Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode of Go Bag, I talk about my Delta Green game. Harrigan goes over the book Moonraker. I find out that I may have been monitored by the Russians. We get a grenade thrown at us by Mike G in encrypted comms. And then in our mission brief, we discuss how you can implement a teaser or cold opening into your covert action rpg.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Hit it.
Strap in. Operatives, this is go back your all access pass to modern day RPGs loaded with bullets, backstories, and a whole lot of bad decisions. And here are your mission leaders, Sean and Harrigan.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: We start off usually kicking off what we're tuned into as far as books, media, tv, movies. And Harrigan's got quite a few this week that he's tackling. I am. I've been dead due to all kinds of different things.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Let's do this. Yeah, this is like the what, what you've been up to in, in the COVID action realm.
Are you giving us a pass? You haven't had anything.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: I will, I will say this.
Delta Green convergence. I have run, I don't know, I think eight sessions, nine sessions of that. And we did wrap it up. I wrapped that, I wrapped that up last week. Sunday, as of this recording, November 16th, we got together.
It started out with like, okay, last we left off, you were here, this was here, blah, blah, blah. Good. Yeah. But we want to do this. Okay, got it. Here's what happens. And then some things go into motion.
They go and do this thing and then at some point I basically tie up all the loose ends. And it's so. It's very me monologuing some of those details for like quite, quite a while. Like almost 45 minutes, for like 2 hours, almost like maybe an hour to tie that up. And we were early and then everybody packed up their stuff and left. So now it's kind of like that is done.
What are we gonna do next?
[00:02:09] Speaker B: So you kind of narrated to the end after a bunch of, okay, I.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: Don'T want it to be like, okay, then we do this and then we do that and then we do this and it's like, no, it's kind of like you've tackled the objective and it wasn't smooth. Like, one of the guys went to the hospital, but I had him transferred to another hospital.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: And is it something you're going to keep playing, like with these characters with this crew?
[00:02:32] Speaker A: So I brought it up to the gang the session prior because I'm like, depending on how this goes, are you guys wanting to continue to play Delta Green Specifically, or do we want to do something else? Well, Jeff's all in on Delta Green, so he's like, oh, I want to keep playing. Other guys are like, okay, you know, whatever.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Sh. Sha. Just shrugged for those who are not watching him.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: I shrugged for everybody. Only me.
I don't know if I want to do just another scenario that is on a standalone basis or if I want to roll out the big. The big behemoth, Impossible landscapes or God's teeth.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: God's teeth?
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I have a week from today to figure that out.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: I asked for a reason, because I know. I think we've all as GMs been in those situations where you're having to, like, tie up loose ends, narrate to the end because you either don't have enough time or there's pieces you just want to kind of draw back in. Right. But I asked because with Delta Green, you could also. As opposed to having that, like. And another thing. And now I go here and the players are still in that, like, real time mindset, which you don't want at the end. You could, if you were going to play again, switch to the home scenes.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Right, Right.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: So you could be like, it's three weeks later, where. Where do we see you? You know, you burned the bond.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Like, you.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: You could do a whole round of that stuff. But I wouldn't want to do that necessarily if you're. If you're done with the campaign.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Right, of course. And I think right now I fast forward the timeline because I'm like, the scenario's ended. We fast forward a week, this happens. And then we fast forward a month, this happens. And then, yeah, okay. You know, Jeff's like, hey, I want to get into, like, requisitions and getting my go bag together. And so he's texting me, like, everything he wants in it.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: And everybody else is on their phone planning their next. Their next Sunday. Like, I'm gonna do something different.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: He's like, I'm gonna check, you know, there's bureaucracy and, you know, us. And I said, well, it's obvious that Delta Green has no resources. They're not giving you anything. I'm positioning them as not funded.
And so I said, okay, that's fine, but they're probably going to look to you to steal this stuff for Delta Green, honestly.
So he's going through that downtime period of what you can do during that. And I want to increase some, you know, I want to do some training. And I'm like, I'm sure the CIA would send you to a conference once a year. Jeff, you could go to, you can go to the Gartner conference once a year and increase your, increase your little skill by two points or whatever it is. And then he's like, no, page 98, man.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: It's got this. And like, I attended a great round table discussion.
I'm no better at forgery.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: You know, it's like, whatever. Okay, fine.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: So, you know what? Put a pin in this. We're going to return to this. I mean, we're going to return to Delta Green generally.
But I think you and I have had many discussions over the years about how much it helps that game if the players all sort of deeply understand the roles they're playing. What, what game Delta Green is. It's not called Cthulhu. It's not an espionage game. It's, you know, it's this weird thing in between and understanding the program and what, what they are. I had discovered Sean recently. And one of the things, you know what, let's, let's flip over. I'll tell you about my week. One of the things I've been, I'm doing is, you know, I got these play by post games that I play. Covert Ops is now off and running. They're about to meet their first contact in Prague after kind of navigating some, some city. City scenes, some, what am I trying to say, some street life complications that are like holding them up. They're going to make them late for their meeting basically with their contact. But the other thing that I got going is a Delta Green solo game that I've finally gotten off to the ground after many years of planning. Fellow by the name of Dirigible, who I've played many of these games with over the years. We've done lots of solo gaming together, but haven't in the last like five years, we haven't done much. So we're trying this again. And that. So whole point is here I've sort of dived back into the Delta Green side of things. There are some conflicting things in the current material about how robust the program is. So in other words, the official one that came From Majestic post 2001, that whole program, if you read the adventures versus what's in the player's guide versus the handler's guide, it is not fully consistent, maybe purposefully, but I think it's very rich ground for you and I to explore in say, a podcast and.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: To just comment on that quick.
I have it set in 1990. I think their most recent is 1996. I think I.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: So they're outlaws then.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: And I started it in 1995.
Right. But they don't know that they're really outlaw.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: They just know they're Delta Green. Right? Yes.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: And. And they don't know it's not an official programmer. That is. And all this, like, it's. There's some things that probably will. I. I probably shouldn't have done that. Would. Like, why. Why would you do that in that era? But.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: I don't care what they think because they don't know anything yet.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Can I ask you a quick question about impossible landscapes?
[00:07:40] Speaker A: And I.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Sitting on the shelf behind me. I've never read the damn thing I played in the game with you, so I purposely didn't read it. Does it address the fact that it starts off in the cowboy era and then you know how it does the time jump?
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: After the time jump, it's the program, it's not the cowboys.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Does it address that?
[00:07:59] Speaker A: No.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: That's weird, man. That's what. That's kind of what I'm getting at. There's some weird flux in it, even from the main authors that I'm like, you're. And. Okay, okay, last thing on this. Remember what was one you ran where we went to, like, Montana or wherever we went. Which one was that?
[00:08:16] Speaker A: I.
