What were you thinking, buying this?
Truth is, this is one of those books I've had for so long that I don't remember why I originally bought it. It was probably to use as a supplement to Heroes Unlimited, but its been about seven years since I picked it up, so who knows?
Now, I have to admit I don't like martial art movies. It's not that the fighting is bad, that the acting is bad, that the writing is bad, or that the direction is bad. Its all of the above. I'll eat up any scene involving swordwork, but I'm not going to sit through an hour-and-a-half-plus of inane dialogue (dubbed, if I'm really unlucky), weak plot, cheap film stock, and bad camera moves to see a fight that won't impress me half as much as the end of Rob Roy. On top of that, I am hypercritical of any spy thriller book or movie I come across. Hunt for Red October, both the movie and the book, rock. The World is not Enough sucks. The difference? Realism. I buy an intelligence agent like Jack Ryan. I don't buy James Bond any more. Bring martial arts and spycraft into a game together and I've got a recipe for extreme potential annoyance.
So, what's up with the book?
Okay, the book starts out much the same as the rest of Palladium's books. The usual disclaimers, intro, list of roleplaying terms, and description of roleplaying appear, then the book breaks into character generation. Character generation deserves special mention here, as it is provides a bit more options in the background department. A full three and a half pages are dedicated to character background information, as opposed to the usual one page treatment. An extensive list of potential places to come from is provided (weighted heavily toward eastern nations), as is a large chart on character heights and weights, a random table for family backgrounds and backgrounds with one's sponsoring organization. Okay, maybe that's not a whole lot to get excited about, but its still chock full of fun ideas and that alone makes the book occasionally worth hauling to the game table.
The book uses as combination of the Heroes Education Table system and Rifts' OCCs. OCCs get to choose from a large list of potential skill programs, each of which provides a set of skills. Now, if you don't like skill-heavy games, this is not the game for you. Characters produced from this system have a lot of skills. I mean a LOT of skills. Its not uncommon to wind up with 40 skills, if you pick the right OCC.
Each OCC also gives one their base SDC, starting age, what martial arts they can choose from, what kinds of cybernetics they get, their starting money... all the usual goodies. There are two martial artist OCCs and fourteen spy types. That's right, fourteen kinds of spies. I'd think that with that kind of room, the spies portion of the game might not have sucked as much as it did... But more on that later.
Remember when I said there were three and a half pages of background info? That wasn't exactly true, because the book also provides three more pages of potential cover identities. Between this and the nifty background tables from before, the game almost makes up for what's coming.
Next are the organization rules. This marks, I believe, the first appearance of the Palladium Point-Based Agency rules. Nothing spectacular here, just agency rules. I think I used these until the updated ones in Villains Unlimited showed up, at which point I pretty much ignored them.
Finally, we hit the problematic portion of the game: Cybernetics. Maybe less than half of the Spy OCCs get some form of cybernetics and its assumed that they are available to pretty much anyone with access to an organization that can get them. Now, some people may like their spies running around with dermal plating, grenade fingers, and radios wired to their jaws, but I don't. Borgs belong in the realm of science fiction, not spy thrillers. Even James Bond doesn't a laser eyeball, and he's a prime example of the one thing a spy is not supposed to be: high profile. Cybernetics, at least to the degree they are shown in this game, do not exist in the real world. That means that those who have them will stand out. No, I'm not saying that everyone walking down the street will notice that the character's Realistic Eye isn't real, but any doctor who examines the spy after a near fatal car wreck will. Airport officials will notice when the spy's robotic leg sets off the metal detectors. "Information extractors" will notice when the spy's fingers don't break like they should. What makes matters worse is that characters that depend on cybernetics will find themselves horribly outmatched by those who rely on martial arts.
Super Vehicles follow up the Cybernetics section. Once again, great if you're James Bond and don't mind standing out like a handful of sore thumbs, but not so great if you're playing Joe Turner.
