On Her Majesty’s Secret Service includes its own system and tools for running the included scenarios solo. This involves two decks of cards (the Action Deck and the NPC Deck), a number of chits or counters involving range, cover, and wound levels; and a playmat. Because I have the capacity to hyperfocus on projects like this, I put the pages from the PDF through Photoshop and made my own digital decks and chits for my virtual playmat, rather than attempting to print out physical copies of any of it.

The booklet says that when it comes to combat, you can either run it as described in the core rulebook or use a Quick System that the instruction booklet provides. There’s a similar system for running Chase scenes, which in the core rules requires a bidding system between the player and the GM; each dares the other by lowering the Ease Factor of the coming skill challenge, reducing the odds of success, until one party decides they don’t want to hazard going any lower. In practice it requires the GM to take an adversarial role, and it’s tempting for the GM to just throw away their NPCs’ chances of success in order to sabotage the player, so a degree of fair play is required. The system presented in this booklet automates/randomizes the process. It’ll be fun to see how that works when Diana gets into a chase.

When going through older gamebooks one sometimes stumbles across a bit of sexism or bigotry in the text, such as Dragon Magazine articles about assigning female characters lower Strength and bonuses to Charisma, or Central Casting‘s infamous inclusion of homosexuality under its mental illness charts. With a property like James Bond, I expect to find a lot of that sort of thing in these materials, but thus far nothing has really stood out to me. I’m sure others who aren’t as blinded by nostalgia and privilege as myself may immediately spot things I’ve missed, mind you, but the inclusion of a statement at the beginning of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was encouraging to me. It clarifies that since this was written with James Bond in mind, situations and NPC interactions may occur in the text that result in a “strange interaction” with female player characters, and it suggests that in such a case, the player may simply switch the gender of the NPC in question if they wish, or imagine a different approach to the scene’s objective. I know it isn’t necessarily a huge thing for the text to “give you permission” to reimagine content, as if anyone required such a thing to do as they please, but nonetheless I appreciate the thought.

Again, I’m impressed that the designer, David Spangler, and the others at Victory Games who created this module, were able to create an adventure that can be run for agents of any ability ranking (Rookie, Agent, and OO) that still works for a single player. I half-expected this to insist that you play James Bond, and the fact that it doesn’t is remarkable in my opinion.

There are three entries included in the errata on the final page of the booklet, so I transcribed them onto a note for later reference if I needed them. Pity they didn’t make it into the final edit of the book before publication, but at least they caught them and included them. The adventure booklet is a series of paragraphs that any reader of a Choose Your Own Adventure-style gamebook will find familiar. Running into a page where the instructions are incorrect would be deeply frustrating.

Anyway, back to the adventure. I put on some John Barry OO7 soundtracks (“Octopussy” is a good one) and started playing:

Diana soared over treetops illuminated only by starlight. She was borne aloft on cool Mediterranean wind currents by the thin canvas wings of a hang-glider. However, her nightvision goggles intensified what little light the stars cast on the earth below, allowing her to see in considerable detail the rough, rocky ground that would provide no cushion should she lose control of the flimsy craft. She risked letting go of the control bar with her left hand only long enough to check the cool green display of her Citizen Quartz watch. The digital display counted down the thirty seconds she had left before she would cut off power to the small motor and silently glide the rest of the distance to her destination.

Before her loomed the grey silhouette of Chateau de Nuit, a 14th-century castle whose builders had found a particularly defensible spot along the cliffs of the Côte d’Azur, far too dangerous to scale. A little over forty years earlier, the fortress had served the Gestapo as a headquarters for the region. Nowadays, the “Castle of the Night” was the domain of a different master – Gregory Fox, a British expatriate with extensive underworld connections – but armed patrols and guard dogs still walked the parapets. Worse, those guards would now have the advantage of sophisticated electronic surveillance measures to detect the approach of any interlopers.

Hence, MI6’s solution: an aerial insertion via hang-glider capable of motorized flight to come in under the castle’s radar search pattern, traveling the last few hundred yards silently to land on the chateau roof. From there, once she had accomplished her mission, Agent Cross would take up her wings once more and glide out over the Mediterranean to be picked up by a waiting submarine. Her watch would provide a homing signal, and her black commando fatigues contained inflatable packets sewn into them which would, upon the pulling of a concealed cord, keep her afloat until she could be brought aboard.

The critical flaw in the plan, Diana pointed out, was that she had no idea how to fly a hang-glider, or any other aircraft, for that matter. Seymour Ogilvie, the Q Branch technician, haughtily assured her that even a novice flyer should have little difficulty with the craft, provided she didn’t attempt any wild maneuvers. His dismissive schoolteacher manner didn’t inspire her confidence.

