James Bond 007 RPG - Deep Dive

[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode of Go Bag, I suggest a true story espionage miniseries. The next James Bond movie. As a director, I come across the TableTop Espionage Spy RPG. At Gamehole Con, a grenade is dropped in encrypted comms. That offers some insight into terminology we should use. And all this as we wrap up our deep dive Into Victory Games 1983 RPG James Bond 007. Hit it. [00:00:30] Speaker B: 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, Sean and Harrigan. [00:00:45] Speaker A: Welcome to Go Bag. I'm Sean. [00:00:49] Speaker B: And I'm Harrigan. Good morning sunshine. How are you? [00:00:52] Speaker A: There's a little more Connory. I like it. I like it every show. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Nope, it's a fire. [00:00:59] Speaker A: It's almost been that way. [00:01:01] Speaker B: No, it's been two shows. It's been both James Bond episodes. [00:01:04] Speaker A: Fair enough. [00:01:05] Speaker B: And. Yeah. [00:01:07] Speaker A: Well, as always. Well, we, we should start with Gamehole Con. We. We went to gamehole Con, like by the time this drops like a month ago. [00:01:17] Speaker B: It was only last weekend, but yes, it was a week ago. I was, I was still in Madison one week ago. [00:01:23] Speaker A: I'm sure people are going to say who don't tune into my live stream are going to wonder, is there any report that we can provide espionage covert ops enthusiasts with an update from gameholcon? [00:01:37] Speaker B: I don't know if there is. Well, you found a game at gamehallcon. [00:01:41] Speaker A: I did. [00:01:41] Speaker B: So let's. Okay. So do you want to do gamehall Con? You want to do like what we're what, the week? The week. I guess it's two weeks since we've technically sat down at the microphones. Right? It has, yeah. I'll tell you what, let me do mine first. I think you did, you did have more experiences than I did. Although I think both of us ended up either missing or having games canceled or something like that where we didn't get all the full experience kind of thing. Fair, short, short version. I had a fantastic game, Hold Con, which I will, I will write up in Harrigan's hearth here my sub stack, you know, the next, like probably week or two. So if folks are interested more broadly in that convention, Madison based annual gaming convention, about 6, 000 people. Really, really good convention. Sean has all kinds of like back, back room connections, so you know the organizers and all that good stuff. But I will say I had one game on the schedule. It was a top secret new world order game that I was not able to make on the Sunday, I was just too frazzled, too burned out from all the other. All the other stuff going on during the con. So that's one game I unfortunately did not make. Frankly, there wasn't a whole lot of spy stuff on offer other than Knights Black Agents, Delta Green and Top. Some top secret New World Order type games. But that's all I had for gamehole. What about you? [00:02:52] Speaker A: I was signed up for the Delta Green game Convergence, which I removed myself from because of the timing it was. Which was a Friday night. I was trying to keep my nights free. Plus I have played it. So I kind of weighed both and said, ah, you've run it. [00:03:08] Speaker B: And. [00:03:08] Speaker A: And I'm running it. Yes. [00:03:09] Speaker B: You're actively running it. Yes. [00:03:11] Speaker A: So I'm like, ah, I'll free up my seat and hope to do it early enough for somebody else to grab it. And then I played in Ken Heights Knights Black Agents game, which was pretty fantastic. We played a security detail for a Russian oligarch that purchased Lord Byron's home in France, I believe is where it was. Or no UK Lord Byron, but the French consulate is connected to it and I think it's like true. Like Ken had a Google Maps and he's like showing it to us and so it was very much contained in that when one particular area and it was good. So it was fun. You to your point there. What your. There wasn't a ton on offer as far as that. The. The genre, if you will. So. [00:03:59] Speaker B: Right, right. Well, we're going to change that next year, aren't we? [00:04:02] Speaker A: I think like I said in a prior episode, I'm going to run 20 games and then you're going to run 20. So it'll be 40 on the grid itself. So. Yeah. And we're going to. Each One of those 20 are going to be a different system. Of course. Course too. Right. So we can spread. Spread it around. [00:04:19] Speaker B: I. I thought you were going to say they were all going to be top secret. [00:04:23] Speaker A: Merle was not there. Funny though. I played with Allan Hammock. I have met Allan in the past. I don't know if he could tell you who I was from a hole in the ground, but he played in the Outgunned Adventures game that I was in. He sat to my right. I did not. [00:04:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:43] Speaker A: I did not bring up the fact that I did an espionage tabletop role playing game and that we reviewed Top Secret. [00:04:51] Speaker B: Yeah. For fear that he would go listen. [00:04:52] Speaker A: I was kind of waiting for that to maybe. [00:04:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that does settle. [00:04:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Merle was not there. Unfortunately I did reach out to Jason Elliott who is of the T. Former, older, newer, old, new TSR now Solarian games and they put out a top secret new world order and reached out to him and said hey, I'm just curious if you happen to know if Merle's going to be at gamehole Con. And he's like oh I don't know, I'll check. And he wasn't or I didn't see him. And that was kind of where it sat. So yeah. But otherwise good, good convention. Highly recommended if you're up for something that is larger than maybe a very smaller intimate con but not as big as Gen Con packs or Origins. [00:05:38] Speaker B: The big ones. Yeah. So we're going to cover ninth black agents. I'm 100 sure. But did the game that. That Ken Height run did it was it more of a like high octane sort of stuff? More, more action than spying because those agents are pretty Jason Bourne like right? They're pretty, they're pretty confidence. [00:05:58] Speaker A: The scenario didn't get to like Jason Bourne in a elevator closet, you know, nine by nine room going back and forth with the camera going all over the place. I don't want to give too much away in case people play in that scenario. But yeah, but it was fun. I, I enjoyed myself. It was great. And the funny thing is I think I had played it prior. The GM was great again his name was Scott I believe and he's a big nice black agents fan. But I think it all at a convention is the group because there are people that are going to understand what night it's like Delta Green like knights, Black agents. You have to understand the tech level. You have to understand it is Jason Bourne. It's supposed to be over the top. Some of the gear you use is pretty nutty. And I think sometimes if you get the people like well I go up to the door and ring a doorbell and like what are you. What are you doing? Right. Like it's the. I don't know. It's me, it's me. Saw me. It's all, it's, it's. [00:07:01] Speaker B: It's been a while since I've read it but I remember coming away from it thinking like this is the. When you find out that where the vampire layer is that night you're in Hong Kong and, and you and your team of five other operatives are fast roping down the side of the building from the roof and then you're swinging and shooting the window as you swing towards it. So the panes all break, you crash through and it's just like all hell breaks. [00:07:23] Speaker A: That's it. Right? And then if you get somebody, that's like. That's what struck me, you know, Pizza delivery. [00:07:29] Speaker B: Yeah, hello. Yeah, we're here to inspect your pipes. [00:07:33] Speaker A: I mean, you could do that as [00:07:34] Speaker B: a cover, but don't you make fun of pizza delivery. I see what you're doing there. It worked. It worked. [00:07:42] Speaker A: So things you've done. [00:07:44] Speaker B: We. We digress. Yeah, we digress. [00:07:47] Speaker A: Appendix and related as far as espionage. Since we last spoke, [00:07:54] Speaker B: I finished Live and Let Die, so listeners might remember. I'm slowly. Because I'm just that guy slowly going through the Ian Fleming book. So I finished the first two now. And really, there are a couple of interesting things about this. First off, it's kind of a combination of Dr. No, the movies. Dr. No and live and Let Die. Like Quarrel. Remember the. Remember the character I mentioned when I talked about the movie? Dr. No, the. You know, I think I forget if he's a Cayman Islander or where. Where he's from, but Coral is the helper that Bond has that takes him in the boat. They find Dr. Noah's island and he dies that horrible flamethrower death. You remember me. Me mentioning that, right? [00:08:31] Speaker A: Coral. [00:08:32] Speaker B: Coral is the helper in Live and Let Die and Live and Let Die takes place largely in New York City and Jamaica and some islands around there. So there's total crossover between the two. They clearly mined several books. They did Dr. No, and I have yet to rewatch Live and Let Die, the movie. But certainly like Mr. Big and Te and Baron Samdi and all the. All these characters are certainly present. I will tell you, I didn't like the book that much. Didn't like it anywhere near as much as Casino Royale because. Just because of the story and the plot and it's. There's a lot of racial stuff. It's very much of its time that just kind of put me off a little bit. Even though I. I generally have a pretty. I. I think a pretty open perspective to when offers were writing, what the times are like and that sort of thing. There's some goofy stuff around that. And then I think I mentioned this last time we talked, actually. The narrator is like, she. She's a brilliant narrator, but she cannot do American accents or like Haitian accents or, you know, sort of French Quarter type accents. She's just awful. And there's a lot of those characters in the book. Last thing I thought was pretty interesting, and I was frustrated by the end because I didn't revisit it. In that book, Felix Leiter gets, like, chewed up by sharks and loses his leg and his arm. And I don't know if in later books he's going to show up with, like, prosthetic limbs, but they never. They never revisit it. Basically, Mr. Big gets mad at Bond and tries to get back at him in a couple different ways because Bond kills a few of his guys and lighter, like, pays the price and is off the screen for the whole second half of the book. He's recovering. One last thing, maybe two last things. Remember the table in Top Secret? That was about execution methods. It may have been. I forget if it was termination or execution or whatever it said. Well, Mr. Big has a method he wants to use on Bond and Solitaire, his squeeze at the end of Live and Let Die, the book. And it is to drag them behind a boat over a coral reef. So they're on, like, a line in the water, right? They're 30 or 50ft behind the boat. He wants to drag them over a coral reef, so to kind of flay them alive. And then that'll stir up all the barracuda and the sharks in the water. And he intends to watch them be eaten kind of bite by bite. Put that in your table, Merle. Like, what the hell? It's. Yeah, there's a whole lot of interesting stuff that. It's pretty clear to me that Fleming visited the Caribbean and did some diving. So there's all sorts of, like, weird factoids. And including in the 1950s, our understanding of, like, shark behavior is quite different than it is today. So there's some weird stuff in the book around how they're expected to behave and that sort of thing. It's kind of funny. All right. Lastly, bon carries his little.25 caliber Beretta. In this book, it's described, Sean, as skeletonized. This is our Firearms Question of the week for you. What is a skeletonized firearm? What does that mean? [00:11:24] Speaker A: I. I imagine it doesn't have all of the plastic molding around everything. I don't know. [00:11:32] Speaker B: That's just. That's essentially it. It's. All it is, is it's cut down. The grips are removed. Sometimes they will actually remove parts and add back parts that are lighter weight because they've either been, like, trimmed or something like that. It's all about making it concealable and lightweight. That's it. Well done. Nice job, man. And then the only other thing in my. In my sort of gaming world, the COVID ops games, I. That I've Been talking about that I'm running on gamers plane know play by post. That game is now off the ground team is Lear jetting into Prague where they're going to have to pick up a long lost asset. So a former agent that's gone dark for like five years is part. This is actually part of the COVID ops. It's actually really neat. We'll get this, we'll cover this when we do the game. They work for a company or a an agency called Sector and Sector has. Has like 13 different branches all over the world. One of those branches packed up and like vanished and they don't. People don't know if it joined the opposition or if it got destroyed. This is an agent from the from sector 13 who vanished that they're trying to find. So that's off the ground hopefully it's going to be fun. What about you? What have you been doing? [00:12:38] Speaker A: Not a ton but talking about James Bond books I used, I have read, I had read quite a few but it is literally been maybe like many [00:12:47] Speaker B: years, 40 years [00:12:52] Speaker A: I think when I was in high school or junior high it's been so long. So some of the things that you're saying I'm like I can't even remember some of the nuances of those books and I should probably return to them as well. Yeah, they're neat. [00:13:06] Speaker B: Connolly mentioned somewhere and either and maybe a write into us or a call into us actually it's totally a travelogue. It's totally where Fleming went and things he did and then he dresses it up kind of thing. Right, right. [00:13:19] Speaker A: I did watch the Spy and I watch. I started watching it quite a while ago. Like a few months ago I came across my radar even before the podcast was an idea the Spies on Netflix. It's the AR Sasha Baron Cohen and it's based on a true story about. I can't remember the person's first name but his last name was Cohen. He was an Israeli that infiltrated serious elite and government and was a spy back in like the 60s. Spoilers. True story. I guess I don't know. He I think met his demise in 65. Great performance by Sacha Baron Cohen in my opinion. [00:13:59] Speaker B: So not. Not a comedy. [00:14:00] Speaker A: Not at all. And that's the thing is a lot of people had commented on like IMDb and rotten tomatoes like I couldn't, you know. You know he's just known for comedy but his acting in this movie was top notch. Very intriguing. Like I didn't even realize even for the first three shows I'm Like, I wonder if this is a true story or if it's just more just a kind of a maybe fake documentary. But it was true. The person actually existed. And the end, he was put to death in Syria, found guilty of treason and espionage. Hanged, put on display for six hours after that. Yeah. [00:14:39] Speaker B: Ouch. [00:14:40] Speaker A: And they have never returned his remains to Israel. Yeah, after like, you know, 60 years now. 70, almost 70 years. They have not, if my math is right, 60 years. They have not done it even after pleas of. Of doing it. So I think in the movie you get a sense at that end of how he had built some relationships that I think were really soured because I think they were. They probably came quite personal and then obviously that suddenly. Yeah, it's a miniseries. It's a fantastic one. I encourage anybody of the spy and espionage fandom to check it out for sure. [00:15:17] Speaker B: Perfect example of like the, you know, the