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Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic

I was first introduced to this game about 8-10 years ago (don't remember exactly), when I was walking through my friendly local game store (unfortunately, now gone) and spied a cover in the unmistakable style of Phil Foglio. Being a fan of his, I was obviously drawn to it. After a brief flip through, I bought it and quite enjoyed it. The setting at least.

I'm writing a review now, well, for posterity's sake (though there is one in the archives), and because it does come up occasionally on the forums. And because although I don't have it, there is now a compilation cd containing PDFs of all the B13 stuff (except the Nick Pollotta novels, those have just been reprinted through Wildside Press , along with his parody of Call of Cthulhu called "That Darn Squid God"). At one time, I actually owned just about all the products for it, but foolishly traded them for either some magic beans, or some Shadowrun stuff or maybe just some candy. But I picked up the rulebook again recently on ebay.

It apparently originally came out in 1981 or so, but the version I have and am familiar with is the revised, 1992 edition. So bear in mind, while the setting might seem somewhat derivative today, when it was originally released, it was not. (This game might even be the inspiration for the X-files, as the book uses that term, though in a different context. I'm not sure if the term existed before this, and you can't search the internet without being flooded with sites about the show, so I don't know how to find out).

The player characters are all agents of a super-secret government agency, called Bureau 13, which investigates and eliminates paranormal incidents and problems. Although an official government agency, it's even more classified than the NSA was, and so agents often have to break laws (though they have the means to pose as FBI agents). And besides really good fake IDs, the agency has all sorts of spy gizmos and gadgets.

This secrecy also extends to recruiting agents. And given the high attrition rate among B13 agents, the agency recruits from normal citizens that have had a brush with the supernatural and have survived.

The "iconic" B13 agent, that is the sample character, is Robert Harrison, a science fiction writer who happened to encounter a were-wolf at a convention, and brained it with a silver-plated award he had won. So, just about any sort of character concept is possible. Accountants, minor league baseball players, strippers, mailmen, are all characters I've had in some of my games, in addition to more normal investigative types (and the of course, the obligatory ninja).

It takes something of a kitchen sink approach to the paranormal/supernatural. Just about everything exists. Aliens, UFOs, Bigfeet, Angels, Demons, Greek gods, Vampires, Werewolves, Cubs Fans, Psychics, all sort of mythological beasties, and well, just about anything you can think of. And there is no one answer to any thing. For instance, there are several different types of aliens, zombies, vampires, etc. UFOs might be alien flying machines, traveller from the future, or they might be some sort of psychic phenomenon. It's really up in the air.

To a large extent, the GM is expected to come up with the specifics of the paranormal problem or incident or creature. There's fairly little actual background. Some NPCs and groups, then a listing of 100 specific supernatural problems or incidents, each with a very abbreviated stat block and a paragraph or so of description. Basically adventure seeds, there's no real coherent metaplot or big secret enemy that B13 is up against. (Though the Bureau does have some enemies, and the novels might have something of a metaplot, but I don't know, not having read them).

To me, this was no problem, since I have dozens, if not hundreds of books on the paranormal lying around. But others might not be so familiar with it and be confused. To a certain extent, it's not meant to be a horror game, or conspiracy (though that can happen), so much as a paranormal game. That is, simply weird stuff. If you understand that, and understand the difference, then the setting works pretty well.

It's very funny. It's meant to be a serious RPG, and for the most part it is. But many of the examples are humorous. For instance, in the entry on vampires, we see vampire Vladimir Rabonowitz try to summon wolves to dispose of Robert Harrison, B13 agent. But instead of wolves, he ends up with 2 pit bulls and a poodle. Later on we see something involving Angus the Were-Squirrel. The interior art, while not by Phil Foglio, is also often in a similar tone, somewhat silly.

So, I really love the setting. In fact, it's probably my favorite setting of any game, since it's so close to the real world, only slightly more interesting.

The system, however, has a lot of problems. While in the past, I've said it was unplayable, that's really not true and is unfair. It's not that bad, just quirky, too chart ridden, and has lots and lots of optional combat rules that look scary. Really scary.

It's something of a D&D variant. That is, it features several stats ranging from 3 to 18 or so, and it uses D&D's 6 stats, plus a few more. In this case, it's actually 4d6-4, giving a range of 0 to 20. The stats are Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Agility, Intelligence, Wisdom, Luck, Charisma, Accuracy, and Supernatural Sensitivity. There are also a couple derived stats, "Throw", which is the average of Strength, Accuracy, and Dexterity, and Dodge, which is the average of Strength and Agility.

But wait, we're not quite done yet. There's also magic resistance, which is determined by rolling a d6 and multiplying by 10 (to give a percentage). Hit points, which is Strength plus twice the Constitution, plus a d10. There's also Piety, which in an interesting touch, is set by the player. So if you want to play a priest, you'd pick a high score, but if you want to play an atheist, you'd pick a low score. And Mental Stability, which is on par with Call of Cthulhu's sanity score, and is equal to the Constitution score plus Wisdom plus 50.

