Mercenaries Spies and Private Eyes

[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode of Go Bag, Harrigan gives us his opinion on the movie Black Bag featuring Michael Fassbender. I highlight my favorite Mission Impossible movie. Harrigan provides a couple articles on espionage and spycraft. Peter, codename Spezbaby, writes in for encrypted comms. And then we get into an overview of Flying Buffalo's 1983 release of Mercenary Spies and Private Eyes. Hit it. [00:00:26] 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. [00:00:46] Speaker A: How's it going, Harrigan? [00:00:48] Speaker B: Good. We just had some technical difficulties during take one. So here we are. [00:00:53] Speaker A: We are here. [00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we were talking about it being the holiday season and you know how we're both doing. I think I was about to say, then we'll do. Then we'll go around your neck of the woods. It's been a funky holiday for me. We lost a beloved pet. My kids are of an age now where they're both like working or back from college and they're in and out and one's going on an international trip today. So it's just been this kind of frenetic pace, I guess I would say. And some of our traditions aren't in place because the dog dying just blew us up so bad that we just didn't feel like doing certain things. So it's been a. It's been okay. It's been great to see my kids and, and the family, having the family together. It's been good, but it's been a little bit of a weird one. What about for you? What's. What's the holiday season been like? [00:01:39] Speaker A: It's been okay. Nothing fancy for me. Nothing? Nothing. Your pets are fine, family's fine. 2025 was a pretty damn good year for me, all things considered. I have no complaints about it. I fear 2026 like nobody's business. So I'm waiting for the shoe to drop. [00:02:02] Speaker B: At least you had a good 2025. Many of us did not have good 2025s at all. Around the world, I guess. [00:02:09] Speaker A: I mean, well, right in that regard. I mean, I'm very self centric. Like I. Oh, we know. Yeah, I mean, we know. There's, there's. There is the world and then there is me and my world. So. [00:02:25] Speaker B: Sean, Pete, Kelly. World. [00:02:26] Speaker A: That's right. I don't try to look beyond the front yard because if I do, I'll lose my. [00:02:32] Speaker B: You know what I Shouldn't complain. We lost this dog, but he was an older guy and had a lot of health issues. We knew it was coming eventually. It was a bit of a shock when it came, but overall my family's health is good. No one's out of work, grades are okay. Like all the. You're right. You know, like, I wish the world wasn't such a shit show. I wish I didn't fear for my kids future like I do. But that being said, it's been fantastic to see them. I had them both out to lunch as they've been home kind of doing things and gets a good quality time with my wife. It's. It's all good, man. We have this podcast. We're surrounded by amazing games. We play games with, with cool people. It's all good, dude. It's all good. [00:03:13] Speaker A: That's right. [00:03:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Be a positive force in gaming, Sean. [00:03:17] Speaker A: That's right. Be positive. Yes. As challenging as it can be. [00:03:22] Speaker B: Let's. Let's switch gears. What have you been doing personally around the espionage, covert action end of things. [00:03:30] Speaker A: I know Paramount plus has all the Mission Impossible movies. [00:03:36] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:03:38] Speaker A: I watched Is it Dead Reckoning, the second to last one? [00:03:43] Speaker B: Sure. Was that the one with the train? [00:03:46] Speaker A: Yes. [00:03:47] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, I've seen most of that one. [00:03:49] Speaker A: I like that one. [00:03:50] Speaker B: Do you? [00:03:51] Speaker A: I like it quite a bit actually. I don't know why. [00:03:54] Speaker B: Ooh, really? [00:03:55] Speaker A: I thought the airport was great, so. [00:03:58] Speaker B: I watched that one on a plane. And I think anybody who does air travel will know that, you know, you don't have full attention often the air, the flight isn't long enough to see the whole movie. Yada, yada, yada. So I have seen, I think, almost all of it, but it's not, it's not sticking in my mind. I'm gonna, what I'm gonna do is rewatch it. I think you know this. When we started the show, I was in the middle of like, I'm gonna plow through all the Mission Impossible movies. And then wherever the hell I was watching at prime or Netflix or wherever, they lost them all. When I got to right after Ghost Protocol, I think right before I got to the switch over of the same director and the consistency, etc, right, all that stuff. But you'll probably like the new one then too. I haven't seen the new one yet. I'm sorry, I'm hogging up the, the, the bandwidth on, on the Mission Impossible movies. What I had intended to do was watch them all in order so I could watch the newer ones all back to Back and kind of compare and contrast them and end on what's supposed to be the final one. So are you, are you about to go and watch that second movie here next? [00:04:59] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, I figured see how it goes. I do like that. For whatever reason, I don't know if it was just the, the premise or the. [00:05:09] Speaker B: It's very like the sub and the, and the, you know, like all that stuff. It's very like the right kind of Bond vibe, I think, you know, slightly silly, like, you know, at the scale of it all kind of. Of thing. What's the airport part you're talking about? Because I just don't remember. I flat out don't remember what's all. [00:05:27] Speaker A: About getting the key. So they're in the airport and there's like everybody's trying to chase Ethan through the airport trying to find him. He's trying to find somebody else. You know, rinse, repeat. And it's. It, the, the thing that I love about it is set them in an airport and see what happens. [00:05:50] Speaker B: Yeah, there's some great set pieces in those movies, man. I mean they're really well made. Yeah, they're a little over the top. They're a little, you know, if you want your, if you want your action a little more realistic. But all of them have great like motorcycle and car chases and action. Like they're, they're good. Those are good movies, man. [00:06:06] Speaker A: When they're in Rome flying around in the cars like, dude, it is good. [00:06:12] Speaker B: They're handcuffed. [00:06:13] Speaker A: Yes, yes. [00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. [00:06:16] Speaker A: Car, car, car. [00:06:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's good. Yeah, yeah. Just light hearted in that, you know, in that sense. But you know, characters die. I mean, it's not. There's some gravitas there. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Yes. So that's what I've been up to recently. [00:06:29] Speaker B: Sorry, Paramount plus. Because I'm going to get back on the horse and finish them so we. [00:06:33] Speaker A: Can talk about Paramount plus has all of them. Yeah. I think I pay for it. Like I'm married to Mike tv. So we have. [00:06:42] Speaker B: I'll let Tam know. See what she says. [00:06:44] Speaker A: Yeah, she'll. She'll admit it. Yeah, yeah. She's like all our tv, this sucks. Like Netflix sucks. There's nothing on here. I'm like, we pay. Pay for five or six different channels. I know. They all suck. Okay, great. Fantastic. [00:06:57] Speaker B: Oh, man, I hate people with no search skills. Including Netflix. People bang on Netflix. You know how big that catalog is, dude. And what, what's in there. [00:07:07] Speaker A: She just kills me. So I'm always afraid of Reviewing and canceling a subscription that may all of a sudden port a show over that she's been watching on another. Well, what happens is they not to get into this but you know, the. A service will have a series up to a season and then it stops. And then you on a different service, they'll have. [00:07:31] Speaker B: You gotta find the other one. [00:07:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So it is be. It's a fiasco. [00:07:36] Speaker B: We have the exact opposite problem in my household where my wife manages it all like a hawk. She's like turning them off and on. Like, like they're a whole series of like eight levers. Levers on the wall every month she's like, off, off, off. Your show's gone on. I'm often like, I was watching that. Hey, what happened to my. She's. She watches more TV than I do. So she manages it all very, very carefully. But we do get Paramount plus because I think we're watching. She's watching Strange New worlds right now, I think. Oh, that's on there. Yeah. Right. Yeah. What else? Let's, let's, let's not bog down too, too hard into streaming services. What else is going on in your espionage world? [00:08:16] Speaker A: I am running Delta Green scenario for BSR Con. Delicious. I. I don't know