The 50th Anniversary of James Bond & The Horrors Of James Bond Part 5

Bond on Bond ~The James Bond Avalon Hill Game 

"Experience the life of a secret agent... work for M.I.6, the British Secret Service, or assume the role of the most famous agent of all... prepare yourself for endless thrills, high-living and danger. Reach out for excitement in...

The World of James Bond 007

• Careen through high-speed chases...
as you track down villains or escape their evil henchmen!
• Pit yourself against ODD JOB and JAWS...
and thwart the plans of Dr. No and Goldfinger!
• Choose your special skills as an agent...
weapon and vehicle handling, hand-to-hand combat, gambling, mountaineering, demolitions.
• Select your equipment from Q Branch...
have your weapons and vehicles modified to suit each of your missions!

Obtain the Coveted "00" Rank:
Your Licence to Kill!

The Fully Illustrated Basic Game
All the information necessary to play the game is provided to the Gamesmaster and players, plus an introductory adventure - The Island of Dr. No!"

1983 ... VG 35000 ... ISBN 0912515007" 
The James Bond Rpg came out from Victory(a division of Avalon Hill) games in 1983 & was a part of a Christmas present back in Dec of '83 from the big Sears Catalog. The box set along with the Q Manual were waiting for me that Christmas You might as well have handed me a loaded gun! Seriously this game blew everything else out of the water! 
The rules were well laid out & very cool but there was something about the game that was different. 
The game had something about it that allowed players to really plunge into the cinematic elements of the movies. The Hero points were an element that allowed the player to take the PC as his own. Agents right out of the gate weren't rear wipers they were proper agents being sent into the mouth of hell. 
 Who was the enemy? Well according to wiki : "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 Tarotcard theme), led by Karl Ferenc Skorpios"  T.A.R.O.T. was actually a much, much better choose. Within our games in high school there had been a war between SPECTRE &  Karl Ferenc Skorpios. Skorpios won & the world paid for it. 

The Adventures & The Horror Of Bond 
There was one very interesting element of the Bond Adventures. The writers learned a very neat little trick that I would later see used in the West End Star Wars Rpg.
According to Wiki : "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."
More then a few times I saw the players look at a module & think they were going to play the film! They game actually took some of the basic ideas from the film & the book . Then it would skip off in a different direction. This allowed the players a chance to be the stars not Bond.
There was another game that had a similar way of handling horror at the time. 

Call of Cthulhu, 2nd Edition (1983) was a revelation. The system was also percentile based & although the elements were different to the brains of a teen, it didn't take much to overcome & adapt. The DYI attitude of the OSR were decades off but we were dealing with whatever we needed to at the time.
Tarot became the front for a world spanning call of Cthlhu cult. Monsters from Chill were dealt with & everyone had a jollly good time! 

The Bond game had a few elements over CoC which allowed characters to have a more survivality factor. The Hero system was a part of it. The combat of Bond was another part of it. We were playing the films that our young hearts wanted to see.
Pure CoC would come much later.
Anatomy of an Adventure 

Lets take apart one of my favorite adventures 

"BRIEFING: Two top M.I.6 operatives, working with the C.I.A. to uncover drug mugglers in New Orleans and on the Caribbean island of San Monique, have met suddent and mysterious deaths. Now a third agent, who had been observing Dr. Emman Kananga, the Premier of San Monique, has been found dead in his New York hotel room. All three deaths have occurred within the last 24 hours. Is someone simply out to destroy the British Secret Service, or is there some more ominous link that unites the three agents in death?

MISSION: Unraveling the threads of these murders takes you to New York, New Orleans and San Monique. At these locations you will find clues to a master plot that threatens to undermine the very fabric of American society. As you penetrate into the mystery behind the deaths of your fellow agents, you will find yourself confronting the dark powers of voodoo, encountering the lovely and mystical oracle Solitaire, and defying the cutthroats who work for the American gangster known as Mr. Big. Your life is in the balance, for the next card to be played is Death!"
The adventure is at its heart a weird mix of Blackexpoilation film and Bond. The whole thing comes off today as weird & slightly horrific. The key here is that the adventure is actually pretty fun. 

