#RPG How Super! The Tuesday Knights Are Going F.R.E.E.Lance...

"The FREE Lancers sourcebook creates a futuristic campaign for the game, including new skills and devices, items on the leading edge of technology and directly from the street. Sections include information on cyborging, power armour, and parabilities, super-human talents now mastered and used in the causes of good and evil."

Once again random happenstance has intervened in our ongoing Top Secret campaign and things are changing.

Simon couldn't make last night's session and then it transpired that Pete had brought the wrong box of Top Secret books with him (leaving behind the Tunisian adventure our agents were supposed to be embarking on).

However, several weeks ago, I'd picked up - for Pete, off of eBay - a worn-copy of the old F.R.E.E. Lancers supplement, which adds an element of cyberpunky-superheroics and a 'near future' setting - 1998! - to the game.

Very nobly, Pete suggested that we run with this instead, and make new characters this session to embark on a spin-off campaign next month.

Thus we knuckled down, picked our way through the rules, and concocted "meta-agents" of ORION's Fast Reaction Experimental Espionage (F.R.E.E.) branch (an offspring of ORION's Ganymede Bureau), based out of Chicago.

Codename: Wuxia

I'd originally planned to create a speedster, like The Flash, but as the creation process unfolded I realised I had - subconsciously - ended up creating a near-clone of Valiant's Ninjak!

I guess this was more fitting, given that F.R.E.E. Lancers is, I believe, essentially still an espionage RPG - just with '80s comic book future tech.

To make the character less like Valiant's foremost secret agent (but still VERY similar), I decided to make her a Chinese woman (physically resembling Michelle Yeoh's Yu Shu Lien in Crouching Tiger, Sleeping Dragon), codenamed Wuxia.

Zeng Jing, aka Wuxia, is a 36-year-old weaponsmaster specialising in the use of a dao (a Chinese sabre), which she can even use to deflect bullets; Chinese archery; and improvised weaponry.

She's stealthy and acrobatic... and rides a motorbike.

I have yet to come up with a backstory for her, but need to justify her assorted 'disadvantages', which include an enemy, moral qualms, and a 'lost dependent' (e.g. a kidnapped or missing family member etc).

These balance up her advantages of night vision, fearlessness, and good balance.

... but with bat-wings!

So intent was I on creating Wuxia that I only gleaned some details of the other characters in our team.

Erica's character looks like Liv Tyler and can fly with her velvety bat-like wings; Clare is a surgeon with a cybernetic eye; and Kevin is a telekinetic called Dr Hurt.

At this stage we're not sure if Pete is going to design a character for Simon or he'll let him create one on the fly at the start of our March games' night.

I'll be able to tell you more about the others when we reconvene next month for our first adventure - called GUN-RUNNING.

As you may have guessed, I'm very excited about this. I never thought I'd get to play in a superhero game - albeit in a chunky, '80s, cassettepunk, retro-future world like that depicted on the cover of F.R.E.E. Lancers.