if I'll run another game for that or not. And if I did, it would be potentially tiny spies. I don't. I would probably tweak that. Yeah, I would probably tweak that game. I think like there's a couple during our conversation about the overview. Flipping a lever here or there just. [00:08:45] Speaker B: Adds about a currency. Man, it's all good. [00:08:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:48] Speaker B: We played without it and it was okay. [00:08:50] Speaker A: It was. But I also got very lucky. [00:08:52] Speaker B: You did. [00:08:53] Speaker A: I mean I must have like 6 kick ass critical like successes. [00:08:58] Speaker B: Those were not criticals. Not critical does not differentiate just successes. You can add those. In fact, let's just for a second you could set it up so that you were like one of the mechanics I love in games, modern games, is when you are amassing the metacurrency by, by the mechanics, by rolling dice. Not by the GM saying good role play, John, have a. Have a Benny. Instead you've gotten any extra six. In a tiny, tiny spice game, an extra six turns into a point of, of you know, spy credit or whatever. Set it up so that it's mechanical and the GM doesn't have to manage it. Is the point like 2d20. I hate to say it. [00:09:39] Speaker A: Well, to your, to your point, which is interesting because when I, we talk about some systems, we do talk about or maybe we don't as much on here but in the past conversations have been around. What is the game trying to facilitate and what is it trying to encourage? Sometimes with any game and some don't encourage anything, they just. It's play, dude. [00:10:02] Speaker B: Yes. [00:10:03] Speaker A: And then there are some that are like you, we are going to give you a little treat when you do this. So do it more and you get more treats. [00:10:13] Speaker B: Yep. Whether it's XP or metacurrency. [00:10:16] Speaker A: Yes. And I think that could be a little bit more in Tiny Spice. Like if you like for example, I don't know how often it would be but if you're rolling with advantage, which isn't a ton or it's rolling with advantage while you're in combat, say that encourages the person to use their combat shtick. Whether it's hand to hand or melee close short. Melee, right? [00:10:45] Speaker B: Yep. Melee light, melee heavy. [00:10:47] Speaker A: Yes. And then if they rolled the extra die and they rolled that extra die as a six, give them the token. So it's not every time they're rolling 2D6. [00:10:57] Speaker B: In the review I mentioned that they don't. The dice could be encoded with a ton of information that they don't leverage. [00:11:04] Speaker A: Correct. [00:11:05] Speaker B: Like you could also just say any extra success doesn't have to be a six. Any five or six beyond the single success that you've already got. You can do something with that. There's all kinds of ways to do it. Or you could say sixes are more meaningful. No, there's just. There's just different ways to do it. You can change the color of one of the dice and if that one comes up, you know, there's all kinds of crap you could do with it. [00:11:24] Speaker A: Yes. [00:11:24] Speaker B: Anyway, we've already reviewed Tiny Spies. I think it's sounding to me like further conversations even beyond our review show. You kind of liked it when we played it and are now thinking about running it. The Essercon for example. So it must have stuck a little bit with you. [00:11:39] Speaker A: I like it because of some of the things that I'm reading in some of these other games that just. I'm in a stage of life. Harrigan where it's. I'm too old for cheap beer. [00:11:55] Speaker B: Yes. [00:11:56] Speaker A: It's nice to have every once in a while. Go back, go and get a. I want to get a six year old Milwaukee. [00:12:02] Speaker B: Life's too short to insert RPG phrase here. [00:12:07] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:12:08] Speaker B: Play bad games. Yeah. Well, and that's you know, at the outside of the show that was kind of my like angle of like how light can I get and still get the experience I want to on? Because a lot of these games are pretty mechanically heavy but they're very directed towards modeling this fiction. Well, do we need that? I think we're on the, on the road to finding out. [00:12:29] Speaker A: The only problem with Tiny Spies with along with some lighter systems. For Sean. No, for Sean is there is a huge difference between getting too light and doing a one shot which would be ideal and then going longer term because then the players like to move the levers and if there's not a lot of levers to move, then it's like, well, I'm the same, I'm the same character as the last session. As the last session. As the last session. So even in Delta Green is skill points. At least they're checking the little box and they're rolling the little one D4 and it might, you know, it could go up. Yay. Right? So they're. It's minimal, but it's something. [00:13:12] Speaker B: It's too bad that so many RPGs are married to that demand for progression. So I mean not all games are like that, man. It's including some of the spy games we're playing where they. People like you can either start off very, you know, you're very skilled, you're very good at what you do just by choosing the level, you know, the agent level, the double O level, whatever, or assigning XP and top secret or whatever it might be. But some games, especially superhero games, because you kind of, you're trying to model a character who's already freaking powerful and you don't need to build in all this. Like how do you, how do you get better? But so many people, so many players are wired to think that way. Apologies. The other thing I wanted to mention was like for Tiny Spies as is it does have an experience point system. You can add traits, you can add hit points, you can add weapon proficiencies. Like there's a little, little mini game there. And I also think for a like mini campaign. So up to what, like what you and I and the gang do on Thursday nights, we usually play up to about 10 or 12 sessions will be about as long as we could. I think it's totally fine for something like that. I don't know if it's all that appropriate for a years long campaign where everybody wants to continue to improve their characters. But I don't want to play that kind of game anyway, so I'm okay with that. [00:14:31] Speaker A: There you go. So that's me. What about you? Yeah. [00:14:35] Speaker B: So just spy Stuff less this this week than usual because. Because of all the holiday stuff that's been going on. I did managed to finish in the last couple of weeks. Black Bag. It took me two sessions because watched on a plane and then watched part of it at home. [00:14:52] Speaker A: Not to be confused with Black Swan. [00:14:54] Speaker B: Correct. Black Swans. [00:14:56] Speaker A: Black Swans, yes. It's Black Bag. [00:14:57] Speaker B: Black Bag is the Steven Soderbergh movie. So very stylish, very well shot, starring Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett. I mean it, dude. It's solid. You mentioned it already in the show. You were like, it's okay. I would say this. I think it's a. It's one twist too many. It's slightly too clever for what it's trying to do towards the end of the movie, but it made it. But it's a pretty great whodunit, twisty tourney, internal workings of a spy agency kind of movie. I think it's absolutely worth, worth a watch. Even though at the end there is a, a gunshot that is so anemic I could hardly believe. Oh my, did a gun go off? Have they ever heard a gunshot before? It was. It's a terrible gunshot. Everything else about that movie though is pretty, pretty slick, pretty stylish. I like it. Beyond Black Bag, I'll point to one of the play by post games that I'm playing, which is the COVID Ops one, I think. You know, I've got. I've got Delta Green running in the background like a solo game. I'm running some operators kind of on a slow burns, a little slower pace game. That one. Covert Ops kind of woke up a little while ago and we've been posting a lot, kind of moving the action along. It's been, it's been fun. But boy, I've had some aha moments with the mechanics in that game. And it's kind of crystallized some things about what I do and don't want in all games, let alone just covert action games that we'll talk about when we cover Covert Ops. We should definitely cover it at some point, but it's, it's one of those games that seems like, like a bit of a mishmash of mechanics that kind of step on each other. So it's not always clear to the GM what to call for. It's one of, it's one of those, like if you don't have the skill, it might be an attribute or a skill at a modifier or this or that. And I have discovered I want to take a blowtorch to the game because of that. That's what I've discovered. I mean there's lots of good parts of the game, but there's a couple of fundamental things that are just. I don't know, they're modern games that separate out how what you're rolling versus the attributes that power them. Like YZE