Non-Mechanical Elements in Espionage Games

[00:00:00] Speaker A: We go over the ingredients of what an espionage game may have outside of just mechanics. Got a few links in sitrep, and you're gonna want to stick around to find out who threw a grenade at Sean in this week's episode of Go Bags. Encrypted comms. Hit it. [00:00:19] Speaker B: Strap in. Operatives. This is Go Bag your all access pass to modern day RPGs loaded with bullets, backstories, and a whole lot of bad decisions. And here are your mission lead leaders, Sean and Harrigan. [00:00:36] Speaker A: Hey, Harrigan, what's going on? [00:00:39] Speaker B: Good morning, Sean. How are you? [00:00:41] Speaker A: I'm doing all right. Yourself? [00:00:43] Speaker B: I'm good. I'm reporting for duty, man. We have a podcast to do. [00:00:47] Speaker A: Excellent. Little prep time. Good to go. [00:00:50] Speaker B: Yep. [00:00:51] Speaker A: Have you done anything espionage or covert ops lately? Books, movies, television games? [00:01:00] Speaker B: Let me think, let me think. I'm nearly through Black Swans, which is a Netflix series about sleeper agents and sort of some. Some London espionage stuff, which is. I'm going to report back more on that when I finish the series. I have like two episodes left. I also watched on Her Majesty's Secret Service this week, so we can talk later about that. Yep, exactly. It's the one where, you know, Connery leaves and then they get Lazenby and then Connery comes back for Diamonds Are Forever, which is a pretty terrible movie actually, on Majesty. Secret Service has some good stuff in it. It's not a perfect movie. It's kind of slow in parts, but, man, it's kind of cool to see, like, clearly the Connery era filmmakers doing something different with, you know, a different actor and whatnot. Like the music, it's just. It feels just like a Connery movie. It's pretty cool. And then lastly, I am starting up a covert ops game in a play on the play by post site gamers plane. So that's just getting going. We haven't built characters yet and whatnot, but I figure alongside this podcast, it makes sense to run as many of these games as we can. So that's what I'm doing. What about you? [00:02:08] Speaker A: I watched the American and the first episode, you're like, and the American. Have you seen it? And I said, yes, but what I thought you said was the Americans. [00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah. No. [00:02:18] Speaker A: S. Have you watched the Americans? [00:02:22] Speaker B: I have not. And I've heard great things about it. [00:02:24] Speaker A: It's a great series. [00:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I'll have to watch it. [00:02:27] Speaker A: Yeah. But I watched. Now I can say I have watched both the Americans and the American. [00:02:35] Speaker B: So I watched two very different things. Right. [00:02:37] Speaker A: They are very much different. And. And yes. So the Americans are streaming. I think you can get it on Amazon and maybe Netflix. I think it pops off and on. But it's the sleeper agents that. Russia. Russian sleeper agents that are pretty American. Yeah, it's. That's a pretty good show, I would say. And then the American with George Clooney. I don't know if I liked it. I don't know. [00:03:04] Speaker B: Really. [00:03:05] Speaker A: I was good. [00:03:09] Speaker B: But you watched both this week? [00:03:12] Speaker A: No, I've watched the Americans for, like, a lot. A while ago, years ago. I don't know if I even. [00:03:18] Speaker B: Okay. [00:03:19] Speaker A: I don't know if I watched the ending. That's where it left off, because I think I was already caught up. And it still had a season to release, which I think was the last one, but. But the American I saw last night. [00:03:33] Speaker B: Oh, okay. So you watched it recently and didn't like it so much. [00:03:36] Speaker A: Okay. I thought it was okay. [00:03:38] Speaker B: I haven't seen it in years. I have to. I'd have to revisit it, but I remember loving it. But I. I remember. Yeah. [00:03:44] Speaker A: We'll have to spend a lot of time in Italy, right? [00:03:46] Speaker B: Yep. [00:03:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:47] Speaker B: Yep. It's pretty realistic. It's a pretty. Pretty, like, gritty spy movie, is it not? [00:03:53] Speaker A: I think it is, but there it's. You know, I don't need my spy movies to be action. Right. I saw it. Watch Tinker Taylor, Soldier Spy a couple weeks ago again. And I do appreciate the kind of realistic component to it, for sure. [00:04:12] Speaker B: Slower burn. [00:04:14] Speaker A: Way slower. Like, there's not a lot of plot twists [00:04:19] Speaker B: I'd have to revisit. [00:04:20] Speaker A: Spoilers like, oh, great. Again. Thanks, Sean. Yeah. Anyways, that's what I've done, but should we get into this? [00:04:28] Speaker B: We should. [00:04:29] Speaker A: All right, we gotta start right here. Give me the sit rep. Sit rep. Some links and things going on in the. The hobby that people may want to be aware of. I have two. Harrigan has a couple. Which ones do you have to share? [00:04:49] Speaker B: The most exciting one that I have, I shared with you earlier this week. And you know what? I'm not up to speed on when the Kickstarter expires, but I'm sure by the time this goes on air, it will be over. So people will just have to, like, you know, search out either the late. You know, whatever they do with Kickstarter, where sometimes you can join late or look for the book later. In the Mork Borg, strangely enough, in the Morkborg line of games. So, you know, Cyborg duck Borg, Pirate Borg. There is a Nordic noir game coming from Paul Baldowski called Cork Board. Cork board. B O R D. So you can picture a corkboard where you've got the suspects all, you know, strung together with yarn and all that good stuff. And it's basically there's been a glut or like a wave of what's the. What's the word I'm looking for? It's. It's called Nordic Noir for those who like, like the genre. But it's kind of like intrigue and mystery. Sometimes it leans a little horror. There can be some sort of pretty dark themes, very dark themes, actually. But a lot of. A lot of films and series that come out of Scandinavia in the last, like, I don't know, 10, 10 years or more that are all about sort of murder mysteries and investigations and that sort of thing. And this is a. An RPG that uses the Mork Borg engine to model that. But Baldowski has quite a pedigree. Like, he has done a whole bunch of work with the Simberoom team at Free League in terms of, like, some translation and some writing in their books. He run. Has run in the past. The Iron Pact, which is the Simber Room, like the number one Simburum fan site. He wrote the Cthulhu hack, he wrote the D Sanction. He's a really cool indie designer out of the uk is what I would say. So I'm looking forward to that game a whole lot. Corkboard. Cork board when it comes out. And then I also have a little minor footnote. And, you know, really, this is just a link you guys can click in the. In the show notes if you want to. If you're interested, there is a James Bond video game coming out called First Light. So if you're keen on. On, you know, espionage computer games and video games, there's a. There's a big one in the works. That's all I had. Sean, what about you? [00:07:00] Speaker A: I knew some people that were really big goldeneye fans when it was out. [00:07:05] Speaker B: That's what struck my attention when I stumbled across it and sent the link. I'm like, you know, these were. Some of these games were pretty cool. [00:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I have professional operator loadouts by Cheat Sheets. David Vexler has done it. And I thought it was pretty interesting that if you want to understand gear for SWAT and special forces and paramedics and firefighters, then that would be a good resource for individuals that want to spice up their action. Espionage, covert ops, espionage game. I think I just said espionage, like twice. And then the other thing that came to my attention is Delta Green, Handlers or delta green handler's screen, not to be mistaken for The Handler's Guide 2025. So some people, I think even Harrigan was like, they really needed a handler screen and they just came out with one. And I'm like, well, actually this is the second one that they've come out with, but I don't know if it's changed much. So I haven't bought it, but it's just released as of like a few days prior to this recording, September 7th. So there you go. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Very cool. Yeah, yeah. I don't think I have the old one. When you mentioned it, I think. I think my comment was it's about time they came out with one. You're like, they've had one before, right? [00:08:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I use mine quite a bit. I mean, sometimes, if you like. It has all the skills in it, which is nice. You don't need a character sheet in front of you. It's all there. Like, what skill should I have them check? And then it has some of the modifiers, it has the sanity, like if. How much sanity you take and what that triggers. Right. So if it some like five or more, then it's a disorder and things like that. So there's. There are some helpful things in there. I say that because sometimes you get a screen and it's like, yeah, oh, [00:08:56] Speaker B: I know all that. Great. [00:08:57] Speaker A: You know. So anyways, so that's what we have. So I think that's it. Now let's get into encrypted comms. Sir, we have an incoming encrypted transmission. Do you want to read the one from Andy Hall? Our first write in? [00:09:16] Speaker B: I could do that. This is unscripted. Sean did not tell me he was going to do that. [00:09:20] Speaker A: Well, I'm sorry. That's how I roll, man. [00:09:23] Speaker B: You're fine. [00:09:24] Speaker A: I don't know if you're new here. [00:09:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, am. It turns out. [00:09:27] Speaker A: I guess you are. [00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah. All right. So this is a message received from Andy Hall. Hey there, Harrigan and Sean. I am down for the new pod. I am planning to run a Three Musketeers game. I see espionage and intrigue as a significant part of the game idea. While I think of espionage and counterintelligence as a modern thing, people have been doing spy stuff since day one. Maybe there's room for main topics about tradecraft through time. I need to dig into the subject matter myself. Opinions will differ, but I don't think a grounded espionage game works if the player characters have supernatural powers. And then Andy adds, as for My favorite spy shows. I really like Patriot. He provides a link. It's about a pot smoking, folk singing operative who is trying to prevent Iran from getting nukes. Amazing cast and many Canadian actors. End communication, Andy Hall. [00:10:20] Speaker A: Thanks Andy. I'm going to have to check out the Patriot. [00:10:25] Speaker B: Patriot. [00:10:25] Speaker A: Patriot. [00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah, sounds like one of those lighter, light hearted, lighter hearted takes on things. Maybe. What, what do you think about Andy's sort of overall, you know, concept here of driving some espionage action into a three Musketeer style game? [00:10:45] Speaker A: Yes. I mean part of the Three Musketeers was to some extent right between England and France at that time. [00:10:55] Speaker B: Oh yeah. Not, not so, not just England and France. So I think you and I talked last week, maybe it was last week, maybe it was two weeks ago about how, you know, remember, recall you were like, what's, you know, this is only slightly, slightly less old than the oldest profession. [00:11:09] Speaker A: Right, right, yes. [00:11:10] Speaker B: Being in being a, you know, someone who's sneaky and spying and all that kind of stuff. But that is like really true. Picture it in the, you know, if you're talking like 16th, 17th, 18th centuries all through Europe and whatnot and you know, even through the whole Renaissance period and after the late Middle Ages there's so much about like the frat, these schisms in the church, about changing like political boundaries and lines and nationalities and all that stuff all the way from like English Civil War to U.S. revolution to American Revolution to French Revolution. It's like loaded with this kind of thing where all you're talking about is people who are trying to get information on one another so they can get an advantage, so they can use it in a military way, so they can use it in a commercial way, et cetera. There's all kinds of stuff you could do in a Three Musketeers setting where you have a benefactor who is working for the Cardinal and you know, he wants you to take on his enemies, but he wants you to do it by infiltrating into his enemy's forces. Those enemies might not be, be like an opposing, like nationality. They might be a different church or even a different art of the same country kind of thing. So I think there's just, there's tons you can do with espionage even in, you know, virtually any time period. [00:12:26] Speaker A: As far as comment on Supernatural, I mean I think you can, but it, how does it impact the game? I guess if you're trying to do espionage, I wouldn't think that, you know, if you're a mind reader it would [00:12:40] Speaker B: do well, but kind of depends, I think, you know, my general predilection is to have, like, if you're going to have supernatural powers and magic and those sorts of things, I either want them to be interesting or rare or think through what it means to have it in the setting. So if it's widespread, that changes the whole economy, that changes the way espionage is done. [00:13:02] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:03] Speaker B: But I do think there could be some interesting things where maybe it's a subset of either people or characters or classes or whatever who have these abilities. So if you have someone who can read a mind from 10ft away and like maybe through a wall 5ft away, they're an incredibly powerful asset if they're not commonplace. So I do think that could be a pretty neat game if the characters represent a group of people who are either powered up that way or have devices that allow them to do these sorts of things. Like, I'm not picturing it as like a, I don't know, a Harry Potter style sort of thing where there's just magic all over and whatnot, but I do think if you treated it the right way, it could be kind of cool. And there's even a whole, you know, subset of the genre which is about some. Like, take Jason Bourne and his whole group of people who. They tried to make super agents in a variety of ways, and then one of them escapes and then the agency's coming after you. I think this leans itself really hard into that type of play. And in fact, there's a game called Siren by Megan Baker, I think, which is all about basically psionically powered operatives who escape their captors, they escape their creators. And the game is about being on the run from the agency who's chasing you. So there's actually lots of examples of supernatural powers, but I agree that, like, you don't need, like, dragons flying overhead and. And, you know, magicians on every street corner and that sort of thing. Right. But what's. What is your take on whether you would do it or not or whether it's interesting or not? [00:14:34] Speaker A: So was it McGay Baker? [00:14:36] Speaker B: Is it McGay? [00:14:37] Speaker A: McGay, yeah. [00:14:39] Speaker B: Vincent's wife, yeah. [00:14:42] Speaker A: Shadow Force Archer was a popular spycraft setting and had a slew of books that were an offshoot of spycraft that did have, I think, mystics in it. So if you are interested in checking that out from an RPG perspective, it's been done. But I didn't get into Shadow Force Archer because I didn't want to dink around with that stuff. Like, I wanted it separate and So I was a big spycraft guy, but I own some of the Shadow Force archer stuff. It's also very, you know, an organization that might have had those things. And then there were probably counter organizations that had those things and made it an interesting dynamic in that regard. So I don't know. I don't know. It's not my specific jam, but I mean, it's not. [00:15:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I can see it. I mean, part of, part of this whole milieu that we're talking about is that there can be an underbelly or a part of society that the Joe John Q. Public doesn't know about. The average person on the streets, like, I'm going to work, I got my ham sandwich, dad. You know, you know, and you know, in the sewers, in the back rooms, in the alleys, there's a battle going on. And it might be, might be just spy action like it is in the real world, that you might, you might do the GURPS thing and just put a twist and say there's Illuminati. There's actually been a grand conspiracy since the beginning of time, you know, of people who are controlling the destiny of everyone. Or you could go so far as to say there's people fighting, you know, supernatural elements. And you could even, you could bend it on the espionage side of things because maybe some of those supernatural elements