Perhaps foreshadowing the d20 system, skills are rated from 0 to 20 or so. Except in this case, when it comes to roll a skill check, each skill rank is converted to a +5%. To succeed at a skill, it's like most d100 systems, the player must roll under his skill total on a d100. There are difficulty ratings, too, which can modify it, but these are not linear or obvious. You have to look them up on a table. For instance, a difficulty rating of 01 (or really easy) gives a +95 bonus. But a rating of 02 gives a +80 bonus. Seeing that a rating of 03 gives a bonus of +65, you might thing a pattern has emerged. But the rating of 04 gives a bonus of +35.). 07 is average with no modifier, and 13 being really hard, -95%.

So, not exactly an intuitive skill system. Though it is playable. But you really need refer to the difficulty chart all the time to convert from the rating to the actual modifier. I guess you memorize it after a while, but when I ran it, it was awfully clumsy. I really don't understand how this was preferable to just using percentages, for both skills & difficulty modifiers, rather than small numbers that are converted to percentages.

Characters also have levels, and start at 1st. For each level they go up (which requires a variable amount of experience, according to a chart, much like D&D), they get another d10 added to their hit points, and a d4 or so worth of skill ranks (I say or so, because there is a modifier, but it changes per level).

If that were it, it would a bit old fashioned, but okay. But the real problem lies in the combat system. In a 180 page book, the combat and damage rules are about 65 pages. Fair enough, combat is complicated, right? Well, it seems like that 65 is comprised mostly of charts.

To be fair, they did include a simple hp system. Weapons do so much damage, just subtract. So basically like D&D. The more complex system is almost unplayably complex, involving such things as hydrostatic shock and "E-Factor", which was apparently borrowed from The Morrow Project. Just thinking about it hurts. As I look through the charts, my eyes just roll.

Still, regardless of which damage system you use, the "to hit" portion is also not great. Physical combat starts off pretty easily, rolling a character's Dexterity score x 5 on a d100 to hit. Simply enough, but too stat dependent for my taste. Characters can learn martial arts, but that requires using a series of charts.

Gun combat uses a complete different system. As mentioned, B13 has an "Accuracy" stat. That is used in gun combat, and is the primary determination of whether someone hits or not with a shot.

The easy system is actually fairly easy, though it does require some multiplication/division. To see if you hit with a gun, you must roll under your Accuracy stat with a d20. The Accuracy stat is modified according to the shot difficulty. 1.25 for a "Shot You Can't Miss" to .25 for a "Ridiculous Shot" to .12 for a "Impossible Shot".

The realistic system works like the easy system, only instead of the rather fuzzily named multipliers, there are +/- modifiers to the accuracy score, which can be determined from various charts (size of target, range, speed, weapon quality). This would actually be easy, if you didn't have to use charts to determine these modifiers.

Of course, I really can't say I like the idea of Accuracy being a stat. I mean, is your ability to shoot an ingrained feature of you, or a skill that can be learned? Granted, it's something of a fuzzy area - some people are natural good shots. But I tend to lean toward the idea that it's something you can learn to do. Like typing. Everyone can do it, but practice helps a lot, as well as training techniques.

There are also rules for psionics and magic. The psionics rules also happen to remind me of AD&D's. Basically, everyone has a chance of having psionic powers, and they roll on a d100 to see if they do. Rather than being determined by the mental attributes, like in AD&D, the chance depends on the character's parents and/or grandparents. Which seems incredibly arbitrary.

If a character does have Psi ability, they get two more stats - Working PSI, or WKP, and Mental Coordination, which is the average of Intelligence and Agility. There's a variety of psionic powers, pretty much the typical stuff. It works okay, but also uses a slightly different sort of skill system, this time it's a d100%, but slightly different modifiers than the normal skill system.

Magic actually works pretty much the same way. Only instead of Working Psi, there's Working Magic, or WKM. There's a fairly standard selection of spells - healing, mind reading, illusions, protection, etc. Also a fairly good section on demon summoning, which is also pretty funny. (Examples of Demon summoning include one for appliance repair, and another demon steals the tires from a B13 agent's car).

When I first got the game ages ago, I did try to run a few games, and played in a very early play by email game on AOL. But I found the system to just be a hassle. I'm sure once you get used to it, it can be easily playable, but for most people, it's probably a turn off. Almost like someone's really extensive house rules for 1st edition AD&D.

But because of that, the B13 system actually converts surprisingly well to d20. As a quick and dirty conversion, you can simply keep the 6 stats it shares with d20, and the skill ranks also convert on a 1 to 1 ratio. Same with hit points. Sure, it's not exact, but close enough that you can run B13 adventures without too much hassle.

Spycraft seems to be the ideal system, but while it has the nice combat rules and gadgets that fit B13 and Shadowforce Archer has some magic and Psi rules, it lacks the wide variety of non-spy character classes to fit B13 agents, so it's not a perfect fit. So maybe OGL Horror would be a better fit (I don't know, as I don't have that). There may or may not be a d20 version of B13 coming out. At one time there were plans, but it's now somewhat murky. There is going to be a newer version, though just what it will be like, and when, I don't know anymore. I've heard rumors of fall of this year.

So, I'm not going to rate this, exactly, except to say that if you are looking for a good background for a modern day paranormal campaign, or want to read a very funny rulebook, you might pick this up. The supplements/adventure books are also pretty good, though a bit more serious in tone.