games, for example. The fact that you are adding the skill to the attribute you're never rolling, just the attribute you're not mixing and matching you're not. There's no like fuss for the GM to figure it out. Frankly, all the BRP games kind of do it. Even Delta Green kind of does it where you have like, you know, roll your. Roll your power slash presence slash charisma or should you roll your persuasion skill, which is it? Any of that sort of like dividing line stuff makes me insane. [00:17:22] Speaker A: Yeah. And to be clear, because Harrigan mentions YZ never running rolling attribute, you do if you don't have the skill. But it's a lesser. [00:17:29] Speaker B: It's. Yeah, but it's. I mean that's. I guess that is the methodology. It is always roll your attribute and add skill if you can. Right. And plenty of games do that. It's just wise to. Easy example that popped to mind. [00:17:41] Speaker A: Right. [00:17:41] Speaker B: But the ones that are like if you don't have the skill. Well. [00:17:44] Speaker A: Right. Well, maybe you could do this or do that. [00:17:46] Speaker B: I guess you could roll charisma times five. And I'm like, that gives you like a huge chance to succeed then versus the poor person who put 15 points in their seal, you know, which makes you wonder why. [00:17:57] Speaker A: Yeah, why. Why would you have that happen? Well, it's because they're going to fail and we don't want them to fail that don't have them roll or like give them a bonus. [00:18:08] Speaker B: The quote unquote fix for this is to do what. What GURPS does, which is to have hundreds of skills and have them naturally default to one another. Right. If you don't have. If you don't have shotgun, you can use rifle at minus 2. If you don't have machine gun, you can use submachine gun at -4. So it's all like tightly wired and it all makes logical sense and is beautifully simulationist and it's a game that no one wants to play anymore. There you have it. Anyway, I think that's it for me. [00:18:41] Speaker A: Shout out to all our GURPS fans. [00:18:43] Speaker B: Love you. Love you. That includes me, man. I love that game. But yeah, no one plays it. Should we move on to sit rep? [00:18:49] Speaker A: We should give Me, the sit rep. [00:18:55] Speaker B: You're looking to be like, I'm gonna do the whole segment here. [00:18:57] Speaker A: Okay, I got nothing. [00:19:00] Speaker B: All right, so this is kind of funky. Both of both of the links that you will share in the show notes, I presume both of these links are tied to the same moment where, you know, cut to, we'll do the spy style. Cut to 14 days ago, I'm in Iowa, I'm in a hotel lobby. I'm walking the elevators towards my room. I see a paper laying on this, on the table in the lobby. Wall Street Journal article. This Wall Street Journal, I'll stop doing the voiceover. This Wall Street Journal article, it was about local spies with lethal gear. So I grabbed the paper when I saw that front page article right from like, I don't know, December 12th or 13th, something like that. I pick up the paper and I grab it and it's all about the Ukraine espionage covert action angle and about Israel and Iran and about how this modern spy game has changed so much due to technology and how having these embedded but low skilled resources people in the field and then enabling them with incredible technologies. This gets into the drones, the phones that exploded and all that kind of stuff. So really cool article. I remembered this morning, I'm like, I should share that Wall Street Journal article. So I went to search for it. Of course it's behind a paywall. So the link that Sean will share is behind a paywall. I apologize for that. Maybe you're, maybe you're a subscriber. If you're not, may article will, will appear somewhere else at some point and you'll at least get the title of it and be able to read the first paragraph from the link that we share. But in the search, the first hit was actually how the modern spy and you know, some things that have changed about the modern spy. And then I looked at the date of the article and it was 1963. So they have archived a, a long treatise on the state of spying in 1960. And it's super cool. I just discovered this this morning. So link that because that's not behind the paywall. And it's all about like the Soviet Union, it's about Cuba, it's about just all kinds of stuff. It's a really, it's a pretty fun read when you look at the context of the time and all that sort of stuff. So kind of a, kind of a flyer came in from left field. But I discovered it while looking for the other article. But it kind of shocked me that they had an Archive like that. Pretty cool. [00:21:04] Speaker A: I bet you there's tons of stuff like that out there. [00:21:07] Speaker B: There is. I just wasn't expecting to run across it, you know? [00:21:10] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. [00:21:11] Speaker B: So, anyway, that's what I got for sit rep. Those two. Those two newspaper articles. Basically. [00:21:16] Speaker A: Sweet. I'll have to check those out myself. [00:21:18] Speaker B: Yeah, they're all right. [00:21:20] Speaker A: Do we want to do encrypted comms? We have a brief one this week, but I don't know. [00:21:24] Speaker B: I haven't even read it. [00:21:26] Speaker A: It's seasonal in nature, so do it. [00:21:28] Speaker B: Okay, let's do it. [00:21:31] Speaker A: Sir, we have an incoming encrypted transmission. All right, so this one's written in by Peter, codename Spezbaby. He says, hiya, beggars. So I was at work, trudging through the snow and slush of a raining Tibbs Eve, minding my own business, listening to the Tiny Spies episode, and I had to pause mid stride because I was so flabbergasted. Not once during the episode, with its sprinkling of seasonal shenanigans, was it mentioned once that On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a Christmas movie. The only Bond Christmas movie. For shame. Well, there you go. [00:22:13] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. I guess we've had our knuckles wrapped. You watched it more recently, so I put more of the blame on you. [00:22:20] Speaker A: Fair. That's fair. [00:22:22] Speaker B: However, I will also say, prepare for more of this, Peter. I will never call out whether something is a Christmas movie or not. Like the whole argument about Die Hard. I don't freaking care. It's an action movie that happens to be set at Christmas time. It's okay. It's all good. It's just not something that I look for in the movie. As to whether it's a holiday movie. [00:22:44] Speaker A: Or not, I look for it all the time. So that was a slight on me. [00:22:48] Speaker B: Oh, that's on you, then. [00:22:49] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. [00:22:51] Speaker B: My Christmas movies are a Christmas story and bad Santa. So, you know, do the math. Christmas vacation is fine, but. All right, yeah, we didn't. We didn't mention. It's true. And I do remember, like, there's the skating and there's, like. There's. There are some. Yeah, there's some. There's some scenes. It's wintry. All right. Thanks for writing in, though, man. Appreciate it. [00:23:15] Speaker A: Thank you for pointing that out. [00:23:17] Speaker B: Hopefully you enjoyed the. Our treatment of Tiny Spies is what I was gonna say. [00:23:20] Speaker A: Yes. Let's get into the mission brief. [00:23:23] Speaker B: Have a seat. Let's get on with the mission brief. [00:23:28] Speaker A: Oh, boy. What are we talking about in this. [00:23:32] Speaker B: Episode Arrogant Moisture Noise, Spies and Private Eyes. [00:23:37] Speaker A: Private Eyes. [00:23:41] Speaker B: Yeah, the Flying Buffalo, one of the early quote unquote, I guess greats, right? One of the big foundational spy and covert action games that of all I think we've mentioned that it was really top secret James Bond in this one. And then I guess there's four because I guess is it Danger International? I think it later become. You know what, I might look it up while you give us the intro here because you've got more of the background in terms of like who wrote the game, what's the company about, etc. So yeah, mercenary Spies and Private Eyes is the game chunk of the episode. Our mission focus here is on sort of the history and an overview. I think next show we're going to go more deeply into the mechanics without doing any more of a preview. You take us away, Sean. [00:24:27] Speaker A: So this thing clocks in at 148 pages, which is the combined edition specifically. And talking about the combined edition because it was released and then later down the road there was another, there were some supplements and then they combined them all into one release and kickstart crowdfunded it. It's been written by Michael Stackpole. So if you don't know who Michael is, I think his big, as far as I know claim in the RPG space. Although he's been very popular in the stars, Star wars novels and other things that he has written as an author. The first printing was in 1983 by Blade, which is a division of Flying Buffalo. And