[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode of Go Bag, we cover premature narration in encrypted comms. We field grenades from Rapier 99, Spez Baby and Jason.
And then in the mission brief, we do a comprehensive overview of Agent Provocateur by Twin Engine Productions.
Hit it.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Strap in. Operatives, this is Go Bag, your all access pass to modern day RPGs loaded with bullets, backstories, and a whole lot of bad decisions. And here are your mission leaders, Sean. And here again.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Hello, agents, assets and operatives. This is Go Bag. Today we're talking about Agent Provocateur.
But until we do that, I want to welcome my friend, co host, confidant, fellow gamer, Harrigan.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: You have great patience, man. Very good.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: I was sure I was not gonna interrupt. Nope. Like, where's he going with this? Good morning, Sean. How are you?
[00:01:13] Speaker A: I am doing peachy, doing peachy. I have some things going on, but I'm not going to bring them into this episode. We've talked about them. Everything's fine, Everything's fine. How are you?
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Earlier, earlier, people should know that Sean said, I'm feeling sassy today.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: I did say I'm feeling sassy.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: He's like, see how the episode goes? Yeah, I'm doing, I'm doing fine. Yes, I'm happy. I'm, you know, reading role playing shit every week and I'm playing games and it's all good.
Let's talk about some spy games.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah. What's going on in the appendix and realm for you?
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Come back to a couple things this week and let me, let me start with a correction. I think multiple times over the course of the podcast so far, I have called the Netflix series Black Doves. I think I've called it Black Swans multiple times.
A couple of people have reached out. Like, I think it's. You mean, do you mean Black Doves? And I do in fact mean Black dubs. So.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: So we're issuing a correction here.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: We're issuing a correction. Exactly.
So beyond that, I have started, you know, I know, you know, I'm on the Fleming dick.
I started Moonraker. I'm only a couple of chapters in third book, baby. I'm on board so far. Like, I am liking what I'm hearing. It starts with a day in the at, like the office for bond at FY6. So he goes, he's at the shooting range, he goes into secretaries.
It's pretty great. And it actually gets into detail of like how much money James Bond makes and how awesome he is in operation. It's just generally like, maybe Twice a year kind of thing. And the rest of the time you see a novel's work and it's bored. It's really pretty cool. And I'm fascinated to see what the book does that the movie does differently because I think the movie was great. Star wars, right?
Remember the timing of all this. I don't think there's going to be a big space battle at the end of this book, but who knows? So I've started that. My wife and I are halfway through Slow Horses season five so far. I would call it the worst season by far.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: That's not the newest one.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: It is the newest one released recently.
Relatively recently, yes.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Okay, then I am behind because I was still waiting for it and didn't know it was.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: So did you see the one where. You saw what, season four, where River.
Yeah. River Goes to France. That's a great season.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: And I don't know why, but, man, there's. This is a huge sideways and backwards step for them so far.
I mean, the characters are still awesome, right? You know, like. Like Oldman is phenomenal as Jackson Lamb. Yeah. Yep. He's really good.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: I wish. Why aren't we reading those books?
[00:03:54] Speaker B: I didn't know those were books.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, man. At the beginning of the. At the beginning of the. The series or every episode, it's like based on the novel by Whatever. Oh, all right. Yeah.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: I don't think it's called Slow Horses. I think it's a different title of the. For the books. Yeah.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. So I'll tell you what, I won't. I'll cut my commentary there until I finish the series. But I am, you know, there's some. I've got some issues with it so far, despite it still has a lot of the same pieces that we. Those of us who are fans, like, in terms of the characters and the setting and all that stuff. But I'll have some things to say about it. And then last thing is that Covert Ops games I've been talking about for a while over on Gamersplane is firmly off the ground. The free agents are in a van that is disguised as a local water company and they're making their way through the crowded streets of Prague in an industrial district for their first meetup with a local agent. So I'm actually loving my game so far. Haven't gotten very far, but we'll see how it all goes. It's going to be. I don't know. It's going to be. It's going to be fun.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: I think you sent it to me and I started. I started reading it and then of course whenever I read I fall asleep. So that's not.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: You're welcome. Got you some. Got you some Z's.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: It's not because of Harrigan, it's just Sean.
Reading is. Is lullaby time for Sean.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: I'm not quite sure how to take this.
Here, here's the game.
I don't know.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: I'm going to take some illegal substance. I'll be so jacked that I'll be too jacked to read.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: But it'll be only a couple of pages of the game so far. I mean, never mind.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: But I'm going to read it. Sounds interesting.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it should be fun.
And like I said, I think previously as well, the system has some quirks that we'll get into when we cover it, many of which actually, you know what? One of those games, I think it probably could use a second edition. But instead of that author has put out like a DM guide that addresses some of the shortcomings. We'll just do a quick preview. There's some. There's some nuance in the game about when do you make an attribute roll versus a skill roll and how broad these skills are. Quite broad. They're skills like soldier and thief. Very classy. But there's a lot of text around what they will let you do and what they won't and when you make an attribute role instead. And the GM guide offers all sorts of advice around how to do that. So I think they address some of the early issues I was starting to see with the game. But they're one spot you have to go and read a second book to kind of get to loadout. So we'll get to all that. What have you been doing in terms of like fuel injected covert action? That's for Dan. Covert action stuff.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: I have started listening to audiobook First Casualty which I bought the hardback book soft cover which I have by Tom Harden which is the untold story of the CIA mission to avenge 9 11, which is interesting. This is the.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: You are obsessed with that stuff. I don't know why.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Why it's. It's been something I've talked about obviously on and off throughout the episodes. But it's. I. I've had it sitting on a shelf kind of doing nothing and then I'm like, well, I'll just get the audio book and turn it on when I walk dogs and stuff. So I'm doing that.
It's just. It starts out very heartfelt because it does talk about what most of those participants are doing on 9 11.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Oh man.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: And it goes into, you know, the family a little bit about like the relationship of this one person who is married to a person and they both are. And I think that, I think they're both in the CIA. They kind of meet through field training and then like he's getting sent off and, and so there that's it's pretty that part is not all that. I mean a lot of it's not that great life wise be because of what's going on. But yeah, it's an interesting book.
There's a lot of faction pieces of Afghanistan that they're dealing with and, and some of the also politics that comes in with Rumsfeld. Like it's an operation military eventually that the CIA is running. It's not the Department of Defense. So that starts. There are some little quips in there. But it's interesting.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: It's good.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: I did watch like 3/4 of the agency, which is serious.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Fassbender 1, right?
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Yes. And Richard Gere, who has like been where the hell is that guy been for years.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: American Gigolo baby. And started watching that got through about three quarters of the I probably started watching it like midnight on a night. And then.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Can I, can I make a, make a guess here?
[00:08:36] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: I'm going to ask you how you like it and you're going to go, it's okay.
How is it, Sean?
[00:08:42] Speaker A: It was good. I liked. Oh, again, it's poking fun at me.
I like it. I like how it is starting and what is going on. And it's always good when a person in the series or movie or episode is going from one country to another and he opens up it, goes into an apartment, kind of pretty dimly lit, couple lights are on, kind of wanders through the rooms, turns on and out, you know, record player, puts on the needle, some music and then proceeds. Like he gets a mirror out of the bathroom. And you're like, what's he doing? Puts the mirror on a stand, goes back, takes off his coat or something, goes back to the mirror, starts walking through the apartment, takes the mirror, angles it at a certain location.
There's a listening device that's there. I'm like, all right, now we're getting down to some stuff. Yeah.
Doesn't remove it, of course, because, you know, but you know it's there. And then he walks around somewhere else, grabs something out of the refrigerator, looks, takes the mirror under something else, sees another one there. Yeah.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: You know what? It's a goofy saying, that whole if you know, you know, kind of thing. But for people who are true fans or. I don't mean like, you know, people who have put the work in or something. What I mean is people who this. This type of fiction, like, touches or reaches, like, you and I. Those little scenes are so cool when you encounter them when they're done. Right.
Whether it's international travel or the streets of, you know, you know, the. The darkened canals of Venice or whatever. European. European city.
It's just. It's so. It's so fun to connect with that stuff. So that's. Yeah, it's on my list to watch.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Because you're like, what? Like, you know, that's gonna play a role in something.
Maybe it's kind of brushed aside, but they know that's going on.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: I think covert action. I should overdub that every time I'm gonna say S.B.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: I know, I know. Thanks, Daniel.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Yep, Yep. So correct action movies are a little better at that, like, teaser thing. Not always being a club that hits you over the head. Like, quite frankly, the listening device that you've just seen. I'm trying to think of another movie that's happened recently. Oh, you know what? Casino Royale. Some of this, too. The book actually has some really cool listening devices. They put a camera down the chimney.
Picture an old French building with chimneys that stack up. First floor, second floor, third floor. They all. All the fireplaces share the same chimney. They use, like, a listing device that they go. They're in a apartment above them, and they drop the camera down. Really, really cool. Point being, sometimes in the spy games or spy fiction, they are simply showing you, as opposed to a horror movie, when someone has a nail gun at the beginning of the movie and they're doing work on the house. You're like, you'll see that nail gun later. You know, it's not quite as bad as that.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: So a fast spender may not do anything with that. They're showing his world. Right.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: You may not. He may not be doing anything directly to it. But I think he. Like, in one scene, he brings, I believe his daughter that hasn't seen him for a while to the apartment. And she makes fun of him and being like this secret agent guy.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: So, I mean.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: But she says, like, oh, have you been traveling around the world? And, you know, what have you been up to? Blah, blah, blah, and makes a few snide comments. Obviously, there's a tension between the two. Probably a strained relationship, obviously. But, you know, he doesn't correct Her. I mean it. So it becomes obvious that whoever's bugging that is going to know. And he's. It's like that dynamic is interesting to me because it's like the bad guys know. Or they bugged his apartment. They're going to know. He knows. They're going to know.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: And it just forms the conversation whenever it takes place. Or why isn't he meeting anybody in his apartment? Well, that's duh. Right. Or why is he meeting this person there, but not that person?
[00:12:53] Speaker B: You know what you're describing.
Fassbender is a Delta Green agent, and he's trying to rebuild his bond with his daughter. That's what you're describing.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: By spending a bit of time with it.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: That's exactly right. Yeah.
Because he's burned that.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. All right. What else?
[00:13:12] Speaker A: I had nothing. I got nothing else at this point.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: All right, so let's move on.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Give me the sit rep.
So, sitrep. I've got a few that have been lingering out there, and I've kind of got this workflow situated, if you will. And so some of these are actually old and untimely, but nonetheless, I think we'll just maybe knock them out to. To some degree.
I've got three. Most are. I think all of them are. Two of them are Delta Green. One is not. But one is also a link that I think you shared a week or two ago. Harrigan and Jason shared it. Or you're like, hey, Jason sent this to me and it was the blackjack sheet, but it was the blog. I found a cheat sheet for James Bond, Top secret from that blog. I don't know why or if I mentioned it. I think you might have mentioned this blog. And I'm like, oh, okay. And then I forgot that I mentioned this.
Yeah.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: It may have even been someone shared in the discord. We both went to the site independently or something like that. I don't know.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: Character creation. Cheat sheet for James Bond. 007 on blackcampbell.com and it's a dated. It's like a 2010 blog entry. So it is dated. But, you know, I think I was doing, you know, where some cheat sheets were. James Bond resources. And this happened to come up and.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: I thought, memory banks failing.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Someone shared that with me, I think, and I think I did share it with you. Or we both saw it in the same spot. I went over that Black Campbell site, kind of cruising it a little bit because it goes. It has a few articles about Bond and that sort of thing. Right?
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Yes. So I found this. Harrigan found the site both separately and so I just pulled up this one page and Harrigan brought up the site and had proved around it a little bit. So I think we've mentioned it before.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Maybe that's it.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The next one is a Google Doc for the 2025 Delta Green shotgun scenario contest. If you're in the Delta Green. No, then you are probably familiar with the shotgun scenario contest. It is running mid December. December until December.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Something like December 15th. I don't. Don't quote me on that. But it's something like that. I might submit.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Dude, that would be awesome.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: 1500 words.