I don't remember.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: We. We picked up the strange pack. I don't want to ruin it for anybody. There's the weird package that gets intercepted in the mail. You end up traveling to like a. Like a pharmaceutical or some sort of manufacturing facility somewhere in the West. Right.
In that one, I remember we ran it and we felt a little bit. A little stymied. Right. If you remember it. And then later I flipped through it and. And the module was suggesting, well, they should just call him the. The special forces on my helicopter to assault the base. And I'm like, what? That. Like, that is not the Delta dream that I play.
And in no way did our handler. You convey that we had these resources available. And it's where I think there's some jank in the way that some people run it or expect it to be run. And I think the misalignment can really kind of trip people up. Anyway, enough about that for sure.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: And I've witnessed that on a couple occasions where even that scenario, I'm like, oh, this is what they could do. Even the one I just ran, which is convergence. Convergence is the first scenario ever written for Doubt the Green. I don't know if you knew that. Yeah. Ever so it was originally for Call of Cthulhu, but they re released it. They updated it. And you know, even. Even Dwayne, I think it was at game. Holcon, he's like, why? How are you even running that? Because it has a permanent thing.
So usually if it's a one shot permanent thing, no big deal. You toss it out, it's at a con game, it's finished.
And I said, I can handle that. I can change it. That's the thing with these things. Yeah, it does say that. So what, I just nuke it or I provide a cure. Right. Or whatever.
But it is, to your point, even impossible. Landscape, cycle. It starts right on the cusp of it forming.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
Right. Yeah. And if you read the lore, like, there are assassinations happening where Majestic. Majestic is knocking people off. There's all kinds of happening in the 90s around that stuff. I mean, number one, it's cool. I will also say this, and I think we've already taken more time.
Delta Green forever. We could talk about it forever. Yeah.
And who's the author? Is Det. Right. Of the. Of the new game.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: It's a conglomerate of them.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: Right, okay, fair enough. I forget who wrote either the Player's Guide or the Handlers.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: I don't know if it's a single person. I know there's Shane Ivey and then there's Det. Willer.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Point being, I came across a passage recently that actually talks about what you just said, which is the. Just nuke it. It says, Delta Green is going to be a little bit different at every table. In other words, lean into the parts that you like and ignore the parts that you don't, which any GM can do. But it is also a game that. With such a rich, clockwork, integrated history that people kind of want to get it right so they understand it's 1995. How do things work versus 2010. That kind of shit.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Totally agree. Totally agree.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Yep. Okay. So let. Yeah. There's very rich ground for us to explore. There is what I would say could.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Do a whole entire podcast. Not an episode. Whole entire.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: I don't. I don't know about that. But, hey, I think we.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: I think. I think there could be a dedicated. I mean, there has been. Right. There has been other.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Well, we should do a season on Delta Green.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: A whole season even.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we could. There's a lot. There's. There's so much. All right, let me keep going because we're. We're barely out of the gate here. I have just finished Slow Horses Season five. I'm a big Slow Horses fan. I would say temper your expectations for this season, people.
I love season four. Liked it a whole lot. Season five, I think, is the weakest by far.
And I was even thinking, oh, it looks like they've kind of run out of source material. You mentioned, I think last week, that these are based on books. This felt a little bit Game of Thrones to me, where I'm like, oh, they ran out of the source material and the writers are running wild and it's not true. It's based on a book called London Rules by the same author, and it's the same creative team doing Slow Horses. So I can't quite figure out why it feels so different. It's so much lighter weight in tone.
I don't know. It's not terrible. The characters are still really fun. It's the weakest one so far is what I would say.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: Even Breaking Bad had a bad season or two. Right?
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: It just always does. I don't know why.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a low point. Some of the characters act out of character. There's some. They take some goofy angles like, you know, oh, it's cute, it's funny, but they take it way too far and they keep returning to it. And, yeah, if you watch it, you'll know what I mean. There's some not great fight scenes anyway, so the other thing that I did in the last week is I finished Moonraker, the book. So the third Bond book by Ian Fleming. And if you'd permit, there's some things I want to talk about with this book because it's really pretty cool. In fact, it's my favorite book so far. I really liked it.
I think I mentioned before, it has some great day in the life of an MI6 agent, which talks about the office part of the job when you're not on the mission.
There's many, many chapters on this fancy club in London where they play bridge.
So the gambling takes. There's a huge. I mean, I'm talking like three or four chapters on one bridge game that they. He's trying to beat Hugo Drax.
I guess the thing to. To really understand is the book is absolutely nothing like the movie. It shares zero DNA, except for there's a rocket and Hugo Drax is a character. It a different Hugo Drax than the one in the movie. It's really great. Fleming has a real obsession with cars in this book. To the tune of. He gets into like, what the top speed of this is. And how many gears that has. And it's all these like 1930s Bentley's versus 1950s Mercedes. And Drax has a Mercedes and Bond can't keep up with him on the road. Like all this stuff. And it's funny though, Sean. It can see it directly translating to the stats that are in the James Bond 007 game.
Remember how we talked about how the author of that game sat and went through the movies and read the books and then was working on the game, like soaking in this stuff? You can see it in Moonraker. You can see the details that he was pulling from that sort of thing. I will tell you this, that James Bond is not a very good driver in these first three books. He has two big car chases and he wipes out in both of them and gets captured in both cases.
It's kind of interesting. I just watched the opening of the movie. I need to see the movie again. You know how after the gun barrel sequence, all the movies have the. The fancy.
They get into the, like, the girls are just silhouettes swimming around, all that kind of stuff. I think Moonraker has a nod to the book in the movie opener, which is kind of cool. I don't want to ruin it because if anybody wants to read Moonraker, it's actually a mystery. There's not very much action, there's no gunfights, there's. I don't think Bong gets into a single fist fight, which is unlike the other two books. It's very much a what is going. What is Hugo Drax doing with this rocket kind of thing? So it's. It's pretty cool. I quite like it. And then the last thing I would say is Drax is quite cool in this book. You know, if you, I guess, if you don't want any spoilers, then stop listening. He is a Nazi.
And not only is he a Nazi, because this, you know, when, when Fleming is writing this is not that long after the war. It's like 15 years after the war. He is a Brandenburger. You know what those guys were.
They're akin to like the British commandos after the fall of France, getting into France and, and like blowing up bridges and ammo dumps and supporting the resistance. But it's the flip side. The Brandenburgers were involved early on in like the conquest of Europe, but later, as the. After the Allies made landfall, these guys would like stay behind in places and up the Allied supply lines, try to assassinate commanders, all that kind of stuff. So it's basically the equival equivalent of the British, you know, and eventually US Special Forces. There's real, you know, coming in, doing a little bit of research on this, I came across one really neat angle. There was a U. S. Canadian Special Service Force that started in 1942. I had no idea. There was a joint special operations force that they used in Italy to capture. You're probably familiar with the Italian campaign, Sean. They, they bypassed a lot of stuff. There were these big citadels and castles that they decided to not go after or they were blocked by and they used these special service for. To capture some of those with clandestine operations and that kind of thing. So really kind of neat. Long story short, Drax has this whole history of being a German commando in Europe and was also part of operation.