then they sold the rights to the game due to financial issues. And then the second edition was published in 1986 by Sleuth Publications. So this is some interesting tidbits about Sleuth Publications because you probably haven't heard of them. Sleuth Publications, this is all from online sources you can get. Was a San Francisco based publisher that carved out a unique niche in the 80s by focusing almost exclusively on mystery and detective gaming. While they are often a footnote in RPG history for publishing the second edition of Mercenary Spies and Private Eyes, MSPE for short, they were industry giants in the deduction genre. You ever heard of the deduction genre here again, no. [00:26:01] Speaker B: I have not. [00:26:03] Speaker A: I did not know this. This was an interesting tidbit that I found. They did the Sherlock Holmes. There's a Sherlock Holmes connection with them. [00:26:10] Speaker B: Yep. [00:26:11] Speaker A: So their most famous sleuth is for creating Sherlock Holmes consulting detective in 1981, which is a book based board game. Ah. That bypassed traditional Dyson boards in favor of a London directory, a map and A book. [00:26:33] Speaker B: A London directory, as in a phone. [00:26:35] Speaker A: Book and a book of cases. Okay. So apparently sold over 500,000 copies. [00:26:43] Speaker B: What? [00:26:44] Speaker A: I know. I was like, what? [00:26:47] Speaker B: All of them in the uk? [00:26:51] Speaker A: An enormous number of niche game at the time. I mean, enormous number. [00:26:55] Speaker B: A million copies. [00:26:56] Speaker A: 500,000 copies. I think that's more than an MCDM crowdfunding campaign. That's no joke, right? [00:27:03] Speaker B: Dude, those are in the 20,000 range, if that. [00:27:06] Speaker A: Yes. [00:27:07] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a lot of. That's a lot of product. [00:27:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So the critical acclaim it won the prestigious Spio de Jaris, which is the game of the year in 1985. A rare feat for an American designed game. An American designed game, centric type. London. Whatever. I mean, it's homes, right? [00:27:30] Speaker B: Yep. [00:27:31] Speaker A: In 1986, mid-80s, Flying Buffalo hit financial trouble. This is where they got into trouble. And then they released the rights. Sleuth released a version with a distinct black and white cover replacing the original cover art. And then the content shift, they removed the Tunnels and Thompsons section, which linked MSPE to the Tunnels and Trolls fantasy system. As a matter of fact, yeah, Stackpole did Tunnels and Thompsons because they were using Tunnels and Trolls and they were in a dungeon using I think machine guns or something like that, Right? [00:28:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's in the preamble of the combined edition, but we'll get to that. [00:28:10] Speaker A: But they added new content like optional aging rules, period rolled characters and a specialized folding character sheet, which was interesting. That's all in the combined edition. Moving on, Sleuth focused on immersion and feel over heavy mechanics. Not sure that focus was deep enough myself, but. [00:28:34] Speaker B: The clay was set that they were working with. [00:28:37] Speaker A: That's true, that's true. They specialized in what they called crime files, which often look like actual police dossiers. [00:28:45] Speaker B: Oh. So Sleuth picked that up from the research that I did. That stuff exists today. You can still buy those types of. [00:28:53] Speaker A: Games they published during the Sleuth era. Sleuth times that provided historical research for gamers covering topics like Victorian London currency, the history of the Pinkertons and Jack the Ripper. So the reason I want to preface all of this. One, it's interesting. Two, there's kind of a theme that sometimes rears its head in mspe, which is the mystery piece, which makes it a little unique to some of the other espionage covert action games. I would say there's always a bit of a mystery, but I would say that top secret, tiny spies. It's the other one we did. James Bond is not Agatha Christie. [00:29:39] Speaker B: And Agent Provocateur as well. [00:29:41] Speaker A: And Agent Provocateur. Thank you. [00:29:42] Speaker B: Lest we forget. [00:29:43] Speaker A: Right. Their products were known for high quality handouts, such as reproductions of the Times newspaper from the 1880s. Sorry. Which served as clues in their game. [00:29:56] Speaker B: This is Sleuth. You're talking about. [00:29:57] Speaker A: Sleuth. Yeah. [00:29:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:59] Speaker A: So continuing on quickly. So eventually they faded as a standalone entity. In the 90s, the rights to Consulting Detective moved through several hands, including ICOM simulations for early CD ROM video games. And then it is currently published by Space Cowboys Flying buffalo. Eventually reacquired MSPE and released the combined edition that I mentioned in 2019 that merges the 1983 and 1986 content. And I'll talk about that a little bit, too, because in the combined edition, it does feel like, here's the game. And oh, by the way, remember those articles that they might have did in Dragon Magazine? Like Sage Advice. That's what some of those are. And then they put those in the book. I felt, okay, right in the back, like. [00:30:47] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of one page, two page insert type things in this book, at least in the combined edition that I. [00:30:54] Speaker A: With different author bylines. [00:30:55] Speaker B: Yep, yep. [00:30:57] Speaker A: And then one of the things I noticed, and I don't know if you did, the book opens with a dedication to Jacques Futrelli. [00:31:06] Speaker B: I did see that. [00:31:07] Speaker A: Do you know who that guy is? [00:31:09] Speaker B: No. Tell me. [00:31:11] Speaker A: He was an American. And it's literally like a picture photograph of him and his name and then a dedication to him and it's a black and white photograph out of the 20s. [00:31:23] Speaker B: Dude has a monocle. [00:31:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Dressed in a suit. [00:31:28] Speaker B: Yep. [00:31:29] Speaker A: He was an American journalist and mystery writer. He is best known for writing short detective stories featuring Professor Augustus SFX Van Dusen, also known as, quote, unquote, the Thinking Machine for his use of logic. Futrell died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic. And the story was he was able to be on a lifeboat. He was pretty affluent, I think, in the upper class of that time. And he gave up his seat and put his wife on the lifeboat and said, no, I'm gonna give it up for somebody else. And then he went down with the boat. Yeah. So I thought again, sleuth Sherlock Holmes. The dedication to Jacques. Mystery even goes into the book later about creating plots that involve mystery. [00:32:31] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:32:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:32] Speaker B: So I see your angle. I have one. I think I agree with it. I have one. It's not a criticism, but it's a potential. I don't know. What is it? Pitfall? No. Bottom line. Before Sleuth gets the game. It's largely intact. That first, that 1983 edition is most of the game already. And even the let me know we're going to get into probably the chapters and whatnot. You actually have chapters that are specifically around mercenary missions, spy scenarios and mysteries. So if they these that three legs of the stool have always been there. So one of the things that's jumped out at me when I read the. You know, the. So Sean hasn't gotten to it yet, but there's a combined edition that comes out in 2019 as a result of a quickstarter that really mashes these two books together. It adds back the pieces that the Sleuth edition take out, took out and it keeps the pieces that the Sleuth edition added kind of thing. But in the foreword there's a couple of different, you know, people who, who have some neat things to say. And Stackball talks about indeed that Tunnels and Trolls game. He called it a Lovecraftian game and how he used like a machine gun to like take care. I think probably it had a high die value in the game and it was a Ken St. Andre game like he was playing with the author of Tunnels and Trolls. And I think that either combined with or at the same time as Indiana Jones, the movie that was the impetus for this game. So there's a huge pulp angle. I think the pulpit is the pulp flag is waived more than the mechanics can really support perhaps. But then there's also the espionage like covert action, intelligence gathering stuff. And then there's there's that. You're right, there's this, this hardcore. Far more so than any game we've seen yet, Mystery. But that's before it gets to Sleuth. And I think that when it gets, when it gets to Sleuth maybe they just. They throw that lever even harder or they go more in for that stuff. I don't know. [00:34:28] Speaker A: The artwork on the COVID is literally. We looked at the artwork of Raiders of the Lost Ark and wanted to capture that. That feel. Boom. So they got the silhouette of the. The bad guy. They even got like Roger Moore looking guy for espionage to represent there. Of course he's got to be French gentlemen because he has a beret and a nice little mustache. [00:34:57] Speaker B: I'm reading the COVID differently. I'm looking at the. So this is the full color version that I'm looking at. That is the same version used in the 83 version, I think. And correct me if I'm wrong, maybe it's not. But I think they brought back that, that cover for the combined edition in 2019 as well, I think. And so on the action side, you've got the French dude with the. With the twirly mustache, the beret, and he's got a submachine with a giant science silencer on it. And they're using perspective. So he's pointing the gun at the, at the quote unquote camera and gun is like super, super long as he points it at you, not quite at you, but hey, then you got on the right, you got the Bogart figure who I think is the mystery thing. And then the espionage thing is the dame in the middle. The lady in the pink skirt. Yeah, that's the way I read it. Then they do. There's some other things where they got looks like Roger Moore karate kicking a guy with a little fez cap explosion, people running away from. It's a great cover. I think, actually you love the top secret cover. I really like this one. Like, really like this art. I remember seeing this in the shop. Didn't make me pick the game up and buy it, but I remember seeing this and wondering. I used to confuse this with a bunch of other games when I was a kid. When I was a teenager, I wasn't sure of a difference between mercenary spies and private eyes and like ninjas and super spies or whatever it was called from Palladium. But I would also. And I have done the research now. I remember now, hero put out espionage first for like a year or two. And then espionage becomes Danger International between Danger International, Super Spies, Ninjas and Super Spies. Justice Incorporated and this game, they all kind of blended together to me as a kid. And I had the James Bond game. So I'm like, I'm good. I got my. I got my spy action kind of thing. So I. That's a, that's a preamble, Sean. Like, I don't. I don't know this game and I don't also don't know Tunnels and Trolls. I remember seeing it, but these are not games that I have any kind of grounding in because I ran them as a. As a young guy or introduced, you know, different groups to them later or even dove in later in life. Like, these are. This is all kind of all new to me, these mechanics and the tunnels and trolls mechanics. I mean, I looked at tunnels and trolls a few years ago because I think dibbing or somebody pointed me at it, but I don't know. Keep going with your breakdown though I've interrupted your flow. [00:37:16] Speaker A: Well, that's the Intro. I do have a question and maybe you haven't gotten that far, I don't know. But if you're going through the bookstore because they are all over the place nowadays and you see this on the shelf with the COVID Does the COVID match the game? [00:37:40] Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean we'll get into the mechanics part of it in the next episode and whether or not is it's money where its mouth is sort of thing like is this high octane action and all that sort of stuff. But I absolutely think, you know, mercenary spies, private eyes, see all that. And there's also like there's a world map behind them or a map of some islands. There's a clearly a megalomaniac, you know, kind of in the background a bald dude staring at them all. Yeah, I, I will tell you straight up. I love this cover. Like I remember it as a kid being like whoa, cool. Machine gun cool. You know, all that kind of stuff. What about you? Sounds like. [00:38:16] Speaker A: No, no, let me, let me clarify my. No. Mercenaries, spies and private eyes. Very pulp cover. I would say it's super pulp. Super pulp man. Doc Savage pulp. [00:38:31] Speaker B: It is. Yep. [00:38:32] Speaker A: Gameplay. [00:38:35] Speaker B: Dude. [00:38:35] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:38:38] Speaker B: Well, we'll get to that. [00:38:41] Speaker A: I mean I think thematically yes, it, it. If you're talking about mercenary spies and private eyes and the COVID and all. [00:38:47] Speaker B: That composition, it actually mentions two fisted action in the first few pages of the game. It like goes all in on how it's trying to go after that. Like this is a game where you're meant to have fun. You know what if I can dive in just for a second because there's just some. As I went through and took my notes, there's some things that were. That were interesting around like there's some reactions to Gygax and to fantasy generally because one of the things that Stackpole says is hey, it's your game. Change it. If you want to change whatever rules you need to to have fun. Which sounds kind of trite today. Like of course I'm the GM or we're the group. We'll change what we need to. Well for various reasons that people can argue About Gygax in AD&D laid down that you know, thou shalt you're not playing the game unless you do these things kind of thing. And you know that may be involved in trying to exclude Harness from some. Some things and there's other things going on there. But in 83 to say that was. Is kind of cool. I think for him to lay out that you can Change whatever you need to change. I do think it's interesting that the game is described a couple different ways by itself. Like on the COVID it says a contemporary role playing adventure game for solitaire or group play. And there's like. There's a lot that's baked into that contemporary. I've lost track over the years of the fact that some people really see fantasy is so pervasive. Sci fi is pretty pervasive too. But some people have this real aversion to like what whatever you want to call the modern current or I forgot that you. This used to be a genre. Contemporary games, in other words modern tech, modern times. And the fact that they call it out that way shows you that they are trying to differentiate from the glut of fantasy and sci fi stuff that was on the market at the time. And then inside the game it says it describes itself as this like the title page. A role playing game of pulp adventures for the early industrial, Victorian, modern and near future eras. So really sort of specific to some of these things. So I'll crack open the ice right now. Sean, I think with the skill system is where they start to get into trouble in this game. I think the core mechanics can be super pulpy. The tunnels and trolls sort of die mechanic of trying to roll 2d6 and hit a number with some additions that come from your stat and that kind of thing. That's not a big deal. And I love the combat for internals and trolls where the whole party totals their whole side and then the other side totals their side and you have to dole out the wound wounds based on whoever wins. That's pretty breezy. But when Stackpole rolls out this skill system, which is interesting to me because I've heard you know Gabe Didding from Analytic Dice, a good friend of both of ours, talk about how he thinks this is sort of the pinnacle of Tunnels and Trolls development and design. It's the skill system that I think he likes and I could not disagree more. I think the skill system is an anchor to what is otherwise a pretty lightweight game that might be pretty fun. But yeah, we'll get to it. But any game where you are tracking individual experience points against an individual skill, I. I punch out pretty quick. Anyway, back to your comment about whether or not like does it live up to the. To the COVID Keep going with your. With your thoughts around that or you just want to stick with your answer of no. [00:42:07] Speaker A: To me if you want to run fast, quick action. The last thing, and I've said this before, the Last thing you want to do is like, okay, let's stop and do this check and that check and add these numbers and add this number and oh by the way, let's figure out these ranges. And well, if those ranges are the. The it's dependent upon X and Y and then we do all this math and then it resolves. That's just not. [00:42:36] Speaker B: I mean the other games that are this old also do that. To be fair, even James Bond, it's just that James Bond is a far more elegant way of getting there. 