are being used by bad actors to do more covert ops style attacks and that sort of thing. So it becomes more of a game where you're fighting the darkness, but no one can know about it. I mean, we're leading into Delta Green territory, frankly. [00:16:33] Speaker A: Right. [00:16:33] Speaker B: True. [00:16:34] Speaker A: That's true. [00:16:35] Speaker B: I think it can work with supernatural powers. I think you just have to think about how they fit and how what you want. Like Sean and I remember, I remember, Sean, the episode you did in gaming and BS where you really got into the whole I don't want peanut butter in my chocolate kind of thing. You don't want guns in your D [00:16:49] Speaker A: and D. And Shadowrun. [00:16:52] Speaker B: And Shadowrun is what I was about to say. Like, that is not my cyber, my chosen cyberpunk. It's not my cyberpunk of choice. Right. Is what I would say. But people love it and I think it kind of proves that. Sure. I mean, cyberpunk or Shadowrun has tons of espionage like, and covert ops like missions that they run. Right. So you can totally do it. It's just a matter of whether everybody at the table enjoys it or not. [00:17:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Let us know. Andy, what you choose to run or, or Explore in that space. I'm interested to know how it goes and what you choose. Yeah. Next one. We have a voicemail. Our first voicemail. [00:17:30] Speaker B: Really? [00:17:31] Speaker A: Yes. Are you ready for this? [00:17:33] Speaker B: I don't know, but play it. [00:17:35] Speaker A: I don't know either. [00:17:38] Speaker C: John, longtime listener, first time caller. It's been nice. You're not putting out a regular podcast. I guess you're back at it. Sadly. I see you've changed. Co hosts. [00:17:53] Speaker B: Really? [00:17:53] Speaker C: Sean, you hired a Canadian? How did you even get security access? You've decided to get into Spy Game. I guess that makes some sense. Your best episode is the ones where you sit in the dark and watch other people work. Modern games. How does it even work with Axe Crawl? Do the orcs have tanks? How many skrulls of cure serious wounds does a doctor have? And when you level up, do you deal with the departmental budget? Anyway, I hope this show was better than the last one you had that only lasted wait eight years. Well, I guess time flies at the hidden base. One star review. Landia, regards your greatest fan, Mudskipper. [00:18:44] Speaker A: Mudskipper. [00:18:48] Speaker B: Correct me if I'm wrong. I think you mentioned this relatively recently. Is that the guy who left a one star review on the gaming MBS podcast back in the day? [00:18:57] Speaker A: The only person that. I think that tore us up pretty badly. Like it's, you know, senseless drivel to that point. Yeah, senseless drivel. I don't know how anybody can listen to this one star. Which led me to make fun of Mudskipper throughout the series from there. [00:19:14] Speaker B: Yes. [00:19:14] Speaker A: And then actually encourage everybody to leave one star reviews, but in a more facetious manner. [00:19:20] Speaker B: But Mudskipper, you got a stalker, man. [00:19:24] Speaker A: Where. Where have they been? And what has brought them out of the shadows now? [00:19:31] Speaker B: Do you think it's really Mudskipper? [00:19:33] Speaker A: No, I don't. But I don't know who it is. [00:19:36] Speaker B: Interesting. I. They got one piece wrong. They mentioned you hired a Canadian. And if you've hired me, we have to talk. That's true. I haven't signed a pain. I don't have a paycheck. Yeah, well, interesting. [00:19:51] Speaker A: It just goes the Mud Skippers, you know. [00:19:54] Speaker B: What do you have to say to all that? [00:19:56] Speaker A: Mud Skipper? I will find you. And when I do, I will see you, I will approach you and I will hug you. [00:20:14] Speaker B: Killing me softly. Oh my. [00:20:17] Speaker A: So quite a shock and a surprise to like, listen to the end of that thing go. Oh, who's this? [00:20:22] Speaker B: Well, Mud Skipper, if someone left a voicemail already, the show's only been released to a few people. Right. [00:20:32] Speaker A: We could do some legwork on it, find out who it is. [00:20:36] Speaker B: We may have an option. [00:20:38] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. [00:20:39] Speaker B: All right. [00:20:41] Speaker A: All right. [00:20:41] Speaker B: That's hilarious. [00:20:42] Speaker A: Thank. Thanks, Mudskipper, whoever you may be. I like getting in the mission brief. [00:20:52] Speaker B: Have a seat. Let's get on with the mission brief. [00:20:56] Speaker A: Oh, man. So last episode, prior to this one, Harrigan and I talked about kind of like what elements make up a espionage game or what we'd like to see in an espionage game, primarily from a mechanical perspective. Like, it's got to have chases, it's got to have social, a way to resolve things socially. And then there was like, Reputation we talked about Classified has that component. Some have hero points and things of that nature. And in this one we're talking about the tone and subject matter, not necessarily mechanics based. Is that a fair assessment of what we're covering today? [00:21:40] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. I think I would describe it as like the. The feel of the game, the. The characteristics that, like, what's in the game, what's the content in the game, what you would, once upon a time, golf, love the subject matter, the stuff like mechanics aside. And it can be. I think what we're going to talk about today, Sean, is not necessarily any specific game or anything like that, because various RPGs do a great job of providing like, setting material and sample mission types and all that kind of stuff. So we're going to take a step back from that, I think, have a wider view of, like, what. What is inside of a good espionage or covert ops game session. So. [00:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah, but there's a caveat to what you were going to say. Well, it's not. What's the difference between. [00:22:33] Speaker B: In terms of the. The split that I. That you and I talked about before the. Before the show. Yes. So in thinking about this throughout the week, it really struck me that espionage games are. Well, let me, let me. Let me describe it a different way. Last week we talked about these, like, four different, like, gritty, I think adventurous, heroic, cinematic and heroic kind of thing by the end of the discussion. I don't know if you noticed this, Sean, but by the end of the discussion, we kind of broken it down into like gritty or cinematic. So it's sort of like it's realistic, more like the real world in spy territory, or it's more of the cinematic movie action that's a little higher flying and all that kind of stuff. That's one way to break it down. The other way that I've been thinking about this week, to break it down is more about like when you talk about like action adventure films and the fact that we talked about. We're going to do a podcast focus on spies and espionage and covert ops. If you look at the definitions and look at the things that have happened through time, there's quite a dividing line. Like espionage is really about intelligence and about information. True espionage is agents who are trying to find things out, to secretly obtain information, to sow disinformation, et cetera. And those operations often lead to a covert op, which is more like the wetworks team, the special ops, the black ops, you know, the, the team of 12 people lined up in the hallway with night vision goggles and black tactical gear who are about to break in because the spy has identified where they have to hit. As we go through this, I think we're talking largely about espionage style games today, but, or, or espionage fiction. But what I think has really happened is there's been this huge blending of the true spiral of like pure espionage where like you, you know, the whole idea is like to not get discovered. You might be alone in the, in the other country or at the other, in the company you're inserted into or whatever. Right. You don't have a lot of support necessarily. There's been a huge blending of the people who do that upfront work with the people who then come in and hit hard and do the, you know, the. So the COVID ops are typically about doing damage to either an organization or to, you know, a country, whatever, and then that sometimes leads to military action. So we're sort of like three different tiers of this. And one thing I saw a couple of weeks ago that that really kind of spurred me on this, Sean, is basically how the US Got