information gathering and deep cover part of espionage that we talked about. Not. Not. I'm sure it's not an action series. Right. [00:15:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I had. Other than Gamehole Con running Delta Green, continuing to run down to green. So today I have a session actually wrapping up convergence. I'm sure we'll see. [00:15:40] Speaker B: Good luck. Should. Should we move to sit rep? [00:15:46] Speaker A: Give me the sit rep, where we provide links and updates and things that we find of interest that you pass along to you. I mentioned the spy, so I'll have a link to the Spies, you know, Rotten Tomatoes page. You can check it out and link, learn more about that. I also put in a couple others that I came across. One is the director for the next Bond movie, which was announced a little while ago. David Heyman speaking for the first time about taking on the next 007 film for Bond's new owners, Amazon, MGM. So we'll see what that looks like. They haven't even announced. I was talking to Harrigan. They haven't even announced the new Bond yet. So we don't even know who's going to be in it. [00:16:29] Speaker B: Yeah, we may be a number of years away from seeing another Bond movie if they haven't got the actor. You know, with Vilna at the, at the helm, he's got another movie to direct for Dune, I think. Right. Maybe that's in production, but I don't know. I don't follow it that carefully, but it may be a while. [00:16:42] Speaker A: Well, David Heyman's calendar is booked for 2030. Working on James Bond. Boom. [00:16:48] Speaker B: You know. [00:16:49] Speaker A: And then the last one I have, Spy second edition, ran Into a gentleman at Gamehole Con. As I'm looking around my desk, I just had his card in front of me and I'll put a link in there. Polyhedral nights. And I can't fail to remember the gentleman's name. [00:17:06] Speaker B: And I. [00:17:07] Speaker A: If he listens to this, I apologize, but I don't have your name on your card. Did Spy, second edition rpg. It caught my eye on the way out to get some food. I'm like, wait, stop, hold on a second, let me see. Okay, I'll take this. And then I mentioned Go Bag and passed along our bookmarks to him and picked up a copy and very cursory, cursory glance. So we'll maybe put that on the list of games to check out. He did a first edition, you know, got some feedback and then re released it as a second edition. [00:17:40] Speaker B: Kind of a small press love letter to espionage games. Right. That kind of thing. One, you know, one small company's take on the genre. Sean, it might be worth mentioning. I don't have anything for sitrep this week, unfortunately, but it might be worth mentioning. You have now compiled the different RPGs that we've run across that are genre like Bullseye or adjacent. Right. [00:18:03] Speaker A: The Go file. The Go file on the website. There is no menu option to get to it yet, but it is gobagpod.com the-go-file. We'll get you to it. I'll get a menu up there, but it'll essentially list all. All of the games that we have come up with. Had people recommend point out and yeah, [00:18:29] Speaker B: but bunch of stuff we already have. But also people are coming out of the woodwork to say, have you seen this? Have you tried this? And I think something that we're discovering is that this genre is even waist deep. We're waiting, we're waiting through all of the material. There's a lot. You know, I knew there was a lot of spy games out there. There are even more. And as soon as you get into that sort of indie space, you know, story game space, there's a whole bunch of really specific games that are doing one specific thing, whether it's the number stations or. Or whatever. Right. So there's a lot. So I think it'll be good for us to kind of compile the whole catalog. [00:19:03] Speaker A: There's a column for a checkbox and then what episode we would have covered that game in. So if people really just want to reference it and say, well, I'm only interested in listening to Top Secret. What episode episodes cover that. Boom. They can just click on the link and I'll take them to those episodes on the website. You are welcome, agents. That's all I have for sit rep. Let's get into encrypted comms. Sir, we have an incoming encrypted transmission. Getting our email situated. Some fell through the cracks before we did the last episode, so I apologize. That's on me. I think we're caught up. We have three this week, all kind of write ins for the most part. You want to check the first one? [00:19:49] Speaker B: Sure. This is, this is going to be fun because. Because I didn't realize there were three. So let's. You're talking about Peters. [00:19:54] Speaker A: Dan Daniels. [00:19:56] Speaker B: When you start with Dan's. Okay. So Dan, by the way, Dan Warby, thank you for writing Dan. Dan is one of the individuals I met at Tacticon that we've talked already a little bit about on the show. The guy who recommended some sort of turn of the century, turn of the last century films, novels, etc. So Dan writes, gentlemen, binged all your podcast on a drive from the Colorado mountains to Denver and back again. I really like where you're going with the cast so far, but a couple of observations. Note the word but he's going to take us to task and some things I think Sean, based on Harrigan's assertions, he's going to take me to task. I think Sean, based on Harrigan's assertions of what should be in this particular genre of game, you should call this a covert action podcast because that would include all the types of operations and actions that Harrigan was describing in the mechanical and non mechanical podcasts. The official description codified in US Federal law is this Covert action is codified in Title 50 US code as an intelligence activity or activities of the United States government to influence political, economic or military conditions abroad where it is intended that the role of the United States will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly. The term clandestine describes a methodology used for a range of sensitive intelligence and military activities conducted under Title 50 or Title 10 U.S. code authority in which the activity itself as well as US sponsorship is secret. So that describes Harrigan's call for different types of activities that he wants to see. In the genre of RPGs, a deep cover spy sell, finding out some information, the location of OBL in AfPak, AfPak followed up by low intensity conflict military operations, Delta team rating a compound to kill Osama Bin Laden is what he's going after. Do you want to take over? You want me to keep reading? [00:21:48] Speaker A: Oh man. Go Knock yourself out. [00:21:50] Speaker B: Okay, so let me respond, just in brief, I think spot on, Like, I'm not using only us definitions of things is what I would say. Bottom line is the, you know, espionage is the information gathering piece. It might take years. It's the movie you described, the spy, whatever it was called, the COVID action piece is where you're actually kind of, you know, going after whatever it is. And I think he's spot on where it's like, there are ways that you don't want the whatever happened, you don't want it to be attributed to you, which we're seeing a lot of right now in various places around the world versus, like, no one knows it happened at all versus who's responsible for this. So there are different shades of this stuff. All right. Covert Action RPGs. This is Dan again, are unique in that they provide a focus for the players in GM that is lacking in other genres of RPGs. If your PCs are members of deep cover intelligence team placed in a foreign nation to gather intelligence, their characters motivations for being there are to complete the mission, not go rob a local bank, free the nuns being held hostage at the local convent, or engage the local crime boss in a duel. All of which I've been diverted to do in fantasy RPGs. Now that focus could change if the GM is running a gritty campaign where there's a conspiracy behind the mission that makes the PCs expendable. But the focus now becomes don't get killed. So I love what he's saying here, and it's kind of why you and I talked years ago about how strong a conceit the Delta Green. Like, you know why the PCs are together. Like, they've got. They've got a mission and they have reason to go go after it. There's really no like, but I've got a day job. But why would I do this? What's my motivation? Sean, that doesn't exist in these games. It's you are there for a reason. So I love that. I love the comment. He then goes on to say, any game can be run as a covert action game. One of my many unplayed adventures is a mashup of FGUs Bushido and privateers and Gentlemen, where the Dutch East Indies Corporation VOC has a group of PCs playing Ronin, or Ronin, however you pronounce that or have you choose to pronounce that, who will sail to Yemen and assist the VOC in stealing. Stealing coffee trees and bringing them back to Holland. Except there are ninjas on board who will be doing the stealing and who will then try to off the PCs once they have the goods. And I'll use Cthulhu by Gaslight if I have to for my great Game in Quotes campaign to simulate the intrigue happening between England, Russia, Germany and the Austro Hungarian Empire at the time. In closing, he says, I have a proposed game mod, use the James Bond RPG rules to do a Wild Wild west campaign. And he wants us to discuss that. That's pretty interesting. Maybe I'll drop a note at the bottom of our podcast notes here. Sean, I want to revisit this after we've done some talking through the James Bond mechanics. I will tell you right now, at the outset, I don't see it. Maybe for chases, I could see that, like the old, like, you know, train robbery or a stagecoach, or I guess people on horseback. But there's an awful lot in here that doesn't seem particularly aimed at the West. But maybe Dan will write and let us know what he's thinking. In specific, anything occur to you around using Bond for Wild West? [00:25:01] Speaker A: Wild Wild west, part of James or. [00:25:05] Speaker B: Oh, he's talking specifically the steampunk version, right? Yeah, yeah. [00:25:10] Speaker A: Not. Not. Yeah. Where they're secret agents. [00:25:14] Speaker B: Yes. Now, okay, my. My bad. [00:25:17] Speaker A: Gonna retract anything. [00:25:19] Speaker B: Simply that I was thinking traditional west that I'm not so sure it's good at. So here's. Here's why I said what I said. I have a blind spot for this. I didn't see the Wild, Wild west show. I've never seen a single. [00:25:30] Speaker A: Even the TV show. [00:25:31] Speaker B: Definitely not the TV show. I only know of a. Of a bad movie. Right. A Will Smith movie. What year? What years? [00:25:42] Speaker A: 70s. Maybe the early 70s. [00:25:45] Speaker B: I. I was watching CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which carried space 1999. [00:25:53] Speaker A: That's what he's gonna call. [00:25:54] Speaker B: That's why I. I know space 1999 so well. It's because the CBC carried it. CBC did not cover Wild Wild west, and I didn't get cable TV with my folks until about 1978. 79, 80. Somewhere in there. So there's tons of shows. Like, I'd never seen the Incredible Hulk TV show. I'd never seen Wild Wild West. So that's why I want you to answer this question, Sean, because I don. Know how crazy the Western spy thing got with that show. So. Over to you, buddy. [00:26:21] Speaker A: So it was released in 19. It was ran from 1965 to 1969. Yeah. [00:26:28] Speaker B: So it would have been syndication when you were watching it. [00:26:31] Speaker A: And it was a. A Western It's. It's touted as an American western spy and science fiction television series that ran on cbs. [00:26:39] Speaker B: Wow. [00:26:40] Speaker A: Television network for four years or four seasons. Like I mentioned the years there were two satirical comedy television film sequels and then the theatrical film 2. [00:26:50] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:26:51] Speaker A: It was developed at the time when the television western was losing ground to the spy genre. Oh. Oh. [00:26:59] Speaker B: It was. It was the western genre. Jumping the shark. [00:27:01] Speaker A: This show was received by its creator, Michael Garrison, as James Bond on horseback, set during the administration of President Ulysses. Granted, the series followed Secret Service agents James West, Robert Conrad, and Artemis Gordon Ross Martin as they foiled the plans of megalomaniacal, maniacal villains to take over part or all of the United States, protected the President and solved crimes. I cannot believe I'm sitting with a guy who has not watched Wild Wild West. [00:27:32] Speaker B: Nope. Never a single episode. I don't know if I've seen a frame of it. [00:27:37] Speaker A: Dude, you should really watch it, though. I think you would probably love parts of it. Maybe like, roll your eyes at some of the other ones, but I don't know, at the television series, people will say, oh, dude, don't watch the movie. Watch the TV series. [00:27:52] Speaker B: Okay, I will. I'll check some out. And so rounding all the way back to Dan's email, since it's been described as Bond on horseback, it should work perfectly, like. Yep, it should be fine. All right, what else do we got for encrypted? [00:28:09] Speaker A: Let's see, we have. I'm gonna just close my window here. Jason Connerly writes in brief. One pushes up the glasses, he says, I know, I'm. I think he commented this on Patreon, actually. Yeah, he did. I know I'm probably the only super fan of Top Secret here, but a charming person should be more likely to surprise someone as they can make them feel at ease. So he's addressing charm being a component of evasion. Yes, thank you. [00:28:37] Speaker B: But evasion then fits into, like, fire combat or whatever it's called. So anyway, keep going. [00:28:45] Speaker A: Likewise, the emphasis on the first shot is valid, as the first combatant to land a good shot is much more likely to win in a gunfight. Yep, absolutely. For what it's worth, there are things in the rules I feel could be tweaked or that need to be corrected. It is funny because I do tend toward beer and pretzels later games these days, but this is still my preferred game for espionage. [00:29:09] Speaker B: Jason Connolly is a liar. He does not tend towards beer and pretzel games. If he likes Top Secret. False. You know what In a minute, when we get into James Bond, I'm going to address a little bit about maybe we're a little too hard on Top Secret. I don't know. I tried to make sure people understood that we had great respect for the game and, you know, it was a landmark product and all the rest. But I do know that a lot of people have a lot of love for that game. There may be some noses that are out of joint if they listen to those episodes. Sean? Yeah, yeah, keep going. [00:29:40] Speaker A: That's it for Jason. So thanks Jason, for writing in. Appreciate it. Thanks Daniel, for writing in as well. So, and then we have one other one. Do you want to wrap up Peters? [00:29:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Peter, AKA Spez Baby. I hope I have the right one. Sean says hiya. I just finished Top Secret Deep Dive 1. Is my memory still working? Didn't they add bureaus and provide rules for multiclassing in the Companion? Or was that just a fever dream? Do you remember? [00:30:09] Speaker A: I don't remember the Companion. I think I have it, but I didn't look at it. Sorry. [00:30:14] Speaker B: So maybe I was thinking the same thing about bomb. There's all these other materials that were produced at the time. We can go back and have a look at some of the stuff that came out around Top Secret as well. [00:30:23] Speaker A: Well, you should do episodes around every supplement, every RPG that we are ever going to go over. Of course that's on the list. You're welcome, Peter. I don't care what Harrigan, he can deny it all he wants, but that's what's going to be