shouldn't have done that.

One of these characters feels like they could raid this island and complete the mission alone.

They are that badass.

I started with the agent with the highest HTH Combat value, which would be the Frenchman Clause "Mongoose" Bouchet. And I made him a Tae Kwon Do Karate fighter. The guy came out amazing, he can kick things directly above his head, throw death blows, do snap kicks, roundhouse kicks, gets four attacks in melee, has an awareness bubble around him that prevents him from being surprised, and he has an entire arsenal of other attacks and defenses that blow my freaking mind.

His skill programs include being a bodyguard, expert thief, guerilla warfare, military intelligence, medical, and Romance (European) languages. He came out like this guy the agency sends into an area of the world to protect a target; while he is working as a bodyguard, he will use his military intelligence skills to figure out the threats and his guerilla war skills to eliminate the threat cleanly without the person he is guarding knowing a thing.

He is Coooo...

I do that in my Eric Cartman voice, and you know if you can say that about a character, you know you are playing a Palladium game. In some games, we get character classes built like high-end European bikes, a joy to ride and incredibly engineered, but they have this almost mechanically sound but not incredibly exciting feeling going on.

I get this feeling from some of the Old School Essentials expansion classes and incredible works of B/X design and rules interpretation. Great designs, they work incredibly well, but my want to play them is sort of in the middle somewhere. A lot of B/X characters have this disposable feeling to them. Mechanically they work well, but ultimately they feel too simple to invest in without pages of backstory.

When I take the time to design a Palladium character, that is both an investment in that character, but also me making choices that give me ideas for adventures. Inspiration is a part of the character creation system.

I feel the strong, cool character is one of their driving design inspirations behind every Palladium game, it is not enough to make a game with a bunch of normal classes, and tropes pulled from movies and comics, or even classes that are more mechanical ideals of design perfection. They also ask if the classes fit into the world and game if they make sense, and how they fit in with the others already in the game. It is more than just cool, honestly, it is a game design that also factors in fun, the world the characters live in, and mechanics.

My Agent

Seriously, I am looking at his skill list, and I want to play this guy - just this guy - and have all sorts of cool adventures with him as an awesome bodyguard assassin. He is deadly enough without weapons; the guy could just fly into a country commercial, kick someone in the face and get a weapon, and complete his mission with that cleanly. Then, wearing his white tuxedo, attended the rich party and danced with the pretty woman (also the target), and know a few hours before anyone who threatened her, he took out by himself with his mad assassin skills.

He is a hundred times cooler in Ninjas and Superspies than in the original Top Secret game.

And I am sitting here wondering why people complain about the complexity of Palladium characters when they just come out so darn interesting. I look at the Top Secret character, and he seems simple and one-dimensional, the best HTH guy with a night vision scoped sniper rifle and pistol, the highest charm and coordination, three throwing stars, and 50' of rope. If I were playing this module, the only things that stand out about him are his high HTH, throwing stars, and his rifle. Maybe the rope. He has four skills in broad areas, such as military science and physical education.

This other guy? A James Bond-level agent ready to go. Freaking Chuck Norris martial arts skills. A guy who knows how to be a professional bodyguard, assassin, sniper, spy on radio communications, scramble his own coms, patch up wounds, survive in the wilderness, pick locks, kick out the lightbulb directly over his head, use a map, disguise himself, set up surveillance cameras, encrypt messages, and do tons of other cool stuff on his own. Everything screams out cool on him. I look at his character sheet, and I get excited to play him!

And what I like about him has nothing to do with his gear. He could have any gear, no gear, or stolen gear and still be cool. He could be wearing Bermuda shorts, flip-flops, and a white hat and be cool.

And I stopped there because I was so shocked the other agents would be just pure sensory overload.

Too Simple?