I've actually spent a bit of time with the shotgun somebody. I don't want to run on a Delt 3 solo scenario.
I don't want something big so that I'm kind of prowling through them. And the formats are pretty cool. Some of them. They've evolved over time. And you know what else is really interesting is that this stuff predates the arc3 version of delt3.
So many of the early shotgun scenarios are for the outlaws in like the 90s. And there's a presumption that it continues into the 2000s because we don't have the new version of the game yet, which has everything changed in 2001 when the program's reignited that sort of stuff. It's pretty cool. Sort of for those who are not.
But those shotgun scenarios are really cool. We should both put one in.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: I would love to. I. I would hope to. I don't know if I'll have time.
Yeah, we'll see. It's. It would be on my to do list for sure. The other one is a mini campaign jam for Delta Green as well. This was like. I think I came across this even before the podcast started.
And I think at the time I was going to hold off until we got to Delta Green.
So this is. I don't even have. I got the article, but I don't have a link to it. So I will hunt that down and put it. It's on Itch Mini campaign jam. Beginner campaigns on Itch IO So I will find it. It talks about. I think this was like January 2025.
So like earlier this year as we talk about this.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Oh, so it's finished.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: It is probably. I think this is over, but.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: It is something to keep in mind should it come around in 2026. I actually may edit this out. I don't know.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: But yeah, the same way you Edit out half of my great content.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you'll be all right. You'll be all right.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: I. I talk enough, so that's.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Yeah, don't worry about that. It's okay. So anyways, that's all I have for.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Sit rep.
And Sean, you've got your workflow, and I haven't developed one yet. I almost, you know, lately I'm not bringing anything to the table around this stuff. And this week is no different.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: If you come across stuff, just don't forget. Sometimes we come across things and we're just like, oh, that's cool. And we look at it and then we forget to bookmark it for the show.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: It's true. Yeah, it's true.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Encrypted comms, huh?
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Yep.
Sir, we have an incoming encrypted transmission.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Okay, we've got two voicemails, a couple comments that we want to highlight this week. Let's get into the first one, shall we? Well, we have two from Jason. I'll play back to back.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Hello, agents. Listen, the beginning of your Q and A episode. I don't know when this message will arrive. If you've already talked about online versus in person games. One other advantage of online games that I'm sure will get brought up makes it a lot easier to pass notes to players.
It's a lot easier to pass secret information to players and for players to ask questions that they don't want the other players to know.
You know, ask questions to the GM they don't want the other players to know about. It's a lot easier to do that online than it is in person.
Obviously, that's easiest to play by post, but it's still pretty darn easy with cameras. But it's a lot harder in person where you have to pass map past notes.
Other question I have is, have either of you. You probably haven't watched it since the 80s, if you watch it at all. But thoughts on the movie Cloak and Dagger with Henry Thomas and Daphne Coleman? If you haven't seen it in a while, might be worth revisiting.
Take care.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: I have seen Cloak and Dagger, but I think it came out in, like, the 80s. And so it's been a while.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: It's been so long since I've seen it that I remember absolutely nothing about it.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Same, barely. Just. Only because he said Dabney Coleman.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: Since you paused here, let's just react to this quickly, then we can move on to the second one. All I want to say is. Yep, I agree. Like. Like the VTT or online Environment is. Is very. You know, having Discord on the side really facilitates that sort of secret communication that you want to have between players or between player and GM or whatever. I mean, and in Discord, there are even some relatively robust setups, like Alice is missing. And there's a couple of other games where they come with a package of channels where you assign the right roles and people can communicate sort of privately, but the GM still gets to see it. Like, there's a lot of. There's a lot you can do with online tools around that stuff.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Although in person, I'm going to be trying that, I think, at Game Hole Con next year, where we have four players at the table, and every time I want to talk to somebody, I'm going to pull them off the table.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: We've done plenty of that in the. In the past. I remember one, and I don't want to take too much time, but one. Hilarious. The very first time I ever played champions, I built this.
You won't even know what it is, Sean. It's a brick. You know what a brick is?
Super strong. The thing, the Hulk, like your main. Your main thing is toughness and strength and that kind of thing. Endurance, etc. But my guy had, like, really low intelligence because it's a point by system. I bought down his intelligence and brought up his, you know, powers and all that sort of stuff.
So incredibly stupid version of Superman.
The GM pulls me aside and I'm. I mean, my guy is literally like, we're here to save the day. You know, that. That kind of character. Right.
Pulls me aside. And where we're playing at the university, it was this cool little room with a little staircase you could climb to go to a private room. So he would pull people from the table, take them upstairs and have this little conversation kind of thing. And he pulled me aside as my character was learning information no one else learned. And I didn't realize this at the time. He talks to me. And as he talks to me, he has this little folded piece of paper, which is meant to be like a secret note that the person I'm talking to gives me. He throws it at my feet. But I'm in character so hard with this dumb, like, it's good to talk to you. I don't even see him drop the note. So we leave the room. I leave the note behind and don't even. I walk away from it.
Travis, who's the GM later, is like, you idiot. I was trying to give you a note. And I'm like, what are you talking about. It was. It was so funny. I digress. But just the note passing has always. Yeah, I always think of that story.
Right. I completely missed the note.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty good. Hello. Hello. Travis, if you're out there listening from Portugal, by the way, really good, really good friend of mine.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks, Jason. Let's get into part. Duh.
[00:22:24] Speaker D: As far as premature imagination goes, it's not so much combat as it is social interactions, Right? You go in front of the king, you can give this impassioned speech.
You're going to try to talk your way past this guard who's found you in the train car.
Well, do we do all the dice rolls and then talk out what the dice rolls say? At which point now it's just improv theater, right? It's okay. You have to fail this. You have to fail to convince this guard.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Go.
[00:22:53] Speaker D: Is that what people come to RPGs to do? I don't know. Not everybody does. Or do you give your pitch to the guard and then you do a really good pitch and then you roll and you critically fail? And yeah, you can explain that, but, you know, that's where it's an issue. It's a social interactions. And do you narrate before or after you roll the dice and how much narration do you do before you roll the dice? That kind of thing.
And then as far as metacurrency goes, the other issue I have, it's kind of minor, is I don't like to rewind time. I like the dice to matter.
And I realize, again, it's how much you narrate ahead of time. But I really just don't like rerolls. I like using metacurrency to enhance your roll to give you a better chance of succeeding. But I don't like that metacurrency let you reroll. I want that die roll to matter. I want all the chips, all the stakes to be on that die roll. I want my pucker factor to be through the roof, and I want people to sit up and say, oh, my gosh, what's going to happen?
And, you know, all or nothing on that die roll. I enjoy that. So that's why I don't like rerolls. But I realize that's a personal thing.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: What do you have to say to that, Sean?
[00:24:05] Speaker A: I would say that I understand where he's coming from.
As far as social goes, what I have a hang up on is not every player at the table is a good orator and persuader.
And so the skill we. I Think we tend to.
This is always a sticking point with social mechanics in RPGs when you have a really good leader, speaker, persuader, interrogator. My friend Jeff worked in, like, borderline law enforcement.
He kind of knows the deal. If he's at the table, he's gonna turn on his old professional hat and he's gonna go, I'm gonna sit down. I'm gonna look at him real calmly and probably reach out, touch their arm. He's gonna do all of the good, cool stuff. And so when he rolls and it fails, that's gonna be a problem. The problem is his character isn't Jeff.
So you kind of have to go, all right, well, I'm gonna try to interrogate or I'm gon.
I'm going to, you know, what method are you going to do? Is it the hard and good cop, bad cop? Right. And if it's the sweet method and it's persuade and there's a skill that's appropriate. You wrote it. Roll it. That if it fails, then I would say then it's. Then it doesn't matter how good of a player. You can try to persuade.
You just fall flat. It's not what you conveyed, it's maybe how you conveyed it and you role play it after the fact. That's what I would say. But I, I too, fall backwards and go.
Like Jeff would stand up at the table and go, oh, man, give me a break, man. Look what I did. I should. I should at least get a bonus. Sean should get a bonus. And I don't think he's completely wrong, but I think it's how we. How we execute that piece in the game.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: So I think let's take the premature narration social part first. We'll talk about pushing in a minute.
I think there's many games that actually do exactly what Jeff is asking for there, which is if the role play was great and the approach was appropriate, give them a bonus. Kind of.
My answer in general, though, is that this is not something you can talk about absent the context of what game you're playing. Because many of the games have incredibly specific mechanics for this down to. There are no mechanics and you are only role playing swivers. Some people call it swivers. Relatively new sort of Guy Ritchie style, Industrial Revolution Britain caper crime game. They purposely designed physical statistics only because they want to role play everything else. So there are no social anythings. You're just supposed to talk. And some people love that. It's even in the sort of the Chris McDowell angle. When the into the odd games, all the mark of the odd stuff where, you know, your approach matters so much and. But the GM has to also behave a certain way where he's giving you the right amount of information, the right number of cues and clues and that sort of thing.
Then you go to a game like Fate where the mechanics are universal. Whether you are fighting, socializing, stealthing, whatever. You're always doing the same thing, which is you narrate to a certain point, you never narrate the outcome, you stop and then you read the dice in Fate, you have some ways to modify the dice result. Right? You can spend Fate points and that sort of thing. So if you're a Jeff and you're unhappy with what happened, you can invoke an aspect of yours by, you know, persuasive, by spending a Fate point. And there's tons of games that do that. Now the two D20 games are kind of like that as well. All the way to James Bond which, that we just covered, which has really specific mechanics for interrogation versus seduction versus persuasion. They're all different.
So I think, I don't know, I still don't buy that this is a. A and, and we should be. I think in the show notes you, you know, we've. We discovered the source of this pretty premature narration stuff is Anthony's Runeslingers blog post from about 15 years ago back in 2010. So Sean, you'll share that. So for those who are more interested in this topic, go ahead and read what Anthony has to say there.
I will admit I don't buy it as a broad based problem.
I think that the table has to have a solution for these sorts of things. And I will also tell you the GM needs to have some skills around managing people who have different ways they like to play.
So Sean, you're saying that, you know, Jeff is so good at the, at the Social park, he's done it his whole career.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: I.
I've talked about this game before in other contexts, but not on this podcast. I ran an Iron Edda game which is like a pretty crazy Mecca Fate game from like, I won't even go into the background of it. But basically the three players, one wanted to embody their character fully. They spoke as them, they acted as them. One never spoken character ever. They only wanted to do sort of director stance or author stance type stuff where they're describing what they're doing. They speak in the third person. My character says this and then another one which was sort of all over the map and could could jump in and out, which is quite frankly how I like to play where I want to be in the character's head and speaking, but I also want to be describing the sc and I also want to be, I don't know, just not limited to only one stance. And I. And then, you know, once I figured out that the three players played so differently, I just had to adjust my style a bit and just kind of try to blend it all together. And it worked great, to be honest with you. And I was worried after the first session or two, I was like, oh dear, this person never, ever speaks in character and this one will only speak in character kind of thing. So I think it's just a skill set you need. I don't see it as a pervasive problem either way in social scenes or otherwise. I don't know what, what do you think about any. Well, anything to comment there? Did we move on to the. The whole idea of pushing die rolls?
[00:29:58] Speaker A: I do think the game matters. System matters.
System matters. Right. And if you're playing a game where. Well, I don't like that, you know, to Jason's point, I don't like that thing or it's not my preferred method.
Some people would say, why are you playing that game?
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Dip it.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Play. Play a game that doesn't have that and it does what you want it to do.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, the OSR has complicated all of this, Sean, because. Right. It has said player skill matters again.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: And what, what you, the words you say, are you persuasive, all that kind of back on the table. Whereas for a long time it was more along the lines of, look, you don't ask a player at the table to climb a freaking 10 foot fence and they're allowed to just roll to do that. So why can't they just roll to convince the guard to let them into the club?
And that was the, that was a mantra in RPGs. It was a learning from the horrible GMs who.
So in other words, it was all mechanized. So without going deeper, another layer down into all that. There are reasons that these games take the approaches that they do. Find a game that you like its approach and play it. Yes, I totally like the idea of like the stakes and that he wants the role to matter and all that sort of stuff.