Next, we come to Martial Arts. Every martial art in the book, with the exception of the lame Agent forms, are Asian in origin. That's to be expected, but I've always been more of a fan of the few western schools. Each martial art grants the character attribute bonuses, more skills, and usually martial art powers of one kind or another. Powers range from the near useless One Shot, One Kill power (lose a melee's worth of actions in exchange for a 1 to Strike and a Crit) to the completely out of whack Body Chi (burn 1 Chi point, get 5 points in any given attribute, so average characters with this can boost their PP upwards 45 points). There's one power in particular worth mentioning: Dim Mak, the famed Death Touch power. This "dreaded" attack removes one's ability to regain Chi, which is somehow connected with one's ability to heal from illness and injury. This is supposed to mean a slow death, since one cannot heal without Chi. Unfortunately for the game, there is no mechanism for losing Chi unless Chi-wielding martial artists attack you. So, as long as those hordes of Chi Masters stay in the woodwork, you're home free for as long as you live.
Palladium's Hand to Hand Combat system gets expanded on for the first time in this book. The changes here are the basis for the new combat modifications in Heroes 2nd and Palladium Fantasy 2nd Edition. Fortunately, they work far better here than in any of the new games. Moves like holds and varying punches are accessible by the martial art forms, plus there are a wider variety of new moves. The additions are a definite bonus to those who want a more realistic, or at least varied, form of Palladium's combat system.
Modern Weapon combat comes next, but isn't worth mentioning. Its the same here as it is everywhere in Palladium games. Vehicle combat follows that, and is worth mentioning, since it's just as bad here as it is everywhere in Palladium games. There's a vehicle combat example here, which is a bonus, but it doesn't really present an ordered combat system. No one seems to roll initiative, except once to determine who gets a given move off first. The message seems to be "run it as slipshod as you want." A clear melding of vehicle use with the normal hand to hand combat system would be of immense help, but we have yet to see that in any Palladium book. Maybe After the Bomb RPG?
Equipment seems as good as any place to bring up this side point. The change from Ninjas and Superspies to the Revised Version was not apparently edited as well as it could have been. There is a weapon in the Special Spy Weapons section called the Vehicle Stopper (after all, nothing says spycraft like a gun with a three-inch barrel). The weapon does a given amount of damage and does a knockback of a given Speed Class. The Speed Class knockback is supposed to relate to vehicle combat, but I have never been able to figure out exactly how. It appears to mean that it brings a vehicle doing a certain speed to a dead stop. Unfortunately, this seems to work as well on eighteen-wheelers as it does on motor scooters. This seems to imply that there was once a different version of vehicle combat which made sense alongside this weapon and that an editing breakdown missed the change, or that it never made sense and the editors failed to catch it twice. Problems like this crop up a few times in this game, notably revolving around the number of martial arts the Martial Arts characters can study. If a 2nd Edition of this game ever comes out, it is my hope that the editors can take a far closer look at the system and clean up these inconsistencies.
A GM's section comes last, but provides little of help to the average GM. There are some conversion notes for bringing this game into Palladium's others, but not much else of value here.
One final point about the system. There is a means for determining one's age at the start of the game. I applied this at the start of a game. Most of our characters wound up being between thirty and forty years old. I, strangely, was the only person who had no problems with this. Thinking of the thirty-something James Bond or Robert DeNiro in Ronin, I thought "Cool, something fairly realistic here." Yet, for some reason, others in my group refused to accept the concept that a starting roleplaying character could be any older than early- to mid-twenties, since anyone older is starting to decay physically. Maybe its just a difference in opinion, but I recommend using the system. There's no way I could justify a young character being as skilled as these characters start out at. Besides, older characters fit the genre better. I mean, how old is Jackie Chan now?
Yeah, right, but what about the pretty pictures?
Layout: Aside from the editing problems, nothing to report here. Its Palladium's standard two-column, black-and-white format.
Interior art is provided by a variety of artists. The artwork serves mostly to break up blocks of text, with very little of it doing anything more. The style supports the genre, but the individual images don't bring much to the material.
Worth the dough?
I'd love to compare this game to Feng Shui, but I don't have that game. For knockout, drag-down fights, Ninjas and Superspies is your game. To date, it has the best hand-to-hand combat system I have ever seen. Also, thanks to the science fiction elements present, it also has the worst depiction of spycraft I have ever seen. I'd have a tough time running a game approximating The Long Kiss Goodnight, much less Three Days of the Condor or The French Connection. The two elements even out to make this book an average supplement to one's Palladium library. And at the cheaper-than-average price, it makes a good starter game for those strapped for cash.
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