The players are sent to deal with the dual problems of  Kananga & Mr.Big. Both the film & the adventure use racial  sterotypes that are larger then life. The whole thing screams fun & if the horror aspect is pushed to far then it drifts into Angel Heart turf. You lose the whole point of the adventure.
There are lots of differences from the movies such as: 

1. Expanded encounters & more combat opportunities 
2. The NPCs are much more important then the film
3. The module is actually pretty generic in a sense. Sure this is a Bond film but.. 

Using the world wide cult idea its could be just as easy to plug in a UN based organization with superior operatives. 
The United Network Command for Law and Enforcement could just as easily be slipped into the adventure & still be just as playable. 

So where could this whole affair connect to? What sort of cult would have the money, personnel  & resources to pull something like this off? 

 The cults from this relic of the past come to mind. Kananga & Mr.Big. could both be high level operatives of the cults of the many faces of  Nyarlathotep
 There could be threads of this running throughout history. After all given the history of the various world spanning organizations there could be lots of interaction & trading going on.
Some final James Bond Rpg Thoughts 
 There were some very, very, good solid supplements for the Avalon Hill  James Bond Rpgs. These were & still are really useful. They provide a whole lot of information for just about any horror or spy related game
This is the list according to wiki: . 

• Q Manual (October 1983) ISBN 0-912515-01-5 - sourcebook detailing required equipment for a "00" agent
  This is the go to James Bond manual with commentary from Q & some really interesting weapons. A bit dated now but still right on the money when it comes to the gadgets & guns of Bond as well as some addtion Q Branch NPCS
• Gamesmaster Pack (October 1983) ISBN 0-912515-05-8 - various tools including a gamesmaster screen with charts and other game-related references.
  Almost every James Bond module had a DM screen but this was quite the nice little packet. There are some addtional rules & such in here. I was hoping for a mini adventure but this is good & solid 
• For Your Information (1983) ISBN 0-912515-07-4 - additional rules as well as information on characters and equipment not included in the original rulebook or Q Manual.
  Basically the rules expansions & the this & that left out of the original rule book as well as Q The Q manual 
• Thrilling Locations (June 1985) ISBN 0-912515-10-4 - detailing hotels, casinos, restaurants, and the Orient Express, with floorplans and NPCs This is hands down one of the most useful books that I own period. This book details everything you need to run a game of Bond, the locations can be used for a post apocalytic game, the locations shift right over to a horror setting, & the NPCs make excellent victims 
• Villains (1986), ISBN 0-912515-11-2, by Gerard Christopher Klug - 7 original major villains, and an updating of SMERSH for the modern day. The go to non Tarot box set. This is the perfect set of maniacs for a number of genres & I've used them all. Not bad for a 2.00 find at Good Will 
  The James Bond rpg was one of the first that dealt with homosexuality, drug use, poisons, violence, etc. all in a matter of fact way. The game didn't cut corners or wholesome the subjects. It was cut & dry facts that was it in favor of spy fy fun.
  

The 50th Anniversary of James Bond & The Horrors Of James Bond Part 4

 Before you is the mostly complete offerings of Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes. The game is an old favorite of mine & was one of the conversion points for Top Secret. Why? Read on & find out as we dive back into the world of  Bond once again. 

 Bond Before The Bond Rpg Part II

There are games that haven't had OSR revivals & retro clones of them. They're out there unplayed, unloved, & unappreciated. This is one of those!
The game is one of my go to sources for spy fy horror! With the Bond years so litterally ripe with opportunities for adventure why choose a game which uses a modern variation of the Tunnels & Trolls engine? 

Who would choose to use this to illustrate the world of Bond with its villians, weird brotherhoods, & its border world War III rashes of international incidents?
The game is simple, fast, & much more robust then Top Secret & conversion between the two is easy. 

The character sheet fills out out, quickly easily & with no fuss what so ever. Given the nature of a horror survival spy game this is a good thing. 

The skill list is extensive & the character design works on a cinematic level quite well. Its also one of the first games that really puts the ladies on a level playing field with their male counter parts. Yes there is some sexism in game design that is unintentional. Call of Cthulhu & OD&D both addressed this & took care of it. 

 The weapons list is extensive to say the least at least for when the game came out. There's a bit of a Call of Cthlihu vibe that echoes through the game & its support. 

 Monsters which Bond never encountered or even many spies never encountered are between the pages. These are the dezines of the pulps of the 30s & men's entertainment. These are the creatures of Johnny Quest! 