coming down the pipe. [00:30:37] Speaker B: No, we should do three episodes for each product. [00:30:40] Speaker A: Three episodes for each product. Which means for every module, three episodes. [00:30:44] Speaker B: Oh yeah, we're gonna juice this to the end of time. Oh, all right. On a prior comment, I think it was something that Gunderman suggested. Peter also says Millennium's End being like Millennium Pasha. Millennium's End was the rough edged love child of Tom Clancy and Miami Vice with a soupcon of Neo Cyberpunk. It presaged the private military operations of post 911 world and was the gun nuttiest of gun nut games of the 90s, can anyone say Hydrostatic shock damage? That's funny. I'm surprised it hasn't crossed Harrigan's TBR pile by now. Well, I mean, there's my gun nutness goes so far. As soon as I get into that Phoenix Command level of like, of, you know, simulation of hydrostatic shock damage, for example, or shotgun, you know, bird shots different than buckshot and all that kind of stuff, like it's gone too far. That's. But that's what Peter has to say. Thank you for writing Peter. [00:31:48] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks, Peter. And Peter's. I think he's a field agent for us actually. So. [00:31:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:54] Speaker A: And so is Jason. [00:31:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Trusted. [00:31:57] Speaker A: That's right. Solid sources. Let's get into the mission. Main mission brief here. [00:32:03] Speaker B: Have a seat. Let's get on with the mission brief. [00:32:07] Speaker A: Oh, boy. James Bond continued with this is the Deep Dive and we're gonna just. We did the general 100 foot overview at the last episode or an episode prior to the Q A1 episode 007 was the general overview. Now we're getting into the deep dive. I want to touch on this and hopefully do it all in one episode. Bing, bam, boom. [00:32:30] Speaker B: I think, Sean, we're going to kind of break this into parts. Right. There's a player section of the book. There's a GM section in the book. We're going to go back and forth as we talk about it, but largely speaking, I'll lead sort of the core mechanic and the guts of the game and then you can get into like what the GMs doing, the NPCs and some other other stuff like that before we dive in. And this. You know, I'm looking at the clock. Shamas could be a long one. We can break this up, whatever we need to do. Because there's a fair bit to cover, I think. I've said before this game would not exist without Top Secret. Like not even the fact that Victory Games identified that there was a gap in the market or this opportunity because there was only the one game that was there. But there's also a ton of components and features of Top Secret that Bond takes and frankly improves is the way I look at it. I would also say that maybe we're a little bit hard on the Top Secret, especially for of its time type of thing. And instead of saying it's not playable, I think I described it as unplayable, which for me personally it kind of is. But I think what I should be saying is instead is it's not for me. It's like not my. I'm not going to enjoy it. I'm not going to enjoy running it. It's not cohesive enough as a system. There's too much to remember. There's too many little like sidelines and blind alleys to go down. And some people really dig that stuff. And you know what? More power to you. I didn't mean to suggest that no one can ever run this ever as written. I think it's very unusual, very unlikely and unusual to do that. But some people I'm sure absolutely did. I think it's, I think Bond is objectively the better game just in terms of how it's organized. I think the rules are cleaned up, but they do take like, you know, fame and I don't know, we'll get into the mechanics. There's so many elements that you'll hear us repeat from the Top Secret breakdown that reappear in Bond. I think what Bond is best at is it leans into a very specific part of this MILU or this fiction, which is the James Bond movies, which I would rate at like, it's like 3/4 of the game and like 1/4 is probably the James Bond books. But there are some things that they either simplify or they exclude. And that's because they're so focused on the Bond ip, basically. And the last thing I would say is for all these older games, I think nostalgia colors our perception of this for at least for us folks who are old enough to have actually played or, you know, were players or were running these games back then, whether it's AD&D roll Master, Top Secret, Bond, whatever. And quite frankly, I think TSR was a lot more popular in the early days for a lot of players than it was with me personally. So I rapidly move from TSR games to other types of games. So I don't have the same nostalgia, the same rose colored glasses that some folks do around things like Top Secret. I do have it for James Bond and maybe that explains a little bit of why you'll hear me gush about one game system where I look at the other one. I kind of go, it's, you know, it's got great parts but man, I, I don't want to play it kind of thing. Some of that I'm sure it goes back to the early 80s and the, you know, the kids we all were and what we have fond memories of that type of thing. I do think it's objectively better, but let's, let's find out. All right. Anything you want to say about that before I get into the core mechanics? [00:35:28] Speaker A: No, I don't. I think that is true, but the fondness I have for Top Secret is its own thing. I have good memories of it, but it is not a game for me personally to also pick up and probably run now currently back in the 80s. Hell yeah, man. Top Secret all the way, bro. [00:35:48] Speaker B: Sean, we're both of an age that we could, could be Considered grog nerds. Right, right. Where. Where they got some gray hairs or old. But I will say I think both of us, like I, I have tended to keep a pretty modern perspective on games as I've gone through my gaming life. So I do not put games on pedestals just because I enjoyed them as a kid. I think I try to look at them sort of objectively. Right. And that's where I set James Bond aside for a long time because I kept coming back after my initial run at it because look guys, this is James Bond. It's so cool. That table, those couple tables in the beginning of the book, the multiplication table where you take your primary chance and you multiply by the ease factor and you have to look it up and you don't have to look it up. You can do the math in your head, but there's a pretty big chart on your character sheet. So there's one bit of math there and then when you make the percentile roll, the GM has a chart where they're looking up very much like what I think eventually Star Frontiers got one. Marvel superheroes had one. All these sort of like result tables where you look across columns and it tells you what quality result you get. For a long time in my gaming career from like the, probably from 2000 forward, I rejected all that kind of like I want resolution faster at the table. I think I may even mention this already in the podcast more recently. I'm, I'm more open to like more simulationist type games again. Like, you know, my love was gurps in the 90s and it was full of that stuff. Right. So I think I'm not able to allow look past the fact that there are these two tape two tables in the beginning of the game that are involved in every mechanic that, you know what, once you start internalizing that stuff, the game actually is pretty smooth. So I don't know. We're at the very beginning of this podcast really. I don't know if we're going to find a better running spy game than this, is what I would say right from the outset. It's pretty sweet, dude. Bold. [00:37:35] Speaker A: Bold words, ladies and gentlemen. [00:37:37] Speaker B: Not really. It's held up as a, as a great game by many people, especially for certain, for certain mechanics. But you'll only need six and ten sided die. It's generally theater of the mind, but they do like roll out like floor plans and city maps and that kind of thing. Everything really boils down to you, you having a primary chance at accomplishing something and that pulls from both your skill rank and a formula that derives from one or more of your characteristics. So we talked about characteristics before being like strength, dex, willpower, perception, intelligence. So they all have a rating of 1 to 15. You do some averaging and you add a skill rank on top of that, you end up with a number of between, like 1 and 30 is what it boils down to. And then Sean's looking suspiciously at his book here. I don't think he believes me on something. You then apply an ease factor, and the ease factor is anywhere between 1/2 and 10, with the average being 5. And the reason why it's ease factor and not difficulty is because the easier things get, the higher the number gets. So ease factor 10 is easier than ease factor 5, and ease factor 0.5 or 1/2 is the hardest of all. And what you do is you combine those two numbers, you take your primary chance. So your primary chance in, like, stealth might be 20, let's say, or might be 15. And if you're. If it's 20 and you apply the ease factor of five, you multiply them, you have a 100, you know, success chance. And there's a table that goes from 1 to 300, because the top number you can get in A skill is 30, basically 15 from your characteristics. 15 skill ranks top is 30 multiplied by 10, the easiest task. So you're at. You're at a chart that is very easy to succeed on versus, let's say you take that score of 20 in stealth. If the eventual ease factor is one half, you're rolling against a 15. And what that it is actually more literal than you think as well. So it takes the four quality results, one through four, which are, like, acceptable, good, very good, and excellent. So it's a very early version of that type of logic of, like, rating the successes that you get. Everything in this game revolves around this one mechanic. And the way they bring it all back and make it universal is really. It's pretty cool. One thing I really like about it is that the only thing that the GM is messing with is the ease factor. So the skill number, the prime, what's called the primary chance, is set right? It's set in stone. And the ease factor starts at five. And then there's this little negotiation that goes on, which is the targets undercover. Oh, it's a little harder ease factor four. But there's all sorts of things that weigh in around the quality of the weapon and the range and all sorts of stuff. So rather than having the player add anything to it further roll or make any changes rather than rolling additional dice. The only measure that is changing here is the ease factor. It's the opposite of some games that. That kind of bug me, where the player adds a plus one and the gm, the GM changes the doctor and then you roll out advantage. Like all these things are doing the same thing. They're all just messing with the odds, right? All of them. So this has a nice, simple way of doing that. I mean, it's unified in terms of a social system, the chase system, the combat system. It's all uses the same stuff. [00:40:45] Speaker A: And you meant. And you meant DC, not Dr. [00:40:49] Speaker B: I did mean DC, except in the. In the Mork board games, it's actually [00:40:54] Speaker A: Dr. Is it really Dr. And Morg? [00:40:56] Speaker B: Okay, it is. [00:40:58] Speaker A: Which is why I said that it's not. [00:41:00] Speaker B: It's not. I misspoke. It's. It's. I. I have forever hated damage or a difficulty class as a thing because it's so tied to armor class. I think difficulty rating is better. But long story short, you know what I'm getting at? A lot of games have multiple levers that the GM is responsible for pulling and the player can control and all that kind of stuff. It's easier when it's like in all in one spot, right? All right. So if I look at sort of how to build a character, one thing I like right away is that there are three overall ranks of classes or characters in James Bond. There are rookies, there are agents, and there are double O agents. And that depends on like how high your skills are and all that kind of stuff. So. But right off the bat, there's no class, but there is a. And we're going to get to this. When we talk about experience. There's lots of elbow room in this game. There's lots of headroom, I guess I should say to grow a rookie into a double O agent. Lots of play would be required to do that. I've mentioned the characteristics. There are 24 skills, no significant overlap. It's a nice trim skill list. And then. Fascinating to me. There are different ways to model levels of expertise. One is skills, one is fields of experience. And then there are professions and abilities. It's a little bit of a jumble, but they relate together. The skills are the things you're rolling against, right? Those are the things where you have a. You actually have a numerical rating that you combine with some characteristic math formula to give you your primary success chance. There's this collection of things that make up your expertise, one of which abilities which are three skills that never improve. Every agent gets connoisseur, first aid and photography. And they are all pinned as a success chance at 20. So remember, ease factor 5. That generally means you have a. You're rolling on the 100 level on the table. And the 100 level on the table is pretty damn good. It really means you only fail on like a on the double o on the on 100. So it's pretty good. So what they're saying is all agents are really good at these things. If you use the professions, that's pretty neat for your role 1d6 to see how long you were in the profession. And for each year you get to choose a field of experience, you also pick up more character generation points that you can spend on very specific skills. So the professions are things like, you know, you're a police detective type of thing. So it's like a little package almost. If you're familiar with the current Delta Green game, it does something very similar where they build little packages around professions type of thing. The fields of experience which are bundled in with those professions are really neat. And this is where like I think the direct tie back to Top Secret exists. Like those are areas of knowledge that come from Top Secret. It's just a victory Games team designing things a bit differently. Fields of experience are things that you just know there's no rolling. So if you are a, a medical doctor, if you are a mountaineer, if you are, you know, have an engineer of some kind of aerospace engineer, you don't roll at all. You ask the questions and the GM just says, just lays it out there and tells you. There's even kind of a neat thing where if the player isn't like snappy enough and isn't with it enough to ask the right questions, you can, the GM can make a sixth sense role for them and say your field of experience tells you. Which is not all that different than, you know, someone saying, make perception checks everybody, or idea checks and call Cthulhu. Right. But it's wired together a little more. I don't know, it's cooler because it's tied to the field of experience where they're supposed to be an expert. And even, you know, there's a lot of like, I don't know, there's a lot of gaming thought that's gone into this. It's the same thing where people are like, should you make people roll for secret doors? Or should they tell you they're looking for secret doors? Or should they just see the secret doors? If they say they're looking for them like shadowdark does. Right. This is similar, similar vibe here. So fields of experience are things that you. That you are an expert in. Abilities are these three things that everybody has. Professions are collections of these things, including skills you should be good at. And skills are the things that matter on your sheet that you're going to be improving over time. You're going to be making them go