Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Strap in. Operatives, this is go back 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.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Sean and Harrigan.
Harrigan, how are you?
[00:00:23] Speaker A: Good, Sean. I'm in the field.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: You are coming to us from the Pacific Coast.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Yes. Which. Which means I'm in a. You know, a different place with different gear and different everything. So apologies if any of the technical issues are from that we can't divulge
[00:00:42] Speaker B: the location of our safe house.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: It's true.
It is like a safe house tucked in the mountains, too.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Harrigan's on the lamb.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Otherwise I'm okay. I'm not in the same deep freeze that the rest of the country is, or the good chunk of the country is. So I'm happy.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: We hit like 20 degrees. Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit. Like it's, it's. It's short weather again now.
I don't know.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. A key or a clue to my location. It was in the 60s here yesterday. It's supposed to hit 70s today, so.
It's all right. I don't mind it at all. Yeah. But overall, it's been a little while since we've done a pure play talky talk episode. We've been doing a lot of actual plays and whatnot, so. Feels good to be back in the saddle. Yeah.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: So the Agent Provocateur vignette duet is coming soon, and then we also had Gabe dibbing run Mercenary Spies and Private Eyes for us.
So those will be both coming soon.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: If I may say so, I was a player on both those games. They're both great. I really liked them.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I enjoyed.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: You did a great job. Gabe did a great job.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Yes. So those will be coming to field operatives, directors, field agents on Patreon, and then to the public once I get them all squared away. So getting the audio maybe a little tuned better than the raw recording, which I can be a little stickler for, but I'm going to try not to get inside my own head.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Yes. That's why I apologize before. And I'll apologize again for the. The setup I have right now, because I bet when you get in. Into the weeds, you're going to be like, what the.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: It's fine. It's fine. Okay.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: All good.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
What have you been up to in the world of COVID apps?
[00:02:37] Speaker A: You know, work and the travel out to where I am and everything else has kept me very busy. So in addition to, like, the playing the vignettes and Doing some boning up for this episode and that kind of thing. Not much.
Oh, here's one I'll mention actually. Maybe it belongs in. In sit rep, but I'll. I'll reveal it early.
You remember my being upset about Pluto not having bomb when you told me it did, right? Remember that whole.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: I. I do. Vaguely.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Vaguely, yeah. Yeah. So Netflix has them all now. Oh well, I didn't watch anything when I was, you know, I'm out here basically on a recon mission with my wife looking for a place to retire to eventually. Right on the. But I've. I've had to fly for work so I've, you know, tested the airport out here. Etc. Long story. But I have downloaded a whole bunch of Bond movies with the intention of watching them. So they're, you know, like on your iPad, you can download them for offline play kind of.
So I did go through and do a review and that's when I, when I found like, hey, Netflix has like virtually. I don't know if it's officially all of them, but it looks like virtually all of them including like Never say never again. Like it has.
It looks like the whole catalog. So I'm preparing for a deep dive into this stuff. What about you? What are you. What have you been up to?
[00:03:55] Speaker B: I listened to a.
Like a member of Seal Team 6's audiobook.
I can't remember the name, but if you give me just a.1 second. By the time I finish this mumbling statement, I could probably, probably tell you what the title of the book and the author is. I thought it was okay. I didn't mean it wasn't.
I mean I find a common theme with some of those books.
It was. Well now come on.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Like it should you keep looking. I've got. I just remember one other thing that I did listen to or I'm in the middle of listening to and that is the.
Oh boy, now I'm going to forget the name. What's the, what's the podcast we both like with the, with the former CIA guy and the guy who. The, the reporter who covered MI6.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: This is classified.
The rest is classified.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: So I'm in the middle. So I won't cover it, but I'm in the middle of. The rest is classifieds coverage of the Israeli like attack on Hezbollah with the. All the devices.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Which is the front end of. It's pretty fascinating. I think it's a multi. Going to be a multi. Episode sort of deep dive. So I'm at the front end of getting into that and I'm also. Yeah. There's other things I'm dabbling in, but I haven't been doing in the last week or so, I guess is what I would say. Did you find your. The title yet of your. Your book?
[00:05:13] Speaker B: I did. It's the Right Kind of Crazy by Clint Emerson.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: And the. I did not know this well. I. I'm like, I'll download this one and listen to it. I didn't realize until after the fact that there was like a book or two that I had like earmarked on Amazon or something that he also wrote, which is like a. Like more survival guide is. I haven't bought it. I don't know why. It's just more another book that. So then I'm like, oh, he. I didn't realize he did that book as well. So he's kind of a, you know, prepare for any type of disaster. And here are some fundamental ways that you can potentially prep that way. And I don't know why.
I don't know if it was a particular. It was probably like a.
What is it? You know, a shooter episode that happened in real life. And I was telling my wife, like, do you. Do you keep attention when you go out into different places and. And telling her like, what happened, what would happen if something were to happen, what. What you would do. And she doesn't like paying attention in that stuff.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: But situational awareness.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Yes, very much so. Yes. And so his was like that times a thousand.
His books.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Funny.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: I don't have it at hand, but.
So my wife has a. She's a little bit of preparator. Just. Just a tiny little bit.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Well, you know, nothing wrong with having a few canned goods. House.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Well. And like I said, I think on a prior episode, because of the fires in Colorado, we have like a bag that we can rapidly pack or is partially packed with food, but we can throw the passports in it and all that kind of stuff. But she went one step further at Christmas time and got me a book that is not about go bags. It's about like what they call it. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna bother going into the closets. Dig it out because I brought it on this trip. But it's about how to make your home a bunker.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Oh, wow. So. So if all. If all goes to hell, dude, Zombie apocalypse, man.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Hell, yeah, it all goes to hell. It's like you're not going to be on the road, you're going to be at home.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: And you need to figure out how to set the traps.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Harrigan. Home Alone.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: I need. I need to read it.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Home Alone, the movie starring adult Harrigan.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Yep. I need some rope and paint cans.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: That's hilarious.
But anyways, that's one book I was reading. And then other than that, I started kind of paging through Operators, the role playing.
Role playing game. Just briefly. Just looking at kind of the core mechanic in that book which I paged open but didn't get like through it very deeply.
Yeah.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: So that is a tough game to page through or to like skim and get the gist of it at. Maybe even as hard as some of the older games that we've talked about.
I kind of strongly dislike the way it's written, but when you pair it all down, the. The mechanic and the way it works is really cool, but it's not conveyed crisply.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: No, it reminds me of somebody who. It's kind of like.
It's just my interpretation that when we meet an individual that does something that is at their core and then they try to take that to a different medium or a different path. Right. Case in point, this person may really, really like covert action movies, genre things of that nature. And then I'm not saying that they don't know how to design a game, but they say, oh, I'm going to convert this into a game versus I'm a game designer first. And that's what I do is design games and monkey with the. I'm a car mechanic and I mechanic all the cars and all of the things.
And then I'm going to try to like build a car.
Right. Yep. Get the engine all kind of right. But then everything else kind of falls weirdly in odd places like, you know what I'm saying? Does that make sense?
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Yes.
Okay, so. So, well, I'm. Forgive me, I'm scrolling on the web right now. I'm trying to find the RPG publisher because you might be surprised, it's escaping me. Maybe we can put this in the show notes. Oh, here's the drive through link.
This is a regular RPG publishing company.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Okay, I found it now. So this author has done the Veil.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: No.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Cyberpunk?