I think it's called Grief. Do you know Operation Grief by any chance?
[00:16:55] Speaker A: No.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: That is the German operation during the Battle of the Ardennes, what we would call the Battle of the Bulge. The last German counteroffensive in 1944, where they captured a bunch of American equipment, uniforms, cigarettes, like ham sandwiches, like all gum. And they pretended to be gis going behind the lines and were trying to strike American targets behind. Behind the lines, really. So it's kind of cool that he. That Fleming ties all this stuff in so you can kind of picture where the rest of the book goes. But overall, last thing I would say is it's a bit anti climactic. In the end, Bond sort of foils things in a way that unfolds slowly. That actually happened in Live Will Not Die too, now that I think about it like the. The end comes with five chapters to go still kind of thing. And that slowly plays out how he foils things. This does something similar. And last thing, the Bond is often, you know, depicted as a womanizer and whatnot, especially in the movies, but also in the books. He's a. He's a player, right? He's a mover and a shaker. In all three books so far, he has fallen hard for the woman. And by the end of it he's like, there's no one else but you kind of thing. And then of course in the next book it switches, but Moonraker is even better because he never gets the girl. And in fact, at the end when M is like, you should go on holiday, Bond, and, you know, look after your injuries and, and rest up for your next mission and take the girl with you and choose anywhere in the world you want to go kind of thing, as Bond is telling her, hey, hey, baby, we're gonna. She's like, yeah, see that guy over there? That's my fiance. So, no.
And the book ends on this, like, deflated Bond. Like, oh, it's. It's quite amusing. I quite like it.
Oh, man. All right.
Lastly, for me in the last week is what I have my targets, my. My sights on.
I have had, recommended to me, have never seen and will watch next week, this coming week. Three Days of the Condor.
I've never seen it and I hear it's pretty great. So I'm going to watch that.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: Wow. I am a little surprised at that as well. Wild Wild west and Three Days of.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: The Condor, you know, I mean, picture it, man. I'm old, right? So in the 70s and 80s, you couldn't choose when you could watch these things even.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: And I.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: And you know, while I did get a VCR eventually, we were. I was not renting Three Days of the Condor when I was, you know, going to the video store. So my point is, I was catching a lot of the tail ends of movies. I would see the first half of the movie, then we had to go somewhere because you couldn't control when it was on, unlike today. So for that reason, I've seen bits and pieces of all these movies, but it's rare that I ever sat down and watched any of them, like start to finish Three Years of the Condors in that category where I don't think I've ever seen it start to finish.
Did you not have a similar experience for you? You watched a lot of bits and pieces of stuff? I certainly did.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: I mean, some of those movies, films I probably saw late or in life right past Bond and some of those details. But yeah, you know, it was probably my. I don't know if it was mid-20s that I was really getting into those or probably maybe a little bit later, but. So I understand. But not.
Dude, there's so many I haven't watched in so long. Like some of the Bond movies, I just have. Even the book, like I mentioned prior, like the books I've read. I know I've read at least four or five Fleming books and I couldn't tell you the difference between that and the movie to save my life because it's been so long.
I mean, teenage years. Like, I'm not reading the Good Earth Man, I'm reading James Bond and Ian Fleming.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough. And I was not doing that. I was reading fantasy back then. Yeah. You know what? I think it's worth it for. For people who are our age to return to those. I mentioned it when I said when I Talked about watching Dr. No, like, I'm like, look at the quality of the film and how good this looks because I was seeing it on a freaking 13 inch screen, fuzzy, with commercials edited.
So to sit down and have a cinematic experience with some of this material where it like looks really good, there are no interruptions. It's widescreen. It's kind of cool. It's kind of cool. So I'm looking forward to three days of the contour for that reason.
All right. I've taken too much time already on just what I'm up to, but it's been a busy week. Finishing Moonraker, finishing Slow Horses. Let's move on to sit rep.
All right.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Give me the sit rep, Sid rep. I have none this week that is worth putting out there. Which means zero.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: I'm shocked.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: You're the anchor. You're the guy with this stuff.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: I know. Usually I'm like googling stuff to find decent things to, to share resource wise. But you have one.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: I do, I do. And it comes. It comes from some conversations I've had. There's a good friend of mine who's really into these. In fact, the same guy recommended Three Days at the Condor. We were talking about older spy films. I'll say this, Sean. So far, at least me personally, I know for the podcast I have leaned harder into the James Bond cinematic spy stuff in terms of the materials I'm consuming, what I talk about, the fact that I like the 007 game so much, but I want to make sure I'm balancing that out and going in with the more grounded stuff that I think you prefer the Cold War side of things.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: Yes, I have an appreciation for both, but.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: So I do too. But I've been leaning maybe too hard one way. We're talking about code breaking and all kinds of things like that.
And he's telling me about this cool stuff that happens in Three Days of the Condor, which is why I want to watch it. And it's. It spurred a memory of mine. And then I did a little bit of Googling to find out if it was true or not. Because my father, who used to work for the Canadian Department of Defense, used to tell me that in the 60s where the. The DOD, not DND. The DOD. Department of Defense in Canada.
So Halifax is a huge military base, right? Big naval base. Etc. He told me that the Russians used to sit offshore and I didn't know whether to believe this or not and listen to the IBM Selectric typewriters. And that they would be able to log what the typists were typing by listening to them. And I didn't know if that was true. I remember I always thought, thinking like, wow, that's crazy. I got to the bottom of it and the link that you can put in the show notes is about how these Russians did have this whole plot around IBM Selectric typewriters, but it was really at embassies in this, in the Soviet Union is where they employed them. But I think what my dad was getting at, you know, he was talking to a kid at the time. I think when they discovered it in the mid-60s, the typewriters were introduced in 1961. They went all the world. You guys can picture it. It's that round ball typewriter that IBM had where the, you know, it makes a very distinctive sort of sound. The Russians actually put keyloggers into the machines, mechanical devices into the machines that transmitted every keystroke to somewhere nearby. So they were getting everything the diplomats were sending back and that was coming in and being retyped and all that kind of stuff. Right. I think what my dad was getting at was that when that plot was unveiled, the IBMs were, were flagged as a, you know, a source of molness, whatever you want to call it. So I, I suspect they either had to not use that brand of typewriter or they had to do inspections to make sure they weren't. So that's not. In other words, the Russians weren't sitting offshore listening, but they would have had a way to install the devices and be closer and have those things transmitted to make off with the materials. It's. It's kind of a cool story.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: It is. And it's modern day. They are wondering like why they're banned, why the government is banning certain equipment from coming into the US from China.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: You know what? I have not just because of this, I think, I think you may know, like in my history, my employment history, I'm near what is called operational technology, right. Process control, scada, industrial controls, those sorts of things. The Chinese have actually had things in industrial control since the 70s that they can turn on and off at will. It's terrible lately with TikTok, with, quite frankly, with drones. Like my current company has a big drone program and we've had to go through and get rid of every single Chinese drone. I hate to say it, but the Chinese have done it. And the same thing is true for all the networking stuff they put into Europe. I'm forgetting the company, even that did that. You recall who was that Chinese company that offered all.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: Huawei? Is it.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: No, I don't think it's Huawei. I think it's the. Maybe it is. In any case, they gave. They gave sweetheart deals all over Europe and all over Africa. And our intelligence services were like, no, no, you shouldn't be putting that stuff in.
