Tagline: Cheapass Games are cool. Bad Bond jokes are cool. This game is cool. You cool with that? Or do I have to kill you in a bizarre, drawn out fashion which will leave plenty of opportunities to escape?

“Imagine, just once, luring the master spy into your evil lair and putting a bullet in his head. Imagine resisting the temptation to gloat over your prize, to tell him your secret plans, to let him escape certain death and blow up your lair in the process. Imagine winning.

Yeah, right.

Before I kill you, Mister Bond, I am going to tell you my entire life story, because I believe that you are the only man alive who would understand…”

I’ve been hearing good things about Cheapass Games for quite awhile now, but only last month did I finally find a store which sells them. Whoa boy, has it been worth the wait. Before I Kill You, Mister Bond… is one of the coolest games I’ve ever played, simply because its conceptual basis is so excellent for a game among friends.

For those who haven’t been let in on the secret yet, Cheapass Games produces games with ultra-original concepts and mechanics on very cheap materials so that they can keep the prices down. Do not confuse “cheap” with poor in quality, though. Before I Kill You, Mister Bond… comes in a handsomely designed white paper envelope which has been printed with a simple, but elegant cover. The instructions take up both sides of a single sheet of paper and there are two decks of cards – one printed on yellowish card stock, the other on greenish card stock. Everything is professionally put together and printed – it just doesn’t come in a cardboard box with laminated cards. Games, as their mission statement says, are fun because of how they’re designed – not because of the clever pieces of plastic with which they come. The pay-off to you is that Cheapass Games are just that – cheap as hell. If Before I Kill You, Mister Bond… was produced like most other games it would cost $20, not $5.

The concept of the game is simple: You take on the role of a super-villain in the classic James Bond tradition – massive secret bases, advanced technological wonders, and master plans… all ruined by our need to design Rube Goldberg machines to kill off the super-spy who comes after us. (Anyone who has seen Austin Powers knows the joke.)

The deck is made of three types of cards — lairs, spies, and doublers. The spies are a different color in order to make them easy to find… “just like in real life. ‘Hi! I’m Doctor Kelley! Any messages for me? Say, I’m a Spy!’” Each player is dealt a hand of cards and play begins in a clockwise manner.

Each turn consists of two phases. In the first phase you can play a single lair card from your own hand. Lair cards have different point values and the value of your lair is the point total of all the lair cards you have played. In the second phase you can play a spy card – either from your hand, anyone else’s hand, or from the top of the deck. You can also play a team of spies from your own hand (but not anyone else’s or the top of the deck). You play the spy cards against a particular lair – either your own, or someone else’s. Each spy has a point value (a team of spies has a point value equal to their total). If that value is larger than the lair then the spy infiltrates the lair and destroys it. If that value is smaller or equal to the value of the lair then the spy is captured.

Once a spy is captured the owner of the lair can either kill the spy or taunt the spy. If they kill the spy they score the number of points the spy is worth. The other option is to play a doubler card, which will double the value of the spy. Each doubler card is printed with a letter and has a matching doubler card with an identical letter somewhere else in the deck. If a doubler card is played it can be challenged by its matched pair. If this challenge takes place the spy escapes and the lair is destroyed.

So, overall, your goal is to build a lair with which to catch spies and score points. The first person to score 30 points wins the game.

The place where the game really shines, though, is the comedic interaction of the players. The cards are all jokes playing off the spy adventure/thriller genre (the Bond films, The Avengers, etc.). Most notable are the doubler cards – all of which are printed with cheezy super-villain taunts, such as: “I shall taunt you with this deadly weapon, blithely unaware that a child could have untied those ropes by now.” Having the players read these aloud in their best super-villain accents is truly the coolest part of the game.

There is, unfortunately, a massive problem with this game: It doesn’t work. I playtested it using a group of three and then a group of four players (it’s advertised as being for 2-6) and the dynamics and balance of the deck simply don’t work properly to let the rules fully realize themselves. Because spies can be played from essentially anywhere it is impossible to build up teams of spies, because any attempt to do so will invariably have someone else use your spies against you or for themselves. Lairs are difficult to get established (because they are easy to destroy), but once they are established they are almost impossible to destroy because you can’t build up teams of spies. Because there are an equal number of lairs, spies, and doublers in the deck, invariably by the time any sort of serious spy-catching is going on (because the lairs take so long to build up to a point where they can capture spies) everyone has built up a huge reserve of doubler cards – making it infeasible to play any of them (because someone else invariably has the matching card).