involved in Afghanistan. And whether or not, you know, we're neither here nor there, on whether we should have gone over there and what good we eventually did and how we got out and all that sort of stuff. But I will say that if you watch some, some sort of documentaries on it, it was the CIA who was in first. And the CIA went there with basically big suitcases full of cash. That was their main tool, I want [00:25:24] Speaker A: to say like $3 million or $13 million or something crazy. [00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And, and they had to. And they were trying to make like get local connections going and find out who they could rely on, who they couldn't, and arrange where the special forces could drop in. Because the next thing was that happened was they dropped in a covert, A bunch of cop. They did a bunch of COVID ops where they were doing the CIA guys were pointing lasers at things and the Air Force was blowing the shit out of them. Right. And then later, obviously the military operation starts and they get on the ground and all that sort of stuff. So it's kind of a great example of like where it all fits. Like the, the CIA part of it was like. Was like a dozen guys in two old helicopters that had to go into the country and land in the dark and figure out what the hell. How the hell do we start making hay with this stuff, right? Have you read that book? I have not. Document? Yeah. What's the book you're talking about? [00:26:15] Speaker A: I have it. It's. I had it on my desk and I've had it for months before, like even before this started because like came across it during a podcast about. I don't have my phone next to me, so I can't tell you the podcast, but I will put links in the show notes if I remember correctly. But the. Yeah, let me know that they mention the operation. And I was like very interested to read about it because the novel was. I don't know if it was a Pulitzer Prize, but it was one of the bigger bestsellers of non fiction. [00:26:50] Speaker B: So. But, but I think it's, it's a good sort of reflection on what we're about to get into here. So I think we're going to be largely focused on a little bit of the mix is what I would say. Because if you look at most RPGs, and this really, really applies to top secret, to covert ops, to James Bond in a way of. I mean, The James Bond 007 game in Classified, they are at least the first one the original is explicit about. Like we are modeling James Bond fiction. So there's a heavy focus on gambling, on seduction, on like all the things that go into a Bond movie, which we all know is pretty fanciful in some ways, right? But the top secret and covert ops and what else, like white lies, etc. Those games blend some of this stuff together for sure. So the agents are in there doing their thing. They find out the information they need, they find the target and then they hit it right there. And. And quite frankly, what Ian Fleming did with Bond was in was he gave this whole like set of agents, these double O categorizations so they could make the hit. They could do the thing after they found out what they were trying to find out. It is pretty cool though. The other thing I'm doing, I didn't mention before is I'm reading Casino Royale right now. Fleming's first. I'M gonna go through the Fleming books as we go through the podcast. I'm loving it so far, I have to say. But it starts off, I don't know where it's gonna go. I mean, I know the film and all that kind of stuff, but I'll see where it goes. But it starts off he's supposed to simply go to this French town, to this casino to beat the guy at Baccarat and, and Le Chiff and make it so that Le Chiff's connections to Schmersh are strained and troubled because he's in so much debt. He's already in debt as he comes to the table at Casino Royale and Bond is meant to be there and keep an eye on him and then drive him out of business basically into such debt that Smersh is going to come after him because he owes the money. I forget the whole, the whole exact angle, but it's, it's very low, you know, low stakes, kind of. I shouldn't say low stakes, but it's not like they're trying to blow anything up. They're not trying to destroy anything. It's like go and keep an eye on this guy and beat him at cards. And that's the additional. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. All right, so let, yeah, let's, let me look at my notes here. I think, I think that is the last of the, the differentiation really. You know, kind of espionage can lead to covert action, can lead to full on, you know, a military operation type of thing. But I think there's this blurring that we see in a lot of media and we, we won't be immune to that. We'll do some blurring ourselves. [00:29:15] Speaker A: Right. So the feel of espionage, you know it when you experience it. Probably some of the components I brought up was tension, paranoia, secrets, betrayal, all cool things to put in to what would be a scenario that you would provide to players. The trust is a big issue. And I hope at some point when we do like a mission, construction of a mission and we talk about question of trust, because I played in, I brought this up before. Chad Parish's top secret game at Gary Con years and years ago was literally four players at the table. He shows up in a London Fogger and a fedora and runs that. And I think even like black suit and white shirt. And the whole component was about the trust thing because of the scenario that he had set up. And I'll maybe talk about it and reference it a few times because it's one of the better espionage, covert ops, game sessions I've ever played in. And it was a one shot at a convention and he knows what he's doing, but it's hard to do that. Trust and betrayal. I mean, it is and it's not right if you're the game master. I mean it's hard in regular RPGs to have. The players are always paranoid that whoever they befriend is going to betray him anyway. [00:30:52] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean one of the harder things In I think RPGs generally is to portray these more mature and like, what's the word I'm looking for? Nuanced, sophisticated relationships that people can have where you gain trust in someone and then it's later revealed that you shouldn't have. Or more common in these games, you're gaining people's trust when you're lying to them. Like the, the right off the bat, like when you say there's tension, paranoia, secrets, betrayal involved in these. I totally agree. And I think a lot of it comes from the play what the players are doing because they're supposed to be inserting into places where they're not allowed to be. They may or may not have a cover. They're lying to people and they may be lying to people that they get to know and who rely on them. And that's where like that's. It's impressive that he was able to do that in a one shot because you've only got a few hours to do that. That's cool. Over the course of a campaign. It strikes me that's a little easier because you have long, more sessions and all that kind of stuff. [00:31:50] Speaker A: There was a style versus grit component where they compare like James Bond more style versus Jean Lra. The, the grit components. [00:32:02] Speaker B: Yeah. For the fuel. Yeah. [00:32:03] Speaker A: It's. [00:32:03] Speaker B: It's very clear to me reading Fleming. But the man cared deeply about cigarette brands, types of brandy and like different liqueurs, high end card games, high fashion. Like he really cared about that stuff. So there's definitely that, that, that angle versus someone who's pretending to be an office worker in a building in East Berlin in the basement. Yeah. Very high, not very high brow. But they have access to the files, Right? [00:32:35] Speaker A: Right. [00:32:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:37] Speaker A: In the Americans, they earn the trust of regular people working in the office. [00:32:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:42] Speaker A: And they do it. It's. It's pretty crazy, I think, in it and that's a component. But also the ordinary people in extraordinary situations, which is always an interesting one because I think some of us want to play the Joe Kick Ass or Jane Kick ass Jason Bourne. When sometimes it's just being the regular person. [00:33:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:07] Speaker A: And then running into all kinds of goofy things. [00:33:10] Speaker B: It's fertile ground, I think, because you can go all the way from like you are the world's premier super agent and you have the backing of an entire government and satellite network and operatives who are nearby you can call in to. You've been embedded for five years and there's no support structure other than your, your dead drop meetings that you have twice a year, once a month or whatever it might be. There's just all kinds of room between. Between that where I don't know, there's lots of good storytelling potential in there. [00:33:41] Speaker A: We talk about the roles that are taking place within an espionage game, whether it's the. What the title of the game master is usually referred to as or the player characters. I mean, things like terms like spies, assets, case officers. So there's a lot of jargon that also coincides with this. So some people are going to be like, well, what's the difference between a case officer and a handler? And maybe you know, and that and some of those details. So handlers and controllers is another component. You have double agents, triple agents, defectors. Like what. So should we talk about what's the difference between a spy and asset And a case officer is quick. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And I hope you have it down because I mean, the answer is yes, we should. I think assets is pretty general because assets can be someone who doesn't work for you but is friendly. It can be someone you can pay that will do something. It could be an agent that's been embedded for five years. You've never activated. Correct. Like assets can be pretty broad. Yeah. [00:34:51] Speaker A: And assets could be resources. Usually a peep person. [00:34:57] Speaker B: I'm thinking people. [00:34:58] Speaker A: People that aren't employed by the agency, if you will. Right. They're just used to further the mission or further the cause of whatever is done. Right. An asset could be an internal employee at a company. [00:35:16] Speaker B: Yeah. If, if the. You have them like you're either you're blackmailing them or you're paying them or they're friendly for some other reason. Right. All those, all those things and they may be on. [00:35:26] Speaker A: They may not know that they're an asset. [00:35:31] Speaker B: Yeah. That's kind of a, that's a cool take. Yeah. [00:35:34] Speaker A: Yeah. For sure. Case officer, I don't have all these defined necessarily. I don't know. [00:35:40] Speaker B: I mean the case officer, I kind of combine that with the handler and the controller. It's like it's the person at the agency who is, you know what one thing we didn't do at the top of this that I remember when we first talked about this show. Sean. Which leads into this discussion of case officers and handlers. It's like these are mission based games. You have an objective and for all the good or bad that goes with that, in many cases you'll find the adventures that have been written for these types of games are pretty linear, unfortunately, especially the older ones. It's rare to have a sandbox, for example, or a wide open game. I mean you have an objective or someone you're trying to eliminate. There's someone, something you're trying to learn, there's an activity you're trying to stop. It is mission focused. To my mind, the case officer, the handler, the controller is the person from the agency that you're working for, whether it's a national agency or a private firm or whatever, who knows the most. And they might not know much, but they're the one who marshals the team, gives the initial briefing and then will also be like the point of contact. If you need further resources, you need to know about assets, you need, you need to report back, you know, the, the, the situation you're in now, etc. Would you agree that that's where they fit? [00:36:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And they can also produce more resources should a team need to lean on them. And, and there I think with many of the games that we're going to talk about that is key. Like that, that type of person, that role and it, you'd be hard pressed to run some of these games without that, that person. Right. [00:37:11] Speaker B: Thinking it through. There's certainly games where the agent is on the outside of everything and Bourne is the best example. Wakes up wet, tired, hurt, like who the hell am I? All that stuff. Right. Like there's no, he has no handler in Shrek. He starts to engage with his former handlers throughout the movie. Right. And throughout the books, I'm sure. [00:37:30] Speaker A: Double agents, triple agents, defectors. So double agents, you're working for a particular agency and you get turned because, and there's real life cases about this stuff and sometimes those double agents become defectors. But they're different. They can be different or one of the same, I guess a defector may not be a double agent. Then a triple agent is like, you know, almost counterintelligence plus a double agent where, you know, you're working double agent working for the CIA and you're obtaining, you're supposed to be uncovering things for say intelligence for the CIA to act on. But the Russians want to pay you a bunch of money or to your point earlier, blackmail you. And now you're getting those secrets from the CIA and moving them over to the, to the kgb. Russians. [00:38:31] Speaker B: Yeah, there's many motivations for that. Right. For the, the double agent, the triple agent, the defector, which all. Everything from their greedy. And you can pay them off with money to. You've got their daughter to, you know, you. They got information on you, you don't want revealed, etc. So. Yeah, in fact, that's a. I think it's a staple of the genre for sure. I, I do. You mentioned counterintelligence there a minute ago. I don't think that gets as much play as it maybe could in some. Either, you know, movies, books or, or games. I'm sure there's, there's, you know, there's whole sets of novels devoted to this, but basically breaking up your enemy's intelligence network and providing them misinformation and all that sort of stuff. Right? More like maybe, maybe the Russians goes there or the, excuse me, the Americans, maybe that goes there. I don't know. [00:39:14] Speaker A: Or not only that, but if you're running counterintelligence. So when we recorded, was it the first episode? Second. I'm losing track already. And it's only been two. But you had mentioned being at a convention and people saying espionage, part of a government. Gross. Right. But counterintelligence would be interesting because they could also be internal. Like they're, they're the internal affairs for police sometimes. So they could be actually hunting down internal ass. Internal agents of an agency that may be leaking things or is the double agent and they're trying to find that person so they may not have to go and assassinate a foreign government's official or prime minister or something. Some people may cringe at when it comes to government work and influence, but actually. And then if it's, you know, maybe it's not a government agency, it's somebody else within the organization. To, to your point, I think you mentioned an example of, you know, a bunch of philanthropers that wanted to create their own agency to do the good in the world. That is truly the good. But maybe somebody doesn't want that good. Right. There's plenty of movies that are like, oh yeah, man, war is good for business and that's what I do. And they're the ones sabotaging things and that. They're the ones that sabotage the peace talks. Right. [00:40:36] Speaker B: Well, the more realistic version of SPECTRE kind of thing, like the, you know, there's A cartel of people who want to exploit resources and people and laws in certain countries. And I, I totally agree. Like, you can totally get into the counter of that kind of thing and feel better about it as a person. As opposed to being the. You're doing CIA wetwe work in the 70s, which is not so great. No, right. [00:40:59] Speaker A: It's not so great. [00:41:01] Speaker B: Not so great. [00:41:02] Speaker A: No. [00:41:03] Speaker B: I love this, the whole genre, Sean. [00:41:05] Speaker A: It's all kinds of stuff. [00:41:06] Speaker B: Like, I love the idea of your. You could be a small town policeman, policewoman, you could work for the FBI and the. Because the FBI often coordinates in like local cases in which. In which you discover there's a spy network operating here kind of thing. Right. And then it becomes like, the scope broadens. I think it could make for a really cool game. And in some ways we're nibbling back at Delta Green's edges as well, because in many cases you can be local law enforcement. You can, you know, you can be from all walks of life, really. It bends towards law enforcement, certainly for the, for the agents. But in that game you have the, the