Time & again the world of Bond seems to be run behind the scenes & we are given glimpses in the movies behind the curtain. These are folks who sip wine while discussing the fate of nations & whose turn of a phrase decides futures of millions with a word.
Stack up the old pulp villains given new Bondian skins & this game easily takes you right into that world. Yet there has always been an uneasy darker world lurking just behind the windows of various sky scraper & within the halls of power. 

The only thing keeping an agent alive is a good solid weapon. Bond's Walter PPK & the various other items he uses throughout the Connery years have a weird military vibe to them. By design or error Bond is a creature of murder. Connery portrays him as a man on a mission. He prowls through the films murdering, dealing violence, & seeking the powers behind the scenes. Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes does a good job of allowing the PCs play in the halls of power. There was a solid difference with game versus Top Secret. 

You could feel the pulp roots of the game right in front of you. The weapons list spoke volumes as to the game's intention. Lots & lots of pulp violence & power plays. 

Everything from shot guns to six shooters were in there. The game even did a decent job dealing with sub machine guns. I remember a Dragon Magazine article giving the game high marks. 

 Remember that I mentioned Call of Cthulhu earlier. The veteran horror game that we all know & love. Well it easily & infact still easily converts to Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes.
 
 Well before we had a billion gun lists with the first edition of the game of CoC I was using the list from here for this game. The other game that was easily converted to another of veteran of  the Horror rpg  school.

So what does this have to do with the world of James Bond?
Well the fact is that with monsters already within  the game Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes was for quite a while my go to source of spy fy/horror mash ups.
There's one character who easily came to represent the perfect villain of pulp grandeur. Bond's Joker
 
Ernst_Stavro_Blofeld is the perfect example of the myriad faces of evil that can come into a game. Who or what is Blofeld? He's become so iconic in my games that he's become a modern version of this fellow

Yet that's pushing it really. The Prisoner television show & the Bond movies had me wondering if there are so many versions of a villian running round. The human mind can be hacked to a degree couldn't this character still be operating today ala Dr. Doom fashion? Programming various people into become another arch criminial while the machine continues to run?

Of course it could. Because Ernst is still with us even today. You thought the Master from Dr.Who was a problem? Who knows who actually is running those various conspiracies that seems so in fashion today? 

Part of the charm of Mercenaries was that it allowed a DM & continues to allow one to play across a variety of time periods. 

Because its based on the Tunnels & Trolls engine its easily convertible to any number of OSR products which a lot of folks don't know. 

You might want to dust off those copies of the game & take a look back at them again.
The game is still available from the original publisher right Here
 Coming up The James Bond Rpg, Uncle, & some of the stragglers as well 

The 50th Anniversary of James Bond & The Horrors Of James Bond Part III

So the Connery era ends with Diamonds Are Forever & then we get into a sort of murky period where the cold war heats up & things get weird foreign policy wise. There are very few details of the era before the  Moore took over the role of Bond. This makes it a perfect time for options & role playing. The cold war chess game in the super spy business had revealed the terrible cost to human lives, resources, & things man wasn't meant to know. There were of course options even in the early halcyon days of role playing.
The Top Secret game was one easy to digest one & there were others as well 

Bond before the James Bond Rpg

 Top Secret 1st edition  was & is a great game warts & all.
The game reads something like out of a cheap Saturday evening movie! 

Here's what it is: 

TOP SECRET includes everything needed to start playing your own adventures in the world of international espionage and intrigue: game booklet, introductory module, and set of percentile dice. The only other things necessary are a good imagination and a spirit of adventure!"

1980 (1st edition). 1981, 1983 (2nd edition) ... TSR 7006

 The Top Secret Rulebook every thing a DM needs to rule the world. Top Secret has always had its weird & highly dubious background lurking under its wholesome family cover. 

1. The rule book gives mind & surgically altered NPCs for the players to tackle. 
2. They work for a faceless compartmentalized organization close to the ground. The PCs get as much or as little support as the DM chooses 
3. There are various corporate mercenary groups right there in the rule book. Something that we didn't see until much later in S.I. 
4. There are rules for strange, weird, double dealing UN backed organizations that would make the most conspiracy minded geek have an orgasm right in there. 
5. The rules for guns, girls, & gadgets are right in there for the DM to turn up or dial down as much as they want. 
6. For horror elements & there are quite a few simply slide where you want the tone of the adventure to go. Mad scientists, terrorist cells, & eugenics cults are all there  