In the end these flaws meant that all the games we played (and we played nearly a dozen) went down the exact same route: Most lairs were wiped out repeatedly until one person got a lair large enough so that it couldn’t destroyed. That person then won the game. Very few doublers were ever played, because whenever they were it only resulted in the person’s lair being wiped out.

The rules themselves, IMO, work, but the deck of cards simply isn’t properly balanced. Plus more cards overall would have been nice because the phrases on these got tired pretty quick – and its the panache and cleverness of those phrases which are the primary strength of this game.

Nonetheless, this is a pretty classy game. At $5 it ain’t a bad buy, particularly since you can get quite a few laughs out of it.

Style: 5
Substance: 3

Writers: James Ernest
Publisher: Cheapass Games
Price: $4.95
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 1999/04/13

This is a game I enjoyed playing for about 3 weeks. Then I wrote a review about how much I liked it. Then I never played it again. Games that are fun only because the content on the cards is amusing simply don’t last. (See, also, Munchkin Quest.)

Also: 14 years later, the idea of needing to wait for a game until “finally finding a store that sells them” is simply adorable.

If you’re interested in checking this game out, you should be aware that Cheapass Games got hit with a cease-and-desist order in 2000. The game is now marketed as James Ernest’s Totally Renamed Spy Game.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Go to Part 1

As we begin to add these kinds of complexity to a game structure, it becomes crucial that we develop efficient procedures for managing that game structure.

Let me explain that by way of example. Over the past year, I’ve been using my OD&D open table campaign as a testbed for developing an enhanced system for hexcrawling. As part of that development work, I trawled my way through multiple editions, supplements, adventures, and games looking for interesting material and then worked to recombine all of that disparate material into a handful of unified mechanics.

When I was done, I had a handful of “core systems” into which I had boiled down a lot of ancillary details. The quick highlights include:

• Encounter Tables: Which unified the chance of encountering the keyed encounter for a hex, random encounters, monster lairs, and monster tracks into a single encounter check mechanic.
• Spot Distances: Bringing together all the information on when PCs spot encounters, creatures, and/or terrain features.
• Timekeeping System: Breaking the day down into six watches (each four hours long), including a system for randomly determining time within a watch. (Why? Because it provides a cleaner structure for “mid-day course corrections”, which it turns out people want to do a lot during a hexcrawl. It also provides a convenient structure for making multiple encounter checks per day, which I found useful for a number of reasons.)
• Speed and Distance: Mostly based on the 3^rd Edition system for determining how far a group travels based on their base speed and the terrain they’re traveling through.
• Navigating the Wilderness: A system for determining whether PCs become lost and, if so, how they get lost. (And also how they can get back on track.)

When it came time to put this into actual playtesting, I had gone over these systems multiple times with a fine-toothed comb. And most of it was based on “existing tech”. I was pretty confident that the system was basically rock solid.

But when it came time for the actual playtesting, this is roughly what it looked like: “Okay, check for an encounter. There is an encounter, so let’s determine what the encounter is. A group of 1d12 goblins. Roll the number of goblins, mark that down. Okay, where does the encounter take place? First, determine time of day. Okay, where would they be at that time? Ask them which direction they’re going, then calculate their speed, figure out where they’ll be. Now, determine if they got lost. They did, so go back and determine where they actually ended up… Hmm. So that means they’re in this hex over here. But the terrain type has shifted… Oh, and the encounter table changed. So that means they didn’t encounter goblins, they would have encountered… Wait, what did I roll? Umm… Must have been an 83 since it was goblins, so on the new encounter table that would be vampire wombats. Roll those up. Now, since the terrain type changed I need to re-determine how far they actually got…”

And so forth. It was a train wreck. Lots of painfully long pauses while I fidgeted with my notes.

(This, by the way, is why you do playtesting.)