[00:09:45] Speaker B: No. Correction. No, I believe I. I know. And I was just going to say who the author was and I cannot remember. You mean author the pub. The publisher might have done the veil. You. You may be dead on. Fraser Simons did the Veil. Fraser Simons has done many of many a games, so if it's under his company, I totally get it. His brother did the game is my understanding right? They share the same last name. I. I'm assuming it's his brother.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Did operators.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Yes.
Oh, okay.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: All is clear.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Yes. So Fraser did the Veil, and he's also done quite a few other peril.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Hack the planet.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: He's a very. Yes. Hack the planet. He's a very cyberpunk guy. Like, he's done.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Many. That's Fraser. I've followed Fraser for quite some time, even in the Google days, but. And then when I got the operators, I'm like, wow, this name seems familiar, but it's not. And then somewhere in the gist, I think Fraser is acknowledged either as like a helper designer, or. Yes. And I'm like, oh, there's a connection, I get it. But I don't know his brother's works that well.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: A, my bad.
B, I think your initial reaction is probably spot on. Then what we may have here is Frasier knowing what he's doing with game design and his brother, or whoever, this other person. What's the author's name?
[00:11:04] Speaker B: I can't remember. I think it's a Simons as well, but I don't. His first name fails me.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: In other words, he probably had a passion project and he's like, I would also like to do a game and you're a publisher. Etc. Because you're right. One of the things that bothers me about the way the game is written is it has that like 200 pages of special Forces lore in the back half of the game. Like that game should. Sean, that game should be like 20, 10 or 20 pages of rules, tops, and then another 30 pages of like campaign ideas and that kind of thing. Instead, it's like a two or three hundred page book. And a lot of it is.
So folks who are listening understand it is a lot of recounting of actual Special Forces missions and actual covert action missions. Right?
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a section that says about all the operations, their titles and what they're done in the year and all that, which is great lore. Like even Delta Green has. The Handler's Guide is all like the history of Delta Green. It gets really into it. But it's also a separate book that many players don't necessarily need to play the game. And so I. I get the passion from the author. Like, he's all in.
But you're to. You know what you were saying? I'm wondering. It's like there could have been headers and breaking down and let's get the mechanics in certain spots.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know what? This isn't a show about operators. But you know, just the. I would also say Sean and I are surmising here. We're guessing about how it was written and by whom. We don't know.
But the. You know, when we do get to this game, and we will eventually. I think we mentioned this on the show already, but it has a really cool mechanic because it uses fate dice, but it's not a fate game. And you know the play that post that I'm running of this currently, which is this glacially moving, sometimes months go, go by between turns kind of thing.
All four players, all four of us like it and all four of us are like when it comes to how it was conveyed and reading through like one of the guys is like, oh my God. If I read one more, you know, note about our mission in 1989 to wherever.
It's too much.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And it has a card thing component which I thought was kind of interesting.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: That helps narrate for chases and martial arts. Yeah.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: But anyways that and then I'm trying to think about what else I have.
I'm contemplating running something for patrons of the show because it is at one of our award levels. I'd run a game or one of us would run a game. I know Michael.
Yeah. Michael Holland had mentioned like, oh, it makes me think about top secret. And I'm like, I could throw a D20 top secret game down on the table sometime to get two or three people if they want to play it sometime. It could be any game. I just would throw it out there.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Didn't he say spycraft?
[00:13:59] Speaker B: He did, yeah.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Spike Craft. Not top secret.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Oh, did I say top secret? You did. My apologies. I meant Spike. I almost did it again. I meant spycraft. Yes.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: And I'll let you run that one.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean the old classic D20. It's not, it's. I never played it back in the day. It was Star wars top secret D and D. I mean, it was like, oh, just oh, it's not fantasy, it's espionage. Oh, it's not espionage, it's Star Wars. Like it's all the same.
In my opinion.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: I shouldn't say I didn't play it. I dabbled in play by post like 20 years ago or something with it.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: So yeah. Yeah.
Want more of Sean and Harrigan? You can find Sean at YouTube.com PGShawn where he streams every Saturday at 8am Central Time.
You can find more of Harrigan's RPG musings at harrigan's hearth.substack.com links in the show notes.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Anyway, should we, should we move on to sit rep?
[00:15:01] Speaker B: We should give me the sit rep. All right, sit rep. I just have one thing this week that kind of came across my radar that's not overly gaming related, but it is genre related. And I, I don't remember if you don't have any.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Correct, correct.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Okay. No, that's fair. See, do you remember Aldrich Ames? Do you remember that whole controversy?
[00:15:27] Speaker A: No. Remind me.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Oh, really? Oh, okay. Well, back in 1994, he was a CIA veteran and then he got paid $2.5 million by Moscow from 1985 until his arrest in 1994.
And so he was tried for espionage, I believe, and he recently died in prison at the age of 84.
Back in those days, I was kind of keeping up with some of those things that hit the wire, although they're not James Bond, but it is interesting. I don't know if the rest is classified has touched on that yet.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: When did the story break?
[00:16:08] Speaker B: Well, I imagine in 1994 because that's when he was arrested, right?
[00:16:12] Speaker A: 94 was prime time for me. I was in graduate school.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Didn't have a television like was not paying a lot of attention to world events is what I will say.
That's what I'll say.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
It wasn't just. It wasn't just that. It wasn't just lamp shades and move all. I was focused, man. No, I got married the next year. Like I had, you know, serious about my girlfriend and trying to get my master's thesis finished and all that stuff.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: I mean, all likely excuses. I get it. But that's fine.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I say that, but it was not. It was the next year that the infamous lampshades and revolvers incident that we often referenced. It was the following year that happened. So I take it all back. Yeah, 94 was prime time for that stuff.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: So if you want to know more about that, I'm sure I did read the entire article and it's. But it'll tell you a little bit about what he had done and, and all that. But yeah, we, some, some of us in the military service or government service don't look highly upon Traders.
Traders.
So there you go. That's the only thing I had. There was a couple Delta Green modules that were released, but I did not include those. Yes. And I downloaded them from the Kickstarter from the conspiracy Kickstarter. So if you're a Delta Green fan, you kicked in on that. You might have seen a notification for those I failed to write down the titles.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: I'm going to say keep it under your hat because in the weeks and months ahead, we're going to be covering Delta Greed in some detail. Right. So be perfect. Time to roll out. Like, I didn't get on that Kickstarter, the one that is years old now that seems to like keep on giving kind of thing. So maybe you can even give us a bit of a debrief on what that's all about. And that's, that's the one where. Well, I think like, I think Nelson got caught by the whole like, oh, by the way, here's the shipping to Canada and it was like the same cost as the books and it was a lot of books.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And they're not all out yet, so.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. A whole fire on that. We'll get into that.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: All right, fair enough. We should get into encrypted comms or are we gonna hold off? Yeah, okay, do it.
Sir, we have an incoming encrypted transmission.
All right, encrypted comms, people. Write in, throw us grenades, comment on social media, email, voicemails. We've got a few, couple here and there. They're very this. We're including them. The reason I asked the parrogate if we should include them is because sometimes we'll hold them and do them in a Q A. And these are, some of. These are pretty short, succinct. I think the first one is kind of geared to you, Mr. O. Canada.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, I see it. This is Crawl Oxyman.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: No, Spez babies.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Oh, are they not in the order they. That they are on my screen, Sean?
