Amazing Adventures

Amazing Adventures lives up to its name.

This game is closest to a d20-style system of the classic Top Secret and Gangbusters games that TSR released in the 1980s. It covers the same subjects: pulp action, spies, gangsters, or period adventurers. If I were generous, I could throw the classic Boot Hill and Star Frontiers games here, too, but the latter would need a few conversions to get it feeling right.

The game doesn't have a "spy" class since "anyone can be a spy," and having the class would be "super obvious" and also "limit spies to a small set of abilities." The original Top Secret game had three classes, assassin, investigator, and confiscator, so it was a class-based design. Assassin was the most "fun" to play for most, given our D&D background, and combat and martial arts are always fun. The AA classes feel like a better mix for spy games, and you get a gadgeteer class, which opens up more high-tech gear-based spy genres.

Top Secret was a level-based game.

The classes feel right at home for the Gangbusters game since AA is a pulp-adventure game. You have the same "spy as class" problem as you do in Top Secret since what defines a gangster can vary widely. There is a "hooligan" class in AA that would cover most thugs and "heat" in pulp-gangster games. Still, there is no reason a socialite, raider, soldier, pugilist, pirate, or other class (or class combo) could be involved in the underworld and hold a rank in the criminal hierarchy. You can even multi-class a hooligan with any other class and get ideal hitmen, safecrackers, moonshiners, and many other mixed-class bad guys. You also get Indiana Jones-style world-hopping adventure, so this does more than Gangbusters.

Gangbusters was also a level-based game.

Boot Hill is relatively easy to emulate, but you will need one of the Boot Hill reprints or any other Western game to get price lists, guns, and a few other bits of topical information to do it right. You can do a Wild West game with the AA rules; it is just some period tropes, horses, steam trains, black hats, and a few iconic guns - but if you want a more grounded game, you need more data, and Western games typically do that research well. There are also ones in the OSR that are worth checking out. You can also have a more fantastic Wild West game with the AA rules, gadgeteers and mystics causing chaos and interesting plot hooks.

Boot Hill's level system was in "number of gunfights survived" and this did improve abilities.

Star Frontiers' adoption of a level system feels all wrong. I think AA could do a fun science fiction game since White Star is a fantastic game in the same genre with levels. However, with Knight Hawks, the game essentially became a "leveled game" with the addition of starship skills being for highly experienced characters only.

The skills are leveled, but the character's stats and hit points are not, but can be increased with XP. Once you spend 30-50 XP, the game begins to emulate levels in a way.

Star Frontiers needs the most conversion since many iconic gear items must be present to feel authentic. The other games on this list, especially Top Secret and Gangbusters, can be "close enough" with just the AA book. A warning, some of the items in SF are built for this game, like a laser pistol being able to be set to 20d10 damage in one shot. Sometimes it is better to use the "laser pistol" designed for AA than converting ones for other games, since the balance and gameplay will be better.

Trying to be too accurate on conversions can derail your entire game and make the effort fail. Not everything done in older games is "right" or "canon" and you need to be able to change things and get the feeling right rather than the little details. Being able to have grand, sweeping space adventures is far more important than letting a laser pistol do 20d10 damage.

These games have "flat" hit points, while leveled systems scale up with level. Once you put scaling hit points in these games, you get the "veteran" survivability factor, where more experienced characters survive longer. This is a good thing since all these games are relatively deadly. High-level gangsters and cowboys surviving ambushes are more cinematic. High-level space adventurers are able to fight their way across a planet and not stop to rest, which is also very cinematic. Even James Bond survives multiple firefights, taking "damage" as near misses until that final bullet lands.

In some strange alternate universe where TSR kept one system for all its games, this is the world we would be looking back on. I like AA; it feels capable yet sticks to the tried and true. It also does a lot with a little, and the classes are iconic across several genres and periods. The Powered/Gadgeteer class can even simulate street-level superheroes, a nice little touch. You could do a 1950s and 1960s superhero game with Batman-style heroes and enemies and feel at home in this system.

Amazing Adventures covers a wide swath of history and does it cleanly. It handles the speculative and fantastic well, without much custom power design and complicated characters. It also plays like any other d20 game, so it is not hard to learn.

I like this game, I can see myself playing it.