RESOLUTION SEQUENCES

Playtesting did result in my tweaking a few of the rules. (For example, I was running into a lot of headaches with groups who wanted to change direction in the middle of a hex. So I introduced a generic system for tracking progress through a hex and an abstract mechanic for groups that wanted to just cross and re-cross a given patch of terrain looking for stuff.)

But what I eventually figured out was that my biggest problem was the lack of a clear resolution sequence. I had three or four little sub-systems that were interdependent on each other, and, as a result, I would frequently end up backtracking and needing to redo calculations that I had already performed in light of new information that had been thrown up.

It took a couple more sessions of playtesting after that to really nail it down, but I eventually came up with a clean resolution sequence:

1. Determine direction and mode of travel.
2. Are They Lost?
3. Encounter Check
4. Determine Actual Distance Traveled
5. Generate Encounter

And with the addition of a brief resolution sequence used when a group leaves a hex, this basically solved the problem and made the Thracian Hexcrawl campaign possible.

In the dozens of sessions since then, I’ve learned a few additional tricks to make play more efficient (like putting landmarks visible from a distance on the hexmap and pre-rolling encounter checks so that I know which watches encounters are going to take place in and can skip straight to generating the encounter), but it all rests on the firm foundation of a clean resolution sequence.

(My next experiment is a keying system for trails: Players in hexcrawls will often follow roads, rivers, or other trails. I think there’s a way to create separate “trail maps” which will massively simplify and streamline travel along known routes. I think this should also make it possible to add a trailblazing system that will allow players to create their own trails through the wilderness. But I digress.)

REFERENCES, WORKSHEETS, AND NOTE-TAKING

My point with all this, of course, is that a game structure is not just a mass of mechanics: It is also the way in which you use those mechanics. If we return to the similar structures of board games and card games, for example, it is relatively trivial to note how the rules for those games are almost always presented in a clear sequence of steps: Do this, then do this, then do that…

The flexible and open nature of roleplaying games obviously complicates this rigid sequencing. But, once again, we can see the value of having a default structure to serve as a backbone from which flights of greater fancy can be launched.

On a similar note, I want to briefly mention the value of reference sheets, worksheets, and efficient note-taking.

A common reference sheet is the GM’s screen. And it’s usually amazing to me how often the design of these screens seem to evidence no understanding of how a particular game is actually played. So, my general tip: As a GM, pay attention to the rules and tables you, personally, are looking up during play. Particularly note anything that you’re referencing frequently or which you find yourself wanting to reference quickly (during combat, for example). That’s the stuff you want to put on your GM screen.

Structured worksheets for the GM used to be common place in the hobby, but they became very scarce in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. I suspect this is because this was a period in which the hobby was abandoning clear game structures, which meant that there was no way to design worksheets that would actually be widely applicable. But one of the first things I developed for running my Thracian Hexcrawl was a worksheet for tracking travel progress through hexes.

On a less formal level, spend some time thinking about how you take notes. What type of stuff – like retainer morale or AC – are you frequently asking your players to look for? Is there a better way you could be keeping track of hit points for your monsters? And so forth.

Go to Part 9: Archaic Game Structures

Go to Part 1

Once an experienced GM has learned how to use a particular game structure, it’s usually trivial for them to “bling it out” with additional game structures that add flavor, complexity, or detail to a scenario.

If we take the basic structure of a hexcrawl, for example, what could we add (or tweak) to change (and hopefully improve) our game?

Random Encounters: A simple example. Just as random encounters add life and activity to a dungeon complex, they can also make a wilderness setting come alive. And it’s pretty easy to add periodic encounter checks to our hexcrawl procedures. Of course there are still questions to be answered about our exact methodology: Do we check once per hex? Once per day? Several times per day?

Hexes Are Big: Does it make sense for PCs to automatically find a hex’s keyed encounter as soon as they enter the hex? Probably not. A typical 30-mile hex (like those used in the original Darlene map of Greyhawk) is larger than New York City and two-thirds the size of Rhode Island. That’s a lot of territory for a couple dozen orcs or a lonely cave entrance to get lost in.

