Author: Keeper

  • ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! REDACTED

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! REDACTED

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! · album

    Variations, alternates and spin-offs. Everything the Top Secret Soundtrack is not.

    If the Top Secret Soundtrack is the main titles, this is everything else the operations produced.

    Some of it is the same bone given different flesh. A main title goes to another singer and comes back as a different agent in the same world: Agent Cinderella of CERBERUS rather than Agent Covenant. The Anvil is taken by Silent Slim, and returned to by Agent Siren of SEA LIONS. Nightfall comes back in its alternative version.

    Some of it is not a song at all. Passenger X arrives as rap, and again with solo violin. Instrumentals are written out of the adventure themes rather than out of the titles.

    Every one is its own recording, often with different musicians and different vocalists. None is a cover of another. They are the house’s own argument, made a second way.

    Credits

    • Bruce Ballon, concept, lyrics and production
    • Abigail Strickland (Agent Cinderella), vocals: A:D! Cerberus
    • Arvibes, music: A:D! Cerberus
    • Romi Gariglio (Agent Siren), vocals: Return to the Anvil
    • Slim Ben Aicha (Silent Slim), vocals and music: The Anvil alternate version
    • Fulan (Agent Fulan), vocals: Nightfall alternative version
    • Arvibes, music: Nightfall alternative version
    • Dawid Jakubiak (Agent SFX), music: Passenger X
    • Joka Violin (Tarantella), violin: Passenger X
    • Gigi Luicir (Mr. Caronte), rap vocals: Passenger X rap version
    • Fred Hampel (FreDestro), music: Medusa Noir, The Last Lap, Train to Vienna
    • Raden Norfiqri, cover illustration
    • Ernest J., cover colour
    • Bruce Ballon, additional art and layout

    Homage and tribute: John Barry, Tyler Bates, Paul Epworth, Barry Gray, J.A.C. Redford, Joel J. Richard, Lalo Schifrin

    AI: NOT USED

    Where to get it

    Bandcamp. Free to listen. https://houndsandjackals.bandcamp.com/album/redacted-assignment-danger-variations-alternates-spin-offs-more

    Published: 31 December 2025

  • ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! NIGHTFALL

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! NIGHTFALL

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! · album

    Thunderball meets Mission: Impossible with a dash of Ultraviolet. Built to play under scenes rather than to sit and listen to.

    Modern Bond-scale orchestration crossed with the cold electronic dread of Ultraviolet, an old BBC vampire series. There was a reason for that cross, and anyone who plays Nightfall will work out what it was.

    This one is not shaped like the other records on the shelf. It opens with a main title. Eight loops follow, built to run under a scene for as long as the scene lasts. It closes with an alternative version of the main title, a different agent with different music. It is a sound environment for a table rather than a record for a room.

    Credits

    • Bruce Ballon, concept, lyrics and production
    • Alex Gusinsky (The Guitarist), music: main title and loops
    • Imago Latens (The Mysterious Imago), vocals: main title
    • Arvibes, music: alternative version
    • Fulan (Agent Fulan), vocals: alternative version
    • Raden Norfiqri, cover illustration
    • Ernest J., cover colour
    • Bruce Ballon, additional art and layout

    AI: NOT USED

    Where to get it

    Bandcamp. Free to listen. https://houndsandjackals.bandcamp.com/album/nightfall-assignment-danger-soundtrack

    Published: 31 December 2025

  • ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! TOP SECRET SOUNDTRACK

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! TOP SECRET SOUNDTRACK

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! · album

    The main titles. One per operation, each answering a different piece of film or television music, and saying which.

    The record that made the method explicit. Bond is not the gadgets, it is the theme. Hear four bars through a wall and you know what kind of story is happening on the other side, and roughly how excited to be. The music is the DNA rather than the decoration.

    So each operation got its main title, the theme you would hear over the opening, and each one answers an ancestor and says so. Passenger X takes the grinding mechanical pulse of John Wick and crosses it with the brass fanfare of Captain Scarlet. Slipstream crosses the cheerful, ridiculous racing theme of Speed Racer with the anxious clattering pursuit music of the Bourne films. Matryoshka crosses the sixties spy strings of From Russia with Love with the industrial dread of Aliens.