from 10 to 15 to 20 as you level up the character and that sort of thing. Fields of experience are optional, as are weaknesses. And I think this is one of the first time we see weaknesses in an rpg. They're used two different ways. One is where they actually will. This is really pretty cool. The lower the ease factor of something, like if you are afraid of something, if you have a fear of spiders or sharks and those things are involved, an ease factor 5 test becomes an ease factor 3 test. It goes down by 2. Then the other thing they can do is they can. A weakness can be a distraction or it can influence your behavior. So this is the whole like bonds, weakness for women. All through the stories he's making bad decisions because he wants to get the girl to safety kind of thing. Right. So the weaknesses really can be. Can power the role play. But I like that they are also mechanical and that they actually make things harder without robbing you of agency. So there's no, like you can't do this thing because you're afraid. I've been in plenty of games where like the party is like in dire straits and the one character can't either can't go into the room or can't do the thing because they, you know, they've got some sort of fear effect put on them. And I vastly prefer one where it just makes it harder rather than making it impossible. Well, they're not locked out of the action the same way they might be otherwise. Right. Some final notes on the characters themselves. True. Throughout the book, man, the sidebars contain some really important information. They are generally speaking to the GM and they are like six point font. Like they're small. So all the costs of everything I've talked about characteristics, the attributes, the skills and everything. Oh, your appearance. I shouldn't. I skipped over that. I think we talked about it last time. There's a whole thing around a. Around appearance, how tall you are, how good looking you are, how much you weigh, which all gets into the fame side of things. Right. All the points that go into that that you have to spend on those things, they're called out in These sidebars, there's not like a big table that lays out like here's all the costs for building a character. It's kind of off to the side. It's kind of strange. I like that you get to choose where you live in London. You pick a flat in a neighborhood which is kind of cool. I did notice as much as I like the layout of this book for its time for 83, there are some like missing headers. There are some headers at the bottom of the page and the paragraph starts on the next page. Or some of that kind of goofy layout stuff that you don't really see anymore in modern layout. There are some corner case rules that are just all over the book. So one example is. Remember I mentioned that you have these skill ranks and they look at like governing characteristics. A good example might be like hand to hand fighting and strength. You are limited in what the skill level can be. It's actually governed by your strength plus two. So it can't be higher too. Higher than the governing characteristic that is called out in some little tiny paragraph like on the side somewhere. It's not very clear. And that happens kind of throughout the book. So the book could use some cleanup. And I'm wondering if Classified actually does that, if it pulls some of these things together. Right. That's the modern retro clone. I thought it was kind of interesting that the authors say there is no intrinsic advantage to being male or female. And it should say comma Gary. Right. It should address Gygax's strange male female, like the limitations that women have in his games. Basically building your character. One of the things you come out of the obsession with is your fame based on everything we've talked about before, like your appearance, your blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And if you build a. If you, you know. Oh, actually should say you get fame from your profession as well. So the longer you're in the field, the more famous you get. And if you decide to build characters that are more more advanced, you're going to get me potentially get scars which add to your fame and you just become more famous, generally speaking. Well, if you start with a base character, the rookie level, female agents start at minus 40 fame to that number. And the rationale is, well, there are more. There are more male agents. To which I say, wouldn't that make the female agents more memorable? Because you run into one. But I think they're thinking you don't know they're an agent. There's just more dudes in the world. It's the 60s, 70s and 80s. If you're traveling abroad, there's more men than women, like whatever, whatever. So points on one side and then demerits on the other side is what I would say. The game, like the movie and movies in the books is obsessed with looks. Obsessed with like different levels of good looking. You're not just goodlook or plain, you're like normal plain. Like I forget what less than plain is, but you can then be like good looking, striking, and then it goes on from there. It's like multiple levels of just how hot you are. So just another example of like how focused the game is on the, on the fiction. Anything around characters that you want to talk about. I know that was a lot. [00:49:39] Speaker A: That's good. That's a good, good overview. I like it. [00:49:43] Speaker B: Yeah, listeners keep. Keep that like skill level and ease factor thing in mind because it's again it's used all throughout here. But we're going to start to see as we into the subsystems around combat and chases. They re they make use of some really cool features where I'll talk about it, but the quality of your result which is this one through four, with one being the best and four being the worst. Those results can sometimes be the ease factor of the person who's going up against you in a chase, for example. So if you get quality result one, their ease factor is one the second lowest in the game. So what it means is things like, you know, dangerous driving and that kind of thing and you're trying to throw someone off your tail, your results really matter. It's not just as simple as like an opposed role. It's pretty cool. So succeeding very well can really make it hard for people. Let's move to combat here. So action rounds are about three to five seconds. There's a pretty strict initiative order. The highest speed declares last you look at your stats to determine a static speed number. The speed drives how many actions you have in a turn. Speed three actually acts three times, whereas speed one only acts once. So it's a big deal to have a higher speed. It's also quite hard to get those high speed numbers and it's generally between I think 0 and 3. If I have that right. Sean, 0 being I think you. These are generally going to be people who are not agents. They're acting once every two rounds and then you've got all the way up to three which are the very fastest. Movement can be normal or this is pretty funny. It can be zigzagging movement which is it takes you longer to get there. And you can't like take an action or you can't attack, but it means that you're harder to hit. There's a wound system that I like instead of hit points. You mentioned that two weeks ago, stun, light wound, medium wound, heavy wound, incapacitated and killed. Each of these wound levels, especially light wound through. I think heavy wound affects your ease factor. So they're building in being wounded into how difficult the tasks are. There is a hand to hand system that is like infinitely easier than Top Secret, but it still does like some level of. Like it looks at your strength and you have like a different damage rating based on how strong you are. You can punch, you can kick, or you can do a specific blow. And the specific blow is where you get into all of the trips and grapples and all that sort of stuff. So again, they took the ideas and they greatly simplified them. It's really pretty slick. I think there are things like relatively simple auto fire rules. Auto fire can even, I shouldn't say auto fire, spray fire is what they call it. I do like that if you have like a semi automatic pistol, you can shoot at more than one target in every round. Even if you only have one action, you can spread it around. You know what, let me retract that. You need both more than one action and the weapon has to be rated that way as well. So you need speed two and the weapon has to have like, you know, whatever rate of fire 2 type of thing to be able to shoot twice. It gets like gurps. It gets a little bit harder with each subsequent shot that you take. I think Top Secret does that too. Every other shot gets a little bit harder. So the ease factor goes, you know, gets more difficult kind of thing. Stun is pretty cool where you, you can shake you can you. It puts you on the ground. But if you Pass an ease factor 8 strength roll, you can recover in a certain number of turns. The GM keeps that secret sort of. Back in the, you know, back in the day there was a lot of secret GM roles. This is one of them. So you're down and you don't know for how long type of thing. I think something called Shake Off Wounds is really cool. I don't know if you saw that, Sean, but that is where, like if you remember James Braun throwing a gold brick at Odd Job. And Odd Job just like muscles it up. Like it just shrugs off the gold brick. [00:53:17] Speaker A: Not to be mistaken for Top Hat. Right? Just, just saying a little inside joke [00:53:25] Speaker B: there in the discourse. Some someone was trying to recall Odd Job and they call them Top. [00:53:29] Speaker A: Top Hat. Top Hat. Well, I mean, you know, IP don't want to infringe. [00:53:34] Speaker B: That's right. Odd Job does have a hat that he throws. There's a bowler with the metal ring that he throws. But. But long story short, Shake Off Wounds is modeling people like Jaws and people like Odd Job who are super tough. So if you're hand to hand with them, like if you got a knife or if you have a pistol, they can't do this. But if you are hand to hand, they can make an East Factor 5 strength roll to reduce the wound by two levels. So in other words, you have to medium wound them to even stun them. So it makes them pretty damn tough. It's pretty cool. I also like this if you are knocked down. So stuns are relatively common result, which is basically kind of a knockdown. You're out of the action for a moment or two. You have to roll to get back up from that. And what I like is even if you fail the roll, you still get back up. But what it means is your enemies enjoy a plus one ease factor against you. So if they're rolling a five, it becomes a six. So you're easier to hit again. There's thought towards like not locking people out of the action for too long, which I think is pretty advanced thinking for the time. Kind of cool. And then if you get medium or worse wounds, those produce scars, those increase your fame, which you don't want, etc. Right. Kind of neat. And then lastly, I would say healing is quite slow. So because these wound levels mainly light through, you know, through incapacitated, and you're only healing one moon level per week, first aid helps, staying in the hospital helps. But if you're out in the field somewhere, you're like in a. You know, you're holed up in a barn and you've just had a gunfight, you're bleeding, it's going to be a while before you're feeling better, which I think is kind of cool. We'll talk about this when we get into the checklist that I have around. Like do the just the game, check the boxes. But the game is deadly. The game is quite deadly. Like when you get that killed result, unless you have hero points to back off the result by, you know, one quality result at a time, you're dead you. If you. And that's just a value on a chart. If you have someone who's got an AK and they're shooting at you if they get quality result, one or two, you're dead like straight up. So you better have some. It's a lot like Delta Green, Sean, with The, with the 10, 20 sort of lethality on the weapons, but it's a little more in your face. I think in this game. Did anything you. I think you're a little bit familiar with the combat at least. Anything pop out at you that you wanted to talk about? [00:55:48] Speaker A: Not offhand, no. I. But I do think that with the lethality that you had mentioned, you know, with hero points. Is it the hero points? [00:55:58] Speaker B: It's hero points. [00:55:59] Speaker A: Hero points, yeah. I mean those are. And I'll get to. Those are to be used to prevent a lot of that. So it's lethal but at the same time easily avoided, I would say. [00:56:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. Well, I guess I think what it means is like as those hero points go down, it's important to kind of keep them in supply. It's supposed to be like Benny's where the, the economy is sort of free moving because if they don't have them, this game can kill you in an instant. If your enemies are armed a certain way. [00:56:27] Speaker A: Yeah. In the game master section, it's very important they highlight the fact that you should be handing those out pretty, pretty freely because they say when you have two hero points, well, I gotta save these two forever. But if you have six, you're just spending them all day long. Which is conducive to the, the feel and tone of James Bond. [00:56:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I'll tell you what I want to do one thing that we haven't done yet in either episode here. I want to. And you know, not everybody's going to get. Be able to get a hold of this game. So I want to describe these quality results, this quality results table that I'm talking about, which is the one that goes from 1 to 300. To give you some idea of the ranges we're talking about because it's important for what like, like Sean is mentioning too, around the. When do you use hero points and moving the success level up and down. So let me give you an example. If someone has a primary success chance of 10 and the ease factor is 5, that's a 50. If I look at 50 on the table, an excellent quality 1 result is 5% 01 to 05, a very good result. Quality level 2 is a 6 to 10. So you have a 10 chance of getting this like quality 1 or quality 2, which with many guns will kill you, incapacitate or kill you. So there's about a 10 chance. And that's even if you have a 10 skill level, which many thugs do. So that's just, you know, and on from there on the 50 line, a good result is 11 to 25. And this is where things are kind of cool. The 50 result for acceptable is 26 to what's called success chance. So in other words, your 50 that you started with. So from 26 to 50, you'll get quality 4, and from 51 to 100, that's a miss. So that final number, that success chance moves around if you have a 49 versus a 50 versus a 55. So it's a little bit different for everybody. What this does is gives. It gives the GM tons of headroom and able to. You're able to move laterally with all the bonuses and whatnot. And they all make a little bit of difference as opposed to like, you know, plus 10 or a plus 20. In a percentile system where you rapidly get above 100 or below zero. If someone's only got a 40 or a 50 in. In the skill, the minute you say this matters, this matters, this matters. And add modifiers, this system accounts for that because it goes from 1 to 300. Basically. Not unlike Role Master. Right. Which gives you just a lot more room to kind of use modifiers and that sort of thing. It just does it in a different way. Whereas this is roll under, for example. Enough on that. But I want to make sure people were kind of grounded in how the. The core part of it worked. Should we talk about chases? Because they're a famous part of this game. [00:58:52] Speaker A: Sure. [00:58:53] Speaker B: All right. These mechanics are lauded by many and are the. Are the heart of many chase systems that have come after them. So 1983 action rounds were used just like in