[00:18:59] Speaker B: They may not be.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: They're not.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Well, I think I sorted them on my end, but I didn't force the view upon you because that's the way I roll, I guess.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Once again, they're too well encrypted.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: All right, let me take Peter, let me take Spez Babies. He says it is short. He says hi quick from me Today on the MSPE Deep Dive Invasion USA came out in 85. I think he's probably correcting me because the machine dual machine pistol thing, the movie, remember the. There's a skill Chuck Norris movie? There's a skill in MSPE that says if you have the skill, you're allowed to do a wield. But it's very explicit about pistols only. And I, I went on a very short rant about. Chuck Norris would disagree. I think he's talking about just timing here. Right.
And he also says csis, which is the Canadian, you know, Intelligence service CSIS was formed in 84 after the RCMP botched some intelligence files. Intelligence was their remit. Before that both post dated mspe. So what he's talking about there was my chuckling at the fact that the RCMP was included in MSPE as like an intelligence agency kind of thing.
And we've talked about this on the discord since and like three other people corrected me on this. Everybody was, was quick to say, hey, when mercenary spies and private eyes came out, CSIS did not yet exist, basically. Right.
I think Anthony Runeslinger has even said RCMP handles like, like embassy security around the world kind of thing. Right. My real point was that they're not the same type of intelligence service then or now. They don't have a foreign intelligence component. Right. They're not in other countries doing espionage. They are national security, like MI5 or like the FBI. Anyway, that's, that's, that's what Peter had to say.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: I'm just glad that we have people that are willing to write in and correct you.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that too.
It's fine. What's the next one?
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Jason from Nerds Variety RPG podcast. You want me to handle it or what? Yeah.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: All right.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Listening to the MSP E episode, Mercenary Spice, Private Eyes episode, and I can't agree with Harrigan Moore. Oh God, I should have had him read this one. Just hang on.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Just, just, just hang on. Read this slowly and loudly. Sean.
Take your time.
Go on, emphasize.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: I can't agree with Harrigan more on progression in RPGs.
For many genre mechanical progression a la Zero to Hero is absolutely not needed. Nothing wrong with being able to train to do a skill on off time or develop that special stunt with your superpowers. But the need to build in level progression has hurt some games immensely.
Keep up the great work.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, I missed that one. Wherever did that come as an email
[00:22:00] Speaker B: or where it came via the website.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Okay, there you go. Yeah, yeah, totally, totally agree.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: And then James, you want to read James's. His is a little bit longer.
His was from middle of December. It's about a month ago.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Oh, we mentioned. And I think maybe that maybe the listeners know this, but we tend to, tend to sit on some of these to see we have enough for a full Q A episode.
We haven't had a ton of emails, so we're kind of covering a bunch off today. All right, so to 1d4 James says hail handlers. Just wanted to pop in and say that I saw a release of your episode on. I saw a release of your episode on Tiny Spies. I'm a big fan as the tiny D6 system is is and well, hang on one second. I'm a big fan. I have to have to parse this
[00:22:51] Speaker B: foreign
[00:22:55] Speaker A: is the tiny D6 system and one I'm done right? Once I'm done running a Marvel multiverse RPG scenario for my three kids ages 10 and 12 and then a mystery age he only included two. I plan to do something with tiny D6 either super spies, tiny Frontiers 2e or tiny Dungeon 2e. I've only run advanced Tiny Dungeon, but I own a lot of the books. Looking forward to hearing your review.
So hopefully you've got the review and the actual play has been released as well. Right, Sean?
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Cool. I haven't shown them. He's talking about his kids a lot of spy movies yet, but they we don't enjoy watching heist movies so I'm not quite sure where he's going with that. So I think his kids don't like heist movies, but he hasn't shown them espionage movies. Is that your read as well?
[00:23:41] Speaker B: I think so, yeah.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Anyway, prefer less crunch these days and more narrative focus in my games. Even though I own Delta Green, the Fall, Delta Green and Night's Block Agents, I sent Sean a link through Discord for an older John Wick game called Wilderness of Mirrors. Not looking to hear a full on review though. That would be cool. I just hope you get a chance to read it or play it and enjoy it. I don't know that one, do you?
[00:24:04] Speaker B: I don't know it, but I did pick it up on his advice because I am interested in, you know.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: Yeah, Wick is one of those designers who's done so much stuff and so much of it is half baked, frankly. Like some great ideas that just don't get quite through to all the way where they need to go kind of thing. But man, he's got a lot of stuff out there.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Yeah, he does stuff. So I'm interested to to see what that looks like. Yeah.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Yeah. So James finishes. Anyway, I appreciate the podcast and I'm happy to support it. I've been listening to Sean since gaming and BS with the occasional YouTube watch. Harrigan. I enjoy your perspective and I've heard you many times.
Glad to see more content on Jason's nerd variety cast. Thank you both. Keep up doing. Keep doing the. Keep up doing the good work and I'm looking forward to more. Thank you.
Yeah, he's. I've been on Jason's show a few Times now covering various topics. I'm not sure when this came, when this, when this one came in, what I would have covered on Jason's show. But every once in a while we collaborate. So. Appreciate the, the note, James. It's kind of you to save those things.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, James. And thanks for, you know, following along with me for this long because it's been, you know, eight years since gaming, Abs, so if you were, you were in tune back then. Thanks for coming along on the journey for sure.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Kind of. Cool. Long time fan.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
Crawlock, is that you? You want to do that or.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: I can do that.
Hang on, I gotta. I'm working on a laptop screen here.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: He's on a very small 12 inch screen laptop.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: My capabilities are limited.
I'm working on like the equivalent of like a tricorder. It's about that size.
Crow up, writes in and says, I've been enjoying the show. Look forward to it each week. James Bond 007 is definitely now on my list. Although I might wait to hear your review of the rehashed version. Classified, I think it's called.
Are we going to do Classified at some point?
[00:25:57] Speaker B: It's on the list, but I don't know if it's so crazy different. I mean it may be a compare and contrast, I think, I think we
[00:26:05] Speaker A: could do a short if we want. If we. If people ever get tired of these long shows, Classified would make for a short one because 80% of the game is the same or maybe even 90% if you. Basically they lop off all of the James Bond ip, they lop up Spectre and Tarot and like all the stuff that I shouldn't say Spectre because Specter's not in there, but all the characters that get included, the NPCs and whatnot. But there are some changes, there are some tunes that would be neat to get into. So maybe we'll do that Anyway. He continues. My question, do you think that many of these games are meant to equally handle three sub genres of intergovernmental espionage, Military intelligence and operations and corporate espionage. Thanks, Prollock.
I'm gonna say no.
I think most of them appear to be intergovernmental and with a, with an eye towards corporate only. Only certain games get into that, like military intelligence, end of things. But what's, what's your take on that? Where he's asking about do all these games cover these three different flavors of espionage?
[00:27:13] Speaker B: While he asks, do we think many of these games are meant to, to equally handle these three sub genres? And that was a profound no.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: The answer is no.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: But I would love to be able to see those three things in action in a game. But it would be challenging, I think. And I don't know if there's even one out there that would do it even remotely.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Well, I would say this. They seem to be at least on the games that we've covered so far and the games that we both have knowledge of that we haven't covered yet.
They seem to be either be. Here are all the real world national spy agencies and you plug in and do a real like it's very grounded in terms of what agencies are out there or they tend to do the. There's one overarching mega international, you know, hand holding everybody's happy organization that you're working for. They don't tend to get into the corporate stuff at all. And the military side of things.
Military intelligence like is rarely mentioned. Some of the games that talk in detail like the ones that offer like here's 20 pages of the intelligence organizations around the world.
Some of those will say here's how the FBI, the CIA, navcom, like various military intelligence. Here's how they interact and intersect.
Delta Green does this right there's. And they'll get into detail about that.