2015 Tunnels and trolls gets. I think it's like a deluxe edition and it gets kickstarted and it's successful and I think that prompts them to go back to Stackpole and others and say, hey, what about doing the same thing for mercenary spies, Private eyes. And that's where the third edition, the so called Combined Edition comes from. And that's probably the game that Sean has. I know, it's the game that I have. Yes. Both in, in PDF and in hard copy. I will tell you, the book construction is awesome. It's one of those like somehow light but strong kinds of books where it feels, it feels good in the hand to me. Yeah, just I really like the paper they use. Etc. Wonderful black and art, black and white art throughout this book. A fair bit of it by Liz Danforth who's kind of a, you know, a big name in the industry at this point. She also edits and lays out this whole thing. So she's actually pretty central to this game. Almost as much so as Sackpole who wrote it. Not, you know, not as much obviously, but. And they actually dug up some of her other art for the combined edition. So the combined edition does a few layout changes and it brings in both editions together. There's a few new pieces of art and that sort of thing but it's. I think, I don't know, it's just kind of a. I like the package. I don't like the organization and the stuff that we can get into around like the fact that none of the chapters are numbered. There are chapter headings at least. So it's better than the way Top Secret was laid out. There's some of that in Top Secret, but not very much. [00:44:09] Speaker A: It also has an index does and. [00:44:13] Speaker B: Both the index and the table of contents are filled with errors. I don't know if you saw that. No, there's a lot of like looking this up and it's like three pages off. [00:44:21] Speaker A: Oops. [00:44:21] Speaker B: For whatever reason. Yeah, there's a fair bit of that bummer. So it could, could use another edit type of thing. [00:44:27] Speaker A: I know Liz has been with Flying Buffalo throughout the years and she was very big on the Tunnels and Trolls Deluxe edition which I was involved with crowdfunding. It was one of my first ones, I think. Oh really? Yeah. So I got that. I don't have the game any longer. I think I surrendered it. But one of the things that you. [00:44:48] Speaker B: Surrendered it to, like the FBI coming to the door. Mr. Kelly, we heard you got a copy of a role playing game in there. We'd like to have that right now. [00:44:56] Speaker A: Is something like that. I actually called for the FBI to come and take it. Surrendered it then. I'm just kidding. [00:45:05] Speaker B: You stole it to them. [00:45:06] Speaker A: I just, I wasn't ever going to play and I got, I think I unleashed it. I wondered if it would. I wonder who I sold it to because that's probably somebody I know better now. [00:45:16] Speaker B: Could have been Gabe, Community, who knows? [00:45:18] Speaker A: I don't know. But during that crowdfunding campaign, Liz got sick and held up. It got held up because she was incapacitated pretty seriously I think at the time. And you know, everybody was like, you know, we understand and everything stuff happens. So I knew like she did play an instrumental role in TNT and even Flying Buffalo Productions. [00:45:42] Speaker B: So last things on like the, at the super high level here. And again, a lot of this comes from the forward and a little bit of research I did around Stack Pole and the games Genesis and all that sort of stuff, it comes at a time like, I guess there was an article in a magazine called Sorcerer's Apprentice or a zine called Sorcerer's Apprentice that really was sort of the genesis for some of this as well. Kind of Lovecraftian modern, you know, firearms included, kind of, kind of role playing. And, and this isn't a direct quote, I think I'm paraphrasing. But Stack Full says something to the effect of I'm not trying to mirror reality here. This is two fisted. It's part pulp, part mystery and part John Wayne movie. It's meant to be 100% fun. And this gets to the heart of what Sean's talking about here where like the, you're shooting for the moon, you're aiming for, for a certain thing, right. And are the mechanics that you're developing, are they supporting that or not? I think we'll get into the, the real guts of that probably next week when we talk about the mechanics side of it. But overall I would say like, it's well written in terms of like the, the Prose flows. I don't have any trouble reading it by understanding it. But brother, the way the rules are buried in mountains of text makes me insane. There is never a quick summary guide. There is never at a glance. There's never a break in the action of all this paragraph after paragraph of text that sums up and says so to make a skill check in bold letters, right, you have to roll two D6 and Azure. It never does that. You have to get into every freaking paragraph and suss out. And these paragraphs are spread over multiple pages, sometimes in multiple sections, to really pull it all together. Like, I can't imagine that the fan community has not created some QRGs or quick reference guides that, like, the GM screen is AMP. Maybe there's a GM screen for this. Do you know if there is one? [00:47:31] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:47:33] Speaker B: If there was, that might go a long way towards what I'm getting after because, my God, you have to read a book like an encyclopedia to unearth the mechanics of the game. They're just not spelled out clearly. Did you have a similar experience reading it? [00:47:47] Speaker A: I did, and I. I agree. It's like you're getting into combat and it talks about the introduction to combat and you're like, well, who goes first in this? And then it eventually gets there and talks about some of the roles you have to make. The extent of. Of educating. I think the reader and the player really is emphasized in the examples that Michael puts together. [00:48:16] Speaker B: And there are great examples throughout the. [00:48:18] Speaker A: Book, but that's like, I guess I just got to go straight to the example instead of just reading the rule. Like, okay, I can read the rule. It's here. But okay, let me get in the example. Oh, now it makes more sense to me very quickly, which I think is probably the purpose of, but it's such an emphasis that I'm like, ooh, I don't. You know, there's no. Let's just break, dude. I don't know what it is with page counts and layout and there is artwork in there and it's black and white. But even with Top Secret, it was like 96 pages or whatever the total was, but it was hugely dense. Mercenary Spies and Private Eyes similar. No, no, no. Don't put in too many pictures or too many breaks or subheaders. Like, let's. We gotta condense it all in here. Br. [00:49:08] Speaker B: I would say it is vastly superior to Top Secret just because of the. It's a couple years later, the role playing game industry is figuring out how to lay out games. Danforth clearly has some skills around. Like, none of this is like too crowded. The font size is good. Like all that is fine. Yes. The problem is there's no subheaders. So the headers are things like Martial arts. And it's like, you know, 2,000 words on martial arts with no sub adders, no breaks, no. No nothing. It's just kind of page after page of that. As I look at it, Sean, there are a couple of fly outs. Like the order of a combat turn is called out a little box, right? That's pretty good. There are some. There are some weapon charts. It is vastly superior to Top Secret in that. In that regard. You know, it's of a similar time. But for example, the examples that Sean is talking about here, they're all in line. So in other words, they're describing, here's how combat works well. Mechanic, mechanic, mechanic, not mechanic, not mechanic, all in one flow. And then suddenly you're into an example in line in the same pair, same set of paragraphs, one after another, after another. And then they go back into the flow of the rules. It's just, it's not concise, it's not succinct, it's not well organized to convey like, you know what it doesn't do? It doesn't teach me how to play the damn game or run the damn game. Now, I will admit there's a bunch of stuff at the back, all those sort of other materials you were mentioning before that I have not read yet. And there may be some good things back there that kind of pull it all together or summarize it. I don't think so. I've glanced at it and I don't. I think they're more about like, there's good materials for running a campaign and for the. The tone and the flavor and the things you want to put into games like these. But they do not talk about how missile combat is quite different from hand to hand combat, which is different from martial arts, and how different the combat mechanics are from the skill resolution mechanics and like. Oh, it's not succinctly described anywhere. That's what I would say. There are. Table of contents wise, there are three books. One is kind of the basics. So it includes like how you play these games, character creation, saving rolls, which is a big misnomer for me, which I really don't like because you use saving rolls when you attack in addition to when you are trying to like. It's just kind of weird to call them saving rolls. It's one of those things where this game is so infected with early D and DNA, you know, with when. With the work that Ken did to say, I've read this game and I don't like it, I could do something simpler. But even Tunnels and Trolls has all this DNA that comes straight from D and D. Right. All these games at the time do