And it's clear why you shouldn't. And the Russian thing is. Is kind of a. An older version of that. It's like a USB keylogger that you would see now in a spy. In a real. You know, these things are real. The Russians were doing it, you know, 50 years ago, 60 years ago.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: I mean, I did learn on an IBM ball typewriter.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: But it was the 80s and it was keyboarding, and that's how I learned to type. So I might have sent them all kinds of A, A, S, a, B, a semi, a semi, A, A, T.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: T, A, asdf, J, K, L, M.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Well, I guess that's how our teacher taught us. She would just yell out letters and numbers, and that's what you were doing. And then whenever you walked by that room, it sounded like it was loud as hell because you had like 20 students typing on these typewriters at the same time.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Mine was also keyboarding. It wasn't called typing, it was keyboarding at the time. And I. You know what? I remember the machines.
Those IBMs were freaking tanks. Do you remember them?
[00:26:33] Speaker A: Oh, they weighed like 25 pounds more than that.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: I think they were probably. They were probably made in the 60s and had just found their way into the schools.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: You know, I was much smaller then, too, so £25 would have probably broken me, but.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: True. That's very true.
Yeah. So that's all I had for sitrep. But I thought just kind of a cool, you know, real world espionage kind of leak of information in a way you don't. You wouldn't think about. Kind of neat.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Very cool. That is very cool. Yeah.
All right, let's get into encrypted comps.
Sir, we have an incoming encrypted transmission.
Do we have one this week?
[00:27:11] Speaker B: I've been talking a lot. So you're reading it?
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Oh, you read it. All right, I'll read it.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: I do.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: This one comes from Mike G. Thanks, Mike.
So he says, hey, guys, found your show and really enjoying it.
First is a media recommendation always like those podcast Wind of Change, in which a reporter chases an urban legend, apparently from inside the CIA itself, that the song Wind of Change by the German band the Scorpions is actually a CIA psyop campaign.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Yeah, this hits home because I've seen the Scorps twice.
Yeah. So anyways, he continues. His leads take him on many divergent threads. So it's not all spy stuff, but definitely a diverse set of characters. Eight episodes, about 45 minutes each with a couple of bonus episodes. So I'm gonna have to maybe check that out. I was, like, oblivious to that. I don't know if I ever heard of the rumor. Have you ever heard that rumor?
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Hell, no.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: I knew that it had to do with the Cold War, right?
[00:28:13] Speaker B: That.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: That whole.
That song is about the winds of change. And you listen to the lyrics, and it has to do with, like.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Oh, I didn't know. See, I'm not a Scorpions guy.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I can name.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: I can name one Scorpion.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: The zoo man.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Rocking like a hurricane, man.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: No, no, that. See, that's where you're wrong. Okay?
[00:28:33] Speaker B: I'm not wrong. It's the only one. I know.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: The album Blackout. Now here we go on Scorps. Now, welcome to the music podcast that we're covering on Scorpions.
So.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: So is that a late Scorpion song? An early Scorpion song, but, like, a hurricane thing, I think. So you're saying I need. I need to listen to their earlier catalog to get to the true Scorpions.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: In my humble opinion.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
Okay. I'll see about that. Yeah, they're German men and.
Yeah.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Hey, rock.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Germans and hard rock. I don't know, man.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Okay, hold on here to debate that. Anyways.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: Second, have you played Palladium's take on the genre? Ninjas and super spies?
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Pass.
Okay, no, I'll answer purposefully. No, I have not. I'm not a Palladium guy. We'll. We will review it. We will review it. We will. We should, I guess.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: I have not played it either, for the record, so.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: I mean, it's an 80s game. It's one of the early ones, man. It was like second wave.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: I've never played anything Palladium Rifts anything derivative from Palladium.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: We will have to get somebody who knows the material better than I do. Like, I had Palladium Fantasy in my travels of.
Can we please play anything that isn't AD&D, please?
And the dudes rejected Palladium Fantasy as well. I think we. I think we made characters. That's it. I. And I have some nostalgic, like, love for that book. When I go through it, there's some things that they did differently than AD it's so clearly based on AD D. But the reason Why I mentioned that. I think we should get somebody who knows this stuff better than I do. I think round about 1990, maybe early 90s when Bama supernatural comes out and then Rifts comes out, the Palladium system changes.
So prior to that it was very AD&D based and I think ninjas and super spies. Heroes unlimited I think it was called. All those Palladium books from the 80s are more like the original Palladium fantasy games. But it changes significantly when they get into the 90s and they add a lot more to it. And I know that game system way less than the early stuff is what I would say. Yeah, Mike, we will look at ninjas and super spies for sure. Keep going.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Sean. My buddy Jimmy is a big palladium guy. He's got tons of the books.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: Like yeah, the art's incredible. Like incredible art continues.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: Definitely more combat than spycraft. Checks the hand to hand box with stats for 41 different martial arts.
Wow.
It leans to the fancy fool with pages of cybernetic. Cybernetic enhancements. The most interesting thing to me these days is there is a point by system for building spy agencies with sweet. Yeah. With point suggestions for various size agencies to spend over 14 categories with the interesting suggestion of giving the player a point budget and letting them build the agency. I would definitely borrow concepts from this for whatever system I was running these days. Looking forward to new episodes.
Agent Mike G.
Mike G.
It's his code name.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: I love it. Do we need to review this game? Hearing that and let's tie it back. Sean.
Not that long ago, fellow by the name of. I think it's Hamza when he wrote was asking us about sandbox play. He didn't ask directly but kind of about running your own agency kind of thing. So maybe we can have some better answers after we get into some of the other other games. We've covered three games so far. People like not very many. Right. And we do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of what's already out there. We have to read these games to gain that.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Great, great, great letter.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Thanks Mike. Appreciate it.
If you are interested in dropping us throwing us a grenade, by all means, please do so. The easiest way is to, you know, email us@grange gobagpod.com or phone one in at 929bigdice.
There you go.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: Have a seat.