But in general the military stuff seems to be held up for like the more action oriented side of things. The special forces stuff. The set of books that handles this of course is groups because GURPS has espionage, special forces, black ops, covert ops. Like it has all these different, you know, slight variations of this.
[00:29:01] Speaker B: Speaking of which, I just got notified from Noble Knight that GURPS espionage is copy is in if I want to pick it up.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: I have not hit purchase yet so I don't know.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: So for this episode I, as you know I'm. As everybody knows I'm traveling but when I was back in, in Colorado I had my cop my paper copy in my hands for this show. I wanted to look at it to answer some questions about this show that we're about to do or that we are doing. And I'm like do I want to bring this out with me? So I actually bought the PDF. So I went, went on a small Earps PDF buying spree and bought about three or four different spy related burps books that I now have electronically.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: I will mention this which we didn't touch on but may. May kind of be part of this. And that's I think mercenary spies and private eyes, right? Don't they have the, the different am I am I thinking in the right game, right, where it has the different agencies and the different stats and the bureaucracy and the right. Like depending on what abilities they have. Depends on how much red tape. Right.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: How bureaucratic is bureaucratic.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you what, what actually tripped me initially on, you know, and apologies because Sean and I schedules have been a little. A little nutty. I haven't previewed these questions when Crock first asked here. Do you think they. Do you think these three things are equally handled? I was thinking of the mercenary spies and private eyes, mercenary action, espionage and then the investigative stuff. But that's not the three. That's not the breakdown he's talking about. He's talking about this governmental, military and corporate. And we talked about it before on the corporate side, like go to any cyberpunk game and there it is like hardcore espionage is. Is, you know, exists in those games.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: So I don't think it's a stretch to be able to.
To your.
So to mention like earlier where it's, you know, maybe you're not in service of a governmental. Any agency, but you're, you know, three corporate or private entities or one private entity has got this thing to do good across the world, what have you.
Which could include corporate espionage, you know, and sometimes you get the, you know, bad super villain that has a corporation that is inventing something that is supposed, you know, it's got to be sabotaged or taken out or.
Right. And so there's.
I mean, it depends on how you define or how stringent of corporate espionage you want to like I think Harrigan's talking about what I would equate to is like anything cyberpunk, you're doing corporate runs. And because corporations are running the world and cyberpunks, you know, and there is no. I mean there's government, but let's face it, they're all run by the corpse.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: You know, I'd have to look at it. But the, the white lies game and the COVID ops game also include like huge tables for generating settings, backgrounds, agencies, etc. So they may do a little better job of covering some of these other bases where it's not just governmental stuff.
But we haven't, we haven't covered those games in detail yet.
You know, you know what, you know what I really liked and people can decide when they, when they maybe hear the actual play the vignette.
So when Gabe ran that, he ran a Danger International adventure that we played in mercenary spies and private eyes. Danger International is the hero.
You know, the second Hero espionage or covert action game after, I always forget it. Espionage, I think it was called espionage first, then Danger International.
But we played. We were part of the network and man, I liked that. So that was like plucking agents from all over for this, like, clandestine greater good. Like, hey, the regular agencies aren't cutting it, and there's some places we need to cooperate and some things we need to do that are a little. Little. Not above board. Right. So I like that one a lot. I like that as a. As a. As a. As the glue for the campaign. That was pretty cool.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I thought it was pretty cool as well, because then you can, you know, you want to represent any foreign intelligence service, that's fine. He brought together to take on this one mission and yeah, might come from different backgrounds.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: And you, were you CIA?
[00:33:14] Speaker B: I think I was, yeah. I was CIA, stationed in the Berlin field office, sir.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: That's right. I have since like, fleshed out the character concept of the character I played in that game.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: I see.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: So she, She's. She was a mail clerk for MI5 who was demoted there. So she's got, like, serious skills that MI5 isn't using. So the network accesses her skills.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: Oh, I thought she might have been a slow dragon or a. Yeah, no, no.
[00:33:43] Speaker A: Kind of like a slow horse. Right.
You've done some things wrong. You've got skills, but you've done some things wrong and you end up in the file room.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: Right. Oh, interesting.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Had I known that. Yeah, but how would I know that as an agent? You might have. Probably wouldn't divulge it.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Anyway, good question.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: Should we get into the mission brief?
[00:34:03] Speaker A: I think we better have a seat.
Let's get on with the mission brief.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: All right. Mission brief.
We were hashing this out as titled Team based Mission Design. But what it really came down to was, you know, Harrigan kind of took one angle, I took another, and we're gonna hash it out between the two of us and get you some decent content. But it really stems from.
In a message that our buddy Mirko, our digital hobbit online, had sent in about, you know, playing James Bond. And I can reread that posting, but it's, you know, James Bond in general diving into it, but it's essentially James Bond being a single agent versus, okay, you're going to run a role playing game with three to five players.
How does that.
You know, which I think he says it feels like it might be harder to do in a group setting in a more modern system, those roles might be abstracted into a single role. So going into like James Bond, the mechanics, and then also playing a single individual that does many, many, many things versus something a little bit more streamlined and multiplayers. Are we on the same page, Harrigan?
[00:35:18] Speaker A: We are, we are. And I think this miracle wrote this into the discord on the back of when the James Bond vignette came out. Right. So he's got one line here that kind of sums it up. He says in James Bond movies the focus is on him as the main character. It's not super obvious to me how that translates to. It translates to an RPG party.
And then he goes on to say, mechanically, some of the mechanics you showcased in the vignette, like seduction, seem fun and engaging, but like they're. They require a few roles and might be harder to do in a group setting, etc. So. So Sean, summing up, Sean and I took this to. To kind of look at like, how appropriate are these games, Bond IP or otherwise, how appropriate are they for regular party play? Like when you have three, four, five people at the table as opposed to one super spy. Right. And I think you've got the. The reigns here. I certainly got lots to say about this, but you want to take the first cut on the answer.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: Because the answer is going to take us probably an hour to get through. Right?
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So the first thing wanted to cover would be the Bond versus the Bureau kind of take. So you're moving from, in my example would be moving from Dr. No to Mission Impossible in format.
So where Bond isn't.
Where Bond isn't one character, he's a. Bond is literally a party of four people rolled into one. So Bond is the face person, the weapons person, the tech nerd, the wheel man.
Whereas, you know, so you're breaking Bond out into four, three to five individuals and their specializations.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: Yeah, my notes said the same thing. Basically what I said was break Bond apart, he becomes three or four people.
And they're. I mean, some of the games actually model this double O or The James Bond 007 game is a perfect example where he is a double O agent level. There's also. What is it, Sean? I think there's agent level and rookie level, something like that.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: So if the P. If you have three or four or five PCs, then have to be lower level. Otherwise they do, especially in the Bond game, they do get into this situation where they could be stepping on each other's toes. They're also capable. They can all kind of do anything sort of thing.
Most of these games will tell you they run better with fewer players. I'll say that I think that we've run across that sort of setup a couple of times now. Where two to three is ideal. I think you can do four and five pretty doable. I do think it starts to get pretty onerous at, at 6 or 7. And one of the reasons. And we're going to. You're going to get into this. Sean. These games require an awful lot of scene switching of like wiping and going to the next moment, cutting to multiple locations.
Let's put it this way, D and D. Maybe you don't want to split the party, right? You better split the party in a game like this or Delta Green or an investigative game where you're never getting anything done.