To model this, we could make the chance of experiencing a hex’s keyed encounter variable. We could even vary the probability of this (making it less likely to encounter hidden locations and more likely to encounter highly visible locations).

Navigating the Wilderness: Once you’ve left roads and well-beaten trails behind you, it’s relatively easy to become lost in the wilderness (particularly if you’re not properly trained). So rather than just letting players determine precisely the direction they want to go, we could add a skill check to determine whether or not they become lost (and, if they do, determine their true direction of travel randomly). To spice things up, we could set the difficulty of this check based on the terrain type they’re currently traveling through. We could even have weather conditions modify this check (so that, for example, it would be more difficult to find your way on stormy, overcast nights than when the stars were visible).

Mode of Travel: Are the PCs traveling at a normal pace, racing at high speeds, covering their tracks, spending time foraging, or crisscrossing their own path in order to thoroughly explore the local area? Based on these decisions, we could vary the speed at which they travel; the difficulty of navigation; the odds of finding local points of interest; and so forth.

Other Game Structures: Tulan of the Isles, a lesser known product written by Raymond E. Feist and Stephen Abrams in 1981, includes a full game structure for prospecting gems. The Ready Ref Sheets from Judges Guild included a similar system for prospecting, detailing the amount of time it takes to prospect a hex, the percentile chances of finding a vein of precious metal, and a methodology for randomly determining the type of vein and its value.

I offer this up not as something that every hexcrawl campaign requires, but rather as an example of how we often don’t think about the game structures that we use. If your players decided they wanted to go prospecting, how would you adjudicate that at the table? Would the method you use remain balanced over time if the players decided to make prospecting a major part of their characters? Could you make it as much as fun as dungeoncrawling? (If not, why not? Think about it.)

Consider, too, how the availability of game structures subconsciously shapes the way we play the game. Would you, as a GM, be more likely to design a scenario hook in which the PCs are hired by a dwarven king to prospect potential gold mines in the Frostbite Peaks if you had a fun little mechanic for prospecting to build a larger situation involving goblin reavers, icingdeath undead, and rogue frostmancers around? Would your cash-strapped players be more likely to spontaneously consider prospecting in the wilderness a viable alternative for cash if the rulebook included a chapter of rules for it?

Go to Part 8: The Importance of Clean Procedures

Go to Part 1

The basic, traditional design of a hexcrawl looks something like this:

(1)   Draw a hexmap. In general, the terrain of each hex is given as a visual reference and the hex is numbered (either directly or by a gridded cross-reference). Additional features like settlements, dungeons, rivers, roads, and polities are also typically shown on the map.

(2)   Key the hexmap. Using the numbered references, key each hex with an encounter or location. (It is not necessary to key all of the hexes on the map.)

(3)   Use (or design) mechanics which will let you determine how far the PCs can move while traveling overland. Determine the hex the PCs start in and track their movement.

(4)   Whenever the PCs enter a new hex, the GM tells them the terrain type of the hex and triggers the encounter or location keyed to that hex: The PCs experience the event, encounter the monsters, or see the location.

In the traditional structure, it’s also expected that the PCs will be mapping the hexes as they explore.

And that’s pretty much it.

ANALYZING THE CRAWL

As we look at this basic structure for the hexcrawl, we can begin to see some common features of the ‘crawl structure in general.

Default Goal: The default goal of a hexcrawl is exploration. This notably lacks a strong, specific motivator. In a dungeoncrawl, as we discussed, the default goal is to “find all the treasure”, “kill all the monsters”, or some other variant of “clear the dungeon”. Exploring and mapping the dungeon is usually a part of this experience, but the exploration is primarily a means to an end.

Thus, over the years, various goals have been grafted onto the hexcrawl structure to provide a strong motivation for the exploration. (For example, the hexcrawl campaign I’m currently designing takes place on the edge of civilization and there are bounties paid for those who first make interesting discoveries in the wilderness.) But I suspect one of the reasons hexcrawling faded away in the early days of the hobby is because, unlike dungeoncrawling, it lacked a clear, default goal to provide strong motivation and a reward structure.

Default Action: Just like a dungeoncrawl, the default action of a hexcrawl is “pick a direction and go”.