    Keep the bone, change the flesh. A race is still unmistakably a race, and now somebody is going over the edge of the corniche.

    Every credit names what it came from, and names the people who wrote it rather than the people who made it famous. Those are frequently not the same, and the debt is owed to whoever wrote it.

    The cover carries the whole cast, and every one of them is based on somebody who worked on the record. They are all NPCs in the ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! universe.

    Credits

    • Bruce Ballon, concept, lyrics and production
    • Marti K (Agent Covenant), vocals: ASSIGNMENT: DANGER!, Mistaken Memory
    • Emina Bajtarević (Agent Blaze), vocals: Slipstream
    • Charlotte Hays (Agent Lucky Star), vocals, piano and violin: Matryoshka
    • Stephanie Rodriguez (Agent Melody), harmony vocals: Passenger X
    • Dawid Jakubiak (Agent SFX), music: The Anvil, Passenger X, Matryoshka
    • Martina Qüesta (Madame Medusa), vocals: Medusa
    • Mateusz Bakiera (Kapitan Czarny), vocals: Passenger X
    • Theodore (Le Marquis des Échos), vocals: The Anvil
    • Imago Latens (The Mysterious Imago), vocals: Nightfall
    • Joka Violin (Tarantella), violin: Passenger X
    • Alex Gusinsky (The Guitarist), music: Nightfall
    • Pina Vanucci (Doc Darkwave), music: Mistaken Memory
    • Raden Norfiqri, cover illustration, and illustrator of everyone in the cast
    • Ernest J., cover colour
    • Bruce Ballon, additional art and layout
    • Music for ASSIGNMENT: DANGER!, Slipstream and Medusa: uncredited at the musician’s request

    Homage and tribute: Adele, John Barry, Tyler Bates, Paul Epworth, Jerry Goldsmith, Barry Gray, Sue Hewitt, James Horner, Nobuyoshi Koshibe, Moby, John Powell, J.A.C. Redford, Joel J. Richard, Lalo Schifrin

    AI: NOT USED

    Where to get it

    Bandcamp. Free to listen.

     https://houndsandjackals.bandcamp.com/album/assignment-danger-top-secret-soundtrack

    Published: 16 December 2025

  • ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! Music Video Series

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! Music Video Series

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! · video series

    Music videos for the operations, cast with the singers and players who made the records.

    The songs given faces. Each video is cast from the people who made the track, and each of them plays the agent their voice belongs to. The cast of this world and the pack who built it are the same list of people.

    The first video was made in 2023. What is on the playlist now is a remake of it, and the series has kept going since.

    The videos cover main titles for the operations, alternative takes, and dark compositions built out of the adventures. Each one names what it answers, which is how everything works here: Lalo Schifrin, John Barry, John Powell, Nobuyoshi Koshibe, James Horner.

    Credits

    • Bruce Ballon, concept, lyrics, direction and video
    • Marti K (Agent Covenant), vocals: Main Theme, Mistaken Memory
    • Martina Qüesta (Madame Medusa), vocals: Medusa
    • Theodore (Le Marquis des Échos), vocals: The Anvil
    • Emina Bajtarević (Agent Blaze), vocals: Slipstream
    • Mateusz Bakiera (Kapitan Czarny), vocals: Passenger X
    • Stephanie Rodriguez (Agent Melody), harmony vocals: Passenger X
    • Joka Violin (Tarantella), violin: Passenger X, and the concerto version
    • Imago Latens (The Mysterious Imago), vocals: Nightfall
    • Charlotte Hays (Agent Lucky Star), vocals, violin and piano: Matryoshka
    • Abigail Strickland (Agent Cinderella), vocals: Cerberus Division
    • Romi Gariglio (Agent Siren), vocals: Return to the Anvil
    • Fulan (Agent Fulan), vocals: Nightfall alternative version
    • Gigi Luicir (Mr. Caronte), rap vocals: Passenger X rap version
    • Rebeca Tomescu (Knight of Swords), choreography and dance: Mistaken Memory
    • Valery Lu (Manzanilla), choreography, dance and video: Nightfall
    • Alex Gusinsky (The Guitarist), music: Nightfall
    • Dawid Jakubiak (Agent SFX), music: Passenger X, The Anvil, Matryoshka
    • Fred Hampel (FreDestro), music: Medusa Noir, The Last Lap, Train to Vienna
    • Pina Vanucci (Doc Darkwave), music: Mistaken Memory
    • Arvibes, music: Cerberus Division
    • Cubiq The Creator, visualiser: Nightfall alternative version
    • German, visualiser: the dark composition pieces