So the GM needs to be able to kind of rapidly go from one to the next type of thing.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: My initial reaction to his question was dude, look at the source material. Like you know, Mission, the Mission Impossible show, Mission Impossible movies, Burn Notice. Like there's just tons and tons of media that don't focus on a single super spy. They focus on a team.
And that part of it actually gets into what I want to talk about a little more, a little more deeply here. I think you've got some stuff around pacing and some other things first.
But I want to look very carefully at this idea of like role niche, archetype, etc. Because that's where I think many of the games that have that baked in. So many of the class based games will shine better from multiple player games
[00:38:49] Speaker B: or a game that emphasizes the ability. Like I think Agent Provocateur is not overly class based although I think they have archetypes but former professions. Yeah, profession. Yes, professions or even if you're playing, if you're playing gurps, much more general getting together with your team and players to determine the types that. And areas that you're going to cover that individuals may run into during a typical mission.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: Well that's, that's part of what I want. What I want to. What I want to talk about is because the class and archetype games you don't have to have that conversation. Niche protection is built in. That's true.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: As soon as you get into the skill heavy stuff, the really skill heavy stuff, you really have to like kind of compare and contrast the PCs to make sure you're not missing something you're not as opposed to a quick glance. Oh, they're four different archetypes. We're Good to go kind of thing. Right. So but we'll get into all that.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: We add a pacing.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Yeah, go to pacing.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Pacing.
Specifically the seduction scene that we did in the vignette. If you, again, if you haven't listened to that vignette, go check it out.
So those that aren't interested in listening to actual plays or watching it, Victor Drake, my agent, approaches the Contessa, which is a contact that he wants to connect with to in order to infiltrate a high stakes blackjack game to get in touch and a photograph of an individual. Spoilers.
And so in doing that, I go into the casino as Agent Drake, find the Contessa and then of course make my way over to her and we do the seduction scene with that. It, we get into a little bit more of the nuances and what's happening. It's just me, right. I've got the spotlight. It doesn't have to go anywhere. I could spend, we could spend 15, 20 minutes on just that alone if we wanted to. Whereas if you did it as a group.
Yeah, it's not going to roll so well.
Especially when you have James Bond that has a few kind of cross reference tables where you know, in many, in some games it's a, it's a target number. Let's roll with it. It's narrated, it's finished. You kind of get the success or failure in that case.
So you have to be concerned with not just, you know, you have to, you have to move it around and we go into spotlight and a few bullets down. But you can run some of these things and what I consider parallel to each other.
So if you have somebody doing the seduction, maybe they're the face person because they have the highest seduction rating or the highest charisma. Everybody's playing to their strengths. You have the tech person that's the eye in the sky that's tapped all the surveillance cameras, feeding the team information that that person is out in the van checking out. And then you have the muscle person who is intercepting suspicious guards or guards that are, are making their way towards the face because maybe they're not supposed to be there. And so the muscle man runs interference. And so coordinating all of those three individuals to make something happen can be be done at the same time. But it has to be a little bit more streamlined in not taking up one of those to be 15 minutes. Because if you're spending 15 minutes on each one, you're, you're all doing it at the same time. But in the game it's going to take you 45 minutes where it shouldn't have to.
Yeah.
[00:42:22] Speaker A: I mean, this is the skill that GMs need to have. Right. If you're playing any kind of multiplayer game, it's the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke is fighting Vader, there's a battle on the moon and there's a space battle, and you are cutting back and forth rapidly, constantly between the three. And it can make for a really exciting play.
I do think one of the. Just actually, as you were talking, Sean, I think I'm honing in on one of the things that Mirko's driving at here in that Bond and some other games have this connecting tissue between roles that might be a little more problematic than some games. If you are doing that context switching, that scene switching rapidly because you make a role and it sets how difficult the thing is. And then you make the first roll. Let's take seduction down the chain. You have the look, then you have the witty conversation, and then on down. If you have eight people doing that and they all have some similar chain, there's an awful lot of bookkeeping. I would. I would also say it's pretty easy to farm some of that out to the players so that, you know, hey, Sean, remember that you've made the second level of seduction when we come back around to you kind of thing. I don't. I don't think it's particularly daunting, but it is a thing. It is. It is definitely a thing. And some of these games are lighter than Bond and some of the older games, and it's easier because they don't have all this sort of one roll leading to another kind of stuff. And it might be a. Easier to switch, I would say. Just one thing I wanted to add just in general, like, the players also need to be comfortable sharing the spotlight and maybe also playing a supporting character. So we're gonna. We're gonna get into. And that can change by scene. Right. Where if the main focus is hacking or social, then the commando or the. Or the combat specialist may be having to sit on their hands a little bit. Right. Or just be acting a supporting role or do something that's just not quite as limelight grabbing as that. But again, many games, many games that are not D D, you have to manage this stuff where not everyone's together all the time, that sort of thing.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: The next point wanted to make was retro crunch versus modern flow. So going off of what Harrigan said and interpreting.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it kind of flows into this, doesn't it?
[00:44:34] Speaker B: Right? It does, yeah.
So it's the, you know, to compare and contrast Bond specifically and then some of the more modern game design. So Bond rolling the seduction, then there's the reaction, then it could build tension and then that's all great and fine where it's step by step going through that seduction piece and component. Where in the modern game design it might be roll once on a persuasion skill, but it's also you loses the. At the same time the granularity that comes with something a little bit more process driven, I would suppose, or that there are steps to.
It is what it is, two differences.
And then of course the spotlight we touch on a little bit before.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: Before you go on to that, if you don't mind like this, this retro crunch versus modern flow thing, I think you're spot on. I think if GM is prepared for these older games or newer games that have more complexity baked into them.
Let's take the two obvious ones that are in front of us for Bond, which is that we played, which is seduction and chases.
Both have these. Where are you in the chase? Where are you in the seduction? Right. Well, Bond actually has on the character sheet you can name the NPC and write down what level you've gotten to.
And it's easy enough to write right next to that what the difficulty is as well for the next step you're going to go to. So there's a little bit of bookkeeping, but there are ways to handle that. I would also say though, like if you're the gm, you've got to have like index cards, you've got to have your notes handy. If you're doing the switching back and forth like it would be challenging to run like two different chases at the same time and a seduction and you're cutting between the three.
This is one of those places where like be smart about when you're cutting. Like maybe you want to run a little longer on the one character to get to a good stopping point before you switch to the next one. As opposed to the. Some games now some modern games, especially Sean have this like left, you know, clockwise round the table from the gm. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? You know, based on like the IC RPG and Shadow Dark now does it as well. Even when you're not in an initiative round or a combat round, you're going. You're doing this like sweep around the table. That doesn't work all that well. I don't think like I. In every case I would follow more of the Powered by The apocalypse mode of stay with the fiction.
Pursue it until you get to a good stopping point. Even if it means that one person, quote unquote, gets three actions to someone else's one kind of thing. Right. So you're not. It can be these artificial breaks, I think, can underscore what Mirko is pointing to here and make it harder to.
If you do one chase round, then one seduction round, but a different chase round two. You know what I mean? Instead, kind of follow them through to their logical conclusion a little bit.
[00:47:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I. It's a game master skill that you have to hone or at least be conscious of. But that would be if whatever game I'd be running if it says, like shadowdark has an initiative outside of combat. But if it doesn't make sense because, well, the party is split, which is a little unique to Shadow Dark. It's fantasy and you never want to do it. It's a bit of a faux pas. Right. With this one. Delta Green. Right. Split the party, get things done. You go to the police department. I'm going to go to the records and then I'm going to go to the scene. Okay, great.