Easy to Prep: In terms of robust design, hexcrawls are very easy to prep. If it’s difficult for the GM of a dungeoncrawl to forget to include a door, it’s even more difficult for a GM to prep a hexcrawl in which the players can’t pick a direction to go. (If the GM isn’t keying every hex, there is a slight danger that they won’t include a sufficient density of content to make play interesting. This is a minimal risk, but consider something like X1 Isle of Dread: Presented as the introductory hexcrawl wilderness scenario for BECMI, the content of the module is actually too sparse to be effectively run as such.)

In terms of prep load, however, hexcrawls can be a little more difficult. Partly this is because there’s no natural “end point” for prepping a hexcrawl: Trying to key an entire world (or even just a full sheet of hexes) can look pretty daunting, and early game manuals weren’t very instructive in terms of explaining how prep load could be managed.

But hexcrawls can also represent a heavy prep load because any given hex can literally require just as much prep as an entire dungeon (if it, for example, has a dungeon in it).

Easy to Run: Once given a proper game structure, I find hexcrawls very easy to run. Even moreso than dungeoncrawls the content of the hexcrawl is naturally firewalled into discrete sections.

One thing that makes hexcrawls a little more difficult to run, however, is the transition between “levels” of material. In a dungeoncrawl, everything is handled at roughly the same level of abstraction: Whether you’re moving between keyed areas or interacting with the content in a keyed area, the actions are described in a consistent (and very specific) way. In a hexcrawl, however, the GM needs to find the effective transition point between “you spend most of the afternoon traveling over the rolling hills east of Maernath” and “you’re fighting orcs; where are you moving in the next ten seconds?”

This is not a massive difficulty, of course, but it does require the GM to develop an additional skill set. Thus it is easy to see the hexcrawl as a natural progression from the dungeoncrawl for the GM: A robust structure using many of the same skills, but also requiring the development of a few new tricks.

Structure, Not Straitjacket: As with the dungeoncrawl, players are given a default action (“pick a direction and go”), but within the hexcrawl scenario structure they’re still free to do pretty much anything their imaginations can concoct.

Flexibility Within the Form: Even moreso than the dungeoncrawl, a GM can put just about anything they want into a hexcrawl scenario structure. (It is, after all, a method for keying an entire world.)

SUMMARIZING THE ‘CRAWL

Looking at the dungeoncrawl and hexcrawl side-by-side, I think we can begin to draw some general conclusions about the ‘crawl structure in general:

(1)   It uses a map with keyed locations. (This provides a straight-forward prep structure.)

(2)   Characters transition between keyed locations through simple, geographic movement. (This provides a default action and makes it easy to prep robust scenarios.)

(3)   The structure includes an exploration-based default goal. (This motivates player engagement with the material and also synchronizes with the geographic-based navigation through the scenario structure.)

In practice, I’ve also found that these ‘crawl structures make it very easy for groups to engage, disengage, and re-engage with the scenario. (You can go into a dungeon, fight stuff for awhile, leave, and when you come back the dungeon will still be there.) This, it turns out, makes them ideal structures for casual play (because players can feel as if they’ve accomplished something even if the dungeon is only half-explored) and open tables (because the disengagement/re-engagement process allows completely different groups of players to interact with the same material).

After considerable thought, I’ve concluded that these latter properties come from:

(A)  Material within the scenario structure is firewalled. (In general, area 20 of a dungeon isn’t dependent on area 5.)

(B)   The default goal is holographic. (You can explore some of the wilderness or get some of the treasure and still feel like you’ve accomplished something. You can’t half-solve a mystery or execute half a heist and feel the same way.)

(C)   The default goal is non-specific. (You can get a bunch of treasure from Dungeon A; then get more treasure from Dungeon B and still be accomplishing your goal of Getting Lots of Treasure.)

(D)  The default goal isn’t interdependent. (You can clear the first half of a dungeon and somebody else can clear the second half. In general, you can’t solve the second half of a mystery unless you’ve got the clues from the first half.)

We’ll be coming back to see what we can do with these general principles of the ‘crawl structure, but first I want to turn back to the hexcrawl scenario structure and see what we can build on top of a basic structure.