I think, I just, I don't know. These are issues for Jason. I just, I can only say that they're not for me. Like, I don't have any problem, you know, with that. When you fail that first roll. Oh, and it can either be a spend something or push or whatever, like your next roll. Now. Now all the stress is on that roll. And it's even high, potentially even higher stakes if you're pushing, because if you fail, something worse is going to happen, that sort of thing. But he's not going to convince me. I'm not going to convince him. It's what it is.
Yeah. Where do you come down on that?
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Yeah, me, I.
I mean, I see both perspectives for sure.
For example, when we do the James Bond actual play disguise, I don't want anybody to notice me. I'm gonna spend two or three hero points and I'm not even gonna know the outcome. I did. I might not have needed to spend any of those and. And their role could have been crappy enough to not recognize you, but I don't want to take that chance. So I spend it anyway. It's a little different because the example is a little skewed because I don't know the result. It would have to be like Harrigan saying, rattle, rattle, rattle, they recognize you. And I go, well, hold on a second, let me spend three hero points. Now they don't. And I think that would be the rub for Jason. So I understand it, but I think it's also like, as you sit down at a table and you explain, if the system is inherently. This is how it's written in the rules and this is what we're going to be playing, then great, then I understand it. But if it's not, or if it's a tweak or a home rule that you have, it could be in the moment, but I think it's got to be something that's relatively clear on how that's handled, just so that the player's expectations matches yours. And if that's your preference, everything aligns.
So that's all I have to say.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. The.
I don't know, it just doesn't bug me the same way it does some people. The. I guess the only other thing I would say, I would wonder about how people like Jason feel about the Call of Cthulhu seventh Edition rules, where to push you. Not only. Not only to. Not only do you have to explain how. And like. Like what. What are you doing differently? You actually have to narrate it like. So in that game, you are not pressing pause. Like, you try to climb the rope and you fail. You're going to push it. You are on the ground again and you're like taking a second attempt in real time type of thing. So I wonder if they have just as much trouble with that. Where, you know, the push now means it's literally a second try and you have to narrate what you're doing a little bit differently to try to get the result.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: So yeah, I think it literally has to be a different thing.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you have to narrate what you're, you know, how, how you attempt it.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You can't just say I'm going to jump up the rope again and try again. I think you have to elaborate the push.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: I forget the text and how they do it, but various games are specific about how you push as opposed to. Some of them are just. Some of them are just like roll again. It's. There's more on the line now.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: So we have a link to the Ruinslinger blog that Harrigan mentioned. We'll put that in there as well about premature narration. And then we have rapier 99. I want to thank you so much for commenting on Spotify, which is something I have over looked for weeks. So I apologize. We see them, we hear you. Thank you so much for, for commenting on some of the episodes. Just a couple blurbs that he had posted. There was a game you might like to check out is Ghost Ops by Jason Lassard at Broken Rat Games. It's primarily special operations but there are rules for intelligence agents. So I will have to check that out and put it on our list on our website, into the go file if you will.
And then he also comments on one episode. Also a gun enthusiast here as well, alluding to Harrigan's affection for firearms.
Yeah, one aspect of some games, how generic they make firearms. For example revolvers, battle rifle, etc. Or 9 millimeter pistol.45 pistol. So just alluding to the how specific some games are and how some just generalize a particular type of weapon is what he commented on. So thank you rapier99. We'll try to be a little bit more diligent on monitoring the Spotify's comments, which is something that I know they've probably implemented for a while. It just back in the day when you had a podcast up on a distributor, they didn't really allow comments.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: So yeah, it's not a place that I think to look, that's for sure.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: Quick note on the specificity of the firearms he's talking about. I actually am fine with like it being very generic. The whole like you know, just be pistol, that's fine, rifle, submachine gun, whatever, where I tend to choke up a little bit is whenever I see, like somebody's really specific about something and they get the details wrong, you know, the, the capacity, various things that are. They're just. And we're going to see some of that in the game. We're going to talk about today, by the way.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Oh, well, there you go. A little teaser for you, folks. And then lastly, we have Peter Spez baby, who's written in before. Thanks so much, Peter. I appreciate it. Hello. Enjoyed the deep dive into James Bond 007.
Although my eyes glazed over a few times when many of the numbers were being thrown around, which I could totally empathize with. Sorry, yeah, I only got to play that game once. Back in the day. My local YMCA had an upstart D and D club when I was 11 or 12 and an older kid, 16ish, asked all three of us in attendance if we wanted to play James Bond 007. We jumped on it and I think it took us two weeks worth of sessions to make characters before starting a mission. We never saw the end of that mission as the Satanic Panic raised its ugly head when some concerned moms called the Y and got the Cub Club shut down. It was my one and only experience with the Panic in my relatively progressive university town. The small mention in rules and handouts was clearly an understatement, as Victory Games went whole hog on handouts in their adventures. If I recall, each one came with a manila envelope stuffed with props and handouts for each adventure. Can't wait to hear how it plays. Take care.
Which we. I don't think I have a supplement for James Bond, so I can't attest to that. But I will take it for face value.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: I've got Dr. No right behind me here if you want to see it. He's entirely right. They usually have like a. It. Put it this way, it was. It follows some of the Chaosium Call of Cthulhu model of including, you know, handouts and that kind of thing. You know, the players will look at once and then never again. There's a lot of that. Like, why'd you print this?
Yeah. Thank you for the. For the email, Peter. I'm going to do some sleuthing.
So Peter's on the Discord. He's written it a few times now and he said some things. Maybe he's actually told me this before, but. And I'm forgetting because my memory is Swiss cheese these days, I think Peter maybe grew up in St. John's Newfoundland.
I say that because in a recent episode I talked about the Great Money Movie, which was a show out of Bangor, Maine in the late 70s. Right. I'm a discord. He's like, I didn't think anybody else would know that it had a banger affiliate kind of thing. And I think I've seen somewhere else him talk about Newfoundland. And then in this note, he talks about being in a university town. And that's going to be St. John's here's why it matters. I am shocked if that's the case. Peter, write and tell us, you know, where you're. Where you grew up. I will be shocked if a satanic panic reared its head there. It's one of the things that I didn't have to deal with in Halifax, where I grew up in Atlanta, Canada. There was no.
My. My parents had no idea what I was doing in the basement. Like, I may have been.
I don't even know how to describe it. They. They were worried. I think to this day, they have no clue what these games represent to people. Just no clue.
So to have the satanic panic sort of, you know, punch some Atlantic Canadian kids in the nads, that's uncool. I don't like that. I thought we were free and clear of that stuff, but, yeah, there you go. I could have that all wrong. You might be from Ontario or Bermuda or Prague. I don't know.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't recall. I'm. He might have mentioned it to. To us in the past where he's maybe dropped somewhere, something. Yeah, yeah. Let us know, Peter. We're interested. Thank you so much. For everybody. That's written in, phoned in, recorded. Thank you so much. Much appreciated.
Let's get into the mission.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Hey, let's do it.
Have a seat.
Let's get on with the mission brief.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: What are we reviewing this week here again?
[00:39:48] Speaker B: You know what we're reviewing, Agent Provocateur.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Provocateur.
The RO, as it says on the game book, underneath it has a long name, the Role Playing Game.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: I Keep and, oh, there's even subtext. It must be on the inside or something. Role playing in the thrilling world of covert operations and international espionage.
[00:40:16] Speaker A: Indeed.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: We're kind of excited about this one.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: Came to my.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: It's a more modern game. Yeah.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Came to my attention from Harrigan before the first episode. Recording was like, hey, you know, look at all things.
[00:40:32] Speaker B: I was hunting for something on Amazon and this came up in a recommended. I was like, what the hell is that?
A YZE Third party spy game.
So I now have the hardcover. I think you have the hardcover I have the PDF.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: I have two.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Two PDFs or two hardcover?
[00:40:51] Speaker A: Two hardcovers because Sean bought it off.
Oh, Sean's got some Drive Thru credits. I'll buy it from Drive Thru on print, on Demand. That's good. Week goes by, you know. I know. Remember, I should pick up that book.
Sean goes on Amazon, buys the book, shows up in a day. A few more days go by, another one shows up.
Sean.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm gonna be that old man that ends up buying like five of the same thing because he can't remember.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: I wish that wasn't happening throughout my life.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:41:25] Speaker B: I don't remember buying this.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: Oh, so maybe, maybe I'll give a copy away. I don't know. We'll see.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, give us some of the. What are some of the stats, like when was it released, who published it, et cetera.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: So some of the details. Obviously a little bit of a longer title, but you know, we will refer to it as Agent Provocateur. Was released in 2025 by Twin Engine Productions under the year Zero Engine Tabletop License 1.0 issued by Free Leak Publishing. So if you wanted to create something using the YZE engine, that's typically the license that you would use.
And then of course you say, hey, it's not affiliated with Free League. We're just using this license for the YZE stuff. I found this odd. I don't know if you know this, but I went on Drive Thru and there were comments on this game from 2024.
Joe, I don't understand the copyright listed in the book of being 2025. If it had come out sooner in maybe PDF version, it's hard to say.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: I bet it was not available in print in pod in 24.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: That would be probably accurate.
[00:42:36] Speaker B: But in my. My print version says on the inside page 2024.
[00:42:41] Speaker A: You're kidding.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: It does.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: My version of print.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: I'm gonna. I have a task for you.
[00:42:49] Speaker A: Oh, it does say 2024.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Wait a minute, which one are you looking at?
I bet your Print on demand is 2025 and your Amazon book is 2024. That's what I bet.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: That is probably accurate. I don't have my Print on Demand book, but the PDF, you're right. This book says 2024. The one I'm holding in my hand, which is from Amazon. And then the PDF does say 2025.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: We are a mystery solving machine.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Because I was taking my notes out of the PDF. Ah, there we go.
Anyways, it was written. Written by Nils Eric Lindstrom and illustrated by Nils and Kent OVI Lindstrom. So they both share the same last name, surname?
[00:43:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Husband and wife, brother and sister, father and son, who knows?
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Could not confirm any relationship, but they did. But they are collaborators and part of Twin Engine Productions who have also done supplements for D and D Dragonbane and Cthulhu Eternal which if you haven't checked that out, there's Cthulhu Eternal Future, Cthulhu Eternal Victorian, Cthulhu Eternal blah.
And on Twin, I think it's on Cthulhu Eternals website has its own website and it has a different character sheet for each. But the only real difference is like the color in the trim based on what it's catered to. But it looks very similar to a popular, I don't know, Call a Cthulhu game that is out there.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: I was just gonna say what's the shtick? Is it. Is it based on call of Cthulhu7th and is their own spin on like or is it a different game?
[00:44:38] Speaker A: I don't know. I don't have any of the rule books. But the character sheet is. I mean it is like almost to me without.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: It's brp. Is it brp?
[00:44:47] Speaker A: It's very much tons of skills and it looks layout wise very familiar to what something BRP or Chaosium would put out for Call of Cthulhu.
But it's very many era.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: Well, I'll tell you what, I did see it sort of referenced in the drive thru stuff that I was looking through. I'll jump ahead here, just briefly. One of the things I wanted to talk about at the end of the this episode, but I'll draw it forward is that this game is actually. Agent Provocateur is actually pretty well supported. There are three adventures. There's a mini campaign generator. There are. There are teaser adventures which are like the before the credits Bond, you know, action scene kind of thing. And there's a just a ton of cards you can get print on demand for like maneuvers and initiative cards. For an indie game, it has a surprising amount of content. And when I was. While I was doing that searching, I did see the Cthulhu Eternal stuff. I just didn't. I guess I was thinking this must be an add on to the Chaosium stuff, but maybe not. Maybe it's its own thing.
[00:45:45] Speaker A: No, I think these guys and I was trying to determine whether Twin Engine Publishing does Cthulhu Eternal and I couldn't nail that down.
I don't think they do, but I know that Nils does quite a bit of the work for some of those eternal. That line.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: Okay, so accomplished. This is not a one and done sort of like out of nowhere. There's a whole company behind this and they have a lot of products on drive thru.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: Yes, they do. Okay, so there you go. That's I think all I had for an intro. Oh, and I should probably, probably stipulate. When did we mention this? This thing is clocks in it. What a hot.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: 120 pages.
