Okay, so I have a player in an SR4 campaign I'm trying to run. I think he must be insane.

After I ask him to please not make another gun-bunny, which I have one application for already, he decides to make a Face.

His next question? "Can I be British?"

Me: "Ummm.... Iiiii don't see any reason why not...."
Him:
Me: "So, why is a suave and debonair James Bond running the Shadows of the Seattle Sprawl?"
Him: "Because he used to be a rebel back in England - you know, anti-corp? Only he got run out. He switched the X and Y coordinates on a bomb drop and bombed a school instead of a corporate bunker...... His fellow rebels asked him to retire, immideately."
"Oh, and he has a Police Record."

So here I have a James Bond imiation, with what would be if the SR4 rulebook had them, the "Dark Secret", "Police Record", "Hunted" and "Distinctive Style" flaws. I cannot however seem to find these negative qualities mirrored in the SR4 rulebook.

Yes, I have told him what an overwhelmingly bad idea they are, but he insists, so.... Hey, at least he's got a nice roleplaying idea going. The trouble is, I'm not sure how many BP to give him for all of thse flaws, especially given that they synergize in ways that are, shall we say, disgustingly efficient.

So, let's recap.
Dark Secret: Bombed a schoolful of innocent children. Known as a terrorist when his real identity is figured out.

Police Record: He's a notorious criminal with facts on file. For example, the fact that he likes to wear bisuness suits and live a fairly high-class life. He's known as a "James Bond wannabe."

Hunted: MI-5 is looking for this sucker. If Lone Star Security Services gets ahold of biometric data on him, the data will be uploaded, it will filter through the criminal-registry services, and will run a huge red flag up MI-5's Union Jack pole. About eight of MI-5's Agents will be on the next Semiballistic from Heathrow to Sea-Tac.

Distinctive Style: He stands out in a crowd, he's the tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed British guy, always in impeccable atire, speaking with a noticable accent.

So, these flaws definately synergize in ways that are absoloutely disgusting. I'm trying to decide what build point value they're worth.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Dark Secret: 10 BP
Police Record: 10 BP
Hunted: 15 BP
Distinctive Style: 4 BP
Synergy multipler?: 1.25?
49 Build Points worth of flaws? That seems excessive, but it's a pretty sure bet that the heavy end of the hammer is going to come down on him for a background like this, even in an easy run like the On the Run adventure.

I'd played with a character like that a long time back.

I don't know about the BP values, but you could add some requirements of your own. For example, the guy I played with NEVER carried anything bigger than a light pistol. I don't think he ever used any ammo other than standard either.

Hey, if he wants to play James Bond, let him, no MAKE him play James Bond.

There are two ways to look at such a strong hunted flaw. It can be seen a free points because there is no way for a GM to make good use of it without completely derailing the campaign or it can be seen as defacto permission for the GM to fiat the character to death much like the borrowed time and cranial bomb flaws.

My recomendation: "A thor shot falls on your home while you are sleeping inside. There are no survivors."

But it can also be good if you are willing to make MI-5 integral to the campaign first as an antagonist and later as an exclusive employer (the kind that you don't want to be terminated by).

Well Hyz, it's not gonna be the "Free points" one. I can garuntee that.


If he gets stupid enough to draw MI-5's attention, they're going to come looking to collect their pounds of flesh, with interest. They want him alive though, because a wanted terrorist like him is definately going to be someone they want to publicly prosecute and lock up for life. And since the player has decided to be an elf, life imprisonment is going to be a Very Long Time.

Okay, it's official. My player is an idiot. When I asked him what kind of pistol he wanted, and indicated that I was willing to convert real-life guns to SR4 rules, he decided he wanted, and I quote,

Him: Hmm
Him: Give me whichever gun.
Him: Fires the highest caliber rounds
Him: brute force approach ^_^


So I said, almost incredulously, "You want the Desert Eagle, chambered in .50 AE?" And he said yes.

So I need stats for the DEagle in .50 AE. Here's what I've got so far:

Desert Eagle .50 AE (HPist)
Damage: 8P
AP: -1
Mode: SA
RC: -
Ammo: 7 ©
Avail: 8R
Cost: 800

Uses Taser ranges.


Does that sound fair enough to you? I was also thinking of making the ammo only available in regular, and bumping it's availability up because the round is so estoeric.