the. In combat rounds. So you go round by round, and there are eight steps you go through for. For any chase. And a chase can be on foot, helicopters, helicopter versus a motorcycle, boat versus a jet ski, you name it. And they have a way of like, actually letting you know which. Which thing can chase another. Because sometimes you can't chase a helicopter on foot. And the game has a way of saying you can't do that mechanically, let alone just the GM saying that doesn't make sense. Right. The very first thing that the GM does is determine range. This is close, medium, long, distant, or extreme. It maps relatively closely to the combat ranges for weapons as well. Not exactly, but they talk about how to map it, map it in perfectly. And the GM can randomize that with a D6 if they want to. To start the opening range, but you start with the range and then you come, you come into the. The mechanic that I don't know has been used yet in RPGs but has been used many times since, especially in story games. There's a bidding mechanic starting with the players. They go to the ease factor, which starts at 7, and they basically say, how hard are you either pursuing or trying to get away? What are you willing to risk? How low will you go with the ease factor? Because remember, as the ease factor comes down, things are getting harder. You're multiplying that primary success chance with the ease factor. So the numbers are coming down. When the ease factor comes down starts at seven. So you know, players say six, GM says, you know, the thugs chasing you are willing to go to five and on from there. There's some neat advice around this where most henchmen won't go lower than 4. It gets too dangerous for them, right? So if the players are willing to go to three, they're going to win the bid, and that means they go first. And there's also mechanics tied in so that the vehicles that you are driving, they have a red line score. If you bid lower than the red line, you have to check for a mishap. You have to make a safety check, which is pretty cool. You're kind of driving beyond the bounds of the car, the tires, the bike, whatever, pretty neat. And then you modify, you can modify the ease factor. I think. I'm not sure about this. I think it's after the bid, you modify by weather, nighttime, are you familiar with the area, are you drunk? And the vehicle's performance. So this is where it all kind of comes together, where you can all those different things. Again, it's just the ease factor moving around. There's not a lot of other things that you're moving. So while these tables that are at the front of the game can be an impediment to people saying, oh, it looks like a lot once you're through that, man, you're working with the same sort of tools the whole time, which I really, I really like. And then I would also say the game leads towards heroic. Sean, remember you talked about how Bond was set up as one of the first games to be player player positive. Remember that? Yes. Yeah. NPCs don't get positive bonuses unless they're up against double O agents. So if you've got rookies or agents in the field, they're not going to get positive factors to their ease factor. In other words, if the player has dragged them down. Because what we're going to see is the ease factor that's about to be established is the ease factor that everyone will roll for everything. Like for all of the, you know, the maneuvers, whether you're chasing or being pursued. So in other words, you can really put it to the villains because they don't like the fact that they have a fast car. Doesn't matter because it's just trying to model the model of fiction, that sort of thing. From the bid, you then go to, like, who. Who wins the bid. They decide who goes first or last. And there are various reasons why you'd want to do that, that I won't get into all that, all those guts, because we just don't have time. But there's like, there's strategy here that's involved. So the side that is determined will go first. They declare a maneuver. The maneuvers are pursuer, flee, force, quick turn, double turn, or trick. And these all have specific meetings. Basically, pursuer, flee. You're trying to increase the distance or close the distance, right? And the better your quality result, the more you do that you can get away by rolling. Amazing. If they, you know, against the, against the. The chart. Force is pretty cool. It's where you're trying to like, force the other car off the road or force it into a mishap kind of thing. Quick turn, I love. You can only use quick turn if you're at long or extreme distance. In other words, you've got a good lead. You know, you go around a corner, you dark down a country road, or you drive behind a barn. So in other words, they can't be right behind you. They'll see where. They're going to see where you go. But if you can get a lead, you can make this quick turn and like, hide and they'll go right past you. Which Bond does in Casino or they do the Bond in Casino Royale. They quick turn, bond and make them wipe the car out. So pretty cool. And then double back is also neat. It's basically doing, you're far enough ahead, you do a U turn, you come back past them. Imagine the cars going past each other on the road. And from there the person who's pursuing gets to decide are you also going to do a. Do a. What's called a double back and try to chase them, or you're going to try your own force move and ram them or sideswipe them as they go past you? So there's all this, like, narrative, I think, that kind of flows off of These choices. And the last one is trick. And this is where like, hey, the bridge is out ahead. What do you do? Like, I'm going to jump it and you know what, I'm going to do a 360 corkscrew in the air while I jump it. And if the pursuer wants to pursue you, they have to do the same trick. So whether you're watching the movie Ronin or Ronin with Robert Dairo does a lot of this. So that movie has a ton of like high speed Audi vs BMW car chases through Europe. And there's lots of like just barely getting the car on an, like an up ramp to a highway where it barely fits in between the concrete barrier and the big lorry or the big truck that's going by. It barely makes it. And the people behind have to do the same thing if they're going to continue the chase. So this model's all of that. And every single one of these maneuvers has a little mini set of mechanics that you are rolling against to avoid mishaps. And what it means that your pursuer or, or the person you're pursuing has to do to be able to kind of either keep up with you or, you know, stay ahead kind of thing. Generally speaking, you need quality for result to be, you know, acceptable to be, to succeed. Right. But the better you do it makes it generally harder for them to keep up with you. Step four was declaring a maneuver. Step five is resolving the maneuver. Then we get to step six, which is fire combat. Fire combat is very much like just, you know, you get to shoot at somebody, you can do damage to the car. The game has rules for people inside the car taking damage. When the car does, they're generally got like a level of protection where the damage results will slide down. So a medium wound becomes either a light wound or a stun, that kind of thing, depending on how heavy the armor is on the vehicle is. And then step seven is the other vehicle, the side that went second, choosing its maneuver. And then fire combat comes in as step eight. So basically one through six are the first. You know, it's the bidding and the first side doing all of its stuff. And then 7 and 8 are basically saying, all right, either pursuer or fleer, you didn't go first. Now what do you do at the very end of things? You measure, like how far apart are you? And if you are beyond extreme range, they get away. So what it means is if you're going second and you're the pursuer, they may do some things that put them way out in front. So when it comes to be your turn to make your moves, you better put the hammer down and try to close that distance because you can be in the middle of a turn. You can be at like extreme plus one range. What that means is if the turn ends, they're gone. So this is where you can use your hero points. You can do whatever to say, Nope, I'm not going to give up. Not only am I going to flee, but I'm going to double down and use some hero points and improve my quality result to change that range from extreme plus one back down to long range by spending two of them, that kind of thing. It's a really cool chase system. You know, I could go on for a long time about it, but we have a lot more content to cover, so I won't. It's worth reading the game just for the chase system, frankly. What do you think? [01:06:42] Speaker A: I'd like to see it in action. [01:06:44] Speaker B: Well, you will. Oh, well, we're running this game. I'll run this game. Sean's looking surprised. I don't know why that surprises you. [01:06:52] Speaker A: I don't know. [01:06:52] Speaker B: Either we're either going to have someone run top secret or you're going to run it like you're not off the hook fully. [01:06:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. I'm just like, it's right here. Like, right. Yeah. [01:07:02] Speaker B: Yep. So you know what? And I forgot I had. There were. So let me. Let me scan my notes here. I had some. There's some nuance in these chase rules that are really cool. Oh, I like this a lot. Depending on the vehicles that you have, each vehicle has a max speed and a cruise speed. Cruise speed is basically how fast can the vehicle go kind of comfortably. Right. So like a big German, like a, you know, sedan, a big BMW 7 series can go pretty bloody fast on the Autobahn without really breaking a sweat. If the cruise speed is faster than the other vehicle's max speed, you cannot get away. You. That's. That's not an option. You have to escape some other way because the vehicle just. And so does that. And that's where on foot, you can't chase a motorcycle or you can't chase a helicopter. They're just going to be gone. So it has a rule built in for that, which is pretty neat. So a sports car can beat the pants off a dump truck kind of thing. [01:07:49] Speaker A: Wait a minute. So somebody somewhere was like, well, I'm gonna just. I'm gonna chase. I'm gonna chase them. You're on foot. Like, they're In a car. I know, but can I chase them? I'm gonna chase him. Right? That's Sean sitting at a convention game and a player across the table. [01:08:04] Speaker B: Sean's experienced. [01:08:05] Speaker A: This says. Well, so they got a motorcycle. Do I see a motorcycle? Nope, there's none available. Okay, can I chase them on a skateboard? I. I'm gonna chase them on a skateboard. Can I do that? Sure. [01:08:25] Speaker B: So in this case. [01:08:26] Speaker A: This case, hell, no. [01:08:30] Speaker B: I was gonna say, while they're on foot and you determine the range. Like, you can see. Like, can you get them. Get to them before they get to the car. But once they get to the car, buddy, they're gone. Right. They're taken off. So I. It's just very. It's nice to have concrete rules. Like, you know, I'm not a guy who needs a rule for everything, as I think, you know. You know, and many folks that play with me know. But I love this. Kind of like, this guides the fiction. You know, run for another car player. Go. You know, go pull somebody out of their sports car and jump in and start the car chase. Right, exactly. That's what it's meant to be. I've already talked about this earlier, so I won't dwell on it, but there's a fair number of these chase mechanics that are. Your quality rating, either by itself or multiplied by two, becomes the ease factor for those that are either being pursued or. Or are pursued by you, which I think is, again, really neat. So the better you do, the harder it is for them to keep up. Under tricks, the GM can also introduce some things too, or the. I shouldn't say that. The player can try to introduce some things. Like, are there drunken pedestrians, other cars, construction? Is there a festival that's going on? Sean, it sounds a lot like. Remember the Blade Runner game that you ran, where you run a Blade Runner chase? [01:09:38] Speaker A: Yes. [01:09:39] Speaker B: And like, Blade Runner has that table for things that happen during a chase. It comes from James Bond. It comes from these. These tricks where the bridge might be out, the drawbridge is raising as you're going up. It's like classic spy movie, action movie stuff. Right. Really cool. And then throughout this, if you're failing, you're not always, like, out of the chase, you are generally rolling some sort of safety rating the vehicle might have against an ease factor. And it's this mishap damage that you're trying to avoid. So in other words, the cars can get damaged as they go, and as the cars get damaged, they lose speed and handling. So it all kind of factors together. So it can kind of be like the sort of thing where you lose your pursuers just because they've sideswiped too many buildings and they blew the tire type of thing. Right. So you didn't actually get away, but their car is so damaged they can no longer keep up because of that max speed versus cruise speed thing. It sounds like it's a lot to keep track of and I want to see how it, how it plays. I bet it plays smoother than, than you would think. I think there's a, it's a pretty nicely little tidy little rule set. I like it a lot. There are also tailing rules which are basically kind of a perception based chase skills to see if you can either not lose track of somebody and not be made or which is. Let me, let me think about this. You roll your drive if you're against an ease factor if you are trying to not get made and keep up and you roll your perception if you are trying to see if you are being followed. So almost player facing roles. I would say the, you know, it doesn't matter what the, what the other folks are doing. As a gm, I would just change the ease factor. If somebody's really good at tailing you, your ease factor is going to be harder to notice the them that kind of thing. Pretty cool. That is I think chases, right? And, and quite frankly the core mechanic, the combat, the chases are like a large part of the game. The other big part that I think we're going to get into a little bit at least and Sean, you'll cover at least some of it too is this whole social NPC interaction thing where you might remember that Top Secret had a way of handling that. Right? Remember, you might remember me saying I don't think it does it. You're like actually it does it in spades. Here, here, here, that kind of thing. It's another example of where Bond took that and boy did they boil it down and make it very like elegant. There are basically there's a reaction chart to show how you know. It's just like you know, BX and you know, old D D which is if you're not sure how they'd react, make a roll. If they have a perspective coming in, if they know your Bond, they're going to react a certain way. But there's a way to set a reaction. There's a persuasion chart. There are seduction mechanics, there are interrogation and torture tables. But all of these tables, they're little tiny sidebar tables and it makes the GM screen because if you look around and find those, it all is pretty tidy how it all kind of comes together. I will just want to dive into one. Are you going to talk about the seduction mechanics or should I? [01:12:24] Speaker A: I don't know if I touch on the seduction as much, but basically I [01:12:28] Speaker B: just love that it goes from like the look to witty conversation to beginning intimacies to where and when. Oh, I forgot. Opening line as well. The look, then opening line. But each one of those has an increasingly difficult ease factor. Right? And then the, of course the person, when they are resisting with their willpower, it is your quality result that they are resisting again, like tightly wired together. So in other words, to go all the way down this chain of