And then understanding you don't want to inadvertently cut a scene short because you're like, you have to. Or it says go. You know, do it for five minutes. Go to the next person. Five minutes. Go to the next person. Five minutes. It has to make sense where you can cut away at a good breaking point.
And you're right. I think sometimes. And even I think players, even though we might harp on Game master, spreading the spotlight and making sure everybody has a fair shot and fair shake. But I also think many players are, you know, if he's. If you're going to spend five to 10 minutes with this particular character because of the situation that they're involved in, I'm good. I'm here. I'll be ready when it's my turn. Right? Yeah.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: That's kind of what I meant by, like, be okay with being a support role. Sometimes you don't have to. Sometimes other people get the limelight kind of thing. But then, of course, it is up to the GM and the other players, frankly, to make sure that that player comes to the fore later. Yes.
Yeah. All right. Keep on trucking. You're going to go to. I think you're going to go to spotlight. Right?
[00:49:02] Speaker B: Spotlight. Yeah. Be a ruthless editor.
And I relate this to their scene framing.
Hard framing. We haven't got into really the nuances. And some people have alluded to it when they've written in or we've talked about it on my Saturday stream and things of that nature. But Bond, the camera can linger longer, walking across the casino floor, describing what the scene looks like, making eyes at the Contessa. The quick coat change that I do. All cool, subtle nuances that make it pretty unique. But then again, it's just me. I could do that. And Harrikin can riff off of it. Great.
But with a group, you got to do more smash cuts. Drake makes his way over to the Contessa. You in the van, you're in the surveillance. You've got five monitors in front of you. Here's what you notice as this is, you know, happening. And then, oh, by way, Muscle guy. The guards, they're curious about what's going on in your neck of the woods. And you can see them peering over and doing some of those cutscenes which will eventually look. Get into maybe something a little bit longer or some type of mechanical resolution. But you can't sit there and describe the entire van while two other people are sitting there waiting kind of for their. For their thing. Also, consider how a team's successes and failures impact other members of the team versus Bond failing. And then now what? So the beauty of having it, you know, if you're an individual in your Bond and you fail, I gotta go and try something else, I guess, and how am I going to get into this building?
Whereas if you have a team, you can lean on some of those individuals to maybe give you an advantage into something, or they divulge or come across a vulnerability from their perspective and vantage point that allows the plot to move forward.
So something to consider.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's one that I hadn't considered. Sean. I love that angle. Like, when you're running a solo game, there is this tension and this, like, concern that what if this person, like, really runs out of resources or things go just keep going sideways? There's no one to come in and help them.
There's no party member that can kind of swoop in. So with a. With multiple players, you have this, you know, they can get captured, and then that creates a whole side mission to get them freed and all that kind of stuff. You can still do some of that with the solo play, obviously, but it's just kind of a natural dynamic that I think rises when you're running a multiplayer game in some way. Sean, I think the spotlight stuff you're talking about very much ties to the pacing as well.
Like the idea, like, I love those moments. Where the camera is lingering and we're seeing Vincent take off his coat off, kind of between frames kind of thing, like all that stuff.
And you can still do that with, with games as long as everybody's okay with the pacing. You can do that in multiplayer games. But if you want, if you want like things to kind of move along, then that's where you have to have that awareness. I do think that generally speaking, this is a GM skill around pacing more than anything. Understanding when to move the spotlight, how long to linger, how long to. When to. When to do that smash cut and all that kind of stuff. Right? Yeah. I mean the way I described it there on my notes is this is a multi scene game that should run like a movie. Right. But even if it's cold war and not cinematic, it should be. You have that mindset of switching locations and all that kind of stuff. That's just the kind of fiction we're talking about. Right?
[00:52:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: So you had those four, right. So we talked about sort of the Bond versus the Bureau, which is, you know, Bond is really like a super PC.
Right. With all the skills and all the everything. Right.
Break them down. You're probably not going to have four of those.
You're going to want to run with more typically or normal spies that. Who are good at what they do, but not the best in the world. You talk pacing, we talk retro crunch versus modern flow. About how the modern games tend to run leaner but they can lose some of that cat and mouse stuff you talked about, which I totally agree with. And then I think the spotlight stuff is related to pacing and all the rest. I do have a few other things that I came up with. You know, when we, when we both looked at what Mirka wrote in about.
I think mission design here is really important.
So knowing what types of PCs you have at the table, design the mission or make sure the mission holds. Social hacking, stealth, assault, hand to hand seduction, gambling, piloting, on and on and on. But you know, put things in the, in the mission that interest the people based on the characters they either built or the character types they chose, that sort of thing. So just make sure that it's. The mission is a good fit is one thing I would look at. Right.
[00:53:43] Speaker B: I have something to say about that.
[00:53:45] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: I agree and I think that is the way to go. However, my counterpoint to that would be I'm a big. Or at least I try to be a big.
Throw the problem at the players and have them figure it out. The problem with some of These modern type games is they don't.
This goes to a point you and I have talked about design. You're hitting them straight in the face and giving them the tool to kind of push them in that right direction. And I don't think there is a better or wrong way if you do the former and make it a little less in the design itself.
And you don't have a player that can grasp going into that.
Well, okay, so can I. Can I climb the skyscraper?
Did you have the climb skill?
No.
Okay. Like you know what I'm saying?
Does that make sense?
[00:54:52] Speaker A: I do. I. I don't know if I'm fully on the same page. I think one of the things you're getting at. I don't know about the skyscraper climbing. That's a bad thing now.
[00:55:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's terrible.
[00:55:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
But. But I would say we talked about it before. The, A lot of the mission design, like for published stuff is very linear. It is that whole, like there's a control room where you have to get in and you have to put a USB dongle in to get the file.
So, okay, you're limiting, you know, how they approach it, et cetera. Modern games should put more emphasis on letting the players choose the approach, even if it's a set thing they have to do. So in other words, they can look at their sheet, they can consider their, you know, their, their abilities. They can, I don't know. There's different ways to approach problems. Right. The best example I can think of is like, there's an informant you need to get and they're at a party. How do you get into the party? Where do you take them? What do you do with the guards? And this is where you're like, that's wide open. However the players decide to tackle all that even, even to a degree, like I run the vignettes pretty linearly so we can see certain things happen in them. Right. And test certain mechanics.
But, you know, Vincent was free to like use the, the hired help entrance or try to go for the front door. He could have climbed on the roof and trying to find a skylight. There's all kinds of things you can do or just bluff your way in with a disguise or whatever. Right. Like there's, there's many ways to approach it. This genre though, does, does tend towards those. There's a plot that, that is detailed and you're trying to foil it. So there are some things, and even to the point where, and this is where if you make it fully emergent and you know it just sort of happens as you go and you build a story fully, collaboratively, you lose some of that stuff where if the players don't get to a certain place in time or don't do something, the timeline moves and things happen. And many people, me included, love that.
You know, that sense of reality, that verisimilitude that that comes when you, I don't know, makes. It just makes the world so much more believable kind of thing. Right. And some, some of these games, you really want that, you want that baked in. I don't know. Is that kind of what you're getting at?
[00:57:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yep. Just a comment.
[00:57:03] Speaker A: So, yeah, I mean that's a, that is a bunny trail. We could spend probably several shows unpacking. Right?
[00:57:08] Speaker B: For sure.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: But here's, here's a different way of looking at it, a simpler way way. If you are running something published and you know who the PCs are, you sit down, you're like, oh, I have someone who is like pilot gal. And all they do is pilot. And it takes place on a submarine like you, you are short circuiting all the stuff that she's good at. That's kind of like be aware of that stuff, I guess, is all I'm saying.