A minor bureaucrat of the British government had been found to be photographing defense documents; covert surveillance revealed he had hidden his microfilm in a red Buddha statue, which in turn was left in a restaurant in Soho where it was intercepted by another unknown party. While the bureaucrat had been placed under arrest, he would not (or could not) name his contact, nor for whom he had been working, though he assumed it would eventually reach the Soviets. Agents followed the trail left by the bureaucrat’s contact, a winding path that led to Chateau de Nuit on the French Riviera. What was more, it was discovered that a top KGB agent had been dispatched to the region, though MI6 had yet to identify them. Presumably, the Kremlin had sent their agent to collect the microfilm.

3…2…1…Mark.

Diana cut the power to her small engine. She tried to ignore the thought that nothing now kept her aloft but currents of empty air and momentum. Trees raced by underneath her as she flew like some prehistoric reptile toward the still-distant castle. The weight of her backpack provided an additional factor to keep in account; Ogilvie had attested that its contents would provide her with a wide range of operational capabilities and options while remaining under a manageable weight. But with every movement, she was intimately aware of the subtle ways in which it shifted on her back, threatening to put her off balance.

Making a Piloting skill roll (a skill Diana doesn’t have): Primary Chance PER+DEX/2 (9) x Ease Factor 5+2 (modifier for the Action Card being in Danger Box A) -3 (due to being unskilled) = 4 (36). I rolled 100 – this means, according to the rules, that the hang-glider is damaged. Repairs will require a day: time I don’t have.

A sudden gust of sea-wind took her by surprise. The glider threatened to flip over, or so it felt to Diana, and she tried to compensate as best she could. She realized with a rising panic that she was now pointed downward, hurtling toward the treetops which now looked like a phalanx of spearpoints directed toward her. She yanked hard on the control bar, twisting her body to shift the weight of her backpack, and felt the pull of gravity as she willed the glider to turn. There was a terrible ripping sound as her left wing was pierced by tree branches. The glider dipped down between the trees now. At this speed, a collision with a tree could mean serious injury, if not instant death – and being discovered by Fox’s guards while lying on the forest floor with broken bones would likely mean death by other means.

She must make a Maneuver – let’s say a Quick Turn – in order to avoid calamity. This has a Safety Ease Factor of 4; she needs to roll a 36 or lower. 17 – she pulls up and sails upward.

She gritted her teeth and wrenched the bar, eventually managing to pull the glider back upward into the air as she cleared the edge of the woods and soared over empty fields. But she was not out of the proverbial forest yet. The wing of the glider flapped in the wind, and Diana felt the resistance it was causing, throwing her off balance. She couldn’t seem to find the current she had previously been coasting upon, and now it felt as though every maneuver only led to another perilous downdraft. Again her heartbeat raced as the glider pitched at an alarming angle, and the ground raced toward her. She held her breath and rolled her body, again using her backpack to aid her. She swooped within a few feet of the ground – she swore she felt tall grasses whipping at her body – and then soared back up into the air, almost straight up. She experienced a second of freefall as the glider reached an apogee, then began to plummet back toward the earth once more.

If I survive this, Diana thought, I’m going to wring Ogilvie’s pencil neck with my bare hands.

Continuing with her flight, Diana must make another Piloting check, again rolling 36 or less to succeed. 42, another failure. Again she must make a Maneuver check to avoid a Mishap. This time, after figuring out the Ease Factor modifiers, I determine she must roll a 9 (!!) or less to succeed. I rolled 06. Another brush with disaster narrowly averted.

But piles of Action Cards remain before this gauntlet is over. Calculating the Ease Factor, I find she must make an 18 or lower.

Reader, I rolled 02.

But luck can only carry you so far. Next roll: 36 or lower. I got 32.

Now it would get more difficult, as I moved to the stack of Action Cards in Danger Box B, which would reduce my effective Ease Factors by one.

Next roll: 27 or lower. Hand to my heart, I rolled 01. Diana is amazing. This ranks as a Quality Result 1, the best you can achieve in the game. But this isn’t about style; it’s about endurance.

Another Action Card, and finally I get a break – I don’t have to roll for this one.

My relief is short-lived; the next card gives me a Success Chance of 27 again. I’ve already asked the dice for more favors than is reasonable, and they give me a 43. I throw against the chance of a Mishap, requiring a 9 or less. I roll 69. Diana doesn’t make it to the castle walls; and the gamebook instructs me to make another roll, which results in Diana receiving a Light Wound in the crash.