seduction, it gets harder and harder to get the person into bed. You know, it's a Bond film, he's trying to do that. But if he's like super suave, it makes it harder for them to resist. So it's just, man, it's like a tightly wound top. It's a fantastic little system. I think the seduction system is the coolest of all of the socials, but they're all, they're all pretty good. There's a whole section on gambling and casino life that I won't go into, but there are actually casino like mechanics for gambling and everything else. Fame, I think we talked about fame a fair bit already. But not only is it based on your like your initial hero outset, but now it's also based on as you complete missions, as you kill people, even kill anybody, your fame goes up. And if you kill like a major villain, it goes up a lot, that sort of thing. And I do like that when the GM is rolling for fame, when you come into a scene, it's in secret. You don't know if you've been recognized. And the cool part is that you don't want to be. You don't want to succeed, right? You don't want to be recognized. And then you talked about it last week, you can fake your death, there are disguises you can wear. So fame is a whole thing. Many of these spy games I think are trying to model like a pretty competent person. But if you go, if you get into any of the games that are more like OSR based or whatever, then you're, you know, you're generally starting off at level one. You're not very competent. This game, excuse me, I would say, does it all. There's a way to go from rookie up to double O. As you earn experience, you spend it on abilities, characteristics, that kind of Thing. So it's all mission based. The Double O guys get more mission rewards, rookies get less. That's because at a higher level you have to spend a lot more to improve. Right. So the rookies are still improving faster, I think. And then this is where you get into the role playing bonuses where the GM says great role play as a Bond character. Or the penalties like they're calling M all the time. Like you said last time, get this, the experience awards and they're in the 500 range, I think is the base for a mission, are made in secret. So I haven't got my head around why exactly why that is yet. But they're made in secret. So you get these experience points based on your missions and you spend them right on your character. But you can also spend them on removing fame points. I think you can get like plastic surgery and that kind of thing. And you can get. You can requisition equipment from Q. So Q Branch has all the really neat James Bond gadgets. You have to first persuade Q with a roll and then you're allowed to spend experience points to get access to the top. The Top Gear. Pretty neat. So on the equipment piece of things, and we talked about this before, but just a standard, standard list, there's the queue stuff. There's a decent collection of guns and gear in the book. But what you really want is the Q manual. The Q manual lists out all of the stuff for this game in terms of other vehicles and all that sort of stuff. The equipment section is where you might remember me, Sean, saying when I was a younger, angrier man, I would get frustrated by games that like got gun details wrong. Right. [01:15:50] Speaker A: I mean I, I can't imagine, but [01:15:52] Speaker B: yeah, no, it's hard for you to imagine. [01:15:54] Speaker A: Weird. [01:15:55] Speaker B: It has, it has the Browning high power having. Does more damage than a Luger or an Uzi and they all shoot the same bullet. The Uzi actually has a longer barrel, but I can forgive it. Yeah. And one, one. My last note here before I get into my final sort of closing piece around like the whole first half of the game, which is all the mechanics I've been talking about. There's a. There's a weapon in the game. Sometimes I wonder, Sean, how am I still married? Well, I don't know if I'm still married. [01:16:20] Speaker A: Some of the stories I've heard, I. [01:16:22] Speaker B: Well, yes, you know better than some people. So here's one more. Here's Harrigan's good idea one Christmas and I'm. What prompted me was in the book There is an AR7 survival rifle. You're a military guy. You know what an AR7 survival rifle is or. And I'm not trying to test you on this. They're pretty cool. The Air Force used to use them. It's a.22 caliber gun that folds into the stock. So it's like a plastic stock. You unscrew the barrel in the action and the whole thing slides it. It floats. So if you drop this rifle in a lake or what it was used for, like in Vietnam and other places, when you bail out of the plane, you had a rifle to defend yourself with and hunt small game and that sort of thing. Right.22 caliber. I've got one. I decided to buy the family one for Christmas one year, put it under the tree, and my wife was like, what's this? And I'm like, it's the family survival rifle. And you can imagine how things went from there. Rifle under the tree. So it reminded me of that story. [01:17:17] Speaker A: You've got a little film from Modern Family, I think. Just a little. [01:17:20] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know, man. I make bad decisions, Sean. [01:17:26] Speaker A: I don't know. [01:17:27] Speaker B: Anyway. All right, wrapping up my piece of this before we turn Sean Luce here. On the GM side, there's a note in the game that's interesting where you can play more than one character at a time. But they also state that we think your ability to role play will suffer. I love that the characters never worry about money. And that is flatly stated. You are not counting pennies. You're not buying things. Etc. There is what I think on page 32, there's some pro GM advice around. Rolling. If you fail, you cannot try again until. Unless something has changed. You have a higher skill level now, you have new equipment, someone's helping you, etc. Right. Love that. Equipment can be damaged, which I think is pretty cool. Language is not being included in the game is really fascinating to me. And that is because in the books and the movies, it's never a problem for him. He never has to worry about it. [01:18:15] Speaker A: Everybody Hablo's English. [01:18:18] Speaker B: Yes. [01:18:19] Speaker A: Apparently pretty cool. Yeah. [01:18:20] Speaker B: This is the opposite approach. Right. Like Top Secret had that very cool language thing where they factored in like, are you speaking to a native speaker or not? Right, Right. This is like, I'm Bond. I'm. No, have you heard me? I'm James Bond. We're speaking English now. [01:18:35] Speaker A: And even being in the country of where Bond is suddenly the somebody in the market peddling with their wares English. [01:18:47] Speaker B: Yes. [01:18:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:47] Speaker B: Now, there is a way they. You can model languages like skills, they kind of get into that. But you know, I wouldn't do that. I like that. The same way that the PC has a character sheet, the GM has a mission sheet, and it has a spot to list NPCs that they are romancing and what level of romance they're at. [01:19:04] Speaker A: I love it. [01:19:11] Speaker B: I love that. And there's more than one NPC that you can list? [01:19:14] Speaker A: Of course, it's Bond, you know, roll against std. [01:19:21] Speaker B: Remember how I said that some of the rules were scattered throughout the book? Here's a fascinating one that was buried in the Chase rules. If an encounter erupts that you're not the GMs not ready for, so you don't have the thugs written up in terms of a stat line, whatnot. And as I'll discuss, I think you're going to get into that part of it. And I think I have some color to add because I found different parts of the book that make it easier. You can roll 3D6 and that is their primary chance. And then you add the ease factor to that. So it's as simple as that. Like you could say you meet these two thugs in the hallway, roll 3D6, you get an 8 or an 11. That's their chance. And then you just use the ease factors as usual, like one roll. So in other words, back to my checklist where I wanted like my thugs to ideally have like one number. This game has that. It's not immediately evident, but it can have that. The easy Bake enemies that I want are in here. They're just not called out directly in that part of the. Part of the section. Yeah. And I've gone on for far too long, Sean. I apologize. [01:20:17] Speaker A: Not at all. It's all good stuff. [01:20:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's a. If you're going to cover the game in, you know, in depth, I think you got to talk about some of the. Some of the systems. I come away from this badly wanting to run it is what I would say. Wow, I want to run this game. Yeah. [01:20:32] Speaker A: Okay. Well, we know where this is going then. [01:20:35] Speaker B: I think so. I think so. All right, over to you, buddy. [01:20:38] Speaker A: Game mastering, which is not as crunchy ish as some may think it to be. Frankly, it's going to be pretty elementary to many of the individuals listening. So there's some highlights in the game mastering section I want to cover. One is it. We mentioned this before, it's very pro player, very cinematic flavor. They want to model the movies, not necessarily the books or even other Espionage genres. As a matter of matter of fact, it is not Jean La Carre, which is like, okay, well Sean wants to run an espionage game because of that. I would not run James Bond for that type of game. Just. That's not what it is. It very stated explicitly this is what the game is about. Where some other games you may get into may say it. They don't deliver. Deliver maybe sort of. Or they. This is what an espionage game is. Okay, so I can run it like Jean Lacrae novels? No, not really. It's not that great for it. But it never states that. So you just kind of like get this weird wonkiness with it. Right. [01:21:48] Speaker B: It's not trying to do that. [01:21:50] Speaker A: Not at all. Not even a bit. [01:21:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:21:54] Speaker A: So it's designed in the favor of the players versus other games that may make the GM all powerful as well. So it is very much the in favor of them doing good things. And the GM should give the players every advantage that they can in those regards. Like if it's. If you're a GM that doesn't like the game going in the favor of the players. And I say that because I don't know, I've heard tales of people playing games where they can't do things or they just have these weird skill sets or the clues behind three different layers of plot walls. Don't run this game. Game master that easy. Right. The GM is likened to a director present the situation portrays the NPCs, et cetera. That is pretty standard fare within James Bond. Okay, that shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. They should encourage bold styles of play. Yes, do that. Go ahead, try it. You should also discourage at the same time players consulting with M or hq. That's why we sent you. I've run into this with Delta Green. Like, was there any more information? No. Well, is there anything that you could tell us? No. That is why we're briefing you, Mr. Bond. Go and figure it out. Find out what's going on, get the details. In some regard they'll even say, just, you know, go as far as to say that you can't even establish communications with headquarters or M. Things are blocked, you're in a bad signal zone, what have you. [01:23:29] Speaker B: Poor players, man. In the COVID ops game that I'm running right now, I have explicitly said. Remember I said there's an agent they're trying to find. She has contacted sector and said, I'm in this city. I'll contact you with a later pickup date. Someone's after me. Players are dying. They're like, who's after? I'm like, she didn't say, you don't know. Like, but, but, but who might be after and where is she? I'm like, she's in Prague. You don't know where you're going to meet her? I'm sorry, you're just going to have to wait. And they hate it. They want all the details. [01:23:57] Speaker A: Good luck. Good luck, agents. [01:24:00] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. [01:24:01] Speaker A: And then, of course, that is to also spur. Right. Contrary to orders if they feel it is necessary. So if they've even been given orders or they think this is the way that they should go, because they're kind of out on their island working autonomously, they kind of have to make it up as they go, which creates role playing and different situations that may not come about if you're always just guiding them or Headquarters is providing those guardrails, which is pretty indicative of Bond. I have labeled some things as bonding it up. Example of that would be exciting, glamorous and sophisticated. Exotic locations and urbane NPCs. Don't make the plot too grim or complex, staying away from styles that Jean le Carre typically will incorporate in novels like Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy, the Russia House, things of that nature. This system, as I say, would be. If you're trying to run concrete, Cold War in the shadows of Berlin type of game, that's not this. [01:25:10] Speaker B: So do you mind if I. If I add something? [01:25:12] Speaker A: By all means. [01:25:14] Speaker B: Because I think you dug into the. The GM section pretty hard on this. The very opening page of the game talks about this as well. [01:25:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:20] Speaker B: If you've ever seen the movies, ribbon novels, you know what kind of world this is certainly close to our own world, but a bit more fantastical. The women are always more handsome. The women are always beautiful. The villains are always evil. It's a world of luxurious cars and breathtaking locations in which the good guys always win, or at least break even. If you want to be James Bond, this is the game for you. [01:25:39] Speaker A: And that's my section. Thank you, everybody. [01:25:42] Speaker B: That's right, we've beaten this horse. But I think it's worth saying, though, like, you know, don't come to this game expecting, like, gritty, super gritty action. [01:25:50] Speaker A: Right. It is the opening scene where it kind of pans across and it's the first kind of down scene as Bon arrives in a particular location. And it's got those violins that play like that. Opening music. [01:26:06] Speaker B: Yeah, you're looking at Rio from Jesus up on the Hill. Right. That big panoramic shot. It's that kind of thing. Yeah. [01:26:12] Speaker A: Yes, yes. It has mechanics that much of which Harrigan has touched on that lends itself to high stakes player agency hero points that we had mentioned just briefly. It's really to mimic Bond's supernatural ability to escape death or find necessary gear. Obviously you know you're playing your own agent. That will apply. It can improve the result of any dice roll, theirs, the agents or the players or the GMs against them. That will change the quality rating. So something that is an acceptable success or a heavy wound that you may experience can be negated to simply a miss altogether. And that's why earlier when I mentioned about hero points, you got to keep those things going and flowing and being awarded to the players so that they don't hoard them. They are knowing that there's plenty more where they came from for good James Bond RPG play. [01:27:12] Speaker B: Before you move on from hero points, are you done with that? [01:27:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I mean they start with zero and then they get X per. [01:27:19] Speaker B: So to get this, there's actually a contradiction in the rules. Yeah. In one place it absolutely says start with zero. I read that later. I also read rookies start with three, agents have eight and double O's have 12. [01:27:32] Speaker A: Yes. [01:27:33] Speaker B: To start with. [01:27:34] Speaker A: At the start of a mission. So if you're not in a mission. [01:27:38] Speaker B: Oh, you got