One of my all time favorites that can easily be used in the 2 years between Diamonds Are Forever & Live & Let Die. Operation Rapid Strike!
The module's Blurb reads as follows : 

"Operation: Rapid Strike [Rapidstrike] (TS002) 

"Nobel Prize-winning scientist Doctor Felix Fendelmann has disappeared from his laboratory/retreat in Switzerland. Genevieve Larreau - known to have contacts in the underworld, and suspected to have been involved in the industrial espionage of the Texacron Chemical Corporation - was sighted in the same area of Switzerland shortly before the disappearance of Dr. Fendelmann. Mademoiselle Larreau is reported to have developed a new and potentially dangerous "mind-expanding" drug. Dr. Fendelmann's Nobel Prize was for his research on chemicals and their effects on the mind. Mission: Neutralise Larreau and her operation at all costs!"

1980 ... Mike Carr & Corey Koebernick ... 32 pages ... TSR 7601 ... ISBN 0935696571" 

This is one of the dungeon crawls that Top Secret produced. See that's the nice thing about Top Secret. The adventures are generic enough to be used with just about any Spy Fy game out there. This makes things very easy to set them up into your campaign background & then push go on the players. For example 

Texacron Chemical Corporation becomes a Spectre front company. Genevieve Larreau becomes an operative of that organization & they all blend easily into that 2 year span. The horror comes from the effects of Doctor Felix Fendelmann's little drug. Could it be a gateway to world's beyond the ken of mankind. What happens when the drug is released & is it a drug at all or a living bio weapon? The possibilities are endless with this module. 

This is it. The introductionary adventure to Top Secret. Code name: Pisces & it lives up to its name this is essentially the Keep on The Borderlands of  Top Secret. The concepts, fringe elements, & even a bit of the high drama that have come to mark the game are there. Could elements of horror be injected into it? Yes but more over the elements of  Noir make make for a slightly different feel to this game. 

I've run this one countless times! The adventure is easy to play with & add elements of adventure & horror.
The basic plot works something like this: 

"Screen includes module Operation: Executive One. "Agents must rescue the President of the United States from a squad of corporate mercenaries."

1982 ... 8 pages + 3-panel cardstock screen ... TSR 6601 ... ISBN 0935696792" 

 I've run this one by injecting an Escape From New York Style to the adventure so that the characters never knew from which direct combat was going to come. Add Escape from New York Style sound track & go. Always make sure that Q branch is a little understaffed! The module has a survival horror element if done correctly. 

The artwork of Operation Rapid Strike had a bit of a sleazy men's adventure book feel to it 

An Organization At Work 
I've always used Top Secret & its adventure's as Bond's little clean up crew. These were the folks who took care of the mess that Bone left behind. The minions & monsters that seemed to be lurking under the surface of the various Bond films. 

The Appendices in the Rule book always gave a DM more options for creating a grittier world, a world where the horror element of Spy fy really shines. The pulp style adventure was the bread & butter of the great  Bond films. It was & remains where the Top Secret game & its environs come from.

 Because of the nature of the Top Secret game its actually very easy to mine bits & pieces from it for other games! The modules enable a DM to incorporate them into everything from a Shield style comic book adventure. All the way  to a solid Prisioner style Danger Man world with the elements of fantastic as they see fit. 

I've always used Top Secret's PCs as the low level agents that deal in the wake of the 00's. They really get to see the working of Spectre. There's always been this very strange cult like aspect of the organization. I've add a few Lovecraft monsters & projects here & there.
The noir/horror aspect of Bond really shows through with the Connery era. The places & situations are straight out of pulp in the best of the spirit. Its very easy to push things into horrors dark corners. Even today a DM might easily borrow some ideas from the game & run with them in all sorts of directions 

Before the James Bond Rpg ever surfaced this was the most well known game in town but not the only one. We'll cover those coming up. Thanks for your attention 

The 50th Anniversary of James Bond & The Horrors Of James Bond Part II

For our purposes lets consider this the world of the James Bond Films only & its still a pretty fantastic world & then lets add some of the popular culture of the 60s 

 The world was rapidly changing in the 60s there was more unrest then ever before on the world stage & things were starting to heat up in a very cold war. The legacy of WWII was still echoing down through history & technology was rapidly changing. The communists, terrorists, & other external threats were rampaging across planet Earth. 