greater good of cosmic. Trying to prevent cosmic horror from overwhelming everybody. So you can feel good about the work that you do. [00:41:49] Speaker A: Yeah. One thing we didn't include was like, to your point about police work is there's informants and there could be informants at a, at a higher level as well. Right. I don't think informants I usually equate to beat cops, you know, versus an, like an espionage asset, if you will, I would say. [00:42:12] Speaker B: But fair, Fair. So, yeah, let's, let's run up a discussion on roles here. I think your notes, you also had. There's lots of bureaucrats, there's analysts. So we're just talking about the characters that populate these stories. Right. So the analysts at Langley, at MI6 or MI5, there's always a contractor and a mercenary element that can come into this. [00:42:37] Speaker A: They don't want to be tied back to the Agency, so they hire a freelancer. Right. There's probably a trail there. But they're not an official employee. There's plausible deniability. So we hire Harrigan. [00:42:52] Speaker B: Have you seen the Gray Man? [00:42:54] Speaker A: I have not. [00:42:56] Speaker B: So the Gray Man's kind of all about this. It's a, it's a high end operative who's, you know, trained, you know, for his whole life, blah, blah, blah, unstoppable, yada yada. But like, there's a changing of the guard and the CIA and the new guards, like these old agents we used to have Were kind of. Kind of born like they're. They're too rogue. We can't control them. We're gonna. We're gonna stop that program. Right. It's not as. Not as dark or dramatic like we're gonna kill them all thing. But what happens is the new head of the CIA has a bunch of mercenaries they use so they can cover their trail and do things that are untoward and not have a tie back to the agency. So it was a big mercenary element. So the gray man, the whole movie long is fighting this mercenary company who's working for his boss, essentially. So it's. It's better than it gets than the reviews. I think it's a better movie than. There's an amazing set piece. I think it's in Prague. There's a big shootout and a train chase. It's great. Actually. It's worth it. The movie is worth it for the one. The one big set piece. About three quarters of the way through the movie alone, it's pretty good. But stay on track here. I agree on the informants thing. Many of them are assets because you're paying somebody or you have something on them so you can get information out of them. But there are other times when Delta Green would call a friendly where they just provide information because they believe in the cause or you have relationships or whatever it might be. I love the idea of just. We're talking broadly roles. I like moles, sleeper agents who are. And this Black Swan show is about that. The Americans is kind of about that too. Where they're in place for a long time, then get activated kind of thing. Right. [00:44:33] Speaker A: Love. [00:44:33] Speaker B: Love all that stuff. And I would, if we bend this more towards the role playing game side of things and more towards the. The games that either have archetypes or classes, then you get into like the second story Thief, you know, the person who's like break and break and enter specialist. You get into the wheel man or the wheel person. You get into the hacker, you get into the. The soldier or the soldier of fortune or whatever. Like the person who's really good at combat and it can break down kind of that way. So the roles can. If you get away from the reality of it or the cinematic reality of it, it can break down more in games so that people all have their own, like, niche that they're occupying. [00:45:12] Speaker A: Right. [00:45:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:14] Speaker A: I think we covered rules. Good. We missed it. [00:45:16] Speaker B: I think so. Don't think so. [00:45:18] Speaker A: I think somebody will call us and let us know, I hope. [00:45:20] Speaker B: Yep. [00:45:21] Speaker A: Trade craft and tools. Like, I like to call gadgets or Q section. [00:45:32] Speaker B: Love it. [00:45:34] Speaker A: But even before you get into gadgets and tools, the tradecraft piece is a huge thing. Huge. Like, even when we talk about Delta Green, which we kind of established early on, it's not true espionage, right. But it involves a lot of tradecraft. I think even like our friend Noobus on Discord was like, oh, I'm interested to know more about this because it's kind of a blind spot for me. I said, well, you're running down to Green. There's a lot of tradecraft, and he's just kind of getting his sinking his teeth in a Delta Green now. But Delta Green is full of. Full of tradecraft, but not espionage. So what is, what is tradecraft? Yeah, right. Yeah. [00:46:18] Speaker B: I think we're in. In this case now we're talking about like, the skills, the objects, the methods to keep things secret, to achieve your objectives, either without people knowing, or you're circumventing defenses or that kind of thing. I mean, maybe you have a. A better. A better. We should look up the actual definition. [00:46:38] Speaker A: Define everything. [00:46:41] Speaker B: Well, what were you thinking when you put tradecraft in there? [00:46:44] Speaker A: Probably the methods and procedures that are involved with doing the thing in espionage or in. I mean, it's. You are. When you are in a trade, it's a job, it's a profession. The craft is what you use to hone your skills within that trade. I think for the most part, if I almost get more literal about the actual word. So in, in games, like the ones that we're going to be talking about, you have. You're acquiring information, you're instilling a level of trust into individuals so that you can obtain information even if it's not actual truth. So like things like dead drops, brush passes, surveillance, all equate to obtaining that information. And as part of trade craft, disguises and covers are also another thing, right? [00:47:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I think covers for sure. Like basically ways to avoid detection, to communicate secretly to. And to handle people, whether they are your opponents, you know, and it's one of those situations where everyone knows, you both know that you're in the game, but there's a crowd around you kind of thing, you know, knowing that, that stuff. I just think there's. There's a lot that goes into it. And then of course, all of the handling of the equipment, like knowing where to put a bug or where. How to look for a bug, those sorts of things. Right. The way that you always see Bond in his hotel rooms checking lampshades and shit like that. Right. That's all trade craft. That's the lowbrow 60s version of trade. [00:48:19] Speaker A: Right, Right. But some of the things like you have to communicate and depending on the era, there are certain things that you use in order to make that happen. And sometimes it's a little more or less, less electronic because there's advantages and disadvantages to using certain communication methods. Right. It heightens, it's all risk in this. [00:48:42] Speaker B: I wish I could, I wish I could remember, but there's a movie or was it a book? I don't remember the whole thing. Where like they would publish newspaper articles or letters to the editor or something and you have to read like every sixth word and put those words together to make the real message. So in other words, that whole, like communicate in public in a secret way that the embedded operative can see it. I love that stuff. [00:49:04] Speaker A: Yeah, love that stuff. So some of those communication oriented things. One time pads, so you sheet a paper and it's got the codes and everything. And then once you use it, it's done, it's ripped up, it's actually burned or what have you. And on the other end there's another pad to decipher it and then that's used. And that's long time, old school stuff. Number stations, which I never got into, which I thought was always weird. Like, I know that there's like a weird conspiracy thing around number stations. Right. They just like transmit numb, random numbers. And I think there's some out there that still exist today. It's crazy interesting. And then encrypted apps and encryption is a big, big deal and goes back to a long time ago. Weird ciphers. And your decoder ring from Cap' n Crunch cereal. [00:49:59] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I see in your notes, actually we've also got like tails as well that like the whole surveillance thing I think can be kind of cool because it can turn into the. You got the equipment where you point the, you