[00:46:25] Speaker A: 120 pages? Yeah.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:28] Speaker B: Print on demand. Hardcover. Yeah, 111 quality. Oh, is that right?
[00:46:33] Speaker A: 111 for the book. And then there's range band page.
It's probably meant to be ripped out. There's a character sheet, a vehicle record sheet and then some credits at the back.
[00:46:46] Speaker B: Right you are. I see that. I was probably looking at the PDF when I got the 120 because it includes all that other stuff at the end.
In other words, a svelte book, typical pod drive through or Amazon sort of, you know, printing quality, print on demand. It's not an offset book, it's not sewn bindings or any of that stuff.
But it's not a bad book in terms of the quality and the construction and all that stuff. Do you want me to dive into sort of the, you know, the overview and then we'll look at some, some sections here, please. I know you've got your own notes as well.
So right off the bat there is an enormous table of contents that this book has.
And unfortunately a theme Sean and I will be returning to is that the book needs some TLC when it comes to editing and organization and that kind of thing. So there's a, you know, it starts off with an intro, there's an example of role playing. Then it goes into the player section and the GM section, all of which sounds good, but in the player section, interleaved all throughout the book are all kinds of things that the GM needs. And the same thing is true in the GM section where there's just all this cross pollination in a bad way over like the rules are not succinctly described. It's the, it's the opposite of. When we talked about the James Bond 007 game, you know, I mentioned that there were a number of chapters that were one or two pages long and it was kind of like here's the gospel on fame, here's the gospel on chases. This is all you need to know. This game is the opposite of that, unfortunately. So while in the end I'm going to tell you right Now I come away with it. I sort of a middling view of it, I think. I think I want to try it, but it really needs some help when it comes to like conveying some of the. Some of the ideas that both the GM and the players are both involved in. Things like villain points and story points and those sorts of things because they pop up in many places. I think you covered this as well in your notes, so maybe you can, you can add in here. What, what level of realism are they going for with the book, Sean, or the. With the game? I should say.
[00:48:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the James Bond Mission Impossible they. They directly reference. So it's movie cinematic movie realism versus simulationism. So it's very Bond and Mission Impossible that they want it to be over the top approach to covert action genre.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: We're gonna be stuck with that now.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: I know. Thanks, Dan. Yeah, just gonna say thanks, Dan all the time.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: So I asked you to cover that for a reason because I think it's something I want listeners to kind of pay attention to as we talk about different parts of the game here, especially for people who know that YZE at its heart is not really a cinematic kind of game. So you better make some changes to the system or the players are gonna end up feeling punched in the face a lot.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: But wait a minute.
Doesn't Alien actually have a cinematic mode?
[00:49:37] Speaker B: It does, but that means something different in this context. Okay.
[00:49:41] Speaker A: All right. It's still pretty grounded action, the listener's mind.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: Fair, Fair. So no, no need to write about that.
Those, Those who got their pens out. Let's see if I got a click on camera here. There we go. Yeah, Actually, yes, yes, yes. And you know, without diving into that right now, we can talk about the, the Alien cinematic versus the, you know, the campaign play at some point because it's a cool, cool split. But for what I want to talk about today and for those who don't know YZE Year Zero engine games, these are. This is Tale, Shimaloop and Alien and Forbidden Lands and Blade Runner and like on and on and on. Right? Not. Not some games like, not Dragon Bane, but they're most of the freely games that they authored. Not all the ones they published, but the ones they authored use this engine. Coming from Mutant Year Zero. Coming from.
Oh, what's this? What's the science fiction one you just played? It's escaping me right now.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: The Walking Dead, the thing I just played. Coriolis.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: Coriolis.
[00:50:45] Speaker A: I knew it.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: For Pete's sake.
[00:50:47] Speaker A: I just wanted to get him off off his chair.
How long I can go before you.
[00:50:53] Speaker B: I can't believe I couldn't remember it. Yeah, yeah.
So I think, you know, there's early. Let's not get into the history of all that. But the early games, Mutant, Year Zero and Coriolis is where a lot of the foundations were set.
Free League has streamlined and revamped that rule set as they go, fine tuning it for every single game. Right. Including if you're talking about, like Twilight 2000, the new version of that, and Blade Runner. They actually use a different dice mechanic than most of the Year Zero games. This game, Agent Provocateur, uses the classic D6 pool that comes from an attribute and comes from a skill. You put them together, you roll all those D6s and you're trying to look for a single 6. If any die hits a 6, you're successful.
And difficulty is measured in taking away or adding dice to the pool.
Some games will actually say you need more than one success, which is much harder. So as soon as you start saying I need two or three successes out of the pool, man, things get real. Things get pretty tough. It uses the classic initiative system, which is a deck of 10 cards, 1 through 10. Lower numbers go first. You just deal them out and it always. A YZE game always has a push mechanic. So in other words, you've rolled, you've got either no sixes or you don't have the result that you want.
There's a way for you to say, I'm doubling down, I'm digging deep, I really need a better result. And you roll in this game, some of your dice. Again, in many Year Zero games, you're rolling all the dice that aren't ones and sixes. Again, this one limits you to just the base dice that come from your attribute and your skill, not the stress dice. But we'll, we'll talk about all that. Anything you want to. You want to add to, like the overview. Otherwise I'm gonna. I'm gonna kind of go quickly through the character part of it.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: Only that if you do not have experience with your zero engine games with the D6 die pool, we can tell you that you can have an epic load of them and not ever have a success.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: In fact, from our Forbidden Lands game, I think we saw 45 or 50 dice rolled.
I rolled and failed. Phil rolled and failed. No, I rolled and failed. I rolled and failed, pushed and failed. Phil rolled and failed, pushed and failed. And all total. It was like 48 dice or something. Not a single six. Zero sixes and I died as a result.
[00:53:09] Speaker A: And so one of the things Harrigan and I were talking about like, oh, Yze, I'm a fan. I've played, I've run forbidden lands. I have, you know, know we've done actual plays of that and you know, we've played Coriolis and Blade Runner and all these big. So those of that have followed me for a little bit of time know that I'm a big fan of Year zero engine and, and free league stuff.
But knowing that this is a D6 dive pool and wanting to be Mission Impossible James Bond, I'm like, oh, I don't know how well this game is going to pull that off, but we're about to get into to it.
[00:53:44] Speaker B: Yeah, they're, they're generally like a little lower to the ground than a super cinematic play or super high octane play.
[00:53:52] Speaker A: It's pretty bad when you're at a convention game and people are rolling like 8D sixes and none of it comes up as a six. So it's a technically a failure when somebody else, you don't know that hasn't been in your games that experiences that and they actually say at the table, yep, that's year zero for you.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: You had people say that?
[00:54:13] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:54:14] Speaker B: Wow. So similarly on gamers playing where I do all my play by post gaming, I know at least two people who will not play your zero games because of the dice mechanic. Purely because of a dice mechanic, including one of the guys. Guy's name is Nez. In my covert ops game and we remember you said, how'd you pick a system? I had Agent Provocateur on the list. He's like, is that Yze? I'm like, yes. He's like, pass.
[00:54:41] Speaker A: So this episode's for you, Nez?
[00:54:44] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. Absolutely. So they've done some things in the game that pull it out of the gutter when it comes to like, holy, you're in for some like rough riding. If you think, if you think you're going to be a badass agent and go in and like karate chop that guy, machine gun that guy and then disarm the bomb at the same like hold, hold the phone there, text.
You got some sixes to get, you know, so we'll see. I mean, I will also say there are. It's, it's not as swinging as something like the D20 or the or D100, but it can be swinging. Like you also hear about people saying no one failed in the entire game. We, you know, we never missed a six. I'VE heard Wayne from our Thursday night group say that when he's run some, some YZE before. Anyway, I digress. Let me quickly cover the character. So those who know these games, no, you always got always have attributes. It's almost always four these days. In this case it's agility, empathy, strength and wits. Pretty, pretty standard set. Frankly, there's a previous occupation that you will have. These are things like an academic, a bodyguard, a diplomat, a journalist, a police, a policeman, a smuggler and quite frankly, this is part of the game. I don't love that much. That previous occupation determines a lot.
It tells you what your key attribute is. So of the attributes that I mentioned, of the four, they usually are rated between two and four. You have some points to spend on those to raise them up. You can't have anything at 5 unless it's in your previous occupation. So you're allowed to have one stat, one attribute that kind of stands out from the others. Right. But on top of that, it will also tell you what skills you were allowed to invest in beyond level one. So it gives you some skill points to spend and it gives you like a handful of like, I don't know, it's 3, 4, 5 skills. It says these are the ones that are tied to your profession. You can put a skill point in everything else, but it can only be one point and then it tells you what talents you have. And I'll get to talents in a second. But all told, the previous occupation is kind of like a class. Like it's quite a little bundle of things that you do. You're not going far afield from that. Did you have the same feeling when you read that, Sean?
[00:56:50] Speaker A: I did and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I'm not a. Generic systems are fine, but the hang up with generic systems is that the boxes are sometimes blurred and not overly well defined. Where some people that are like just don't like, you know, I'm a class person, I'm fighter or I am Claire Rick. I can't. It's one or the other. This one's not that restrictive. So I like the balance in that regard.
[00:57:17] Speaker B: You're right. It's a little bit playbooky almost. It gives you some rails like it doesn't tell you you have to invest in these, these skills. It gives you a range and then tells you some other things that you can put a little bit into. So you're right, it's not, it's not bad by any, by any stretch. It's not quite as wide open as I might like, but. But I can see it. I can see it being effective.
[00:57:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:34] Speaker B: So what else about attributes? This is where we get in. There's some sort of secondary attributes around, like exposure, health, story points there. This is part of the organizational problem that Sean and I both ran into, where we're in the attribute section in the book and suddenly we're like dropping in, like, what are these story points? Things. We haven't talked about them yet, really. And then it actually goes into quite a bit of description of them in the attribute section in the book. It's just not well organized is what I would say.
[00:58:01] Speaker A: The layout. I know we can kind of tear it up a little bit, but some of the things that kind of threw me off is that there are headers that aren't and then there are sub headers, but they're not. They're so close in font that it's almost. You could almost lose yourself that way. Which was a little disconcerting. But yeah, to Harrigan's point, just a little tweaking of. Well, there's story points and they're talked about here and then there are story points and they're talked over there.
Wait, wait a minute, hold on a second. Why didn't you just put it all in one place?
[00:58:34] Speaker B: Yeah, some games get around that by saying, here's the story point value you're going to start with. And by the way, C page this for a full treatise of story points.
They kind of go into it halfway in several places and you have to piece it all together is the way it. It read to me. Yeah, did not love it. And to emp, I would just wholeheartedly high five you on this header subheader.
It's. It makes the reading difficult, actually, at a glance, the game is laid out pretty cleanly. Like, there's not a lot of, like, you know, hanging sentences and headers at the bottom and the text starts on the next page. There's not a lot of that going on. It's more professionally laid out than that. But brother, just the content organization is awful, quite frankly. And that table of contents that I mentioned at the beginning has like dozens of entries in it. It's almost like an index mixed with a table of contents. And table of contents doesn't do a proper job indenting to show you what the major header is versus the subheaders. And I swear there are times when I'm like, okay, I'm in the player section, I'm reading about this and then I'm like, why am I reading about two chases right now? Like, where.
Where'd that come from? And it's because they didn't pick up the header change, you know?
[00:59:44] Speaker A: Yeah. So, Nils, just take the header. It could even be the same font size and the same font type. Just put a background to it.
Background black, text, white. Anything else underneath. That goes till the next one. Done.
[01:00:02] Speaker B: The game needs another edit.
It needs a better person to help organize the thoughts that are better on the paper. In some ways, they do some of the classic YZE stuff, which some people like and some people don't. In other words, when you get to the skills chapter of a YZE game, that is often the guts of the mechanics of the game. It tells you all about helping and pushing and succeeding and failing broadly. And there's some of that in this game, but there's also other stuff that's just sort of salt and pepper scattered throughout the pages, which makes it harder to find. Do you want to get into things like story points right now, or do you want to, like, save that for a little later?