With herculean effort, Diana pitched to the side and twisted the glider into a spiraling pattern, circling down toward the ground. There would be no way to fly on these broken bird’s wings over the castle wall; it would have to be enough to make a ground landing without breaking her neck. She leveled out enough to give herself a few moments to prepare for a crash landing, and at the last moment, she unbuckled herself from the contraption and tucked into a roll. The earth hit her with a body blow, and she tumbled in the grass for what felt like ages. Once her body came to a stop, she lay still for a moment, listening for the sound of sirens, dogs barking, gunshots. No searchlights blinded her, no helicopter blades chopped a staccato beat in the air. To her relief, there was only the sound of crickets in the field on a warm Mediterranean night.

She lifted herself up onto an elbow, stifling a cry as she felt a searing pain erupt along her left arm. She saw that her sleeve was torn and the slickness of blood glistened in the gaze of her nightsight goggles. She gingerly felt her bicep, searching for broken bones, and was relieved to find nothing indicating serious injury. She retrieved a first aid kit from her backpack and quickly bound up the wound to stop the bleeding. The glider lay some yards away in a warped and pathetic-looking heap.

A Light Wound first requires Diana to make a Pain Resistance roll: her Willpower 9 x Ease Factor 7 (63). I roll 09. She bears the pain and can act normally. However, until the wound is treated, she will suffer an Ease Factor penalty of -1. Fortunately, in the moments following her crash – which, mercifully, no one has noticed – she has time to bandage her wound. Every character in JBOO7 starts with a First Aid skill at a Primary Chance of 20, so after a successful roll against Ease Factor 5-1 for a Light Wound (4), requiring an 80 or lower (I roll 60), I lower her Wound Level by one, reducing it to a superficial flesh wound.

She would have to find another way, both into the chateau and out of it once more to her ride home. Good thing I’m a thief, she reminded herself, trying to bolster her courage.

The walls of Chateau de Nuit seemed imposingly tall and dark from here, even though she reasoned it could be no more than twelve feet in height. She had climbed peaks in the Pyrenees that were far more dangerous. Diana crouched low and moved quickly across the bare fields. There was no cover out here, and more than once she halted and dropped down to her belly when she saw movement on the castle walls. On one such occasion, she espied a small black box jutting out of the grass: an electronic scanner of some sort, effectively an invisible tripwire. She steered clear of the device and zigzagged her way toward the base of the castle’s outer walls, remaining alert for any additional such surveillance measures. Ultimately, she reached her destination without setting off any alarms.

Well, none I’m aware of, she thought. I may already have set off silent alarms inside. There was only one way in which she would prefer to find out.

The meadow infiltration section is much like the hang-gliding section. I have to make repeated skill checks to determine whether I’m spotted, spring an alarm, etc. Fortunately, unlike the last segment, I actually have a fair amount of points invested in the relevant skill, Stealth. In the midst of this, I also have to make a Perception check, which I pass with a roll of 22 out of 60. However, I miss my second Perception test, meaning I don’t get to skip to the end, and have to keep rolling. Nonetheless, Diana successfully reaches the castle wall without incident.

She opened her backpack once more. Among the equipment Q Branch had provided were a set of suction cups that could be affixed to the hands and knees. Alternatively, there was a black nylon rope with a metal tip that extended grappling arms at the touch of a stud. I’ve had more than enough of gadgetry tonight, I think. Time to rely on time-tested methods.

With a few swings of the rope, Diana hurled the grappling hook up and over the barbed wire atop the castle wall. An experimental tug confirmed the hook had caught firm on the battlements, and she dug the toes of her boots into the medieval mortar joints between ashlar stones as she began to scale the wall. As she climbed, she contemplated the many hands and feet of those who had made a similar ascent in ages past, only to meet their deaths at the end of an arrow, spear or sword once atop the parapet. Her left arm burned with the pain of her crash wound, but she bore it with irritation. It occurred to her that she could be the last person to die upon these walls, though her identity would be erased from the annals of history – and that would be the optimal outcome. After the hang-gliding incident, however, she felt a stirring of angry determination that she would not fall victim to a foe while engaging in what she did best. She had not spent hours upon hours of her life scaling frigid cliff faces and descending into heavily-guarded museum vaults only to be picked off by a night watchman with an AK-47.

Scaling the wall requires a Mountaineering skill check, in which Diana has a Primary Chance of 10 x Ease Factor 5+1=6, which means ≤60. I roll 12, giving me a Quality Rating 2 (Very Good).

Diana reached the barbed wire, carefully maneuvered herself over it, and began a swift descent, rappelling into the darkness of the castle grounds.