Let's get on with the mission brief.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: So we've talked about games. We've done a vignette that Sean is currently editing.
Something a little different today.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: Yeah, we've done a Q and A as well, but when we first brainstormed what the episodes would look like, we also talked about like the subject matter or the approach or like pick one part of these games and unpack it a little bit.
So whether it be combat or chases or in today's example, Sean.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Teasers and pre credit scenes.
Yes, that is what we're covering.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: So we're gonna. We're focusing in on a specific part one section of the genre, typically the Bond Mission Impossible type stuff often has these.
What I've seen described, Shauna, also as a cold opener.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: You're right in the middle of the action. It's usually in media res when it starts. They have not explained who people are. They have not explained what the objective is. And what Sean and I are going to talk about is how that relates to gaming. Like, why would you want these types of things in your espionage and covert action game? I think you have a nice outline or some meaty stuff for us to dive into and I will, I will add to it as we go.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Fantastic. So yes, why and what we're referring to many times in the media that you would find this is at the beginning of a James Bond movie.
And sometimes it ties into the rest, sometimes it does not. Like, could be, just could be. You know, how many movies have you seen where it's like, oh, man, I just wish it would kind of get to the action, man. Somebody over there in the production of Broccoli. Broccoli, yeah.
[00:34:38] Speaker B: They understood that.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: And sometimes even in other role playing games, people may say, hey, this is what you should do. But it's often I find Harring, and I don't know about you, sometimes it's a con game. Get them into the action quick.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: Oh, my heavens, dude. Yes.
The whole, the whole con game could be the cold open, could be the teaser.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: You're in the middle of a dungeon you just went into, now you got to battle your way out. Boom. Go.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: I kind of won't run a con game that isn't. At least in media. Media stress to start, like, give them a kick, give them momentum. Get it going now.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: I am planning on running James Bond for BS or Con 5 in January for folks that don't know about that. I, I kind of administer one and Harrigan partakes in that. And we get lots of different games and I'm thinking of running James Bond, but my fear is the cold open might take longer and you know, like, sidetrack the like main mission. But I don't know. We'll see.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: Like I said, it could. The mission, the session could be the cold open or. Well, and we'll talk about this as we chat here this morning. Excuse me.
You could keep it very short so.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: We get a few things. I think the first one where we start is what we've all know it to be, which is the cold open, which is the open piece of that, which is starting in the middle of the action. So dropping players right into the intense situation in media res. A chase, a botched extraction, a gun already pointed at them are just some of examples. Can you come up with one or two yourself, Harrigan?
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, tons in fact. So the little bit of work that I've done on this, like it should either be a combat or a chase. They're trying to escape a facility. They're on a plane that's about to crash.
Like they're on a train and the bridge is out. Like there's. And this is what I was getting at with the. Even with the con game, Sean, if you want to keep it super short, it could be literally one scene, one shootout or one chase, or you have a moment where you're trying to get up and jump off the train at the right moment before it all crashes kind of thing. It can be that simple. It can be more elaborate, there's more you can. Can get into. But what they're really trying to do is get the blood pumping, set the tone. And when we talk about the fiction side of it, I thought it was interesting that both the. Of the three games review reviewed so far, both James Bond 007 and Agent Provocateur talk about these scenes. They both reference them. Neither has what I would consider is a particularly good treatment of them. They're both like a paragraph or two that says this is something you should think about kind of thing. Bon is neat because if you look at the, at the structure of Bond movies, it goes in everyone except, I think, except one. I think there's one of the. The more recent ones that puts the. Puts the teaser at the back somehow. No, no, no. It puts the gun barrel sequence at the back of the movie. So the Bond movies almost always go cold open gun barrel sequence. So the dumb where he's walking and he shoots, shoots at the guy, whoever's holding the gun. Then they do the title sequence, which is whoever's singing the song. And as you talked about the girls swimming around the screen. Then they do all the action, you know, the movie, the movie happens kind of thing. So it's a pretty like a standard recipe for sure.
[00:37:58] Speaker A: Indeed.
So there's no setup, there's no briefing. Assume the players already know why they're there and then reveal the context as. As they act, not before.
Have you. Have you used this in a game? Could you. Do you have an example of this Harrigan putting Harrigan on the spot? I know he didn't prep exactly for.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: This question, but yeah, yeah, I didn't. I know that I have. In fact most con games I do something similar.
The best example I have is not going to be an espionage game. I'm trying to think what we did with the White Lives game that I ran for you. I don't think there was a cold open.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: Oh man, was that a while ago?
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a while ago. But when I ran a black hat game at BS or con either last year or two years ago, I forget when it was the. Let me put it this way. The mission, the objective of the adventure is to take your petrified adventurer friend. So you've had a co adventurer turn to stone and you're trying to find a wizard tower where the wizard was known to be a master of petrification and controlled like stone armies and turned his foes to stone. So the idea being travel to this remote tower. Of course it's dilapidated and falling down, the witch, the wizard's long dead type of thing. But the cold open that I used and we'll. We'll talk about why this matters to. Like you mentioned, it can relate to the plot, but it doesn't have to mine very much related. The cold open I used was you're in the bottom of this like inverted ziggurat snake person temple adventuring. And your adventuring companion, this, this person who gets turned, you know, who's a statue, eventually races ahead to try and defeat the Big Bad. And when the party fights their way through all the serpent men and you find your way in the. In the chamber with the Big Bad, you discover that your friend has been petrified in that moment. So you arrive a minute too late. And then we cut from there like you know, from the realization that oh no, they've been turned to stone to it's now a month later the statues in the wagon that you're hauling up north looking for this tower. So that's the best example I can give you off the top of my head.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: Pretty good.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: Have you done something similar?
I bet you have.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: I know I have, but I just can't recall in the moment I even.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Did it a little bit in The Bond vignette with Egypt. Egypt is kind of did.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, that's right.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. People haven't heard that yet, but they will, they will.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: And you guys will be amazed.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: There are games when you're not going to want to do this because there's games and in fact Delta Green is kind of one of them. At Delta Green you're supposed to be like in the, in the break room eating a sandwich when the, when the envelope comes, right. Or you're going to your kids soccer game when you get the tap and you're like, oh, I gotta, I gotta work with the family to figure out how I can get away and go on the opera. Right.
So it's not for. This is, this is for the cinematic spy stuff that we're talking about. Agreed. Yeah.
[00:40:54] Speaker A: So the other thing, next step, keep it self contained.
Pre credit scene should be mini mission with clear objective, a few obstacles. Some would even say maybe not a few, maybe one a clean ending. Whether that is the escape, the capture or the mission is accomplished. Think 10 to 20 minutes of table time, which is super short.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Yes. One scene, crunch it.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: It shouldn't derail the main story. It foreshadows it if you even want it to foreshadow the main story.