Go to Part 7: Playing with Hexcrawls

Tagline: Possibly the best superhero setting ever created specifically for a roleplaying game. Inspired by works like Astro City, Marvels, and Kingdom Come this is a balanced, believable setting for the Champions game.

I knew I was picking up a high-quality product with San Angelo: City of Heroes when I turned to page five and saw the first proper illustration of the book (ignoring one which accompanies the table of contents): A boy looking up into the sky, his basketball laying forgotten on the ground next to him; behind him the shadow of a caped figure flying past. The first words of the book? “San Angelo is truly the City of Heroes.” Definitely.

STRENGTHS

Patrick Sweeney and the folks down at Gold Rush Games have really put together a gem. San Angelo, a fictional Californian city, takes the best elements of Astro City, Marvels, and Kingdom Come (projects all written by Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid who were, in turn, influenced by great comic book artisans of the past) and adds spice. In a little over 255 pages San Angelo: City of Heroes delivers the type of tantalizing hooks and richly textured background that is all too often lacking in your average sourcebook.

You will find that there is nothing lacking in this book. You get a finely detailed history of the city (dating back to its pre-colonial roots), a look at its current geography (in a neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdown), an analysis of its major players (with holes deliberately left to be filled in and personalized by the GM), a look at its commercial development (from the biggest companies to the fast food joints your characters would probably find themselves hanging out at), and much more. You are left with the indelible impression that San Angelo is a living, breathing city. That’s worth the price of admission right there – far too many city supplements in the RPG industry fail to accomplish that, even when they’re based on real cities. For San Angelo to accomplish that, while being entirely fictional, is impressive feat.

Further, Sweeney has done an excellent job of making San Angelo a balanced, believable superhero world. He chooses not to include some of the more extreme staples of the superhero genre (such as aliens), but he does so in order to capture a feel of “pseudo-realism” which readers of Astro City will quickly recognize and everyone will appreciate.

In addition to the big stuff, the book also has all those nice little touches which turn a good product into a great product. The attention to detail is exquisite, but the most noticeable of these touches are the quotes from the citizens of San Angelo. These are both amusing and insightful and a prime example of the high quality his product offers.

Finally, although the book is designed with the Hero game system in mind, because the setting works so well as a setting it transcends its intended engine and could be successfully used in almost any superhero campaign. San Angelo is an inspirational product, and succeeds brilliantly because of that.

WEAKNESSES

Marring this relatively perfect picture are a few flaws. First, the lay-out is not always as keen as it might be (there’s one place where an inset causes a line of text to be reduced to less than six characters).

Second, the book lacks an index. The ultra-detailed Table of Contents typical of Hero products helps make up for that, but nothing is more annoying than trying to track down information without an index. Especially if time is of the essence (such as during the middle of a gaming session).

Finally, although the book is chock full of NPCs, not enough of those PCs are supers. It has been said that what makes one science fiction universe different from another is the aliens. That may or may not be true, but it is almost certainly true that what makes one superhero setting different from another are the superheroes themselves. The explanation for the lack of super NPCs is that the PCs are supposed to be the focus of the story. Well, yes, of course. But haven’t you ever heard of the word “crossover”? And who would want to adventure in the Marvel Universe if it wasn’t because they shared that universe with Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, and a host of others? I consider this lack to be the most serious problem the book possesses, but it is certainly not a crippling one.

CONCLUSION

If you have even the slightest interest in superhero roleplaying, buy this book. If you’re looking to start a new campaign there’s a good chance this will save you a lot of problems. If you have an established campaign then San Angelo would make an excellent addition to your world with a few modifications. The strengths of the book vastly outweigh the handful of weaknesses and what looks to be a strong line of support products are already on GRG’s production schedule. You won’t be disappointed.

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Writers: Patrick Sweeney
Publisher: Gold Rush Games
Price: $25.00
Page Count: 255
ISBN: 1-890305-03-0

Originally Posted: 1999/03/17

Although I have never managed to run an actual game session in San Angelo, my fond memories of this book still mark it as one my favorite city supplements of all time. It managed to make the city feel unique, believable, and unmistakably alive while also managing to capture the ineffable excitement of a world filled with superheroes.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.