[01:00:38] Speaker A: We could touch on. I mean, we could go a little all over the place, I think. And the. The listener may be just like the book. Familiar. Yeah, well, the listener may be familiar with the game, but I, you know, most may not be. So I think we could pretty much march to our own drum.
[01:00:51] Speaker B: So do you want to cover them or should I?
[01:00:54] Speaker A: Do I have much on them? I don't. I do a little bit. So players earn story points, which is a kind of one of the things in the game. Like, James Bond would have hero points, and they could be spent to succeed at key actions that include, like, escaping certain doom or adding cinematic flair.
[01:01:18] Speaker B: And I will tell you this, without the story points, this game is like DOA because of the way the YZE dice mechanics work and how hard it can be to succeed. If you don't have some sort of metacurrency to help you out, you're done in this game. So I will say that you generally have. You start with three. Like, out of the gate, you get three, right? You can never have more than six. You gain one per session. So there's a way to, like, you know, kind of build them up, and it allows you to set all of your dice results of this pool that you've rolled.
All your ones get turned to twos.
So if you have banes on your stress dice, you're not going to have those, and it adds a new die. So if you roll six dice and don't get one and you spend. Don't get a six and you get like two ones. You spend a story point. The two ones both turn to twos. They're very specific about them turning to twos. And you add a seventh die or another die which is a six. So you get an auto success. But the story, story point, it can also be used to do the same thing for someone going against you. So like for a foe, what you can do there is you get rid of their successes by spending a story point. So you turn their successes into a failure. And that includes exposure roles. So if you are worried about not being recognized when you come onto the scene, a story point will make sure you are not recognized. You can't spend them on other people.
You can reuse them to re roll critical injury and vehicle damage.
So like Almost all recent YZE games, this has pretty specific D66 style critical injury and vehicle damage tables which are really pretty dangerous. Like if you roll in the 40s and above, 44 and above, you're in a world of hurt on that critical table. And spending a story point would let you re roll that. There's also the last thing I want to mention on it, Sean is around how you raise a story point.
But before I do that, you've been reading. What else do you want to add to what I've just covered?
[01:03:16] Speaker A: And the most you're going to have is six. Anything over that and you. And you lose them.
[01:03:21] Speaker B: Yep. You are meant to be generating and spending these things relatively freely when you're out of story points.
I know we try not to swear on this show, but you're, you are well and truly if you are out of story points in this game and you're like halfway through the session.
All right, so last thing I, I want to say about story points and this I think might be the saving grace because we've talked already about how we both have some concern over how the YZE YZE engine like it'll do Cold War all, all day long.
Well, I think but in terms of the high flying, high octane stuff, you better have these story points. So here's the. I think the cool part.
If you either are out or you have a situation where it just seems to make sense, you can do something called raise a story point.
You take a point of stress. We'll talk about stress in a minute. You take a point of stress, you grow your stress pool, you give the GM a villain point that they can use and you get a story point that you can Spend immediately. Once per scene you are allowed to do this. So if you haven't done it yet and the chips are down, you can be like, holy crap. I take stress, have a villain point. I use my story point to either get an auto success or make the villain fail or whatever it might be.
This mechanic alone sounds very powerful and it is. It is limited to once per scene. This mitigates a lot of the D6s Hate Me Die pool stuff from YZE. I think that alone does a lot of mitigation. Did you have the same feeling when you read that?
[01:04:48] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think it's Nils's way of. Of making sure that people could do the things that YZ ends up squashing potentially. So yep, it's a hero point, you know, and. And that's when you're wanting James Bond or high action Mission Impossible. You gotta have these one, you know, Benny's. Whatever it is, meta currency to make it happen.
[01:05:12] Speaker B: So yeah, it's also, I mean, the. We'll get to the villain points, but they, they are generated pretty quickly. Like if you push the villain, the GM gets a villain point. If you use the razor story point mechanic, they get a villain point point. There's a fair bit of that going on. All right, let's move on a little bit. The stress mechanic, for those who know either Alien or the Walking Dead, it is that die pool of different colored D6s that are rolled with. Every time you roll your attribute plus your skill, you're also rolling your stress dice. So in other words, if you have three of those, you're watching those to see, you know, if I get a six, that's a success. Fantastic.
But. But unlike your base dice, if a one comes up, it's a Bane. And that Bane in many systems in the Walking Dead and Alien, I think it's a pretty damn cool mechanic. In fact, it's probably my favorite pushing mechanic of all is the Walking Dead, where when you roll a one on those stress dice, you grow the horde size or you make the horde more aggressive or you get attacked by a zombie or something, you run out of ammo, someone gets trapped. Like all this cool, cool narrative stuff comes out of this.
Well, this is the most neutered, boring version I've ever seen of a stress dice.
This is the Bane cancels a success in your pool.
So we're already playing a system where it's hard to succeed and now you're having the stress dice not make the play more interesting, they just make it more prone to failure.
And I Hate it.
I absolutely hate it. And I would change it if I were to run this long term. Did you have a similar visceral reaction?
[01:06:53] Speaker A: Strong words, arrogant.
Don't know why you're gonna bleep that. I don't know why I did that way. Oh, I'm gonna make it richer.
[01:07:03] Speaker B: Like, you know what I can do. I should be swearing in the background beneath you when you're talking, so you'll have to bleep yourself.
[01:07:09] Speaker A: That's what I should do. Of course.
[01:07:11] Speaker B: Anyway, go on, tell us about what you think about the stress machine. Yeah.
[01:07:14] Speaker A: So you, if you.
And you. You roll the stress dice only on the original ability skill check.
[01:07:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:07:23] Speaker A: Harrigan.
So it's. It's not, hey, I have. And you mark stress, and it's stress points we should also stipulate. Right. In many other games, it's stress dice, so you kind of. To mark it. Word.
[01:07:37] Speaker B: What.
[01:07:37] Speaker A: Keep track of it. Anyway, but in this, it's mark a point, your erase points, you know, gather points. But you. Oh, and how many stress points you have or how many D6s you add to your original first roll of skill check.
[01:07:51] Speaker B: But not the push roll. That's right.
[01:07:53] Speaker A: But not the push roll. And when you do push, you don't automatically add that stress point that you immediately get to that role because in some you do.
[01:08:03] Speaker B: You do it later. Yes.
[01:08:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's just something a bit of a nuance. But to Harrigan's point, okay, I have, you know, in Alien, specifically, when you have stress, you have more D6s, which gives you a better chance of, you know, succeeding because you're, you're focused because you're, like, so panicked, your adrenaline is going through the roof. So you're able to accomplish many more things. But then it can also be a huge drawback to. To what may occur here with the Bane. If you roll and you have. Okay, I'm gonna add three stress to this skill check, because that's where I'm at. I roll. Yes. It can increase your chances. But if you roll a Bane, you could have the 16 you need, and you roll one bane on that stress die, and it's done. Like, it just cancels it.
And usually when it's the Bane, it's the bad thing. It actually says that, like, it's really bad. Right. If the band comes up, it's bad. Like, if it's more than one, it's really, really bad.
If you fail a die roll, just fail. Like, ah, I'm not gonna push. I'm Just gonna fail. Well, it's bad, but it's not that bad.
It's. Oh, I mean, yes, the story moves forward, but they just have to do something different.
[01:09:18] Speaker B: It never gets into the. It's never explicit about, like, partial successes and failing at cost and failing forward. I wish it did, but it never gets into that level. But it does obliquely reference it. You're right. You know, things should. Things should keep going.
Unless you roll the bane.
[01:09:32] Speaker A: Yes, yes. So it does say that.
And then. And then I mentioned with Harrigan, I had a note where it's like, yes, so regaining stress is then later under suffering damage.
So again, going to the stress leader. So you're kind of going through. And you're like, oh, you're having to.
[01:09:49] Speaker B: Piece it all together. How does it all work?
[01:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And so when you're like, how do I regain stress? Well, that's under the part where you suffer damage.
[01:09:57] Speaker B: And they're like, oh, yeah, not recovery. Suffering damage, which happens to have recovery tucked underneath it. Like it's. And none of these chapter headings are numbered at all. It's a. Yeah, it's a. It's a dog's breakfast.
[01:10:10] Speaker A: To touch on that a little bit. So you have to rest for one stretch to lose one point of stress.
Okay, I can rest. Yes. So how do they define that?
Resting is when you are standing still, sitting or lying down.
[01:10:30] Speaker B: Standing still.
[01:10:31] Speaker A: It says that? Yeah. Or it says when they can relax and feel relatively safe.
In air quotes, it goes on to say that.
[01:10:43] Speaker B: Those are. Those are actual quotes, my friend.
[01:10:45] Speaker A: Those are actual quotes. Yes. I'm sorry. Those are actual quotes. But you. I am animating that you're making air quotes. Yeah. Yes. It goes on to say that the game master can okay it. When a person is actively hiding from an enemy.
And I'm like, no.
[01:11:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds kind of stressful.
[01:11:03] Speaker A: If you're playing in my game and you're hiding in an air shaft from an enemy that's going to shoot bullets into it. If they hear you, you're not relaxing. I don't care what anybody says. And of course, Nils is going to say, well, that's why I put it in there. It's up to the gm. Yes, but relaxing, like, you got to be. You got to be at a safe house. Nobody knows you're there. Like that kind of resting. In my humble opinion, I would spell that out very like, it's not going to be, well, you're standing still.
Congratulations, you can remove a point of stress. Get that.
Get out of here. Get that out of here.
Standing, sitting or lying down, we're done with stress.
[01:11:46] Speaker B: Right. Which like it's not a bad mechanic but I think there's some quirky ways that they've. Things we have, we haven't seen before. I guess with the YZE engine I'm not sure that I love but I guess I want to see it in play.
All right, so moving on to other parts of the character, we have skills, talents and traits. There are 15 skills, which is an unusual number for a YZE game. They YZE games usually have four attributes and then they either tie three or four skills to each of them. So they're usually either 12 or 16.
And these are asymmetrical. So I don't know if you noticed this Sean but like agility supports four skills, empathy supports three, strength supports three and which supports five.
So it introduces a level of like load up on wits because it's good for skills. The skill selection I think is pretty decent. They are rated level 0 through 5. Like you know, with a lot of different YZE games there's a helping mechanic. Sometimes there'll be opposed roles, often for stealth and observation for many different scenarios. Throughout the book they use those two for opposed roles a lot. The player always has to win those can't just tie, you have to win them.
On the talents. There are 42 different talents and I. What my notes say here is this is kind of the heart of the game. So this is where with only 15 skills and four attributes, how do you differentiate, how do you say you're really good at something that other players aren't? So this is things like boating, diving, explosives, hacking different languages, martial arts, quick draw science, skydiving, sniping, etc. So there's a. There's a long list of things that you can really be pretty good at, I think. I think you choose three of those if I have that right Sean.
[01:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah, and you can, you can. There is no number of maximum talents that you can obtain and many are ones that you would choose and could choose again and it would incrementally. You know, they're tiered. Tiered.
Not to be mistaken for tired talents like it is which is.
[01:13:41] Speaker B: Which is in the book of complex.
[01:13:43] Speaker A: More than once in the book as tired talents.
Now in fairness I'm sure you know English may not be Nils's first language. So I, I understand.
[01:13:56] Speaker B: But anyways there's some jank to these talents, frankly. Like I, I like them again they tie back to that previous occupation we talked about. So you've Got some sort of thematic sort of grounding going on and. But what they tend to do, I think you actually had a list of the different mechanical ways they could affect the action.
The one that I kept seeing over and over again was they would reduced difficulty penalties so they weren't giving you a bonus.
The game has a difficulty of minus 3 to plus 3 in terms of dice. For like difficult tasks, something that's really hard, you reduce your pool die by three to three dice. It's really easy. You add three dice and you can also do plus two, plus one, minus two, plus one or minus one, whatever. Right. A lot of these talents say if it's a challenging task, it's average for you. So in other words, it doesn't help you. If it's an average task, you're not getting help. You're only getting help with the harder stuff, which is not a bad way to model it. But again, it leans away from the high flying spies and into the more grounded action where your talent helps you when the growing gets tough. Not that it helps you because you're a badass generally.