chivalry and sorcery, role master. They all have all these constructs around, like attributes and hit points and all that kind of stuff. And this game is no different than that. It could, you know, if they had broken away further, I think some of it would have made more sense. Like the saving roles don't need to be called saving roles. Just don't do that. But sort of back on my list of in the books, skills, combat, adventure points, which is experience. And then it gets in the movement. And then book two, which is all the same, you know, the same volume, it gets into the bad guys, different types of missions. This is the tunnels and Thompson stuff. But it also includes some. Some sort of. Maybe they're optional, like hit location and interestingly, car crashes, not car chases sections called car car crashes. And then you get into that Book three, which I think is a whole bunch of single ads from different authors and whatnot around skill specializations and optional rules and characters and aging and all that other stuff that got added sort of as almost like leafed pages that they inserted towards the end of the book is almost how it feels to me. Right? It's like a little appendix back there, almost. [00:52:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it's very much a. Maybe intentionally so, like, okay, here's the book one, and it's. This is the original. All the other stuff we added and the articles and things of that nature, we put in the back. Instead of revamping the entire game to incorporate those into one succinct, single updated revised edition with all of the things. Boom, bam. The funny thing you mention is the saves, right? Yeah, but they changed action points, right? They changed experience points to action points. [00:53:16] Speaker B: They did, they did. So just had to expand that thinking a little bit. Right. [00:53:21] Speaker A: Well, and also it's like, well, we called it action points, but it's really experience points. So it's. Yes, we change the name, but it doesn't indic. It's not like, oh, it's something completely different. I mean, you just swap it out. It's like, oh, it's experience points. There is a little bit of a nuance to that because you can use it to level up your character, but you can also save them to increase your skills. [00:53:47] Speaker B: But yeah, it's a whole different thing. Yeah, I will say I kind of like the front end of the adventure points. The way you gather them, the way you earn them. The spending and stuff I haven't actually gotten into in great detail because my eyes glazed over too much last night while I was reading that and I thought, ah, that's for next week. But in terms of earning them, it's kind of cool. Surround, like how dangerous is the stuff that you're doing? Right? And if you're not doing very dangerous stuff, you're not going to earn very many adventure points. And if you take real risks, there's all these multipliers. The GM can apply times 2, times 3 to the base 100 adventure points that you earn. Long story short here, I like, I really like the front end of it. Like how you gather them. Like the. It's by how risky is the scenario and the situation you're in. It's also by combat or like defeating foes. And you get less for ambushing people regardless of who you are. So unlike Top Secret, which is like, hey, if you're. If you're an assassin, you get lots of points for killing people who, no matter who they are. This game is telling you you want that, that upright Paul two fisted, you know, kind of forthright sort of stuff. Right? And then it also includes adventure points that are awarded for. For reaching your goal or solving, like adventure resolution, I think is what it calls it. Did you see that? There's also. You earn them with every saving roll. [00:55:08] Speaker A: I am torn. [00:55:09] Speaker B: You see that? [00:55:10] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. [00:55:13] Speaker B: And there's quote unquote, there's discretionary adventure points. Of course, the GM can just be like, Sean, I like you a lot. I don't like Joe next to you, but I like you. Here's 100 adventure points. [00:55:26] Speaker A: This takes me back to days where I had a dungeon master and I don't even think it was that long ago. Yeah, I mean it was long ago, but AD&D, he did it. And then fast forward years when we got back into it when 3o was around where he concocted this method of his awarding of XP in the D ds. And he did this approach, but it was his only. [00:55:56] Speaker B: Like he. [00:55:57] Speaker A: He would tell us, here's how I'm going to break these things down. And he would. He would have it on a spreadsheet or even sticky notes. He would say, good RP 100 things killed 1000. [00:56:08] Speaker B: What game was this? Was this one E. So he did. [00:56:12] Speaker A: It in AD&D originally when he got. When we got rid of, like, hit dice, like XP per monster. Well, that's not true. He might have done it for XP per monster as rules as written, but then he would add his own for, like, you know, good thinking, role playing. [00:56:28] Speaker B: He's ahead of his time. [00:56:29] Speaker A: Killing blow. [00:56:30] Speaker B: That's awesome. [00:56:31] Speaker A: And he would do that, and that's fine. And I liked it. And I would incorporate that myself as well. But now it's kind of like. [00:56:39] Speaker B: It's pretty subjective, though. [00:56:40] Speaker A: Yeah, that and it's also. I mean, somebody would call me a hypocrite because it's like, YZ has this as a checkbox. Like eight checks. Check, check. [00:56:51] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's written down. It's the same every time. [00:56:53] Speaker A: It is. Exactly. [00:56:55] Speaker B: That's a difference. And so I actually love, love that kind of approach, by the way. [00:56:59] Speaker A: I do too. But it looks like tops, like even top secret in this. Let's go. Okay. How many monsters did they kill? 5. Oh, how many hits? [00:57:08] Speaker B: There's an exercise, right? [00:57:10] Speaker A: And it's like, dude, I don't want to do that. [00:57:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I see what you're getting at now. So I thought. What I thought you were complaining about was the fact that he was like, changing things and making them so that it wasn't fair to everybody, for example. Well, you know, because sometimes good thinking in the GM's eyes, like, you know, what is that? Versus, you know, who really had the idea. Blah, blah, blah. You're talking about the whole mathematical exercise of sitting down with your. With your pencil and your paper or your spreadsheet and being like. Yeah. So for example, I told you about. Here you go. When I ran the white box fantastic medieval adventure game, which is like a swords and wizardry white box variant game for my son and his girlfriend a few years ago, we ran 30 some sessions of that across a couple of parties. I do not like XP for gold. I'm a firm believer in the reward system should incentivize the play that everyone wants to see at the table. So, Jim, on our. On our Discord on the. On the BS Landia, Discord has the same approach, I think that I do where we incentivize with XP awards like expl. Exploration, problem solving, helping people solve their, you know, their town issues or whatever that are beyond like monster XP and gold xp. But I'm trying to be consistent about it. But there was literally a spreadsheet that I. But I did it all. I just doled it out to my son and his girlfriend, you know, at the beginning of A session because I would have had it. But you're right, I would have gone through and tallied what happened in the session. They went three hexes. They've already been to that one hex. And what doesn't count, I still prefer that to XP for gold, but it's. It is indeed. And I think the YZE thing you mentioned, I think it really comes from Burning Wheel and some of the power by the Apocalypse games is where that type of experience point and highly incentivized, you know, trying to incentivize the right kind of play. I think that's where that comes from. One of the best ones I've ever seen. Maybe we've mentioned it on the show before, but I don't think so. Marvel heroic role playing, which is a cortex game from like, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, something like that, had an incredible set of what they called, I think milestones for each character and they could change. So Peter Parker, Spider man could have a milestone that was like get a date with Mary Jane. And if you do it, you check it off and you know, this adds to your experience pile and then you develop more milestones. Go on a second date or whatever. And I think I'm oversimplifying it, but I remember like Captain America, the thing, the Hulk, all these Marvel characters, they all had very specific milestones they were trying to hit very much like what YZE does now around. Did you play? Did you defeat a menace? Did you encounter, you know, magic or whatever. They kind of tailor them for their games. I love those experience systems. I