England had already had otherworldly contact in the form of  The Quatermass & The Pit Affair in 1958 &  its after effects in 1959. Contact with the "Doctor" in '63 really shook the foundations of the interior of the British secret affairs group part of the  British Rocket Group, & precursor to Unit.

The world of that James Bond came into was described by a writer of Pravada thus:

James Bond lives in a nightmarish world where laws are written at the point of a gun, where coercion and rape are considered valour and murder is a funny trick ... Bond's job is to guard the interests of the property class, and he is no better than the youths Hitler boasted he would bring up like wild beasts to be able to kill without thinking.

Yuri Zhukov, Pravda, 30 September 1965.

By the time Dr. No had come out in '62 the world felt the weight of the super human. The Fantastic Four had debuted & made a splash with their appearance. For better or worse the super human was back. World War Two hadn't killed them all or retired them.  The old nemisis of the Si Fan hadn't gone away at all. It mutated into to two organizations & multiple splinter groups. Spectre & Thrush. The threat had of these two had been uncovered by operatives in 1959.  For more information See Here  & also see Thrush Here

 The Idea of the "00" s is very simple. For a time a top operative takes on the identity of one of them. His old identity is gone or erased & he operates for M-16 as their visible asset. Thus allowing his enemies to think there is a high level semi immortal being on the pay roll of M-16. There are many such entities working out there within a world where super humans, freaks, deviants, & mutants are the norm. You see right after the Dr.No affair in '63 the X men appeared followed by the menace of Magneto! The world was never the same. 

 

The immortality Option 

There are some assets who are not expendable & have given their all in the line of duty. The organizations they run see them as the ultimate in operatives. So they are given any number of risky & controversial technologies. Many of these were side projects & military super soldier technology applications from such folks as the Quest Group & many others. 

The idea of an operative whole doesn't age like the rest of us is something that offers endless boundaries of horror & depravity. The hero becomes devil & so forth.

 Even the regular Bond books give Bond an uncanny youthful appearance. Coincidence I think not. These immortal operatives are easily controlled. Then again not always. 

The Shadowed Mirrors
 
1971 marks the end of an era when the whole glass ceiling of the super spy game seemed to almost come to end for the whole world with the Ernst_Stavro_Blofeld almost causing total nuclear chaos. 

 Spectre's proposing an international auction for global nuclear supremacy caused almost total global chaos & allowed the perfect opportunity for 007 to exit the world stage.. For a time. 

The legacy of 007 isn't one of gadgets, girls, & guns. It all leads into the inversion of that trope 

 John Drake is the opposite number of everything that James Bond stands for. 
Danger Man is as follows according to wiki : 
"Every government has its secret service branch. America, CIA; France, Deuxième Bureau; England, MI5. NATO also has its own. A messy job? Well that's when they usually call on me or someone like me. Oh yes, my name is Drake, John Drake."The Plot :

"Unlike the later James Bond films, Danger Man strove for realism, dramatising credible Cold War tensions. In the second series, Drake is an undercover agent of the British external intelligence agency (called "M9" instead of the actual MI6). As in the earlier series, Drake finds himself in danger with not always happy outcomes; sometimes duty forces him to decisions which lead to good people suffering unfair consequences. Drake doesn't always do what his masters tell him.

Developing a rule established in the first series, Drake is rarely armed, though he engaged in fist fights, and the gadgets he uses are credible. In fact, most were off the shelf, and their appearance in the series spurred sales of such commercial items as the folding binoculars (Battle of the Cameras) featured in the American title sequence and the sub-miniature Minox camera. Unlike James Bond, Drake is often shown re-using gadgets from previous episodes. Among the more frequently seen are a miniature reel-to-reel tape recorder hidden inside the head of an electric shaver or a pack of cigarettes, and a microphone that could be embedded in a wall near the target via a shotgun-like apparatus, that used soda siphon cartridges containing CO2 as the propellant, allowing Drake to eavesdrop on conversations from a safe distance.

Agent Drake uses his intelligence, charm and quick thinking rather than force. He usually plays a role to infiltrate a situation, for example to scout for a travel agency, naive soldier, embittered ex-convict, brainless playboy, imperious physician, opportunistic journalist, bumbling tourist, cold-blooded mercenary, bland diplomat, smarmy pop disk jockey, precise clerk, compulsive gambler, or impeccable butler." 