    AI: NOT USED

    Where to find it

    YouTube

    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq7wG6CUmqSX8RplEAdzxS2BcQYFH3Mcm

    Published: 22 July 2025

  • ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! AGENT DOSSIER

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! AGENT DOSSIER

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! · roleplaying supplement · EZD6

    An expanded agent sheet and a mission journal, for players who want a record of what their agent has survived.

    The core book builds an agent in seven steps. This is for what happens afterwards.

    The contents: an executive summary, an identity, the fellow agents, and a mission log. Then the assets, adversaries and others met along the way, mission notes, a section for secured data and the diplomatic pouch, and the conventional equipment of D.A.N.G.E.R.

    An agent who has been through four operations is a different proposition from one who has been through none, and nothing in the rules records that. This does. The sheet is also supplied as a fillable PDF.

    Credits

    • Bruce Ballon, written and designed
    • Mario Agustin de Belda Cid, art
    • Henry Javier Aponte, art
    • Gandhi Mardion, art
    • Licensed clipart
    • Nathan D. Paoletta, graphic design and layout
    • With thanks to Enchanters of the Realm, whose Hunter’s Journal on the EZD6 page inspired this project
    • With thanks to the playtesters, the G.O.R.T. gang and the Sunday Night Irregulars

    AI: NOT USED

    Where to get it

    DriveThruRPG, as a PDF or a softcover in standard or premium colour.

    Published: 17 November 2023

  • ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! THE ANVIL

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! THE ANVIL

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! · adventure · EZD6

    An adventure for agents of any experience. A training simulation, until one of the agents turns up dead.

    The Anvil is a D.A.N.G.E.R. training facility on a remote island, a crucible for new agents and a refresher for veterans. Dense jungle covers rugged terrain of ravines, rivers, cliffs and overgrown caves. The simulated zones are held by personnel carrying rubber bullets and paint pellets.

    The brief is simple on paper. HALO onto the island, find Object X in the Tower, extract to the Cove, and get two miles offshore. The agents have six hours. Every agent wears a watch that counts down, tracks them, and turns red when they are killed.

    Simulated, of course.

    The debts are named at the back: Gog, The Guns of Navarone, The Manchurian Candidate, Westworld, Moonraker, Heavy Metal, The Living Daylights, Predator, and Mission: Impossible — Fallout.

    Credits

    • Bruce Ballon, written and designed
    • Henry Javier Aponte, art
    • Gandhi Mardion, four character drawings
    • Mario Agustin de Belda Cid, art
    • Billy Blue, art, offered free to the roleplaying community
    • Licensed Shutterstock images
    • Alec McKinley, map of the Anvil
    • Josh Hinge, map of the Control Centre
    • Nathan D. Paoletta, graphic design and layout
    • Parker Sheffield, editing
    • Simon Strike, editing
    • DM Scotty (David Scott McFarland), EZD6

    AI: NOT USED

    Where to get it

    DriveThruRPG

     https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/457746/assignment-danger-the-anvil-an-adventure-for-agents-of-any-experience

    Published: 29 October 2023

  • ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! CONTINGENCY PLANS

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! CONTINGENCY PLANS

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! · roleplaying supplement · EZD6

    Randomized tables for espionage thriller inspiration, for the Rabble Rouser who needs a complication now.

    Fifteen tables for the Rabble Rouser who has to run an entire world of intrigue and has four seconds to decide what happens next.

    The tables:

    • briefing locations, NPC agents and MacGuffins
    • Betrayal Most Foul
    • action, and the obstacles that turn up mid-chase
    • interesting locations, villain lairs, and the mundane situations that are sometimes worse
    • encounters with people who are not spies at all
    • set-ups, further mission complications and death traps
    • a table called Expect the Unexpected, which does what it says

    Roll a six-sided die and take what comes, or read a column and steal from it. The book is explicit about what it is: a catalyst rather than a script. Modify it, combine it, remix it. Let the randomness put the agents on edge and the Rabble Rouser on their toes.