zero. [01:27:40] Speaker A: You have zero if you're doing some [01:27:42] Speaker B: kind of downtime thing because you're usually on the mission. All right. [01:27:47] Speaker A: He's like, you would. [01:27:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:49] Speaker A: You would play it at an on mission. So you'd. [01:27:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's James Bond, man. One thing I don't know if you caught because I don't know if it's in that section. This is kind of cool. Several of us, I guess, who are like minded in your GBS community in the BS land, you discord like metacurrency that is generated by rolling the dice. So not reliant on the GM saying good job, have some metacurrency. This game has that quality run results that are not in combat give you one hero point that's not called out in flashing lights, but it's a sidebar somewhere that says you. So I love that. So as you're like rolling these ace roles, you're piling up the hero points. Pretty cool. [01:28:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes, indeed. Keep going to Harrigan's point. Like it says you don't start with them. But then of course rookie agent and you know, Double O get certain amount. [01:28:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:38] Speaker A: Which is kind of interesting. [01:28:40] Speaker B: It's weird. [01:28:41] Speaker A: And then you as a GM Would also reward for accomplishments outside of die rolls, like completing a mission, devising an ingenious escape plan, etc. Good play, awesome stuff. Come up with great ideas like not to be confused with. Oh, so they drove off in a car. I will chase them on foot till I catch them. [01:29:03] Speaker B: Give me that hero point back. [01:29:04] Speaker A: I will cut across the the grass. No, no. [01:29:08] Speaker B: Oh, you know what? I hate to dwell because we're, we're going long, but it's cool because in a game of metacurrency, sometimes you could get that weird like, well, I spend my hero points and I catch the on foot. But the, this game has the look. I'm going to look up cruise and max speed. No, you can't, can't spend any hero points to do that. [01:29:26] Speaker A: I may let them go across buildings all the way. I mean, if they're spending hero points and they're jumping parkour across the tops of roofs. Oh, yeah, yeah, Go nuts. [01:29:35] Speaker B: Ruler. [01:29:36] Speaker A: Cool. And James Bond, ladies and gentlemen. [01:29:39] Speaker B: Depends on the scene. Right. Like if they're right, right behind the person and they get in the car. Yeah. Grab onto the bonnet. Like grab onto the top of the hood while they take off. But if you're seeing them in a parking lot and you're like in an apartment building window looking down and they're taking off, you're not going to catch the car. [01:29:51] Speaker A: Right. Right. Almost done with hero points because there are some interesting things like they take no time to use. Like, I'm going to use it. Well, you can't use it because you don't have time to use a hero point to do it. No, you can use it right there. And the PCs don't have to be conscious to use hero points. [01:30:10] Speaker B: Oh, I didn't see that. Yes, interesting. [01:30:13] Speaker A: Yeah. You don't have to be conscious to spend hero points. They must be used immediately after results of a die roll. They can use any number of hero points that they want over any series of dice rolls. The more they spend, the more. Fantastic. So it's not a one and done one. I want, you know, if you spend two or I'm going to spend three. Great. Fantastic. It just increases odds. [01:30:37] Speaker B: I have a question for you because it sounds like you're more steeped in this part of it than I am. Can someone who's incapacitated. Because that's one of the, one of the wound levels. Someone who's incapacitated, they're down. You said they can spend them when they're unconscious. [01:30:49] Speaker A: Yes. [01:30:49] Speaker B: Can you spend a your own hero point when the villain's doing something to someone else. [01:30:54] Speaker A: I think you can. I think you would. I would allow it as the rules as written. [01:30:59] Speaker B: So this is a little more meta than some games. [01:31:01] Speaker A: Yes. [01:31:01] Speaker B: Some games will be like the. If you're going to push or spend meta currency, you have to justify why you can. And this game is just like, nope, we're a bunch of badasses. And I'm. I'm gonna say no to that or I'm gonna draw the kill rating down. You know what? This makes the gun combat less deadly. Because what it means is as long as. As long as anyone has a hero point and someone gets a kill result from the gun table, from the wound table, someone can spend a point, a hero point, and drop back incapacitated. Right? [01:31:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:31:32] Speaker B: Interesting. [01:31:33] Speaker A: They can also be used for secret roles that the GM will use, which would. Would be like disguise and some of those things seduction. But you have to state it and then you risk spending it on a QR1 situation. Let me reframe that. So if the GM is going to make a secret role, the player can opt to use a hero point without knowing what the result of that role is. But they may be spending it on what a quality rating one would be. So it could be just an easy role for them and not realizing it. [01:32:06] Speaker B: Let me give you just a brief example, which I think is super cool fame. When you enter a scene, the GM secretly rolls fame to see if you recognized or not. And you. The player's not going to know, but the player really wants to not be recognized. They can spend 1, 2, 3 hero points. Right here there's a little table on the fame side of things based on how famous you are and the quality result that the recognition is, which will say they do recognize you. They don't. Or in the middle, they kind of recognize you. There's a question mark as the. As the result. In other words, they might do some digging on you. They're like, I think I recognize this guy. Which I think is a super cool outcome from that. [01:32:45] Speaker A: Indeed, indeed. So I have a couple things about the chase bidding war uses ease factors. Harrigan touched on that a little bit, but going into running villains and managing operations. So the big bad evil team gets survival points, which is their equivalent of hero points, which is used specifically in a defensive manner to mitigate the amount of hero points that the PCs use. So it is to ensure that Blofeld doesn't get one shot, essentially because you're going to use your survival points as a game master to Prevent that so that they can come back in the sequel. There you go. [01:33:25] Speaker B: I think to Gabe's point last week on the call in. [01:33:29] Speaker A: Yes. [01:33:29] Speaker B: About how he. [01:33:30] Speaker A: Yes. Game Gabe wins in this situation. [01:33:33] Speaker B: Yep. This is. [01:33:34] Speaker A: This is that Gabe 1 Sean 0. [01:33:36] Speaker B: So there's no anticlimactic like oh, right, right. [01:33:40] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:33:40] Speaker B: How'd that happen? [01:33:41] Speaker A: Yeah. The interesting thing about the survival points on the GM side it is outline how they are used intent, like the intention of them. [01:33:50] Speaker B: Them. [01:33:51] Speaker A: It's not everything. [01:33:53] Speaker B: It's very much not. So it's the opposite where the PCs can use them kind of to do any pretty number of things. [01:33:59] Speaker A: Yes. [01:34:00] Speaker B: Including the hidden GM roles. The GM is not allowed to improve their own results. They're not allowed to downgrade player results. I don't think. Well, with the exception of like saving the villain. [01:34:10] Speaker A: Right. Surviving defense. Yeah, yeah. [01:34:13] Speaker B: Defense. Right. [01:34:15] Speaker A: Villains boast. This is the bonded up. One of the bonded up features. So they don't kill captured PCs. They will want to know how much the PC knows. They boast about their plans then seek to kill them in a creative way. So even if they want to capture the player character, they're going to put them on the table and they're going to interrogate them and then they're going to point the laser gun at the crotch between their legs. And it's not even going to shoot it right away. It's got to take its time to go up the table, which totally makes sense because it takes a while to turn the laser, I guess. [01:34:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You expect me to talk [01:34:57] Speaker A: expect you to die? [01:35:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:01] Speaker A: Bond it up. [01:35:02] Speaker B: You know, in our Outcast Silver Raiders game, Sean, I wanted to have a moment where the villain did that. You guys murdered the out of him in like one round. [01:35:10] Speaker A: You play James Bond then, my friend? Yes. Not Outcast Silver Raiders. That nothing in that game about that. [01:35:18] Speaker B: Apparently not. [01:35:19] Speaker A: Just saying the stunt teaser, it's like the intro to Bond films. It allows the PCs to get some HP. So here to Harrigan's point. If you have your character starting with zero hero points, it's not a mission. The stunt teaser, technically, maybe by the rules, as is written, is not the mission. But you can start them in media array going through the stunt teaser, which allows them to garner some hero points so that they can continue moving forward with that. So there's one method of. Of getting it before they would maybe technically have any. And then of course NPC role playing consistency. They actually state in the book major NPCs. You refer to them in the first person. You speak like that? Yes, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die. If they're a mundane mook, you know, sidekick, then they're referred to in the third person actually spells that out, which I think is an interesting tactic. [01:36:16] Speaker B: That is interesting. [01:36:17] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Going into plot design and GM tools, props are helpful, which I found was interesting that they actually state this out. But many of us in the game master world would love to be able to do that all the time. But sometimes time just doesn't provide us with that. But they mention examples like dossiers, handwritten notes, matchbook covers. In a nutshell, handouts is what I put this under because it's a very, you know, RPGs are a kind of a visualization exercise. So it'd be good if you did these. But we all know that you could still pull it off without some of those physical handouts. But they're nice if you can make them, make them happen. There is the clue structure with the equate to the iceberg. MI6 headquarters M should provide only the surface problem. That's the tip of the iceberg. And then it's up to the PCs to discover the rest. That kind of tapers down and below. And of course as things they investigate and explore great locations and it takes them to different things and different contexts. It goes down further down the iceberg versus starting at the bottom and going up, I guess flexibility with clues or flexibility and backup clues. So most important quality of a game master is some of these approaches which I think many of us have probably encountered if we've game mastered for any length of time. So it's a crucial set of blueprints. The GM should ensure that plans are in several places so that the PCs can find them. Never lock the clue behind a door. And when you find yourself running even fantasy games, but mostly with these modern type games, even Call of Cthulhu, when the players go off in direction A and they could have went to B and that's where you have the thing that would lead them to C. Well, somehow you have to incorporate it into where they're going into down path A, so that they can kind of come back and around. It can be somewhat of an art in how to form that, but it is one of the things that really lends itself to the flexibility and the backup approach to well, how do I insert this McGuffin so that they can grab it, come across it and get on the right direction. [01:38:33] Speaker B: It's like an early version of the three clue rule and that kind of thing right and also, frankly, everything you're talking about is why this is a much more full game than the one we talked about last time in Top Secret. Like they, they put thought into like how, how does the GM run this? And what help do they need? [01:38:49] Speaker A: Yes, yeah, yes. And what to think about when you're running it. Yeah, yeah. [01:38:53] Speaker B: Let me break in just one quick comment. Last thing I had on hero points. This will. This won't take long. Very advanced thinking around. This is 1983 and one of the things that players are allowed to do is use a hero point to find something useful in a scene. I don't think I've seen that in a game before. This one, the whole like, you know, you know, is there something in the warehouse that I can use? Here's a hero point. Sure there is. I mean that's fate and it's, you know, 20, 30 years later. Pretty cool. [01:39:23] Speaker A: Yeah, very, very cool indeed. Going into running villains and managing the opposition secret roles and info control. So disguise, Sixth Sense. Harrigan alluded to rolling when the PC may not know the result and that would be for the GM to roll those because they don't know how good they are and how well they did. And this would be one of those situations where, well, I'm going to put on a disguise. Okay, great. I'll roll as the game master. But before I do, I'm going to hand you three hero points because I definitely want this thing to be very good. I don't want to be recognized. Okay, sounds great. So you're not leaving it up to a role or if you are, you're impacting those roles through hero points and hopefully they're enough to get you through. [01:40:10] Speaker B: Man, you can see how it all changed together. Sean, you could make the role to put the disguise on and your quality result can be the ease factor for them trying to recognize you for the fame part of this equation which is when the player would also spend the hero points. Like it. These pieces we talked about play really nicely together. [01:40:27] Speaker A: They do. And then lastly around this particular area is the torture rule which we mentioned last was that the skill, it is a skill. It's a skill that the non player characters can only use. They're the only ones PC may never acquire or use that skill. It's not. Hold on a second. I don't want to kill him. Are you going to, you know you're going to shoot him? [01:40:50] Speaker B: But yeah, I don't. [01:40:51] Speaker A: I want to shoot him, but I want to kill him because I want to capture them and I Want to question them. [01:40:55] Speaker B: It is not a Shades of Gray game. It's a good guys and bad guys game. [01:40:59] Speaker A: It is. Yeah. And the good guys don't torture. [01:41:03] Speaker B: Yep. [01:41:04] Speaker A: They just kill them. [01:41:06] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a whole different discussion. [01:41:10] Speaker A: Or they keep trucking. Yeah. The NPC portion. Role playing style and significance. Like I mentioned, the first and third player, depending on how significant the NPC is. Plot device, keep things on track, provide information, avoid offering unsolicited advice or solutions because that preserves player character agency. It could also be used to slow down players if. If plot is moving too quickly as far as plot devices. So sometimes I think we get in the habit of kind of sitting there and going, well, this isn't going to move anywhere. I'm going to. Oh, oh, you know, forgot to mention you would have known this. And then injecting that there may be a need for that as if Hits a brick wall, I think with any role playing game. But it really discourages it in James Bond. So that the players really are the ones coming up with what they need to. To