[00:41:29] Speaker B: So what I've got in some similar notes around this is keep it simple, have a chase. You either are trying to catch someone or you're trying to get away from someone. And that ends it when you do, Right. If it's combat, you are trying to defeat someone, period. I really like the one. There was advice, I think it was maybe in the Bond book that was basically starting with them trying to escape like a burning facility or something or a sinking ship is great because it's, you know, it's a single scene, it's compact, it's not going to take you very long, et cetera. So it's kind of good stuff. My own notes on this were without the, you know, not with the Bond or Agent provocateur write ups. You're trying to set the tone as well, like for the. Like, is this going to be a high action game? How realistic is the action? Get the players blood pumping, make some rolls, teach them the mechanics.
So maybe you're going to get to this, Sean, but this is the first chance you have to introduce mechanics to the table. If they're new to the game, that's.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: The next one I was going to tackle is showing. Using it to show off the system.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, so take it from there. I would also say do you talk later about making the characters look good.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: Giving each player a moment?
[00:42:35] Speaker B: There you go. You just keep going. Then you're going to get to all my notes, I'm sure.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: So the next one, using it to show off the system, the action mechanics. If you're in the middle of a chase, this is how chase works. You know, James Bond, we're going to bid on things.
The risk factor, right?
[00:42:52] Speaker B: Yep. Ease factor.
[00:42:53] Speaker A: Ease factor. That's the type, that's the term, the ease factor.
[00:42:57] Speaker B: But you're right, they get to know that you can picture it. You're holding up the character sheet and they're getting to know the sheet. You're like, here's where your attributes are, here's your skills. This is, see this table, these, these factors and that kind of thing, right?
[00:43:08] Speaker A: If you use signature gadgets that can come into play and then the game's tone, to Harrigan's point, whether it's gritty, pulpy, stylish, can come into a, come into play right away. So if you're using cats, right, Concept, aim, tone, subject matter, you know, if you're talking tone, high action and you're talking to me in media res intro.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: You establish it right away.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: Boom, bam, bam.
[00:43:33] Speaker B: There won't be a. You start off in a bar moment in the espionage game, but there might be, I don't know, just sort of a low rent, kind of like you're going to the office, you're going to get a briefing, you're riding the subway and you go like, that's not what the game, it's not how you want to run these types of games.
Cold war games, a different story, but for these cinematic games, they're bombastic.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: I would say this though.
You wouldn't start off with the mission brief, but I would wouldn't hesitate to put in a flashback very briefly in the middle of this.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: I personally think it's too short. I know what you're getting at and if you went with a longer opener, you could do that.
[00:44:12] Speaker A: True, true, true, true.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: You could certainly do that.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Moving on to number four in my list of criteria that goes into this, things that you want to keep in mind. Give each player a moment, the spotlight, do one iconic stunt, use a signature skill, deliver a line, make a clutch roll, and that's across the members and the group that's in this. And so even just talking about this as a game, from a game master perspective, as a player, don't be afraid to really lean into those things that are maybe on your sheet that highlight Something, a personality component that puts you in the moment that you can kind of express.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: Or if you have a question about how something works with mechanics as well, it's a perfect time to explore that kind of thing. So everything that you just. You did a much better job of it, Sean. Everything you just covered, I summed up in the. In make the characters look good so it gets back to the competency. And they like, these are not dumbasses. These are really competent action heroes. You know, in the. In this type of spy fiction.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: I have it down as a highlight reel.
Yeah, the next one Consequences travel into the main campaign. Now, this could be kind of more optional, but not, you know, I also have it where it says not all consequences, just the narrative ones. So some of the examples that I'm referring to and would include an NPC they helped will may reappear later.
Or a villain escapes and becomes important. Like, it doesn't have to be, oh, it's this one scene edit all the rest.
Like, I want them to capture the villain no matter what. You can leave it completely open and whatever happens happens. Just like a regular role playing game session.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: My notes on this, all I said was villain or plot framing. So in other words, it flows into the main game. But picture it. You could even do the coal open or the teaser takes place five years before the mission and you show the agents capturing the villain. But now five years later, the villain through by hook or by crook, they're free.
It doesn't even have to be five years. It could be the kind of thing where like, they got enough connections that it doesn't stick. You're like, I thought I put them away, but. But you didn't.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: Two months across the screen, two months later.
[00:46:36] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: They retrieve a mysterious intel file they don't understand yet.
So you could plant it now they find it, they turn it over or whatever, it ends the scene and then the main mission or the main scenario takes place.
And then maybe two more sessions down the road. Four more sessions down the road. Because you do the scenario, maybe it's broken up and now you've got that intel file that has been decrypted that was acquired four sessions earlier in an intro.
Spitting diamonds over here, man.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: Yes, you are. This is kind of awesome actually. Sean, like, workflow wise. Sean and I will often take a game that we're going to cover and we'll either look at different chapters or one person will have the lead on a topic kind of thing. In this case, we're like, what are we Talking about next week, we're like, what about these, these coal opens, these teasers kind of thing. And then we independently came up with what we thought was important. And for everything you just talked about there, Sean, the file you find, I just have world building.
Like in the opener you can set the tone for like who are the agencies, what is the geopolitical climate? Like what year is it? Like all of that stuff can be set in the teaser. All that stuff. Some of it, like you're right, might come up later as well in, you know, session four. Remember that dossier well.
[00:47:57] Speaker A: And then the last bullet, I have my, my shorter list, short list is they're botched op leads to diplomatic heat.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: Oh right, yeah. In other words, there could be significant consequences that come from just this short little thing.
And you can even do it dynamically because I think all of us probably folks who are listening as well, probably have some desire to not only play these games in this linear way where this happens, this happens, this happens, this happens and the players are along for the ride. So in other words, you could do a pretty wide open teaser, coal open. And what happens if it drives the rest of the. What, what the next scene is? You can even do that. The GM is going to have to be fast on their feet to do that. Maybe have a few things prepared that they can kind of go to. But I like that idea a lot where if, let's say the cold open doesn't go the way you expect it does, I would say that most things that you read and most of the coal opens and teasers that you will witness, I don't know, they're pretty directed towards setting things up. In other words, a right hand turn that you might get from the players failing where you don't expect them to. You may have to dance a little bit, but that could be a very cool way of starting the game.
Kind of game where the GMs as surprised as the players are.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: Yes.
And then lastly, just keep the mechanics clean.
There's no need to load the PCs with wounds or resource loss before the real campaign starts. Like it's all. Once it's done, it's disposable, but it can lead into the bigger campaign. But it's not necessarily having to have to carry over like, oh, you just. Well now you're on one hit point, you're in the hospital and then the real campaign starts and you're still in the hospital. Like that's not the way to do it.