Does that make sense?
[01:15:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:15:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:15:13] Speaker B: Some of them allow you to swap attributes so you can use wits instead of empathy and that kind of thing depending on what the. What it is. So it's, it's not a bad collection of things. Should I keep going or you want to, you want to weigh in on talents?
[01:15:28] Speaker A: No, I think I'm good on weighing in on talents.
[01:15:33] Speaker B: Then we get to traits, which I like a lot. These are basically fate aspects.
So these are things like.
[01:15:40] Speaker A: Can I comment on something?
Maybe you'll get to it. I will.
[01:15:44] Speaker B: No, go for it.
[01:15:45] Speaker A: No, no. I don't think we're there yet. It's about a trait, but it was something where I was. So it's funny because I was going along and I'm kind of reading along and I'm like, oh, senior citizen, huh? Age. Okay, how does that work?
[01:15:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:59] Speaker A: And I'm thinking, I'm thinking I'm not in the traits section.
[01:16:04] Speaker B: I was. I had the ex. I know exactly which page you mean.
[01:16:08] Speaker A: Because I'm like, oh, I'm an old agent.
Oh, wait a minute.
[01:16:12] Speaker B: I thought there was an aging mechanic separate from traits as well. Just like you did.
[01:16:18] Speaker A: Yes. So it's because I didn't scroll up to realize I'm in Traits. And traits are characteristics of your agent.
Not like age is in Bond.
[01:16:32] Speaker B: Yes.
Here's how they work.
They are basically experience point engines. At the end of many YZE games, the GM asks the players a set of questions and you earn experience. You tick a box by saying, I explored the thing, I solved the problem, I showed up at the table. There's a whole variety of these questions, right? If you role play and lean into these traits, you will generate more experience, which I like a lot. It's a great way of doing it. And just to be a little more sort of concrete with what we're talking about here, the traits include things like they're, you know, they're named. They're things like adrenaline junkie, ambitious, careful, disgraced, flirty, forbidden liaison, greedy, loyal, patriot, phobia, PTSD relationship, ruthless senior citizen. There's the senior citizen one Sean's talking about. What it really does though, the reason why they're like aspects is that you can see that they're kind of two way. Like they can benefit you a little bit, but you can also kind of, you know, get into some trouble with. They're not quite as mechanical as something like fate or the two D20 game with its, its traits. Not quite as much. It's really about experience points, but I like it a lot in terms of like, there's reason to lean into these things, which is kind of cool. And quite frankly, this puts the lasso around all the weaknesses we talked about in the James Bond 007 game. They're all represented here. And there's no reason why you couldn't come up with your own traits for this game.
But after that, for the character, you just work out your appearance, your age.
Money is handled just like James Bond where it's an expense account. You don't have to worry about counting anything. You set up gear, you pick a home country, a native language, your name, your code name and your agency.
I think that does it for the character part of this. Right?
[01:18:11] Speaker A: Well, those that may not be familiar and I know you touched on was the experience points, which is what you get at the end of most a majority of YZE games. There's a checklist that you go through and for each one that you meet, you get an XP point. So like some of those would be. Did you participate in the session? Did the PC explore at least one new location? Did they defeat a villain which also goes into exposure?
Yeah, some of these, but. But then you get to spend those xp, you know, on talents. Typically. Yeah, yep.
[01:18:47] Speaker B: Skills, talents or lowering exposure, which you can also do in Bond, if you remember, and maybe even top secret.
[01:18:53] Speaker A: Did we touch on exposure yet?
[01:18:56] Speaker B: If. Do you want to tell us about exposure?
[01:18:58] Speaker A: Exposure is. Well, it's kind of like what it you're recognized and you gain exposure doing and doing certain things.
You gain exposure if you participated in a mission. You gain exposure in events during the session led to PC's face being caught on journalistic cameras, streaming media, or filmed by the opposition.
A PC is killed by a villain.
Captured.
[01:19:25] Speaker B: Killed by a villain.
[01:19:26] Speaker A: Killed a villain. Sorry. And was captured by the opposition. So those are the ways you gain exposure which you don't want. Because if you get to 10, what happens? Arrogant.
[01:19:37] Speaker B: You are too recognizable and you are removed from the field.
[01:19:40] Speaker A: That's right, you go to the desk or you retire.
[01:19:44] Speaker B: Anybody who knows YZE knows that almost all mechanics are around these die pools. So as your as your exposure grows from 0 to 10, you're just rolling that many D6s and looking for a 6 to see if you're recognized. You don't do it when you're out in public. You do it like if you are confronted with, with someone from the opposition who might recognize you. So you're not rolling exposure all the time. Even with like, if they hire a bunch of like low level thugs, those guys aren't going to recognize anybody. But if the lieutenant, the, the villain's lieutenant is in the restaurant and you're across the way at the buffet, he might recognize you or she might recognize you, that kind of thing.
And this is where the story points would also factor in. Right. Where you could spend a story point to not be recognized. What were you going to say?
[01:20:27] Speaker A: So XP going back to experience points. So you get, did you participate in a session? Check a box one. Did you, you know, do this? Check got an xp. So now when you're done with a mission and you're looking at your experience points that you've had, it's not uncommon for people to bank experience points in some of these YZE games. But now you have to go, well, do I want to raise an attribute? Do I don't want to increase a skill? Do I want to try to get a talent? And oh by the way, I have this exposure that I have to keep at bay.
[01:20:59] Speaker B: You have to manage it. Yeah.
[01:21:00] Speaker A: So there's another thing to manage on an to prevent things from going negative to your character with that exposure mechanic where in some games it's just, oh, xp, great. I get to spend it on skill points and talents that benefit my character. Well, now you're having to balance that a little bit more with this exposure trick. Because if you hit 10, you're in a lot of trouble and you can have 10 and the GM can opt for you to go on a mission to lower that.
But by lowering it, you know, in the game, by the way, you're doing it by, you know, oh, they took pictures of you, but they're corrupted. Right. That's how you would, you know, spend the XP to get rid of the exposure. Because it's doing something within the game that, well, you kind of erase some of what that would have exposed you.
[01:21:46] Speaker B: I don't think we've seen in the three games we've reviewed so far, I don't think we've seen any of them. They all touch on this, which is good. It's one of my like checkbox items for my. I want the game to have this. I don't think I've seen the, what I would consider like the ultimate treatment of how to lower it because it could involve like plastic surgery, faking your own death, corrupting records, going on a mission to steal data.
There could be a whole section in the book about here's how you do it and make it really like beefy.
Maybe one of those games we're going to review, we'll do that. But I don't think we've seen it yet. No, we haven't seen it yet. No, they're up. They all do it, which is cool. But hey, only thing I want to say about experience points is and we've seen this in other YZE games as well.
They really took these. I think, I think the first place these were seen was maybe it was what's Luke Cranes seminal RPG Burning Wheel. Burning Wheel, maybe. Maybe Burning will do that. If not, I think it's the power by the Apocalypse games that do it where you, you have these checkboxes to say, did you do this thing, Mark?
[01:22:47] Speaker A: If you did, yeah, it's powered by the Apocalypse World, usually dungeon.
[01:22:51] Speaker B: I know, I know it came from that. But it may have been Burning Wheel first. I forget that like there's. There's some lineage there. Right, Gotcha. Most people know it from the Power of the Apocalypse games. The first place I saw it on the YZE side was Tales from the Loop where they started. Because that was one of the early YZE games that I saw. I'm like, oh look, they use the Apocalypse World style or dungeon world style of experience points. Cool. My point is I think you have to be careful when you run these games in shorter sessions more frequently because the points can pile up. So if you are running two hour sessions, you need to make a decision as a table how often the Experience points are going out because otherwise they're like. They've. It's like a waterfall of xp because you're playing so often. Often because you're getting one just for showing up at the table, that sort of thing. So just be aware of that. If you have shorter sessions, you may want to meter or throttle how many XP you're handing out.
All right, should we cruise along to the combat side of things, how it's done, action, that sort of thing?
[01:23:50] Speaker A: Why not like.
[01:23:51] Speaker B: Like Bond and maybe even like a little bit. A little bit like Top Secret. This is primarily around like sketched maps and that sort of thing. This is not minis on a table moving in five foot squares.
This game actually goes into good description of zones and zone features. Like, the feature of a zone might be that it's dark, it might be cramped, might be filled with barrels, that kind of thing. There are range bands that are used. We're looking at the traditional YZE turn, which is five to ten seconds long around.
You know, I already mentioned that the 1 to 10 initiative cards are used. You don't repull after every round. So you're kind of going through the same thing over and over again in terms of the order that you're in. I do like a lot when you're. Especially when you're in close combat. These. This book has some great ideas for how to use extra successes. And one of them is to be able to switch initiative ranks with someone else. So if someone is acting on two and you're acting on six, you can spend an extra success. You roll your D6 pool, you get two sixes. One six can be a hit. The second six can be. I'm swatching switching numbers like initiative numbers with my foe. There's also a. I don't know if you read this. There's a hilarious bit in the book that says you can actually switch numbers with anybody at the table, including your companions. It's polite to ask them first, but you don't need to. So you could shove someone behind you essentially in the initiative order by spending this. This extra success, which I. I kind of like. It's kind of cool like that. There's pretty good coverage of surprise sneak attack ambushes. I was a bit disappointed that there were no waiting rules. I was looking. Looking for some good waiting rules.
[01:25:25] Speaker A: Well, that's not this game. There's another game that can do that for you, Harrigan.
[01:25:32] Speaker B: There is. There is. Sorry, I just touched on this, but in terms of the extra successes, it's pretty weak. Need in ranged combat, where it's like you can either switch initiative or do more damage. When you're in close combat, you can exchange initiative, do plus one damage, KO somebody if they're defenseless. So if you sneak up behind somebody and get an extra success, bam, they're out. Which is very emulative of the fiction. Like, I really like that a lot. And it also puts all the grappling and everything. So pinning, pushing, shoving, tripping, wrestling a handheld item out of someone's hands. Anyone? That's all covered by extra successes in combat, which I really like. Like, I think this does hand to hand combat maybe better than any game we've seen yet.
I really like the way it does it.
[01:26:20] Speaker A: Strong words, Harrigan.
[01:26:23] Speaker B: It's a refrain for you today.
Beyond that, like, there's classic stuff like there's rules for being prone for being defenseless, for tackling. There's neat rubles for blocking, actually. So YZE games usually have a fast action and a slow action. And in this game you can block hand to hand. Think of a hand to hand block with a fast action. So two people fighting are generally like using their slow action to strike and their fast action to block. So there's a lot of chop socky like which is I think pretty cool. And they also. This is kind of important.
If you're successful with the block. Each success on your die does not block the hit. It blocks one damage.
And that's important because sometimes if they've only hit you with one success, but it's two damage, your block only subtracts one damage from that. So you still get damaged. There's some other YZE games we've seen where the very first success, actually it nullifies the hit period and that slows the combat down. This is a little better, I think, where the blocks are a little bit less effective, which I quite like.
Kind of strangely for some of these, you know, more modern games, you're counting.
[01:27:34] Speaker A: Every bullet, one bullet, two bullet, three bullets.
[01:27:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Including for auto fire and all that kind of stuff. Right.
I don't know if you caught this. There's a really cool way of doing grenades where pulling the pin is a fast action and throwing the grenade as a slow action.
I love that. And I don't know if that came from Twilight 2000. Maybe I don't remember that game well enough.
But picture you can pull the pain in one round and do something else with your slow action. And then the next round you can throw the grenade because you're just holding the. Holding the. You Know the lever against the grenade kind of cool.
It does model silencers so they do less damage and they're harder to use, make the gun a little more unwieldy. And there's a few little weird gun things. I won't go deeply into the. Into the gun nut part of this. The gun porn part of this. Sean looks very shocked right now. What?
Okay, fine, I will.