Tell him you are ok with all that background, but he needs to toss in some amnesia. Then, just make him an incompetant escapee of a mental hospital.

Taser ranges, for a .50AE? Wasent that puppy originally designed to be a target gun?
Not very Bond like to carry that penile replacement insted of a ppk (which was a rather small caliber IIRC).

Actually, wouldn't "whichever gun... Fires the highest caliber rounds" allow you to say, "Sure. Carry around this 30mm tripod-mounted chain gun I found in the Compendium of Modern Firearms" as a means of fulfilling his desire?

After all, he didn't say pistol, did he?

Uh, Taser ranges? How, exactly, does that make any sense?

The Desert Eagle, for all its impracticality, is a superb target pistol. It should have SMG ranges, if not slightly increased.

Your player is a moron, of course. Those flaws don't synergize for free points. In any marginally realistic game, he'll be fertilizer within two sessions. Then he can try making a character that doesn't fucking suck.

Istead of a 50.AE pistol give him a .50 BMG pistol.

Maadi-Griffin .50 BMG "Jesus Cannon"
8P
-7AP
Single Shot
Ammo 1 (m)
Bolt action
Concealability +4

Use assualt rifle ranges

Dude, don't let it derail the plot; let it BE the plot!

-Emo's Guide to Zen GMing.

Yeah, thats a great idea. I'm sure all the other players will have fun following his crazy ass around while MI5 tries to ice him.

Arethusa, that's why I'm giving him free points. He's getting all enthused about the free points, and forgetting the fact that MI-5 is in fact going to ice him the third day after they catch his trail.

I'm going to let him learn from his mistakes, and tell him "When I tell you it's a very bad idea, next time try listening, hey?

BTW, what should the "Distinctive Style" flaw be worth in SR4? Maybe +3 to the dice pool of everyone trying to find you by investigation?

Instent death? Sub-orbital bovine bombardment? Pack of drop bears? Dikoted AVS ally spirit to the back of the skull?

No, make it the exact oposite of the bland quality, same points given, +1 on the tests instead of -1.

Well SR4 has a max of 35 build points for flaws, just give him that much.

And police record is available in SR$, its called SINer (criminal) and its worth 10PB.

The problem with the character is that when the rest of the party learns what a liability he is they will want to disassociate with him, if not claim the bounty. You cant use it as the plot unless the rest of the party has a good reason not to drop him like a hot potato.

Edward

Once I made a James Bond character. I used the custom firearms creation rules to make a custom sport rifle with a tiny magazine which I called my "walther PPK", because James Bond's dinky 7.5mm Walther PPK seems to automatically one-shot everyone.

EDIT: I'm really bummed that in contemporary James Bond film they made him stop using the Walther PPK. What gives? It's hard to believe that a man who has been on so many missions with a particular sidearm would be eager to change it.

Even Bond has to update every now and then. The Walther P99 is nice, and that's what I wanted to give my player, but he wanted a Big Fucking Gun.

Couple of notes, as this guy has left the UK it will prolly be MI6 in charge of hunting him, they handle overseas stuff, though not sure as the background would imply some cross over of Jurisdiction. Secondly this thor shot talk is silly, The British goverment would note have him killed. He would die of a previously undiagnosed heart condition. Thats how British spies work.

I would give him the 35 points for those flaws (making a ludicrously gimped character concept shouldn't get you a break from the rules in an open build system - you make the choices, you live with them).

For his Desert Eagle, I would just say it is similar to the Ruger Super Warhawk and use the same stats for it. Why bother doing custom stats for a weapon used by a player with a lifespan of several sessions, if he's lucky?

Let his flaws take their natural course, without cutting him any unearned breaks, and hopefully he will learn to do better with his next character.


As far as James Bond, he's like comic book characters. He ages at a slow rate, and his backstory gets ret-conned as needed to fit him in to modern times - his signature pistol apparently being one of those tweaks. It wouldn't be the first time Bond changed guns. They made him switch to the PPK after his Beretta jammed in From Russia With Love.

Sota64 had the nice intelligence services flaw of "Dossier", which in a way is covered by Police Record I suppose, but at least to me seems more appropriately severe. Something that catalogs your history, preferences, habits, friends, etc. Its kinda why going off the reservation or skipping on the crown, or whatever the hell the term is for ditching MI-5 is bad.