[00:57:33] Speaker B: Yes, totally agree. For sure.
[00:57:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I went hard into the, the whole idea of these, these games that take James Bond and they break him into a bunch of archetypes or they take the Mission Impossible team and they identify who they are. Right. And I'll get into a little bit of detail around this eventually here in a minute. But those classes or roles or archetypes, whatever you call them, so not the point buy type systems.
They're doing what they're doing for a few reasons. Some of them are explicit, right. Like they are providing variety in the characters that make them mechanically interesting to play.
They're like candy for the players.
So these are the players who are like, what are the abilities? Oh cool, look what this one does. Right. And that's part of the game, right?
They also provide niche protection so that when a certain thing is happening in the game, someone can go, hell yeah, I'm good at this.
Let me take on this part of it. Right. So they kind of explicitly do all that stuff. They also just ensure that the bases are covered in terms of what skills you need. So you don't have to go through and review detailed skill sheets to make sure. Does someone have crypto analysis? Does someone have this? If they're role based or class based, they kind of, you know, it's Usually tend to be like four to eight of them or something and they cover a lot of ground. So they're doing all that implicitly though they are also. These roles or classes are also doing something else. They act in the osr. You would say this is system as setting. So the fact that there's a driver tells you there are going to be chases and racing and fast cars. The fact that there's a hacker tells you there are security systems you have to get behind. So it's that I think it's.
I'm maybe more of a fan than I used to be of these types of like role based and character class based games for that reason where it's informing you what the world is like, right?
You can break the games into like they're strongly typed for these classes or roles. They're sort of moderately typed or they're weakly typed. The strongly typed stuff is stuff like tiny spies. You have an agent, a face, a driver, a hacker and a soldier. Perhaps too limited. It's very, very, you know, you have five different things that you could be. But they all really have their own remit, their own place in the world. White Lies does the Confiscator, the Eliminator, the Infiltrator, the Investigator and the Transporter. You can see some sort of common themes just described differently.
The easy D6 game that I held up before we got on the show here, Sean does something very similar. It's got an assassin, a hacker, a mask, a planner, a point person, a shadow, a technician and a transporter. So again like the driver is present throughout, right? The hacker is pretty present throughout sort of thing. So when you're trying to do that multi player espionage game, I think these games are really well suited for it because of everything I mentioned before, like niche protection and the fact that you don't have to work too hard to make sure all the ground is covered, right. Then you get into the games that are. That are like moderately typed and this is like Covert Ops, Asian Provocateur. They tend to include either origins or former professions or something like that where there's some sort of guardrails. They help you with your point spend or they help you by saying a certain stack can be raised higher. So they give you some, but not the same, not quite the same guardrails, but some. And then finally on this point you have the. What I would call the weekly typed or wide open stuff. This is top secret, this is mspe, this is Bond and to the nth degree this is Hero and Gurps. Where you build whatever you want because they are long lists of skills and the player, the player has carte blanche as to what they're, what they're building in. Right. As soon as you get into the, the overlapping abilities and skills like where anybody can do anything, you can have more trouble running a multi person team where it's not clear as to who wants to put their foot forward first and all that kind of stuff. Right. So I don't know what do you, what do you think about just the importance of role in class here?
[01:01:31] Speaker B: I like it. It serves a purpose and it would be my preference for running. I wouldn't want to run a GURPS game.
I mean I would mind but it wouldn't be my preference and if I did I would want to make sure the players are covering certain bases and then what happens? Then you're putting them in boxes again anyway.
So. Yeah.
[01:01:55] Speaker A: And in fact later iterations of GURPS and some other skill heavy systems include things like playbooks and templates because they recognize the human propensity of the like let's. I need to categorize things. I need, I need to kind of put a, put a box around it so I can understand it quickly is what, you know, what that's about. Now having said that I, you know my background includes the going to the lowest level of these skill systems and in my rejection of DND I ran for the nearest like you know, thousand skill system which was gurps and I have a deep adoration for that system.
I would say last thing on this point Sean. I think with skill heavy systems you have to be extra, extra careful.
I'm talking about the systems that don't have 15 skills that have like 80 or 100 skills and usually they have some sort of point by thing and if someone comes in and uses their scalpel and says you know what, I'm going to invest everything in these six skills because I know the mission needs driving, stealth, gun combat, etc. That player character will be infinitely more capable than the poor SAP who includes me often who comes in and builds a diversified jack of all trades kind of character because of the way freaking point system point by systems work. Right Kthulu the BRP systems suffer from this greatly in my, in my opinion where if you want to spread the spread the points to say I'm I had this breadth of background. Well guess what? You now have 35% in everything.
Good luck. Right. It's not dissimilar in any of these seal systems. So what it means is the Jack of All Trades person can feel pretty useless if the GM is hitting them with action scene after action scene or, or infiltration scene after infiltration scene and they have a 10 and then everybody else has a 15. You know, you're trying to roll under that on 3D6 type of thing, like you do in Gurps.
[01:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the, the person that ha.
Does anybody have this? I do. Great. Give me a roll fail.
Right? You have it. You can roll.
You fail like 90% of the time because everything's at 10.
Right. Versus the one person that has three skills that are all at 30, 40%.
They never get to do any roll except when it's that specific thing. And then they. Yeah.
[01:04:20] Speaker A: And if the mission, and this is what I was talking about before, where it's kind of tied to that whole like scenario mission design thing where like, if you look at the Jack of All Trades character, you're like, you know what? We're going to bring your ancient history knowledge and, you know, make it important in this mission kind of thing. If you don't have that kind of awareness and you're, especially if you're running something published, they're going to end up running a suboptimal character class. Right. Which I personally don't care about because I'm playing the character on the paper and the character that's in my head, I don't care if they're the best at what they do and. But it can really bug some people and it can be frankly kind of lame if it happens over and over again where these, these more diversified characters just never, you know, they never measure up.
[01:04:59] Speaker B: So we haven't put out the MSPE actual play yet, but.
[01:05:04] Speaker A: Oh, we have some of that going
[01:05:05] Speaker B: on in that spoilers. My agent that I roll UP has a 21 intelligence. There's also a debate on whether I should have that 21 in an IQ and be able to reallocate it. But that's another discussion that we also touch on. But so then Harrigan goes, oh, so let me guess, you just went through the skill list and purchased as many as you could. And I said yes. So I did not go deep, I went broad. In which case even Gabe said, well, Sean, for this one shot, I don't know how applicable the breadth is going to come in because, you know, over a longer term it might. Yeah, right. I'll press more buttons as the campaign progresses before a one shot, you know, one mission, two, like two scenes.
I, I might, I might have done it wrong. But that's okay. It was fun and it was a good time. But it did come up during that game.
[01:06:00] Speaker A: It kind of depends on the experience you want at the table. Right. Like, you and I both like. I love all these games, man. I love RPGs so much. And I love skill. Heavy stuff if. If it's done right and it runs well. And I like the ones that are like, pick an architect and archetype and just play it. Leah, you're a driver. What are you good at? Going fast.
But. But I also like the ones that are like. Actually, I'm really good at seduction and I have a weakness to, you know, I don't want to. I have a fear of open water. Like, I love that. Like, yeah, depth you can get to. It just depends on what you want at the table is what I. What I would say.
All right. If you have. If anything else on that. Otherwise, I have just like a collection of kind of a dog's breakfast of odds and ends that are in the junk drawer to talk about.
[01:06:43] Speaker B: On to Fido's meal.