The series ran " 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968" The series ends in only one place

There were villages all over the world where various agents & operatives "retired"
The village & evirons might still be in operation to this day! You can of course read much about the Danger Man & Village connection right  Here
The uses of these locations in horror is easy & well known. The ghosts & specters of aging spies & operatives is a trope that can easily be explored.

High Caliber Adventure & High Tech Mysticism 

Bond & his spy fi movie rpg connections are well known. In part III well explore some of the uses of the horror aspects of the series.
I've recently made use of the Bond legacy in a game of Top Secret

The 50th Anniversary of James Bond & The Horrors Of James Bond

In case you've been living under a rock today is the day that Dr.No was unleashed on the world. October 5th marks the date when this vicious little movie made its way into the world.
The world has never quite been the same..

I've always considered Dr. No as the traditional Bond movie. All of the elements are there of course. The guns, the girls, the gadgets, & the movie delivers the goods.
Major plot spoiler ahead 
The plot goes something like this  according to wiki: 

"John Strangways, the British Intelligence (SIS) Station Chief in Jamaica, is ambushed and killed, and his body taken by a trio of assassins known as the "Three Blind Mice". In response, MI6 agent James Bond—also known as 007—is summoned to the office of his superior, M. Bond is briefed to investigate Strangways' disappearance and to determine whether it is related to his cooperation with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on a case involving the disruption of Cape Canaveral rocket launches by radio jamming.

Upon his arrival at Kingston Airport, a female photographer tries to take Bond's picture and he is shadowed from the airport by two men. He is picked up by a chauffeur, whom Bond determines to be an enemy agent. Bond instructs him to leave the main road and, after a brief fight, Bond starts to interrogate the driver, who then kills himself with a cyanide-embedded cigarette.

During his investigation in Strangways' house Bond sees a photograph of a boatman with Strangways. Bond locates the boatman, named Quarrel, but finds him to be un-cooperative. Bond also recognises Quarrel to have been the driver of the car that followed him from the airport. Bond follows Quarrel and is about to be beaten by him and a friend when the fight is interrupted by the second man who followed Bond from the airport: he reveals himself to be CIA agent Felix Leiter and explains that not only are the two agents on the same mission but also that Quarrel is helping Leiter. The CIA has traced the mysterious radio jamming of American rockets to the vicinity of Jamaica, but aerial photography cannot determine the exact location of its origin. Quarrel reveals that he has been guiding Strangways around the nearby islands to collect mineral samples. He also talks about the reclusive Dr. No, who owns the island of Crab Key, on which there is a bauxite mine: the island and mine are rigorously protected against trespassers by an armed security force and radar.

During a search of Strangways' house, Bond found a receipt, signed by Professor R. J. Dent, concerning rock samples. Bond meets with Dent who says he assayed the samples for Strangways and determined them to be ordinary rocks. This visit makes Dent wary and he takes a boat to Crab Key where Dr. No expresses displeasure at Dent's failure to kill Bond and orders him to try again, this time with a tarantula. Bond survives and after a final attempt on his life, sets a trap for Dent, whom he captures, interrogates and then kills.

Having detected radioactive traces in Quarrel's boat, where Strangways' mineral samples had been, Bond convinces a reluctant Quarrel to take him to Crab Key. There Bond meets the beautiful Honey Ryder, dressed only in a white bikini, who is collecting shells. At first she is suspicious of Bond but soon decides to help him, leading them all inland to an open swamp. After nightfall they are attacked by the legendary "dragon" of Crab Key which turns out to be a flame-throwing armoured tractor. In the resulting gun battle, Quarrel is incinerated by the flame-thrower whilst Bond and Honey are taken prisoner. Bond and Honey are decontaminated and taken to quarters before being drugged.

Upon waking they are escorted to dine with Dr. No. He reveals that he is a member of SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion) and plans to disrupt the Project Mercury space launch from Cape Canaveral with his atomic-powered radio beam. After dinner Honey is taken away and Bond is beaten by the guards.

Bond is imprisoned in a holding cell but manages to escape through a vent. Disguised as a worker, Bond finds his way to the control centre, a multi-level room full of high-tech instrumentation with an atomic reactor set into the floor, overseen by Dr. No from a command console. Bond overloads the nuclear reactor just as the American rocket is about to take off. Hand-to-hand combat ensues between Bond and Dr. No; the scientist is pushed into the reactor's cooling vat, in which he boils to death. Bond finds Honey and the two escape in a boat just as the entire lair explodes." 