A lot of the TSR games made during these times had this really simple design, and you see this in all of the TSR d100 games (Top Secret, Gangbusters, Star Frontiers) and also B/X style games (D&D, Gamma World). This is what made them so popular. Looking back, I love the nostalgia that a B/X style game gives me, and it feels familiar and comfortable. I can jump right in.

But I see why other games with a slightly higher complexity appealed to so many, especially in character design. Some systems had complex systems of character design that felt like more work than what you got out of them (Rolemaster, Space Opera, by-the-book Aftermath, and a few others). This, combined with complicated play rules, "felt" like a complex game, but the time it took to play them weighed it all down.

A few systems and Palladium had this moderate level of complexity in character design but kept the combat and task resolution rules simple like B/X. When I was playing, I could keep all the rules in my head, and honestly, many rules were up to the referee to rule on as things came up. But the slightly more complex characters felt exciting and a lot more capable than their more concise counterparts.

My nostalgia for B/X and those classic, simple games feels broken now.

I am feeling simple is not always better.

Today versus Yesterday

I know that these characters were designed for game convention play, and the game should be able to be picked up quickly by people wandering by and signing up for games. It quickly gave them a cool spy experience and made them want to buy the game. That is great stuff, and we sure loved Top Secret too.

But today?

I look at the Ninjas and Superspies version, and I instantly want to take him on a hundred adventures. The Top Secret character seems like meals I used to like as a kid, but I am just okay with that type of food today (and some of it, wisely, I stopped eating). He is average but not something I would choose if I had a choice in what I would rather spend time with on my adventures. And I don't really need or want that team of six agents. I could spin up one of them and have hundreds of interesting adventures.

I create a Palladium Fantasy character recently and got that same feeling. I ended up with a seasoned bard in many areas, ready to take on the world and do all sorts of interesting stuff. Lots of different social skills that would benefit the character in interactions and lore. While others may be more capable on the battlefield, this character will excel when a tricky negotiation comes up, an ancient elven scroll needs to be saved from a goblin outpost with a bit of stealth, and a lost elven song on that scroll is decyphered and performed for a visiting elven dignitary. Perhaps an extra mile would be done by re-transcribing the scroll in a more beautiful document complete with elven runes and artwork and presenting that as a gift to them.

That bard is going to shine. No one else can do that.

My B/X bard had a short sword, leather armor, and a few spells. I did not get that same feeling of competence and excitement other than, "This is the playing piece that casts spells through music." I exaggerate a little, but I feel a simple class leaves a lot up to the player (which is both good and bad), and you get my point.

The question comes up, would I get this same feeling through a B/X game with non-weapon proficiencies? You could do all those as skills in an AD&D 2e style game. But I never felt as inspired by those games, and they always felt like the classes were a bit too generic, and the fighter could eventually pick up those same skills and do what I do. The skill packages for these classes, combined with their fighting styles and magic, make each OCC design cool and unique.

Instead of a game that lets us stumble into cool with a generic design or skill system, the Palladium way gives you a solid yet cool design.

All Six Together?

And if I spun up those six agents and sent them into this island fortress, the team would instantly feel like an Avengers-level of superspy team up instead of "six basic characters with different skills and weapons." Like if we had six different "00" franchise movies done over a dozen years coming together for one epic adventure.

Would each character be this complex system of fighting and skill usage? It would be, but it would be insanely cool if you played with friends who could each master their character and fighting style. Frankly, I would limit my first game to either the "basic" simplified agent styles or just the two martial arts forms these were based from. 

But I would have a game where every one of my friends would play a superspy who felt instantly like an MCU-level character. A somebody.

Given the little time I have to play as an adult, I would rather have more satisfying and complex characters who instantly inspire me to take on adventures. The simple ones I look at and get my nostalgia hit, but not much else.

A strange experience and feeling from this exercise and an interesting one. We learn a lot about rules and game systems with conversions of characters we "thought" we knew, but seeing them in a different light can open our eyes to things we may have overlooked because of the warm, familiar glow of nostalgia.