Men in Black the Roleplaying Game.
Westend Games: Written by George Strayton & Nikola Vrtis.
Softbound rulebook 140pages.
Reviewed by Marc Farrimond.
The best kept secret in the World.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. What with all the exposure that the cult TV show the X-Files has generated in the past few years, plus hit movies such as Independence Day, it was only a matter of time before someone got around to producing a roleplaying game based around the Men in Black ( MiB’s as they are more commonly known.) and true to form to coincide with the release of one of this years blockbuster movies, Westend Games have come up with a movie tie-in.
The history of MiB dates back long before the movie to a much darker theory. For those of you unsure what a MiB is, I will try to clarify for you. Many cases of UFO sightings and abductions are often followed by the appearance of sinister looking men dressed in black suits and sunglasses, to the persons involved. More often than not the person is frightened into keeping silent and forgetting the whole thing that happened to them or, as the MiB tells them, they and their families are not safe by any means and could easily become the victims of a nasty accident. Altough the game is called Men in Black there is no reason why you can't play a female or even an 'IT' as rules for generating aliens are inclueded.
The MiB rpg does its best to ignore the more sinister elements of the mythos and sticks very firmly to the movie and much of the humour from the Sonnefield film is present and very tongue in cheek. The game follows the characters as they become agents of this Above Top Secret organisation, and the contact with the various alien life forms that are constant visitors to the Earth.
The aim of the characters is three fold.
Of course all of these goals are not the only agenda in the game. It’s the ultimate job of the Agency to stop the Earth becoming a pile of smoking dust, and the duty of all the agents to find and recruit suitable candidates to keep the ranks at optimum level.
Throughout the book are various references to the movie and the genre in general. There are a lot of quotes taken directly from the movie and these add a little spice. The book is littered with dozens of black and white photographs, some taken from the movie and others of the games designers dressed oddly enough in black suits. The quality of the illustrations is first class, and had me casting my mind back almost a decade to an earlier movie tie-in Ghostbusters (also from Westend Games.)
The game is split up into different sections, which are referred to as Folders. Each folder tells the player about the things they need to know when dealing with aliens, civilians and even members of other agencies, even down to wiping their memories as in the movie.
The movie is filled with weird and wonderful aliens and gadgets and the book cashes in on this as most of the aliens, guns and vehicles used in the film are present. So just why do the MiB wear those dark glasses? Well they are coated in a protective film that stops the wearer from losing their short-term memory when they use a Neuralyzer on someone to wipe out the memory of the encounter they just experienced and new memories can be added to the witness to explain the events that they have witnessed as marsh gas or weather balloon. And if the person sees the MiB all they should feel is a bad case of déjà vu.
Just the facts Ma'am.
Creating a character for a new game is very much one of the most fun aspects you can get in the hobby and MiB has a great character generation system. Players are to choose from a ready to play template or are allowed to create their own character. As I said the game is full of the odd little things that give an edge and make it funny, one of these is on the character sheet. In most rpg’s the players are free to choose the way that their character looks like and how they dress. Not so here. All the characters look the same and dress the same. That is to say that they all wear the standard issue black suit, tie, shoes, underwear and a white shirt, plus they all have the uncanny ability of being of nondescript looks an added advantage in this line of work.
The whole game borrows heavily from a redesigned Star Wars system ( another of Westend's movie tie in and one of the best rpg’s on the market!) and with the combat and character creation systems very much the same it would be fun to have your party from Star Wars fall through time and land on Earth to meet the MiB.
Each character has eight attributes used in the game, and like in Star Wars they use Westends customisable D6 system™. The combat and character generation is very simple and within a few minutes you are ready to play. The game includes a short solo play adventure as in the type made famous in the old Fighting Fantasy books, this is fun to play and gives you a good chance to use skills and find how combat works (Note to games designers. Take a leaf from Westends book this stuff is excellent for new gamers!) Another nice little touch is the Cue Cards. These are small cards with dialogue written on them by the games master. At certain times during play the players can read out these cards and gain advantages or experience such as the following taken from the book.
Revenge of the Geek is the ready to play adventure in the back of the book. Its simple enough to give the players a chance to get to grips with the system, but isn't too easy so that they will lose interest. I wont give away anything about the adventure as its best left as a surprise, but needless to say when I ran it for my group I had them in stitches for ages. The MiB rpg is a fine example of how a movie license should be treated and is lots of fun to both play and run. I am looking forward to the sourcebooks that will be released later this year.
Until next time this is Agent M saying ‘Watch the Skies’.
And now that you have read the review I'm sorry to do this but….
Agent M places on his Sunglasses and pulls a Neuralyzer from his inside pocket, and with a flash of brilliant white light…
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