It lists as Sig Sauer, but it doesn't tell you what model of Sig Source hour. It looks like a P226 to me, but I. Yeah, for some reason, the Beretta Model 92, what you would know as an M9, maybe you even trained on an M9 when you were there in the. In the army.
It is the most like, effective, accurate pistol in the game, even alongside some other pistols that are known to be just that. Right. So that's a little weird. There's some super rare guns that are for some reason included, including like a fresh custom. Murder was one of the most it has. It's really strange.
Yeah. I'll stop on the guns.
Staying with combat, though. The damage model, this is where. This is one of the places where like YZE is a bloody deadly game. As soon as you run out of health, your help is going to be in that generally in that sort of three to five range. Right. It's. It's one plus an average of your strength and your agility, I think is your health score. So you're going to be in that 4 to 5 range pretty typically. Pretty. Pretty often as soon as you run out, you go and you take some. Take some damage that goes. Put you at zero. You go to the critical tables and this is where you can be instantly killed. What, 16% of the time, something like that. Like a lot.
[01:29:33] Speaker A: The top three on a D66 are dead instantly.
[01:29:38] Speaker B: Dead.
[01:29:38] Speaker A: I think 66 is your heart is ripped out or something crazy. The 65 is usually.
[01:29:45] Speaker B: It's the head. Yeah.
[01:29:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:29:46] Speaker B: But if you look at it from 44 forward, there are a bunch of bad injuries, including like, you know, internal injuries, a punctured lung, just internal bleeding. There's all kinds of stuff that will eventually kill you, which for a certain kind of fiction I totally get. And it'd be perfect for a spy game, but not for Mission Impossible.
It's not.
It just isn't.
[01:30:08] Speaker A: Ethan Hunt on the table.
[01:30:11] Speaker B: Yeah, clear.
So I think the last. The last thing I want to talk about before we get to the GM section, which I think we can cover relatively quickly, there's A whole vehicle and chase section that quite frankly is. Sean wants to give something to say about it.
[01:30:26] Speaker A: I just want to note that the vehicle section lists specific vehicles. Harrigan.
It's not just car. It's not subcompact car.
It's that truck. It's not SUV, it's Ford F150.
[01:30:43] Speaker B: So I will spoil one of my takeaways from this game overall, which is like the James Bond 007. DNA runs deeply through this game. There's all kinds of places where you can see a direct connection of clearly what's what. The inspiration was for Nils when he was writing this thing. And it includes those beautiful crisp line drawings of the firearms and the vehicle. The art is very reminiscent of those early Bond books, as is the specific firearm or car like you're talking about.
The part I thought weird was weird about the cars is that almost every car listed is like a supercar of some kind. It's like Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Rolls Royces and like, where are the Toyotas and the.
[01:31:23] Speaker A: You know, that's for the supplement. Harrigan.
[01:31:27] Speaker B: Apparently not a bad idea. You back to chases and vehicles.
These rules are very inspired by. Reminiscent of the James Bond chase rules. There's no bidding at the beginning, but there is a simultaneous reveal of like you choose a maneuver, you both turn your cards over or you both reveal them at the same time. I'm not going to go into it deeply, but it's. It's got similar like pursue, flee, hide, block, cut off, ram, stand and shoot, do a trick. It's. It's very reminiscent of bomb with some, you know, there's a couple pieces. Quite frankly, it does maybe a little bit better than the Bond stuff. And some pieces that I think are not as cool. Like the whole ease factory bidding I think is genius. And this game doesn't have that. That's kind of a big thing that it's missing.
There is, I think, pretty cool 2D6 obstacle tables for both foot chases, ground vehicle chases, boats and flying vehicles.
In fact, do you have two D6 handy, Sean?
[01:32:25] Speaker A: Come on, man.
You forget my name?
[01:32:31] Speaker B: Let's say you're. It's a foot chase. Roll those dice. Let's see what the obstacle is so the GM can roll this obstacle at the beginning of every, like, round in the chase.
And when Sean rolls a nine nine.
The police have shown up. A pair of police try to try and block the chase, weapons drawn. This gives a minus 2 modifier to pursue or flee. Hide and stand and shoot anyone who Performs the stand and shoot maneuver, will be fired upon by the police.
Interestingly, you're doing this like, in order, and this is why you revealed your cards blindly. The police showed up for you, and then I'm gonna have my guy shoot. Now the police are in there in that round, firing back at them kind of thing. So it's. It's kind of cool. I like those tables a lot, actually.
All right, Anything else you want to talk about before we move on to the GM section, which I think is. There's not a whole lot to it.
[01:33:22] Speaker A: You know what other covert action game?
[01:33:27] Speaker B: Nailed it.
[01:33:28] Speaker A: Used cards and chases.
Spycraft 2.0 operators does too.
[01:33:37] Speaker B: There's a few games like that that have maneuver cards kind of thing, right?
[01:33:40] Speaker A: Yeah, but I was Spycraft 2.0 the first to do it.
[01:33:46] Speaker B: Maybe.
I don't know either.
GM section.
This is a collection of like, a little bit of setting information. You work for NATO, you work for a group called Section X, which is kind of cool. All the Bond stuff comes through here as well. You got an S branch instead of a Q section.
They want to know where you live in your city. Just like, remember how Bond was like, where's your flat in London?
Same thing. Like, what part of the city do you live in, etc. There's a little bit of a breakdown on the mission structure. Do the teaser, have a briefing, gather some info, have some action scenes, do a showdown, and then do an after mission scene.
These are all in the final, like 10 pages or so of the book, or final 10, 15 pages. So they're pretty lightweight treatment, but at least they're there. There is a neat section on keeping the PCs alive. So this is the whole, like I mentioned how. How dangerous the criticals can be. So this talks about pushing, raising a story point like we talked about, and also getting captured. So in other words, in those scenarios where in some games you might see death on the line, it may Instead be the PCs getting captured or some of them getting captured, that sort of thing.
We haven't talked about it much yet. There are villain points that now come into play in the GM section, and this follows. Quite frankly, this is a tip of the hat to Gabe's call a couple of shows ago on our Q A session where he was wondering, how do you keep the villains alive without it being super cheesy? When the players are so prone to putting down their opponents, how do you have that villain stick around and show up for the next, you know, the next movie kind of thing? The villain points are all about that. They're like the story points for the PCs. They, I think one for one, they cancel successes, if I remember correctly. Sean, is that right?
Yes.
That is different than. Remember how I described blocks cancel damage. So if someone hits you and then the reason why that matters, like if someone hits you with an axe that does three damage, your block only takes off one of those. In this case, they're, they're blocking successes.
So if the PC shoots and hits the villain and gets two successes, two villain points will wipe that out entirely.
Same way you can't. The villain can't spend those for frivolous things. You're not doing more damage with them. It's to keep the villain alive. Basically. They start with zero and then they generate them as we described before. When PCs push, when they raise a story point, or when they surrender or get captured, you also get villain points as the, as the gm.
Then there's some advice on like leaning into the PC talents and traits on how to use exposure in the game. They provide some sample characters, they go into some real world intelligence agencies. And I think one of the things that's neat here is that they include adventure seeds with each one of those. So when they talk about the CIA and MI6 and various agencies, there's a little, little piece that you could kind of blow into an adventure that's written about each one of them. They cover criminal organizations and then at the end there's like a glossary of sorts that talks about game terms and those sorts of things.
Beyond that, there's a, there's a beefy illustrated equipment section which I think occurs actually maybe even before the GM section if I remember correctly. But it's basically must be 20 pages or so. But it's all this nice line drawing work of the, of the guns, the gear, the, you know, grapple hooks and helicopters and all that sort of stuff. Right.
That's what I had on the game. I had some key takeaways. But I want to let you reflect on it before we kind of get into the end game here.
[01:37:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So the artwork is after the GM section.
[01:37:04] Speaker B: It is.
[01:37:04] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, it's a list. But I like in the GM section that it also goes over almost everything we talked about prior, like pushing roles, raising a story point, using story points, getting, you know, like, what is, what are you doing here? Now it's over here in this section. It also, what I found interesting, which I thought was, oh, okay. They really kind of went into this was in the Organization X, they actually outlined the leadership by Name really? Did you see? You did not see that?
Yeah. So I just don't remember it part. Yeah, it was.
[01:37:38] Speaker B: I cruised that part.
[01:37:39] Speaker A: Yeah. I was like going through it and I'm like, huh? Oh, okay. That's interesting.
[01:37:42] Speaker B: Oh, you're right. There's individuals that are called out, right?
[01:37:45] Speaker A: Yes, that's right.
[01:37:46] Speaker B: That's right.
[01:37:46] Speaker A: Specifically. So I think that may be a tip to M and Q and Moneypenny, but it's specifically for the X organization.
And then it goes into like the mission and how to create one. So I thought was pretty cool.
Yep.
[01:38:02] Speaker B: Just remember one last thing on the equipment section. That's also where they get into the gas gadgets and that sort of thing. So the game does cover the classic Bond or Mission Impossible style. Like, you know, fanciful gear that's in the field.
All right. Before we get into like, does the game have all the things that we said it. We should. It should, you know, to tick the boxes to be a good covert action game.
My main takeaways are like, the game for what it's trying to do is kind of left. You know, it's in left field.
Even the story points, I think help a lot. But there are these, like, brute, like the fact that the critical injuries are so brutal. There's high rate of fire weapons, which means that the villains shooting at you with an average pistol are shooting twice. And every one of those is a pretty significant chance to like do major damage to the, to the hero or the spy. And then these success canceling stress dice, all of that together, it makes me think like, man, these guys are going to struggle. Like, it just feels like the odds are not tipped enough in the favor the way that the Bond game, and I hate to keep going back to that. We've only reviewed three games so far, so our context window is limited here. But the Bond game was very upfront about, like, you know, this is all about the players being heroes. They'll be successful. They're the good guys. Yada, yada, yada. This has some lip service to that. But then there's some YZE mechanics that are in the path for sure.
I will also say it's a very complete and a very competent game. Like, I don't think they're. I don't read this and go, well, where's this? They didn't cover this whole part of the genre. How would I possibly model X, Y or Z like, like going prone or grappling or struggling to get a device out of somebody's hands. It covers all the bases, like it's got rules for all kinds of stuff. And most of those rules are not super complicated. So it's not like you're going to be really stressed to kind of internalize them all. Generally speaking, though, the thing. The thing lacks polish and charm. It has. Doesn't have a lot of character.
The art's pretty good, but it just so badly needs another edit and some reorganized reorganization.
I've already talked about how important I think the story points are. And without them, without the ability to raise them, I think the game is not. Is going to just draw into a halt on the cinematic style of play. And then I've already talked about the support. All right, so all I've got after that is what we're looking for in a game. But what are your main takeaways for the game? Like how you. What's your gut tell you about this game? Do you want to run it, play it?
[01:40:24] Speaker A: I do want to run it. I do want to play it. I want to see how it rolls. I'm an YZE kind of person, so I. There's some familiarity with me and some bias in that regard. So I'm not, you know, I'm not going in completely blind on trying to figure this out.
I think for cinematic high action play, it's James Bond Bond just to say. And I know it's probably a compare and contrast, but it just there. And there are elements in this game where I think it could keep it a little bit more grounded. So while the aspiration is to hit high flying action like Mission Impossible because sometimes James Bond is not too crazy, like Mission Impossible is crazy.
[01:41:03] Speaker B: The more. The more recent ones are.
[01:41:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that it can come down a couple notches and make it a little bit more challenging where you are balancing the players, you know, creating enough difficulty that the players have a challenge and that is there without the premise of the game in James Bond saying, like, you're favoring the players. That's just what it is. Give it to them, let them roll with it, you know, put things in front of it. And sometimes players can take advantage of that. Like, I know I'm just gonna win, you know, hey, but. But this one, I don't know, maybe this might be my Cold War frame.
[01:41:40] Speaker B: It might, it totally might. We. I. So I think we really, really need to play this game to see if what we're saying right now. Because, you know, we've just read the thing, we haven't played it right. We don't know if, if it will come out quite as risky as we think it will.
I will say that it's pretty bold though, to put in the beginning like, like you can play Kingsman with this game.
I'm like, dude, have you seen Kingsman?
Like the scene in the church.