don't hate this one, but it definitely has the tallying up adding machine component that you're talking about. For sure. [01:00:03] Speaker A: It doesn't say anything about Bond except for in the, I think appendix N or what it's the game's appendix N is, which is some of the influences or things to reference to get a good grip of the game and the good feel of the game. It mentions Bond, but it specifically says it's Fleming Ian. So it's, it's mentioning a lot of authors. Even Stephen King is mentioned in, in this suggested reading section, but it says Fleming Ian. The James Bond books in their original versions are superior and can provide players with a strong feel for the elegance of Europe. Try to find the books in the editions written before the movies. [01:00:50] Speaker B: No kidding. [01:00:52] Speaker A: My point is, is that the games that we have been talking about right from the get go is this is to mimic James Bond high action and that, I mean he states that like Pulp two Fisted, you know, John Wayne of all people, but no Bond, which is like, okay, great. [01:01:15] Speaker B: I wonder if there were some copyright things they were worried about. I mean, Victory Games had the license at this point, right? [01:01:20] Speaker A: True. [01:01:21] Speaker B: So that might be part of it. Like when Top Secret was being developed. Nobody else is on the market with this stuff, so they could be a little freer with their references and whatnot. Stackpole may have been trying to steer clear of any kind of legal entanglements or whatever because Victory Games was coming out with a competing game at the same time. [01:01:37] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, that may be. [01:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I need to resume my read of the Fleming work. I stopped after, after three books just to take a little break, but I'm going to get back onto it in 2026. I do have a real interest in seeing Habbo's books sort of transform through time. Remember I mentioned when we covered James Bond, we talked about why they couldn't include Spectre and Blofeld and all that sort of stuff. And it involved the movies. It involved like split ip. Like that was my idea kind of thing from other people. So I wonder how much the books are influenced. But once the movies are. Are rolling and I think I mentioned as well, like some of those early, early books are kind of pulled apart and you see different parts of them in different movies. They're not kind of one for one kind of thing. But I don't know, I love that stuff so dearly. It's. It's so central to my love of this genre that I like every book I read and every movie I watch. Basically. [01:02:30] Speaker A: There'S a. Quite a bit, you know, that they reference. Reference works in where they actually talk. Like guns in this thing are named like lots, you know, many guns. So there's references he makes. But some of the, even the authors like Doyle P.O. jacques is. Is referenced in the back. [01:02:56] Speaker B: Obviously there is that Sherlock Holmes connection, that mystery solving connection. There's. Remember how they talked about the genres? One of them was industrial Victorian games are like late Victorian especially are like front and center for this. [01:03:08] Speaker A: I think James Clavel, which is. If you're not. If you remember who James Clavel is, Shogun. [01:03:16] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [01:03:18] Speaker A: And they state, while Clavel would not qualify as a mystery writer, his stories are high adventure and it can provide many interesting settings for games. We already have one character who claims relation to Noble House in Hong Kong. The idea of running a shogun or taipan adventure is really too good to pass up. Then of course, Howard Forsythe, you know, here's one that's. [01:03:39] Speaker B: That was interesting to me sort of. We'll just, you know, some one off things here before we, we wrap up. There's some. There's too many skills in this game and we're going to get into that next, next week, right? [01:03:49] Speaker A: They tout it as a. They tout it as a feature. Harrigan. [01:03:53] Speaker B: Well, it is. I mean, it's not like they were trying to go lightweight. [01:03:55] Speaker A: I mean, all including almost 100 skills for character development. [01:04:01] Speaker B: There you go. [01:04:02] Speaker A: A hundred. It's. [01:04:04] Speaker B: They're not unusual for the time, Sean. That's what they're all doing, right? I mean Bond's pretty, in retrospect is a pretty svelte skill list and in fact, Top secrets approach a little bit different too. But as soon as you get to hero this gurps role master, like man, the skill is go, go bananas. Two things popped out off the page that I liked a lot. The first was that the seduction skill is not limited to members of the opposite sex. And it's like explicit about that, which I think is pretty cool. Recognition in 1983 that there's, you know, there's people who actually are gay out there and it's okay, you know. So that was pretty cool. The other one, and this is. I wish more games would take this approach. How many games have driving or pilots and it covers, you know, mechanical operation, whatever. And you get in that situation where the GM calls for a role and the players are like, you're sitting there in your watch, you're like, should I be rolling for this? It's driving a car, dude. I do it all the time. The skill in this game is fast driving, which I think is pretty damn cool. So in other words, if you're just kind of, you know, even if you're on a bit of a. Bit of a chase, you're trying to hurry somewhere, you're not going to, you know, risk wrecking the car. But when you are like pedal to the metal, jumping curbs, switching lanes, it's different. It's a skill that kind of calls out now this is above and beyond, just kind of, you know, motoring through traffic and getting to work on time kind of thing. [01:05:25] Speaker A: I'm going to make every person in any contemporary game that involves driving, if they drive, they're making a roll. [01:05:35] Speaker B: Well, I mean, there are stats that show you, you know, driving is more dangerous than flying and all that sort of stuff, right? So if you roll the D1000 or a D10000, you could probably, you could probably model the Random death. [01:05:47] Speaker A: The chances are low, but you never know. [01:05:50] Speaker B: You never know. Yes, indeed, indeed. In the end, I want to like this game way more than I like it. And I do think that the complete opposite of our esteemed host over on Analytic Dice. I think I will vastly prefer Tunnels and Trolls to this game because it doesn't include this skill list and all the mechanics that go along with it, including the way you level them up and the fact that you need a certain iq. Holy non dump stat. You better have a high IQ in this game or you can't even attempt certain skills, can't learn them. [01:06:25] Speaker A: That's right. [01:06:26] Speaker B: There are requirements, requisites, if you would, for each of these skills. Again, a DND ism, I think, being pulled over. Anyway, that's all I got for the overview. I mean, we can get it. We'll get into some more specifics next week. Do you want to play this game? Want to run this game? [01:06:48] Speaker A: Yes, I want to play. Do I want to run? I don't know. [01:06:51] Speaker B: Okay, I'll run it if I need to. We could probably convince some other people to run it as well, the same way we did with Connerly and Top Secret. We still plan on doing vignettes for Agent Provocateur. We've recorded the Tiny Spies one already. We've recorded the Top Secret already with Jason Connolly. So these are all going to drop at some point then. They may in fact have dropped before you hear me saying this. It's going to be a new year soon, Sean. 2026 it is. Yeah. [01:07:18] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to Go Bag. On behalf of my esteemed co host Aragon, I'm Sean. We'll catch you on the next one. See ya. Want more of Sean and Harrigan? You could find Sean at YouTube.com @rpgshawn where he streams every Saturday at 8:00am 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 field operatives, special agents, black ops directors and friendlies. Joe Swick, Roger French, Merkel Froilich, Tony Sugarloaf, Baker Hus Caro Laramie Wall, Eileen Barnes, Heptal Lima, Aaron Railia, Wayne Peacock, Old School DM Jeff Walken, York Orcus Rex, Eric Salzweedle, Phil McClory, Jason Hobbs, Michael O', Holland, Remy Billido, Crystal Egstad, Eric Avia Voronak, Brian Kurtz, Chad Glamen, Jim Ingram, Orchis Dorcas Chris Shore, Brian Rumble, Victor Wyatt, Kevin Keneally, Andy Hall, Jason Weitzel, Salt Hart, Kelly K. Ness, Tad Lechman, Nicholas Abruzzo, Matthew Catron, Curtis Takahashi, Angela Murray, Mr. White, 20 Jason Connerly, Shannon Olsen, Ryan West, Kristen McClain, Larry Hollis, Glenn Seal, Jake at Faded Quill Gaming Tess Trekkie, Tim Jensen, Kelly Ness, Nubis, Christopher Lang, Crowlog, Peter Skaines and 1d4 Khan James. Thank you, agents. We appreciate it.