Setting
The game is set in the world of the James Bond books and movies, probably the most famous spy series of all time. The characters take the role of secret agents, either James Bond himself or his allies, other agents of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, or allied agencies (usually the American CIA), and thwart plots of world domination from foreign dictators, megalomaniacal mad scientists, and arch-criminals. Unlike many role-playing games, where the player characters are, or at least start, relatively unimportant to the universe, and much less powerful than the non-player characters, the James Bond setting is much more centered on the player characters. The PCs are usually more competent than the NPCs, better outfitted with gadgets (from Q branch), have more Hero Points (see System, below) to perform cinematic feats, and in general have a lot of influence on their surroundings.
Following the setting, the game is focused on just a few leading roles, not large groups, and is intended to play well with just one gamemaster and as few as one player.
The game was licensed from both Danjaq/Eon Productions, which holds the film rights, and Glidrose Publications (now Ian Fleming Publications), which holds the literary rights, and tried to be as faithful as possible to both the books and the films as circumstances permitted. However to challenge the players appropriately, key plot elements in the modules based on the films were changed with the open warning to players that exactly imitating Bond's choices and actions in the film's original story would be dangerous. For instance, in the module for Live and Let Die, the players learn that Mr. Big and Doctor Kanaga are definitely two separate people rather than Kanaga playing the New York gangster in disguise. In addition, the module for You Only Live Twice is largely rewritten to eliminate the outdated space hijacking scheme to a plot to investigate the crash of a Soviet space station that crashes near Japan and deal with the reported bioweapons being researched on board.
The characters from the Bond universe, including Bond himself, his allies and enemies, Anya Amasova, Jaws, Goldfinger, etc., play important roles. One notable exception was the villainous organization SPECTRE and its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the rights to which were contested by Kevin McClory, so in the game, they were replaced by a similar organization called T.A.R.O.T. (with a Tarot card theme), led by Karl Ferenc Skorpios.
Read more about this topic: James Bond 007 (role-playing Game)
Famous quotes containing the word setting:
“One of my playmates, who was apprenticed to a printer, and was somewhat of a wag, asked his master one afternoon if he might go a-fishing, and his master consented. He was gone three months. When he came back, he said that he had been to the Grand Banks, and went to setting type again as if only an afternoon had intervened.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We don’t arrive at it by standing on one leg or on the first day of our setting out—but though we may jostle one another on the way that is no reason why we should strike or trample—elbowing’s enough.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)