[00:49:39] Speaker B: One of the only things I don't think I heard you say, necessarily, Bond calls it out. I think it's a great way of doing it. This gives you a way. So the same way that Sean is suggesting the consequences don't carry over. So in other words, like, I would. I would certainly use the wound mechanics, consequence mechanics in the cold opener for sure, but I think Sean's suggesting they don't, you know, enough time passes that when you're in the main game, you're not. You're not saddled with all those, like, things that happen. Conversely, metacurrency. This is a way to build up metacurrency going into the game. And we even had that situation in the 007 game where it's a little. It's a little at odds with itself as to how much metacurrency you start with, where it's like beginning agents have zero, and then it's like rookie agents have three. So it's like, I guess you mean rookie agents that are starting out have zero, but rookie agents that are not starting out have three. The cold opener gives you an opportunity to generate metacurrency, either by awarding them for being successful or if you. In a 2d20 game, hats off, Gabe, you can generate this momentum, you can carry forward, because I think you just typically lose one between scenes type of thing, that sort of thing. So I think it's a cool way to kind of build up some, you know, mechanical metacurrency as well.
Do you know what. And I don't know if this is true or not, but one of the sources, the origin of these that I read about. Did you come across any of that in your research?
[00:51:05] Speaker A: I did not.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: Why these. Why these things started happening or why they put them in Bond movies and all the rest. It actually, if my research is correct, comes from the 1960s TV shows so that the networks would prevent people from changing the channel. They did not want people saying, what's this at the top of the hour, bottom of the hour? And like, no, this looks. This is pretty slow moving.
I'm not sure, you know, not sure I want to stick around for this show, as opposed to they're on horseback or chasing the train. Who's that guy on the train shooting at them? You know, all that kind of stuff. So there's even. I found reference to Gene Roddenberry writing a memoir about this type of opener that he used in the start in the original series, Star Trek stuff, which, if you think about it, always has a cold opener. Like, every episode has the bum, bum, bum, bum moment at the End of it, where you're like, you know, some of them are more so than others. Like sometimes they're on the bridge. It's a little less of a. Like not quite so in media. In media's res where, you know, they encounter something and they have to figure out what to do with it for the rest of the episode. But sometimes there's some of those episodes where they're like already on the planet. There's a play going on, someone gets murdered and then Scotty gets accused. All in the first one minute of the show. And they're trying to hook people so they're not changing the channel. Which I think is pretty fascinating.
[00:52:23] Speaker A: And Kirk typically narrates what is going on.
Boom. Done. Like, yes, we're on the planet this to investigate this.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: Oh, Rod Roddenberry's note talks about that as well. Interesting. Like how you can narrate and kind of get there. Yeah. Really cool. Like I didn't dig into it deeply and I don't know if that's truly the source of these things, but it certainly sounds like it's plausible.
[00:52:45] Speaker A: Very, very cool. Yeah.
[00:52:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I have a few other little things on this, but I don't want to. I don't want to take away from whatever your structure is here. What else do you have to cover?
[00:52:53] Speaker A: I have make it visual and kinetic as my next one. Six out of ten.
[00:52:58] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:52:58] Speaker A: Yes. So kinetic and visual. Fast, varied, stylish. Boom, bang, boom. Use changing locations mid scene.
Which. Interesting. I don't know if I would do it that. Right. That way if it's a 10 to 20 minute scene. But regardless, take it for what it's worth. Vehicles. Harrigan mentioned, you know, the chase, whether it's on foot.
[00:53:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:22] Speaker A: A tut tut, a hut hut, tuk.
[00:53:24] Speaker B: Tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk tuk.
But you know. But yeah. Jets do. Jet skis, horseback train, mopeds, bicycles, horses, helicopters. Yeah.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: Yes. Hot air balloon, whatever.
I don't know.
Throw it in there.
Improvised weapons, which is fantastic. Throwing the dishes at somebody. A bottle trade a block, a bullet. Just get nuts. If it's a high action, environmental hazards. Snow, ice, rain, make it slippery. They're on top of a train. They can't move very quickly because it's wet and slick. Throw in some sand. Things getting bogged down, Dry heat, all that good stuff.
Over the top stunt should go without saying. So this is not the time for a game master that says, no, you can't do that.
[00:54:18] Speaker B: I partially agree.
[00:54:19] Speaker A: I'm talking about Rule A. Cool man.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Yes, so. So even though we're talking about cinematic games, some of these cinematic games are not like completely outlandish.
[00:54:29] Speaker A: Well, I mean, can I jump up to the fourth story?
[00:54:32] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly.
I would just temper what you're saying with the like, what's the game on the table? Is all I'm saying. If it's ninjas and super spies, as was recommended earlier, which is a little, I think, a little higher rate, if it's feng shui, if it's the kind of game where you know the action, then yes, absolutely. But there are cold openers to the early Bond films which are not like this.
[00:54:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:54:57] Speaker B: They are very down and dirty. They are Red Grant garroting a Bond look alike and murdering him while he has an audience of Smurf agents all clapping politely as he. As he murdered them quickly, you know, And I mean, I know what you're saying. Like, I, like, I'm totally into the bombastic action and like, let's go. But that's what I meant before by like, set the tone. Because if a tone is that like, anything goes, boys, like, let's remember the Star wars game that you ran where you were frustrated that we were having a chase. We were kind of all packed onto the one speeder and as soon as someone like jumped from one speeder to the other, you were like, finally, yes, Action.
Set the tone.
[00:55:39] Speaker A: Everybody's every. Oh, my God. That drove me nuts. Like, everybody was on a speeder and they had stormtroopers chasing them, coming up alongside them and they're like.
[00:55:49] Speaker B: I think there was some. Pew, pew. But that's about it. Yeah.
I don't know what to do.
[00:55:54] Speaker A: I'm like, jump on. I'm gonna jump on the speeder.
[00:55:58] Speaker B: That's what I'm talking about.
[00:56:03] Speaker A: The other one was, the last one I had was like quick cuts between PCs and quick cuts. Like even with some. Like, even Mission Impossible, I don't remember. Like, there is a moment where maybe Ethan is trying to do something and it's tense and then he's talking to his.
Into his comms and then it goes back to a van. What's his name in the van that's trying to walk him through as he surveys the building and makes sure that nobody's coming his way. So doing those cuts between the players to make sure that they're still in the action.
[00:56:38] Speaker B: Mission Impossible does it really well. The newer later movies where they're. It's a spotlight thing you mentioned earlier. Like, let's. Even if you have one super agent in Ethan Hunt and a support team. Support team gets nearly as much screen time. Just as much screen time. And they're all performing some task that allows the agent to do the thing. So they play a critical role. And yeah, that definitely applies in the opener or the, the cold open just as much as it does other action scenes. Make sure that you're not just focused on one character.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:09] Speaker B: Did you say that was the, the end of your list or is that. Yeah, I did.
[00:57:12] Speaker A: Did you have anything to add, sir?