I'm giving him the extras to make sure he feels like I'm paying attention to him. And I'm going to drive home that I am paying attention to him. When MI-6 comes barking down his door.

So he's the Face? Isn't the point of the face being that he IS known by people? He's much more likely to get found out this way; if he were muscle, he wouldn't be a key figure in a Lone Star investigation, but with this, he just wants to die.

I pointed it out to him, and pointed him to this thread.


He decided that "ex-MI-6 agent who lost all his identity in the Crash and decided to go to America rather than go back to work" sounded better than "world-infamous criminal."

You're no fun.

I recall bond being ordered to change gun in one movie, and trying to sneak his old gun out of eth office so he could keep using it.

He wasn’t the one that wanted the change, but I’m not shore if that was long enough ago to be when he got the ppk,

And he thinks hes going to be a face. Work out his strating notoriety,

Dark Secret: one point
Police Record: one point
Hunted: one point
Distinctive Style: one point

Starting notoriety 4, any fixer/knowledgeable runner/fence/Johnson will know of his reputation, -4 to social dice pools. A face cant afford social flaws in SR4


Edward

In the first James Bond moive, Dr. No, Bond is asked to change sidearms. So, that is a point. I guess it could have happened more than once.

Still, though, going by the books, the swap was from a .25 beretta with a skeleton grip and IIRC the skeleton grip got caught while he was trying to draw it from his waistband. I also recall that in the book they issued him a 7.5mm Walther PPK for concealability and a S&W .38 for when he needed to have something more powerful.

(I was always a bit confused by why a .38 is supposed to be a hand cannon, but I guess that's Europe in the sixties for you.)

Still, though, the Walther PPK was such a signature weapon I'm really disappointed that they changed it. I'd argue that it makes a lot of sense to upgrade from the beretta to the PPK but that the PPK is a perfectly acceptable conceal-oriented firearm today. I mean, the pistols that Bond seems to run around with now...they seem a bit bigger than the PPK, don't they? And it would seem to me that for Bond the priority is obviously concealability over stopping power, or else he never would have been running around with a .25 in the first place.

He was running around with the Beretta because it was the same sort of weapon his author (who was a member of Naval Inteligence during WWII) carried, because he honestly didn't give much thought at all to the weapon Bond carried.

In his novel NIGHT PROBE!, Clive Cussler implied throughout that a supporting character, "Brian Shaw", was in reality, a post-retirement James Bond.

The first clue was earlier in the book, in which Shaw is attending the funeral of his old chief at MI-6 (or the Special Intelligence Service, as it is currently known).

The aforementioned superior's secretary--Miss Moneypenny?--starts to call him by his original name; he corrects her, saying, "It's Brian, now...Brian Shaw, remember?" to which she replies, "I shall *never* get used to that name."

The book also mentions that Shaw was "...an MI-6 operative during the Cold War--the late 50s and early 60s. He was 'retired' several years ago, after the KGB got on his trail...."

And finally, near the end of the novel, after saving Shaw's life, the book's hero, Dirk Pitt, after watching Shaw free himself from a pair of handcuffs--apparently without tools--says, "James Bond would be proud of you."

Shaw replies, "Bond? He exists only in fiction."

Pitt responds, "Does he?"

Shaw shrugs.



(I'm not sure that I have the quotes right, but that's the gist of it; I read the book only once, shortly after it was originally released in paperback, 20-odd years ago.)

I'm tempted to try to pass off my PC in Sahandrian's campaign as Commander Bond under another name (after all, at about 150 years of age as of 2060, he's about the right age), but I think they'll kick me out of the group (assuming that we ever play again, that is ) once "The Foreigner" walks into a Seattle bar and says:

"Vodka martini; SHAKEN, not stirred."



--Foreigner

WR:

Perhaps it was an RL version of a "Hold-Out" pistol?

That is, an easily concealed, last-ditch defensive weapon?

--Foreigner

Actually it was something to give the kind of sod who never ever left England during the whole of war, so he'd have that "armed" feeling, without taking away resources that some soldier could use to kill a Nazi.

If you want a real good "Bond gun" for SR, look up the real life S&W ASP.

Don't use the ASP specificly, but imagine the same modifications to one of the canon light pistols.

According to this website, it is manufactured for several cartridges.

http://www.answers.com/topic/walther-ppk

Hmm, when I said 7.5 I must have meant 7.65.