know, point the equipment at the pane of glass that's, you know, quarter mile across town. You can hear them, right? Yeah. You got your big, got your big cans on. Yep. Sean is aiming his mic now. Like it's a, like it's a parabolic microphone or whatever those things are. Yeah, I love all that stuff for sure. So let's, if we, if you don't mind, let's talk gadgets just for a minute. I mean, they can go from the outlandish for some of the Mission Impossible and Bond type stuff, especially in, you know, if you go into the Roger Moore era. And there's. There's. There's different. Bond kind of goes through waves of being more realistic and little. A little more outlandish. Right? But I love the stuff that's. That's. That's real as well, like. Like microdots and that kind of thing where there's, like, you know, tons of information packed onto a little tiny, you know, little tiny thing that you're trying to. You're trying to get somewhere. Micro cameras in Her Majesty Secret Service, which I recently watched. As I said, there's an amazing scene where Bond is doing true espionage. He's breaking into a law firm, and they've set it up so that when the lawyer goes for lunch. I haven't figured this out yet. Somebody else watches this. They can tell me how Bond gets the key. Bond ends up with the key to the office, and he walks past the guys. The guy goes to lunch in the hallway of the office building. Lazenby walks past him. Bond walks past him. They do not touch. But later, on the street, you see the lawyer patting himself down like, huh, I seem to have lost my key or something. And then, you know, Bond's like, look what I have, Saki to the office. And, you know, click. And he's inside. I haven't figured out quite how he did that, but when he gets inside, he's just looking for some documents that tie them to Blofeld from Spectre, because Blofeld's using this law firm to do some genealogical research, of all things, as you do. So. So this is the best part. He finds the safe. And this is an office building in Switzerland, I think, goes to the window, and across the street is a construction site. The construction site is owned by the father of the woman he's in love with, who he's entangled with already, who is like a criminal, like worldwide international criminal boss that Bond seems to somehow get along with in this movie. So set that aside. So what does he do? They use a crane to lift a machine from the construction site to the window where Bond is in the office building. And he pulls out what is the size of, like a steamer trunk, like a big trunk. He pulls it out, he opens it up. And, Sean, it is a. It is a machine that does two things. He attaches, like a magnet on a. On, like a wire to the safe. And so it does the auto safe cracking thing right where you. You see the six LED digits. And they're all, like, running and counting down, you know, counting one through 10 over and over again. And they're Slowly, like lock the first one in, lock the second one in, lock the third one in. So that's kind of cool. And yeah, the machine's, the machine's huge. To do this, he gets into the safe, he finds the documents he wants, he wants to copy them. The machine is also what's called a Photostat. He makes a photocopy of the documents. He has lifted it like a Xerox up into the room, makes the copy and then he bundles it all up, puts it back in the, in the, like the basket that the crane has outside. It takes it away and it gets away scot free. But it's just this absurd. The machine must weigh 200 pounds. You know, it made me laugh so hard. It was great. So I love that they kind of interesting thinking that goes into the gadgets and whatnot. And then I will do. Sorry to go on here, but I will, I will compare and contrast that with something in Casino Royale which I think is really cool, but I haven't really fully investigated yet. There's a bomb that goes off early in that book and they are investigating to see who was responsible. And they get some prints and they were able to use a machine. And this is like in like 1952 or three or something when this was written. There's a machine called the Balenagraph which allows you in the 50s by phone to send images. So I have to, I have to look at it. But they basically Bond is collaborating with both the CIA and with French Secret Service as well. And the French get the prints and are sending them to Paris from, you know, from Casino Royale, from the town it's in Royale. It's just kind of amazing to me that in the 50s that technology actually existed that they could, they could transmit that stuff. So, you know, doing the digging on the like the realistic side of things, I think there's some really cool stuff that you can, you can unearth. And I'm hoping as we go through all the RPGs and they all have their gadget sections, some of that stuff is included. So we get some of the real world OSS and other, other real world spytech kind of thing. [00:54:38] Speaker A: Yeah, we got a few more to cover. Plot devices, all kinds of things that you can get into, you know, mole hunts. So looking at individuals that are internally leaking secrets out to the enemy, usually a double agent. But a mole is a specific thing, right? And there's a, there is a definition of what it's like, why it's called a mole. I can't remember what it Was offhand, but I think it's. [00:55:10] Speaker B: Oh, really? [00:55:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I want to say it has to do with the animal, but I can't say for sure. Right. [00:55:18] Speaker B: So for those who are, who are listening, Sean, for those who are listening for whatever reason and don't know what a mole is in this, in the espionage world, it's somebody in your organization is providing someone else with information. Right. Like you have a leak, basically. [00:55:29] Speaker A: Taylor Tinker, Taylor Soldier Spies. A good one for that. Yeah. [00:55:34] Speaker B: Who's the mole? [00:55:34] Speaker A: Yes. Defections and double crosses. Plot. So these are all plots where you sit down as a game master, come up with a mission that'll probably involve one of these things. And honey pots. So do you want to describe what a honey pot is? [00:55:53] Speaker B: I don't know that I can do it justice. If you have it on the tip of your tongue, go ahead. [00:55:57] Speaker A: It's putting something out there that's going to attract maybe another, an agent or a double agent to it in order to maybe capture them. And sometimes honey pots are not easily set up because they have to be realistic so that it's not like, well, that's a trap to the, the opposing agent that you're trying to, to capture or, or unveil and expose. So honey pots are usually done in tech. Right. For hackers. [00:56:26] Speaker B: I was just going to say that now that you're, now that you're going into it, in cyber security, it's used all the time. Yeah. So it's basically a distraction and a TR Or a trap or, you know, occupy their resources where they don't want to be spending them instead of on the real stuff. [00:56:40] Speaker A: That, that too. Right. Yeah. It's kind of a diversion to, well, let's give them all this stuff that's just a bunch of nonsense, but they think it's actually, you know, valuable. So then they're not doing what they could be doing, which is really bad stuff. Blown covers, safe house compromised. So those are things when you're on the run, maybe it's part of a scenario that you're dealing with because now they know who you are or who the players are, player characters are. They might know who the players are, but player characters. And then if they. The safe house. If you're not familiar with a safe house, that's just a place where it's usually set up by, you know, the handler or the organization that is been swept of bugs. It's off the radar. It's a place that they can go that is that nobody knows where it is. It's A it's a safe place to be and sometimes when that is compromised then people can put bugs in there and surveil it and then find out who is really behind what's going on. If agents are going there. So another way to garner information to uncover opposing agencies, forces, groups. Right. [00:58:04] Speaker B: Maybe blown because of the mole. [00:58:07] Speaker A: Because of the mole. Time pressure, extraction before discovery and countdowns if there's always a time factor. Got a, there's a bomb that's going to go off, the train is going to be derailed. It's all kinds of time things. Somebody's going to die at a certain point in time. [00:58:30] Speaker B: You know, linking back to something we talked about at the top of the show as well. The whole like covert ops versus espionage. Sometimes the