A Brief Mention of The James Bond Rpg Victory Games Adventure 
 This adventure came out in 1984 for the Victory James Bond Rpg & as you can see from the plot & contents seems to emulate the movie 

"BRIEFING: Something is terribly wrong on the island paradise of Jamaica. The always reliable M.I.6 Station head has failed to make his report and has since disappeared. What terrible secret is so important on Jamaica it is worth the risk of murdering an M.I.6 operative? All clues point to the existence of a mysterious figure unknown to the British Secret Service - someone called Dr. No. Where is Dr. No located, and could he prove a threat to the rest of the world?

MISSION: Against the backdrop of romance and intrigue in the Caribbean, you must discover the link between the missing Station head and Dr. No. Though your assignment sounds simple enough, you will find yourself in constant jeopardy as you seek to separate the lies and legends from the truth about Dr. No. Do you have the courage - and the intelligence - to unravel the mystery of Dr. No?

The Dr. No Adventure package contains:

• An illustrated 48-page Gamesmaster's Guide with complete instructions on running an adventure.

• An Agent's Briefing Dossier from M.I.6 with 8 Mission Sheets that provide clues and maps for the players.

• A stand-up screen containing a map of Jamaica and the floorplan to Dr. No's lair."

1984 ... VG 35006 ... ISBN 0912515066

Notice I said seems to. This is one of the essential James Bond Rpg adventures but with a little work could be used with Top Secret or Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes. Yes the gadgets, the girls, & the guns are all there but this is a slightly different adventure then the movie. It takes a bit of a different tract & if you assume this is the movie your PCs are dead meat. The factors are there from the movie as well. 

 The Dr. No Nuclear Disaster 

This is the part that's always bothered me. " Bond finds Honey and the two escape in a boat just as the entire lair explodes."  The lair with a nuclear reactor explodes right in the middle of  the  Jamaican Islands  & Bond escapes..Quite possibly the worst nuclear disaster related to the Western world up till that time. Had this event been real it would have quite possibly altered our history. Fortunately this was a movie. There's a quite a few ways of diverging many rpg threads from the movie. 

1. Dr. No was/is the perfect Spectre agent. He minds his business gets on with his mission & almost is successful. The fact that there's a blunder in his plans doesn't take away from the fact that he's an interesting & engaging villain or NPC. You can find his whole history both movie & Ian Flemming book right Here
2. What happens to Crab Key, Jamaica after whole Bond/No debacle? The whole island is a contaminated wasteland. Perhaps a breeding ground for all sorts of deadly mutant species depending on your game. The events of the movie could spark off a post apocalyptic event in your game world as well. The cause of either the Mutant Future or the Mutant Epoch might come about by the hands of Dr. No or Bond. 
3. However you slice it Dr.No is a mad genius in the grand pulp style & could be added to a game of horror quite easily. He might have been operating for well over a year before the events of the Bond film who knows what he had done then?  

If we were to assume for a moment that  Win Scott Eckert is right &  "Who's Going to Take Over the World When I'm Gone?" is correct & that in "Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe (Win Scott Eckert, ed., MonkeyBrain Books, 2005), Win Scott Eckert contributes "Who's Going to Take Over the World When I'm Gone?" wherein he posits that No's mother was an agent of Fu Manchu named Madame de Medici, who was in turn the daughter of Fu Xi, from Sax Rohmer's novel The Golden Scorpion. Then there's all kinds of possible relatives in the No family. The No family might provide patrons, villains, & even gasp other PCs.

Or that  Likewise in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, No is stated as being a distant relative of Fu Manchu. Later in the book, it is revealed that Bond's mission to stop Dr. No was a fraud, an alibi for Bond to kill a British leader for the Americans — "There was No Doctor."  Are both valid the possibilities for a game such as Kult, Top Secret, Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes. The options here are pretty endless to see behind the curtain of a  game of  high adventure espionage. 

Here nothing is as it seems & there are endless mirrors simply waiting to be explored & fun house conspiracies just around the corner. Here the ruins of Crab Key hold more then any adventurer of  horror or otherwise  might be bargaining for. 

This is the world of both Johnny Quest & The Man From Uncle all of these might be part of the same world spanning organization.  We'll explore that tomorrow in part II of this article The Many Masks of James Bond.

Tomorrow down the rabbit hole into the worlds of mazes, conspiracy, the TSR Top Secret game, & more Bond as well as Marvel's Shield