[01:06:45] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Now I'm picturing Fido's upchuck in the junk drawer. And I'm like, oh, hey, yeah, that's not good. Who left us here? There's some neat stuff you can do as soon as you get into the whole, like, multi agents as opposed to one super. Super agent. Right. And this involves, like, the team relationships, the team rivalries. Can the agents trust their employer? Can they trust one another? Do they come from different agencies? Like, it's just super cool, you know, Even though the Bond movies have the one guy at the center, I would bet. See if you agree with Michelle. And I bet most of the fiction movies and books have more than one protagonist, you know, many of them. Many of them do. I also think cinematic. So the Bond style is actually served really easily by having a team. Maybe a little bit less on the Cold War, you know, really gritty stuff where, you know, it might be an agent who's embedded somewhere and you don't have a full support team around you all the time. You're not operating in the open. Right. All that kind of stuff. So I think cinematic makes it easier.
[01:07:47] Speaker B: I do think with Cold War, I'm gonna try to. I'm gonna try to put a scenario together. I have some of it baked and I am interested in having you play it and a couple others. And it would be a team of three, maybe four, but I think I would know how to approach it because you would have to do scenes and it wouldn't have to be like.
I think it could still be driver, face person, tech person.
Because I think there's always an underlying need for those types of resources on even Cold War missions. And I'm interested to take it from like Mission Impossible down to more street level and see what people have to say.
[01:08:28] Speaker A: Well, and you get. And when you do that, you get into that whole thing like where it's much more grounded. Like you need a signals analyst, otherwise no one can do it correct at all.
[01:08:37] Speaker B: Right. You don't know how to operate a frickin. You don't know how to load the radio with the encryption device.
[01:08:43] Speaker A: Yeah, one person knows how to do it.
[01:08:45] Speaker B: Right.
[01:08:46] Speaker A: Period.
[01:08:46] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:08:47] Speaker A: And that's. So that gets to the type of game that we're playing here. So. And actually one idea I had here was that could be kind of neat. Even though we have this like niche protection, we have this genre you're trying to emulate. Let everybody, you know, make sure they can lean into what they think their character is good at. So they can be a badass and all that sort of stuff. I also like, like mixing up who gets what job. Like you go to hack the computer and run into security and we have a hand to hand fight in the, you know, in the basement. We have the commando on the rooftop who meets a debutante and has to have a social encounter. Right. Like, I love that, that idea.
[01:09:23] Speaker B: You're at the electrical box. You. It's on the roof. You're on the roof. Right.
[01:09:27] Speaker A: You happen to be there. So you've got to do it.
[01:09:29] Speaker B: You have to do it.
[01:09:30] Speaker A: And we'll talk you through it. Right. By having that through the headset. Like great, great scenes like that. I think that you can really. By taking them out people a little bit of fish out of water type stuff, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[01:09:40] Speaker B: Not the blue, not the blue wire. No, no, no, don't touch them off blue wire.
[01:09:45] Speaker A: Yes. And I would also say if you are doing that Mission Impossible, like even the baseline skills, everyone is a kick ass, hand to hand fighter. Everyone can shoot a rifle, like all that stuff. Some games do really well at emulating that. Like I'm pretty good at everything.
So even if I'm a fish out of water, I can do this. I've got it. Versus something like, you know, gerp, which is like, yeah, I'm afraid you're not doing that because you don't have the skill. So you. We won't be having any of that. Right. And then everything in between. And I kind of like the games that are in between. You can still do it, but it's a long shot, you need help and all that stuff.
One other thought that I had is depending on the mission, different people can rotate into the lead position.
So if it's combat heavy, if it's infiltration heavy, if it's a ball you're trying to infiltrate, you can kind of let different people, people at the table call the shots, build the plan and do the roundup of, you know, who's doing what when and all that kind of stuff. So there's ways to, so that not everybody's just in their rut or in their, you know, in their lane all the time type of thing.
[01:10:45] Speaker B: It's good stuff, man. Now you want to go and play. Let's. Let's get some dice.
[01:10:50] Speaker A: Let's. I agree, I agree. I, I do think there is a summing up, bottom line thing here which is like probably better with fewer players rather than more players. Like 2, 3, 4 is like kind of chef's gifts to me. Like perfect. That's what you want. You get more than that. And any of these games becomes a lot to manage. But any RPG does. But these are, these are maybe particularly vulnerable to it because of all this scene shifting we talked about in the spotlight and all that sort of stuff. I would also say Mirko is a big fan of a game that does this really well, that's outgunned. Like outgunned has a lot of this baked into it. And it is absolutely a team based party that are going after either high octane action or espionage or pulp, you know, adventure or whatever it might be.
[01:11:34] Speaker B: And specifically a B team type adventure. Yes.
[01:11:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:11:40] Speaker B: Don't forget to be the B team will.
[01:11:42] Speaker A: They'll return one day.
[01:11:44] Speaker B: Three.
[01:11:45] Speaker A: Last, Last comment.
We've had some. A couple of folks write in. I think Hu was the one I'm thinking of Sean, where they wanted to see more content that was a little less system specific and a little more like, how do you run these kinds of games? What are the threats of things you have to worry about if you're running espionage and covert action. So this is. I would consider this in that series, right?
[01:12:05] Speaker B: I would, yeah.
[01:12:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:12:07] Speaker B: I think. Are we. Do we have one more episode and that's the season finale finale.
[01:12:14] Speaker A: If that's what we're doing.
[01:12:16] Speaker B: That's on the schedule. And I want to say that because once this comes out, people can start, start like oh my goodness, the season finale. We need to start running trailers. How will it end? Will Harrigan punch Sean in the nose? Will they continue to talk about COVID action genre? Or will new subject matter come up?
Stay tuned for season two.
[01:12:42] Speaker A: As of this recording, I think we're planning on having a finale show right for season one.
[01:12:49] Speaker B: We. We are. For sure.
[01:12:50] Speaker A: There are absolutely ways we can extend the season and talk about more games and all the rest, but I think we're both ready to shift gears a little bit and.
But we'll see. Stay tuned is what I would say.
[01:13:01] Speaker B: Oh, not a cliffhanger. He went the cliffhanger route.
Wow. This guy.
Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Go Bag. Much appreciated. On behalf of Harrigan, I'm Sean. We'll catch you on the next one. See ya.
This episode of Go Bag brought to you with help from the following field operatives, special agents, black ops directors and friendlies.
Joe Swick, Roger French, Merkel Froilich, Tony Sugarloaf, Baker Hus Caro, Laramie Wall, Eileen Barnes, Heptal Lima, Aaron Raila, Wayne Peacock, Old School DM Jeff Walker, Yorkis Rex, Eric Salzweedle, Phil McClory, Jason Hobbs, Michael O. Holland, Remy Billido, Crystal Eggstad, Eric Avia Voronak, Brian Kurtz, Chad Glamen, Jim Ingram, Orcus Dorcas, Chris Shore, Brian Rumble, Victor Wyatt, Kevin Keneally, Andy Hall, Jason Weitzel, Salt Hart, Kelly K. Ness, Tad Lechman, Nicholas Abruzzo, Matthew Katron, Curtis Takahashi, Angela Murray, Mr. White 20 Jason Connerly, Shannon Olson, Ryan West, Kristen McLean, Larry Hollis, Glenn Seal, Jake at Faded Quill Gaming Tess Trekkie, Tim Jensen, Kelly Ness, Nubis, Christopher Lang, Crowlog, Peter Skaines, and 1D4, Khan James. Thank you, agents. We appreciate it.