espionage piece does not have as much time pressure I find like the agent might be in place for a long time. Right. When you're running the COVID op, when you're running that thing where you have to get the 10 man team into a place or you're. You're hitting from two different directions usually then like time is of the utmost importance. Right. You have a limited window kind of thing. Right. I think it certainly can, can really, really matter, but it doesn't always matter. [00:59:01] Speaker A: Conspiracies reaching into governments. So the Americans and Condor. So a couple influences there. I'm not sure. I mean yes, there are conspiracy components to, to look into and leverage specifically Delta Green is a big one. But I don't know if I would leverage. [00:59:24] Speaker B: I don't know. I think I know what you were going after with the notes here. Like you might even be doing something. This might be like more of an internal thing even. Right. Where the CIA is like or whatever inserts by agency here has been compromised and your bosses are thinking we need to find out why these decisions are being made or why funding's being cut or why this part of the organization is being shut down and there may be a broader conspiracy at work behind that. Right. That sort of thing. Yeah. [00:59:49] Speaker A: Continuing with plot devices. [00:59:53] Speaker B: Okay. So since we're talking plot devices, I think they can be pretty wide ranging. And I had some other thoughts that were, you know, these are a little bit of a scatter gun so you'll have to bear with me here. But I love to see like that kind of the deep cover angle as well where someone's been embedded for a long time and goes, you know the sleeper agents we talked about before, I love the notion of like burn to spies or spies who are out in the cold for one reason. Or another their agency has abandoned them and they're either operating independently, they're working for someone else, or they have been sacrificed by the agency to pin the problems on kind of thing. Love those. I think we talked about this already but like ciphers and codes permeate this, this, this sort of media and this sort of fiction. You've already talked about dead drops. There are also live drops which are kind of cool. So dead drops are those things where information is passed without the talking or meeting. Whether it's a briefcase that gets picked up when, after someone sets it down, etc. And the live drops, I just discovered this this week. The live drops are meant to be those like short briefing sessions where you actually meet with your handler or meet with the other party out in the field in a clandestine fashion. You know, that kind of way. [01:01:03] Speaker A: And I think there's a brush method. [01:01:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I love the brush method where you walk past each other in a crowd. Well, what movie was. It was a great movie where there's, there's a brush method of assassination as well. There's just a little like little pin through the sleeve of the jacket kind of thing and they get poisoned as people are leaving a subway, very crowded scene. One of those things like who did that sort of thing. As the fiction becomes a little more Bond like or cinematic. There's the whole idea of femme fatales. I think forgeries, impersonations can be really factor, really large. And then the last one I've got on my little list here is often these missions are about like providing either bolstering like a certain type of propaganda or destabilizing a government. So now you're leaning a little more towards the real side of things where I'm sorry, it's not a two hour movie when this all takes place. It takes, you know, three years to insert the right agents and to destabilize the group that you want to destabilize. But I think you could make it so that the games are at the critical point of that happening or get, you know, the admissions about getting the agents into the right place or getting them out after the mission is complete the extraction, like that kind of thing. So yeah, there's, I mean as we move through the show, Sean, I think we can return to this one. There's, there's so many plot devices that, that are, you know, cliche and are fun frankly. [01:02:23] Speaker A: I think we should come up with a list of them so that if anybody were like to come up with a scenario for their game, they just like what should I do. Here's a list. [01:02:31] Speaker B: Right. [01:02:32] Speaker A: And I think there's some RPGs that have those actually in them. [01:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah. As we go through them, they. Absolutely. Some of them have tables around mission types and whatnot. And a lot of this stuff comes to the fore when you do that, when you make those roles and whatnot. You know, Sean, you've run sort of heard on this section today and you know, when I reviewed your notes there were a few things that one big thing that struck out at me that we want to make sure we cover that I don't know if we have. Which is what are. Remember how he was at the top? I mentioned that. These are mission based things. You've got an objective, you're trying to accomplish something, you're trying to prevent something from happening, whatever that might be. I think it's maybe for those who are new, newer to this, it might be worth just kind of listing out like what do these missions consist of? What do they look like usually? So these, you know, from the, from the hip. These things you're trying to gather or steal information, you're trying to surveil somebody. So that may involve planting bugs or devices or wires, but it may also mean you're tailing them and you're just like being around them as they move from place to place. I think they're a prot. Escort intercept type missions. There's certainly. Even though espionage is, you know, in the real world is pretty separate from COVID ops, certainly the assassination stuff is not necessarily the case. You might be trying to get a spy in so they can drop the poison in the right place kind of thing. Right. So it doesn't turn into a big loud mission from a covert ops team. In fact is an assassination that's done on the down low and no one knows that they were actually. It's a murder, they think they were killed accidentally kind of thing. Right. We talked a little bit about like the destabilization. So I think sowing disinformation can be important. There's blackmail and there also might even be like exercising control over somebody so you have something on them or you might be going to get something on them so you can exercise that control. Sabotage. Absolutely. This can also go in terms of a scale. This can go from like world spanning to like if you know some of the, some of the goofier Bond movies, whether it's a collection of satellites in space or nukes or whatever. Like if you don't, if you don't stop this, the world ends or there's something absolutely terrible happening happens. Right? But it might be as grounded as. And this was. This was the third season of Slow Horses. There's a plot to blow up a building, a single building. That's all it's about. Much more realistic. Because this is the kind of that those. Those bastards do plan, right? So you can take it all the way from like the. The kind of ridiculous level of like Grandy grandiose villain plans and whatnot, all the way down to someone got a whiff that there's a plot of what to attack the super bowl or something like that, right? And that's so you can. And everything in between. And you know, some. What some of the best series do, I think, is they. They foil that first one and then when you pull the thread, you realize there's more to this. There's actually a bigger plot here, there's more people involved, etc. So I don't know the mission part of it. And that's. This is another place where when we get into the games themselves, they generally do a pretty good job of outlining what a mission should look like. You're not going to a dungeon to find treasure, right? You're doing something different is the bottom line. [01:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. [01:05:35] Speaker B: That's all I got, Sean. [01:05:36] Speaker A: That's all I got. It's a lot. We definitely pounded that down. So thanks for tuning in, everybody. Much appreciated joining Harrigan and I. If you like this show, do us a favor and tell a friend. Tell a friend. Well, mission completes. Wheels up in 10. Better grab your go bag. Thanks, everyone. This episode of Go Bag brought to you with help from the following agents, assets and directors. 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