    Credits

    • Bruce Ballon, written and designed
    • Mario Agustin de Belda Cid, art
    • Henry Javier Aponte, art
    • Bondo, art
    • Nathan D. Paoletta, graphic design and layout
    • Parker Sheffield, editing
    • DM Scotty (David Scott McFarland), who allowed material from EZD6 and Wasted World to be adapted

    AI: NOT USED

    Where to get it

    DriveThruRPG

     https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/453466/assignment-danger-ezd6-contingency-plans-randomized-tables-for-espionage-thriller-inspirations

    Published: 18 September 2023

  • X-Card for ASSIGNMENT: DANGER!

    X-Card for ASSIGNMENT: DANGER!

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! · card · tool

    A safety card for the table. Free to download, with optional payment going to Doctors Without Borders.

    An X-Card, printed properly so it is present at the table rather than scribbled on a scrap and forgotten. Anyone can raise it, at any time, and the game moves on from whatever it was doing. No reason is owed.

    This one carries the space disaster image from one of the supplements, the astronaut reaching out for help. It turned out to suit an X better than anything drawn for the purpose.

    There is no point causing traumatic experiences when a few easy actions reduce the chance of them happening.

    It is free to download, with optional payment. DriveThruRPG keeps five percent for hosting, and the rest goes to Doctors Without Borders.

    A companion card carrying the Scare Dog is available for the horror line.

    Credits

    • Bruce Ballon, written and designed
    • Mario Agustin de Belda Cid, illustration

    AI: NOT USED

    Where to get it

    DriveThruRPG.

     https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/452329/x-card-for-assignment-danger-from-hounds-jackals-support-doctors-without-borders

    Published: 7 September 2023

  • ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! CORE BOOK

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! CORE BOOK

    ASSIGNMENT: DANGER! · roleplaying game · EZD6

    Espionage thriller roleplaying game for EZD6. Spy fiction in the Bond and Mission: Impossible register.

    Clandestine cabals and insidious syndicates have infiltrated governments and mega-corporations, and they are pulling the strings. Agents are sent to stop them, in exotic places, against long odds.

    Agents are built in seven steps. The archetypes run from Assassin to Hacker to Mask to Planner to Point Person to Shadow. What an agent actually is gets decided by their Facets and their Signature Action rather than by a list of numbers.

    The rules add what the genre needs and EZD6 did not have: Mental Strikes, chases, underwater combat, and the Bad Penny Pool. Optional Gonzo rules let a table run the wilder end of the era, the paranormal and the science-fictional, in the register of The Omega Factor, Man from Atlantis and The Six Million Dollar Man.

    The debts are named. From 1960s and 1970s television and film: Mission: Impossible, James Bond, Danger Man, The Prisoner, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. From older games: the James Bond 007 RPG, Top Secret, and Call of Cthulhu.

    And DM Scotty. His EZD6 made this possible. He gave permission, lent material from Wasted World so that future crossovers would stay consistent, and stayed in the loop to release. The book uses the Open EZD6 License, and the material in it may be shared the same way.

    Credits

    • Bruce Ballon, written and designed
    • Mario Agustin de Belda Cid, art
    • Henry Javier Aponte, art
    • Gandhi Mardion, art
    • Sumit Roy, art
    • Ghizal Mahendra, art
    • Nathan D. Paoletta, graphic design and layout
    • Simon Strike, editing
    • Harvey Read, proofreading
    • Caleb Willden, proofreading
    • Thomas Weinberger of Dramadice, article on safety tools, reprinted in the appendix with permission
    • DM Scotty (David Scott McFarland), who allowed material from EZD6 and Wasted World to be adapted
    • With thanks to the playtesters, the G.O.R.T. gang and the Sunday Night Irregulars

    AI: NOT USED

    Where to get it

    DriveThruRPG, as a PDF, a softcover or a premium colour hardcover. A fillable character sheet comes bundled.

    Found at DriveThruRPG

    Published: 29 August 2023