Mr Bond, I presume

Last year, Walmart had the James Bond Legacy packs on sale for $15 each. Each pack holds a mixture of 5 movies from the various Bonds. I had originally thought that these were a great deal when they had come down to $30 from the $50 they had started at but couldn’t justify the price at the time. At $15 they were too good to pass up – almost.

I snapped up the first two sets but didn’t have enough for all four sets right then. When I went back later that week for the last two – they were gone. The other Walmarts didn’t have any either. I kept checking but was unable to complete the set.

It turns out that they had pulled the sets back to the manufacturer so that they could make new sets for the 50th anniversary this year. So I had 10 movies and was missing 10 movies – not counting the new Daniel Craig films. I already had the old Casino Royale – with Peter Sellers and David Niven as well as Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery – neither of which count towards the main 20 films.

I was finally able to snag another 7 individual movies at Giant Tiger for $5 each a few weeks ago – leaving only You Only Live Twice, Moonraker, and Tomorrow Never Dies. Last weekend I picked up two of them marked down from $12.99 to $5 each at Best Buy leaving only the Moonraker – which I could truly do without. But while we were at the Real Canadian Superstore I checked the bins and found it for $7.49 – which normally would have been too much. Since it was the last one I needed though, I picked it up. This means that the last 10 movies cost me almost double what the first 10 did.

Now I just need to find some free time to sit done with the boy and watch them. Maybe I’ll try to dig out the old Victory Games James Bond 007 RPG and play him through the each movie before we watch them. He did say that he wanted to try some role playing games and the Victory Games ones have a great set of hand-outs.

V & V again!

Back in the day, if you wanted to play a superhero role playing game you had a few serious options. Champions was the leader but as cool as Foxbat was, it had a large amount of modules and supplements. This made it a bit daunting to jump into starting with it. Marvel Super Heroes was another one (FASE RIP) that I ended up getting – but it was more of a simplified game. It eventually ended up with a large amount of books but it started out small – plus it was heroes from Marvel. When I decided to get into another one, I went with Villains & Vigilantes (2nd edition).


Besides having an ampersand, it also was written (with Jack Herman) and had artwork by Jeff Dee – who had drawn some of the pictures in the original Basic D&D book. They eventually had a bunch of supplements and modules as well as a set of comic books. Then they stopped. Eventually, they had come out with Living Legends game – which was effectively an expansion of the Villains & Vigilantes rules. We had a campaign that we ran for a while and I still think of my weight in how many Basic Hits it will generate. But the math formula for the carrying capacity was what really endeared the game to me.



There now seems to be new modules coming out for V&V. What is interesting is that they are being published by two separate companies. There is a legal dispute over who has the rights for the system.

FGU or Fantasy Games Unlimited used to publish V&V, plus a bunch of other games that I had also picked up. They were dissolved by the state but are still printing new modules at their new site. They have almost a dozen modules as well as some of the counter sets from the old modules.

Jeff and Jack have formed a new company called Monkey House Games and have also printed about a half dozen modules as well as a newer edition of the game.  They also have some character sheets and counters available as downloads from their site.

making a list, checking it twice

With the hopes of a game room looming in my future, I’m looking at getting back into Warhammer and 40K. I’ll probably also try to fill in some of my gaps from my role-playing games. Thanks to the internet and ebay, I can find out what I’m missing.
I just have to wait until after the renovations so I can unpack some of my boxes to confirm what I have. A lot of my RPG collection has been packed away from when I got married – over twelve years ago. I’m already getting lists ready for the West End Games Star Wars RPG as well as Twilight 2000 and Chill. I’ll have to see if I’m missing any of the D&D Gazeteers or Car Wars Road Atlases too when I can get into those boxes.