move things along. [01:42:11] Speaker B: So you do, you do have that sixth sense sort of outlet that you can use for their fields of. Of expertise. But yeah, again, like pretty advanced thinking for 83 around. Like provide them information. If they ask for it, just provide it to them. Right. [01:42:25] Speaker A: Just give it to it. [01:42:25] Speaker B: Don't. But don't give them too much and don't give them things they're not asking for. Right. [01:42:30] Speaker A: The mechanics for the opposite for opposition and player favor. The NPCs have ranks as well. Little do people know they have hood, criminal and mastermind. It mimics the rookie, the agent and the double O. Right. Is that agent for the middle one? [01:42:45] Speaker B: That's it. Yeah. [01:42:46] Speaker A: Those define how tough they are. Just like the player characters. Right. The analogy. We have the survival points on the GM side. So major villains and privileged henchmen are granted them. And it's usually on a table. It's a D6, a D6 plus one and a D6 plus six respectively. You know, the higher, higher the rank, the more survival points. Fame points can also be used. On the GM side, there is a table for generating the amount of fame points. So yes, actually bad guys can have levels of fame. Go figure. [01:43:19] Speaker B: It's all about getting recognized. Yep. [01:43:21] Speaker A: And they'll get recognized. Yeah. Specialized types of NPCs include beautiful foil, fellow secret agent, guards and soldiers, major villains, civilians, privileged henchmen. Literally these are headlined in the GM section of the book or the MPC section. Rather shady contacts and technicians. So there's a table to quickly generate these characteristics and skills for the different types. Boom. Run full stat block right across the row. Right. So checkbox. [01:43:55] Speaker B: Let's unpack this just a little because this is what I was talking about like an hour ago. Now maybe it feels like a week. A week ago. So this section of the book where they lay out all those NPC types and they have little like 2d6 tables to determine what are their characteristics, what are their skills. And then you mentioned the card at the back of the book for an npc. Right. So an NPC fits on a little like three by five card, basically. And this is where I found two different pieces, two different margins in the book that allow you to determine the skill ratings of these guys. Really the, the primary chance, I should say in different ways. So what Sean just described is really pretty easy. Bounce dice a couple times, write some numbers down, you know what their skills are, their attributes are, et cetera. Right. But if you want to go even simpler, I already described the whole like 3D6 thing, right. Where if they, if you need, you just need numbers in the moment, roll 3D6 and that's the primary chance. There's also a section that calls out Sean. A hood has a default of 10 in anything and a criminal has a default of 15. And a mastermind has a deep. Or. Or a major henchman has a default of 21. So just three numbers. The GM is never at a loss. I don't think for. Oh man, I didn't like. I would rather have statted up the, the guard. So I know what they're carrying and all that kind of stuff. But in the moment, you have a couple of different tools to very quickly react, which I really like. [01:45:13] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. Cinematic behavior of villains, their ego. They've got capture immunity. So defying or delaying death of captured heroes. I mentioned they boast about the plans, they divulge their. And then. And then they divulge their plans. Oh, I'm going to go ahead and, you know, put California into the lotion. Duh. Mr. Bond, it's. It's not for what you think it is. This is what I'm going to do. Bond it up. [01:45:40] Speaker B: Yep. [01:45:41] Speaker A: Deadly trap. It's usually staged in a, in a creative way of elimination, allowing the PCs to escape and stop the plot. You're going to get tied to the table, but you can use a hero point to use the little saw that you have in a watch that comes out and spins around and cuts the rope. [01:46:01] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. [01:46:03] Speaker A: Love that so interpersonal interactions and relationship mechanics. Harrigan touched on them briefly. So the reaction role is an initial attitude which is undecided. The GM rolls the charisma to determine the NPC's initial attitude that will put them in a particular. Some of these later role playing games have these as their initial. How do they view the person that they're interacting with? Depending on the role, they could be opposed. They can be antagonistic, neutral, friendly or an enamored and it can be modded based on the PC's behavior. PC's behavior is really smooth and suave and make a few skill checks what have you and it could shift those conditions of the NPC that you are presenting to them. Persuasion PCs can use charisma to persuade. [01:46:53] Speaker B: Oh I gotta. I gotta break in. I'm sorry. [01:46:55] Speaker A: Oh, you gotta break. [01:46:56] Speaker B: I just. I just love way it's all. All knit together like those, those reactions, the. What do they call them? The attitude, the opposed, antagonistic, neutral. They affect the ease factor of things you're when you're trying to convince them. So as they get more and more open to working with you on things it gets. It gets easier to like roll against them again. It's chef's kiss, man. It's good. Sorry to interrupt you. [01:47:18] Speaker A: That's all right. It's good. Yes. That is actually the ease factor into that persuasion Charisma check in order to. PCs can use charisma to persuade the NPC into believing something, change their mind, have them grant them a favor. It modifies the ease factor or the attempt which is Harrigan alluded to. The other one is seduction which we covered. We'll go into that and then torture, which we also mentioned the NPC encounter system, which is also what we covered in the first general overview about different random encounters and immersive play. There are a couple different areas, two tables, hot area and cold area tables. You roll a D66 and it'll cross reference you a result and then you can find out and look up that result. Basically an encounter description slash type and it gives you the type and then each type has options and under each of those is six of those options. And you roll a D6 plus your modifier because there may be more than six. But how do you get to six if you're only rolling a D6? So you may have thrown a modifier and that comes up with other things that you would encounter which is pretty fantastic. And so James Bond is a D66 system before year zero engine. [01:48:50] Speaker B: Yep. Before it showed up in the OSR or anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:48:57] Speaker A: So that's what I had for my to do list for this episode, ladies and gentlemen. But it the gm. I just want to sum up the GM section. It isn't a lot of things. Like it's not as intensive as some other games. It's very like very good GM advice [01:49:17] Speaker B: when you get right down to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's cool. All right. Well, in closing, do you want me to run down the checklist that we. [01:49:25] Speaker A: I think it's only apropos that we figure out if this game checks all the boxes and is indeed playable or is for us. [01:49:35] Speaker B: This is a better way of saying it. You know what? I can. Instead of going through them one by one, I've sort of collected them together. Like I think you tell me if I'm wrong, you see, tell me if you disagree with any of this. I think the answer is yes. And in many cases it's hell yes for all the following little, little items that in episode two I said I wanted to see mechanically, I wanted to see competence buys totally tradecraft. I wanted represented. I wanted chases, I wanted social mechanics. I wanted gadgets, vehicles, reputation, fame, easy bake, enemies, metacurrency. I think those are all like no brainers, are they not? He's nodding. He's giving me a stranger. [01:50:13] Speaker A: I think so. I think, I think so. [01:50:14] Speaker B: Yes, yes. From there there's some that are a little more like I'm not as sure good hand to hand rules. Like they are really good. They're not maybe the most exciting in the world, but they're good. Then rules for assisting. I. I answered this a yes only because I think the GM could rule that the ease factor changes based on someone else assisting you. I don't know that it says that in the rules anywhere. [01:50:37] Speaker A: Do you know another person is using the hero point? [01:50:41] Speaker B: Oh, the hero point. Absolutely, absolutely. And then I also wanted adventure emission design tools and I think it has a fair bit of that Sean just talked about a fair bit of. Of like what you want to see and those encounter tables as well. I think on the nope side of things like the things it does not include that were on that list, there are not really infiltration mechanics per se, the same little tables, little subsystems that we see for social chases, etc. We do not see multi part challenges. So one of those things where you have like a caper and one person's tackling security, one person's breaking in, one person's talking to the guard, you could do it with this system really easily. And I think the ease factors could all chain it all together. But it's not written up that way. Maybe one of the later games adds that in. I should look at that. There are no failing Forward canics because it's 1983 and they haven't even thought of the term yet in terms of like how you would adjudicate this. And the guys are, you know, the people at the table are failing all the time. How does the GM keep the action moving? It's got to have a modern mindset, but it's not in the rules, that's for sure. Fates other than death? No, there are not. There are scars and whatnot, but if you hit that K, I L L or kil or whatever it is on the wound chart, you're dead. And if you don't have hero points to back it off, the game is like no ifs, ands or buts. It's like, roll a new character, dude. Like you're done. So it does not have more interesting long term capture, getting crippled and all the, all that kind of stuff. And then I think, Tim, things that we could probably debate, Sean, as to whether they're. They belong, you know, as if they get check boxes or not. Are there firearms rules dangerous and fun? I think they're dangerous. I don't know how particularly fun they are. They're okay, you know. What do you think? [01:52:21] Speaker A: Well, I mean, coming from the firearms critique person, I don't, I would find them probably not a. Ah, they're fine. You might be like, you know what? [01:52:30] Speaker B: I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put this in the yes category because you can shoot more than one person around. Even with like a regular pistol. There's just, you know, they're modifiers. It has relatively simple rules for auto fire, for like spraying a room with a machine gun kind of thing. I think they're pretty fun and they are definitely dangerous. For sure. There are not mook rabble or mob rules which, which you know, evokes that whole like multi takedown and the whole team up thing. So in other words, Bond is facing off against four guys and he, they make one attack roll, but it's a stronger attack roll rather than four individual attack roles. This game doesn't do that either. This game is like if Joe Bond's facing six dudes, he's facing six dudes. They're gonna, you know, they're gonna put a hurting on them. That's what I would say. But I think it does pretty good on the checklist, man, to back to my comment. [01:53:20] Speaker A: It does. And I think the team thing that you mentioned where you have one person sitting in the van doing surveillance, one person doing this and that and helping and assisting, I think that that was probably, I'm just guessing, not at the forefront of the design team. Only because you are playing a single James Bond agent doing all of the things. [01:53:42] Speaker B: And Bond does not have that earpiece with. With the connect. He doesn't want that. In fact, Bomb would take that out and drop it in the toilet. Right, right. [01:53:49] Speaker A: It's like, okay, you're approaching this. You're approaching the outside perimeter. There's a guard at the just. Yep. Right out. Right out on the beach as he's tearing away his scuba suit. [01:54:01] Speaker B: Yes. [01:54:01] Speaker A: And getting into his tuxedo. [01:54:03] Speaker B: You're right. Again. It gets back to the type of spy fiction that we are emulating here, which is the. You're the boss. Like, go, go to it, champ. [01:54:10] Speaker A: I don't want help from hq or HQ is not going to provide it because you're the person. [01:54:16] Speaker B: Having said that, it's so easy to modify the ease factor based on something you know or are told or use a hero point from someone else. Pretty easy. [01:54:25] Speaker A: In my humble opinion. If Bond is going to a dinner party and you got the van in the back or the van and outside, I think the person that would be in the van would be also in the party. [01:54:37] Speaker B: Oh, 100%. So then this is where some people struggle with, like how Bond. Specifically, how do you have a party doing that? Well, look beyond some of the Bond movies. Look at the Mission Impossible movies. Look to remember True Lies with Schwarzenegger, where he's got Tom Arnold doing this sort of backup kind of thing. When you're running a party of players, you're going to get into that situation where some of them are in supporting roles and some other scenes, they take the center stage. Right. That sort of thing. We beaten the hell out of this, Sean. But I think it's a. It's a game that deserves the attention. [01:55:06] Speaker A: It does. Obviously a few favorable things to say about it. [01:55:10] Speaker B: You. You like it as much as I do. [01:55:12] Speaker A: I do like it. I am interested in it. I would run it, but I would have to run it under certain pretenses. I am the Merkborg of espionage. I am the one that wants the Cold War. Yep, no guns. I got you secrets. Who do you trust crossing the border? Who knows what's going to get through? That is not James Bond. But then this would be a Great con game. Put it on a con game, explain some of the rules. Here's all your hero points. You know, use little shell casings as hero points and let them run around all over the place and whoop it up and see how far you get in the scenario it'd be hit. [01:55:48] Speaker B: Agreed? So agreed. Right. We gonna roll on out of here? [01:55:52] Speaker A: We're gonna roll on out of here. Let us know if you've played James Bond, the Role Playing Game. If we've piqued your curiosity, don't forget to throw us a grenade and let us know what you think. We'd be interested to hear hear your thoughts on this role playing game. With that, pack it up. Agents. Extraction successful, but the next call could come at any time. On behalf of Harrigan, I'm Sean. Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you on 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 Bag brought to you with help from the following agents, assets and directors. Aaron Railya, Hus Carl Michael Holland, Mr. White 20 Eric Salzweedle, Joe Swick, Laramie Wall, Ari Hollis, Merkle Froehlich, Orchis Dorcas, Tony Sugarloaf, Baker Bornak, Ryan West, Andy Hall, Chad Glamen, Crystal Egstad, Curtis Takahashi, Eileen Barnes, Erica Villa, Glenn Seal, Jake at Faded Quill Gaming Jason Hobbs, Jason Weitzel, Jeff Walken, Jim Ingram, Kelly Ness, Kevin Keneally, Kristen McLean, Matthew Catron, Old School DM Phil McClory, Remy Bilodo, Roger French, Salt Heart, Shannon Olson, Tad Lechman, Tess Trekkie, Victor Wyatt, Wayne Peacock, Yorkus Rex Nubis, Angela Murray, Brian Kurtz, Brian Rumble, Chris Shore, Pep Talima, Nelson Bispo, Nicholas Abruzzo and Tim Jensen. Thank you for your support, Agent.