Oh, I mean, yeah, with. With Freebird playing Ballroom Blitz, man, it's.
[01:42:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:42:14] Speaker B: I mean, that is an amazing scene. And I don't think this game can touch it. I don't think it can touch it.
Yeah, there'd just be. They had to, you know, only certain games, like you have to play feng shui or something to. To model that. Right.
[01:42:26] Speaker A: And even then I'm questioning that game. But yeah, you.
[01:42:29] Speaker B: You said we'll have to get to that game too, if I. I think so. Yeah.
[01:42:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:42:33] Speaker B: All right. So you have a similar. I think, like I'm interested. I wish it were better laid out and better organized, but I'm definitely interested enough to want to experience the game is what I would say.
[01:42:45] Speaker A: I think the layout and some of the little hang ups are okay. I haven't played this game. I have to read it. And there's different. It's referenced in different areas.
Got it. Once you play it and understand how story points work or exposure, you don't have to look them up. It's kind of into your brain. So therefore the layout takes a backseat after the fact.
But on an initial review, it could be a little difficult.
[01:43:11] Speaker B: You know what?
Remember how I said that they actually have a pretty strong drive thru presence and they have all these supporting products?
[01:43:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:43:18] Speaker B: There is a whole GM pack that I suspect coalesces. Brings together all these pieces that are spread throughout the book and probably put some. Because I think it's like four or eight pages long. Like it's not just a G, like a single screen. There's a fair bit of things they bring together that might do it.
So I have enough interest that not only will I either run or play in a vignette with you, I might run this game play by post. And I also might run in that BS or con upcoming here in January.
I want to see how this thing, how it rolls down the road in action. That's what I want to see.
Do you mind if I do the does it have what we're looking for checklist?
[01:43:57] Speaker A: By all means, sir.
[01:43:59] Speaker B: Okay. Are the spies competent, Sean?
[01:44:04] Speaker A: Yes, maybe.
I guess it depends on how you roll in this.
[01:44:11] Speaker B: My. My answer says unclear.
[01:44:14] Speaker A: Yes, I see that.
I like. I like to think that what I create is going to be a work of competency.
[01:44:24] Speaker B: Well, okay, so let me, let me give you a little bit of a counterpoint here. And I was thinking about this this morning after I was. My notes are all done and whatnot.
[01:44:31] Speaker A: The.
[01:44:31] Speaker B: If you go to that section in the GM's guide, I think I. Maybe I didn't even mention it. The GM's guide also has a short section of like foes and NPCs. So your average guard, your fellow spy you might meet in the field, it has a half dozen or a dozen of those.
Even the guards are like rolling like 5 and 6D6 to fight you.
[01:44:51] Speaker A: They, they are like, for example, I have it up. The armed terrorist has a strength of three. And I would imagine with close combat, that's associated with it. That's two, that's five D6s. Yeah.
[01:45:02] Speaker B: And your average PC might have six if they're good at it, right?
[01:45:07] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:45:08] Speaker B: So I don't know how competent these spies are. Are. I don't know.
[01:45:12] Speaker A: If I were nils, I would have done just straight strength, agility, wit, empathy. Boom.
[01:45:17] Speaker B: Yeah. They don't need skills. They don't need skills. Yep. So let's, let's, let's do a slight design session here for those who are listening about and they want to do like these Easy Bake NPCs, these enemies that come up with very quickly in real time. There's some really easy ways to do it. These guys, Sean, could be a single number.
They could just be 3D for every 45 for everything. And one thing, one, one way to do it. And this is, I've learned some of these lessons from like powers and paragons. So this has a great way of building foes sort of quickly. You could easily do. You got a 2D base because you're a regular person. So you got two dice. And if it's something that they are or. Excuse me, let me, let me, let me reframe it. Let's say they'll do three dice. For the average thing that the goon is trying to do. Do. Let's say the goon is trying to drive. Goons aren't particularly good at driving. They roll three dice. If it's something the goon is good at, give them an extra die or two. So if they're shooting, if they're intimidating, if they're punching, they get one more die. And if it's something the goon should not be good at, like trying to figure out a puzzle or be particularly observant, take a die away and you're done.
[01:46:26] Speaker A: Genius.
[01:46:27] Speaker B: It's not me. This design, you know, this thought process exists throughout the industry.
[01:46:32] Speaker A: Everybody else is genius, but you know what I mean?
[01:46:35] Speaker B: As opposed to these guys. They're not bad, but these, these NPCs have all four attributes and they have a list of skills and you have to put them together and they have a health score picture that could also be a one and done if you want. Like the equivalent of like a mob. Because we're going to get to that question. Any hit should take out a thug. Any hit. Don't give them a health of 3 or 4. Unless you're modeling Cold war spy fiction in which case you're having a desperate battle with somebody on a train or in a subway for freaking Mission Impossible and Kingsman.
The body counts through the roof for these types of battles, you know.
Anyway, so it's unclear as to how competent our spies are compared to these guys. Is tradecraft properly represented in this game?
Sure, I, I think, yes. And I think this is going to turn into an also ran question for us where we're not going to review a single game that doesn't do this because it's table, table stakes. Does it have chase, tailing or vehicle combat rules? Yes, sure does. Does it have social rules for interrogation, persuasion, deception and seduction?
Yes, kind of.
[01:47:47] Speaker A: Kind of it does.
[01:47:50] Speaker B: You can have your own opinion then maybe, but I'm just giving you my, my perspective. Like I think it's a weaker take. It does have them, you're right. But they are buried in the skills themselves.
There are no, there's no treatise or like wider discussion of how to explore that in the game. It's not like Bond, like Bond has all kinds. And even, even top secret has a, like all those result tables which I was reading just recently and kind of chuckling. Some of them are like the, the, the, you know, not only do they not give the information but now they're mad at you.
There's stuff like that.
[01:48:22] Speaker A: That's the guy. Oh no, that was top secret. Going through, going through the kitchen, trying to persuade somebody.
[01:48:28] Speaker B: Yeah, they're pretty, they're pretty funny. So it does. This game does do it, but it's not, it's not a strength is what I would say. Are there multi part challenges, those sorts of things where you have many different things that all have to combine? No, he's shaking his head. No, he's correct. It does not. Does it have gadgets and vehicles? I'll just go quick, quickly. Sure.
[01:48:44] Speaker A: Does not only does it have gadgets of vehicles, one thing we did not touch on. Is you can modify the vehicles by the whole.
[01:48:50] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a system, right?
[01:48:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:48:53] Speaker B: Yep, agreed. There's a whole system for that.
Is there a reputation or recognition or fame system?
He's nodding. Absolutely. Does it have easy bake enemies? I said moderately. I'm gonna say no.
They're not hard to come up with. I mean, I just did it a minute ago. Know it's really easy to come up with them. But the game does not suggest easy bake enemies.
[01:49:13] Speaker A: No, it doesn't. But to tap on to your suggestion, you could also do like. Oh, like for guns of this NPC type. Starts at 1d or 2d and then for each additional one they get an additional D and then you roll them all and it's not one person, it's everybody shooting you at the same time game.
[01:49:36] Speaker B: Yes. If you're doing the whole, the whole mob or the mob thing. Yeah. I'll tell you what, I'm going to change my Easy Bake enemies answer to no because. And here's why. So the stat blocks are not big. Right. They'll fit on an index card, but they will not fit on one line. And here's the important part. They've all got gear. And if you arm your. What were they, terrorists or thugs or guards? If you give them body armor and a weapon, the body armor and the weapon all has stats.
So you're now in this model of. You're having, you're modeling like, like little PCs, little mini PCs and some.
[01:50:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:50:10] Speaker B: Little mini mini guys. What, what some games do is say, don't worry about that. Like they've got, sure, they got SMGs, whatever, but they're, they're, they're cannon fodder. So just roll their dice. If they're a lieutenant or a, like a sub boss or whatever. Now equip them with a gun that actually does plus two accuracy and does three damage instead of one and all that. So sort of stuff. Right. This game doesn't do that. You're. If you're terrorists, if they have freaking aks, those do 5 damage if they fire a burst at you, which will kill most agents or put them in the critical range outright with one hit, one success.
[01:50:47] Speaker A: Right. An agent's dangerous work, Harrigan.
Just saying.
[01:50:53] Speaker B: Ah, yes. All right. Keeping on trucking here.
Does it have meta currencies?
Sure. Yes, sure does. And I don't know if you saw in my show notes here or in our private notes I've, I've added, including the GMs, this is a tip of the hat to Mr. Dibbing the villain points.
[01:51:10] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:51:10] Speaker B: Yep, yep. And it has both of those, right? Does it have failing forward? Not really. Rules as written. It obliquely references it.
The firearms. Fun and dangerous. I'm going to say. Yes, they are. Are actually.
Are there consequences other than death on the line here?
Yes, there are. They're critical tables, right?
[01:51:30] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:51:30] Speaker B: They're all physical, but there's quite a whole set of like, you know, long recovery types of injuries.
[01:51:35] Speaker A: There is a trait called ptsd, but I don't think it relates to. I don't know if that relates to combat.
[01:51:40] Speaker B: Well, we hadn't talked about this but like fate, you can change your traits, which is pretty cool.
Yeah. So I like that a lot. So you can drop one because it doesn't apply anymore. You can add one because of what happened in the game.
[01:51:51] Speaker A: May not be a senior citizen anymore.
[01:51:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Let me know when you figure that one out, please.
Are there solid hand to hand rules? I said they're pretty solid because of the block move. I kind of like that. And the extra success allowing you to grapple and trip and all that stuff. Pretty neat hand to hand combat rules.
Is there other rules for assisting someone?
[01:52:14] Speaker A: Gotta have a skill in that thing. You can give the other person a bonus die.
[01:52:22] Speaker B: Up to plus three I think is kind of like traditional YZE sorts of helping rules. Is there a framework or advice for adventure and mission design?
A little.
[01:52:32] Speaker A: It's in the supplement.
Gotta buy the next book. Come on.
[01:52:37] Speaker B: There's a little bit in that GM section, but it's not a lot. It's a page.
And are there mob rebel or cannon fodder or mobile mook rules? And the answer is no.
And I think you need those if you're going for that top level of high octane stuff where you are just a supreme badass kind of thing. Without that you're not gonna. Now not hard to add it, but out of the box this. This game just has this mismatch for what it wants to be versus what it looks like it is on paper.
And we come to the end of Agent Provocateur.
[01:53:11] Speaker A: Have you tried Agent Provocateur?
If you have, let us know if you think you're gonna pick it up and run it and then you do and you let us know. You could email
[email protected] or give us a call at 929 Big Dice.
On behalf of my esteemed colleague Harrigan, stay in the shadows. Keep the comms open and always be ready to roll initiative. Check out the next one Want more of Sean and Harrigan? You can find Sean at YouTube.com PG Sean, where he streams every Saturday at 8am Central Time. You can find more of Harrigan's RPG musings at harriganshearth.substack.com Links in the show Notes this episode of Go Back, brought to you with help from the following field operatives, special agents, black ops directors and friendlies Joe Swick, Roger French, Merkel Froehlich, Tony Sugarloaf, Baker Hus Caro, Laramie Wall, Eileen Barnes, Heptalima Aaron Rilya, Wayne Peacock Old School DM Jeff Walken, Yorkus Rex Eric Salzweedle, Phil McClory Jason Hobbs, Michael O' Holland, Remy Billido, Crystal Egstad Eric Aviation Voronak, Brian Kurtz, Chad Glamen, Jim Ingram Orchest Chris Shore, Brian Rumble, Victor Wyatt, Kevin Keneally, Andy Hall, Jason Weitzel, Salt Hart, Kelly K. Ness, Tad Lechman, Nicholas Abruzzo, Matthew Catron, Curtis Takahashi, Angela Murray Mr. White 20 Jason Connerly, Shannon Olson, Ryan West, Kristen McLean, Larry Hollis, Glenn Seal, Jake at Faded Quill Gaming T Tess Trekkie, Tim Jensen, Kelly Ness, Nubis Christopher Lang, Kralog Peter Skaines and 1D4 Khan James thank you agents. We appreciate it.