[00:57:15] Speaker B: The things that I want to talk about a little bit more are like, like we talked about it a little already. Where the, the teaser or the coal open might relate to the current mission, but it also might not. Like there are situations where I'll struggle to think of an example here, but I know I've seen some Diamonds Are Forever I think might have this. He kills Blofeld in the first like minute of this, of the movie. And they're just trying to tie up loose ends for whatever reason. I think, I think I have the movie right where he's not. He's got him on a helicopter, he's on the wheelchair and he dumps him into a smokestack. Remember that? Like. Yeah, yeah. Yes.
[00:57:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:52] Speaker B: So they're. Yes, I think that's it. I may have the movie wrong. Point being, there are times when you want to. You are literally just establishing the badassery of the main characters. You know where I'm remembering now? You know where this comes from.
The specific thing I'm thinking of is the game Operators. So Operators also has a cold open. And that cold open is basically show everybody who they are, what they're doing and how, how kick ass these characters are. Because these are, these are, you know, rappel down from a helicopter into an office building While shooting your MP5 at the guy on the roof, kind of. It's that type of game, right? Super frenetic, maybe nice black agent style of high agentry.
And it could be that you are finishing a prior mission or just defeating somebody and the next scene is the briefing and now you start the actual plot. So they could be completely disconnected. Like I like the idea what you were talking about, Shaun, where things like the seeds can be planted for things going forward. You introduce the villain, there are plot hooks that you're aplenty, but you're not forced to down that path. The teaser could be a smaller operation. If you're running a campaign, maybe you run the teaser. It seems to be self contained. Then you run the main objective and then later, two or three ops down the line, you return to what happened in that teaser. So the whole idea of like world building and making it start to seem alive and cohesive. Remember that character who got away? Or remember that person you put behind bars or that you thought you killed but didn't die?
Because we use meta currency, villain metacurrency and they didn't die. Right.
I just like the idea that it could be something you introduced that that shows up later. And then the last idea I had around kind of an unusual way to do a cold open. You can play schlubs, you can play goofballs in the opener who all get killed. And we've seen this in movies. We've seen this in like Octopussy where the agent at the beginning, I think they had the Faberge egg and they're running from the knife throwers and all that sort of stuff and they end up getting murdered. But I think the. I forget if the egg is recovered or if it's lost. But point being, you can actually have the players play different characters in the teaser. They might all get wiped out. They might be low level security guards. So you get to showcase what the villain is doing and you're seeing it from a different angle. So in other words, the agents aren't on the scene yet. There's a bunch of things, a bunch of movies and games that do this. The other one I've already mentioned is for Martian With Love, where it opens in a Smersh training facility and you think you're watching Bond get murdered by Red Grant and it's in fact somebody who's got the mask on. You don't have to just narrate that, gm. The players can play that, hand them little sheets. And that's why I. Oh man, I know I've either seen this or done this, Sean. And I'm just drawing a blank where I've given people like little cards with micro characters just for the first scene. And it even lets you learn some of the basics of the game because you don't have a lot of other stuff on the sheet. It's like a trimmed down version. And then as soon as that hat 30 minute scene is long, you collect those up because either those low level guards get back to work or they're all dead or whatever it might be. Then you hand out the real sheets or you flip them over or whatever. And here's, here's where we're going to, you know, take this from here. But I do think that this, this idea of the cold open can connect in a lot of ways that are really cool and you don't have to repeat it. So if you're. Part of my point here is you don't have to get into a rut where it's like every time we do an adventure it's going to be a teaser or a cold open that does the same thing time after time. There's all kinds of different variety you can inject into it. I love the idea of the these. Love it.
[01:01:36] Speaker A: The one I have now is number seven. The using the teaser to establish a theme which I think is a little redundant with ones we've already mentioned before. So if your campaign is about infowar, the opener would be a data heist that's gone wrong or. And it's. So it's more establishing the type of mission that might be coming up or that plays center stage long term in your campaign. So burn notices or double agents.
The opener involves betrayal action, heavy spy craft. Opener involves a rooftop chase, something similar, political intrigue type of campaign. You would have the opener be a diplomatic sting gone sideways. Perhaps just some examples. It's basically letting the cold opener telegraph what kind of game this will be. So not only just tone, but actually some of the. The centric theme of what the campaign may involve is just another idea that you could throw in there.
Going to your point, I think the cliffhanger or punchline says end on a cliffhanger or punchline I have which kind of talks to you a little bit about like the villain gets away, the agents escape by inches. Some of we. Which we kind of rehashed already or hashed. A mysterious device explodes, a double agent is revealed.
A baffling piece of intel changes everything. It's smash cut to a title sequence, so it feels like a Netflix episode. Cliffhanger, you know, you did it right kind of thing.
[01:03:09] Speaker B: Let me just chime in on that because I think there's. I don't know if we had talked about this in detail.
One of the things that could be pretty cool.
Like you said, it's not just tone. It could be the subject matter of the game. And maybe the subject matter is your burden burned. You're on the outside of your agency. You know, you no longer have their support.
And the opening scene could be agents just trying to take you out. And you don't know why.
You're like, what? Who are these guys at the end of the coal open? You realize, holy, they're CIA or insured agency here. And then when you flow into it now what is the game about? The game is about like you're not going to get a briefing. You're going to be pulling your team together, trying to understand what's going on, what happened. They. And there's many different versions of that. So I just, it gets back to like, this is not as limited as you think. This does not have to be just a, a chase as meaningless. It can actually set the whole thing up and get it rolling in the right way.
[01:04:05] Speaker A: Well, and to capitalize on that. So typically you would as a game master show up to the table and go, okay, let me tell you what this game's about. And then you would just say, you would convey that, yeah, you know, I'm the gm, I'm telling you what you guys are as far as agents.
Instead of, okay, we're gonna do a cold opener.
This is what happens.
[01:04:24] Speaker B: You can bake in some of your cats into the, into the cold opener.
[01:04:27] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:04:28] Speaker B: Right.
[01:04:28] Speaker A: And what Arrogant mentioned is cats is not your animal cats, but the concept, aim, tone and subject matter.
[01:04:33] Speaker B: Right, right. Where you normally would go through that out of character and say, hey everybody, you could establish a lot of that in that first scene.
Number eight, I just had a thought, you know what you could do.
[01:04:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:04:46] Speaker B: And I'm, for whatever reason, I'm thinking a lot of like con games here. Because con games have that whole thing where you have to get the table like quickly on the same page. Come on everybody, let's all get marching to the same in the same direction. Right.
Because you know, and I rant about this in my, in Harrigan's hearth all the time. Or how about how I want the GM to have a better presence at the table at the start of a game and I want them to introduce people and find out why they're playing and whether they played before, what they want out of the game, et cetera. I also like flip side of that, sit down, hand out these little one off characters, run the first scene right away when you finish it, then get into like, you've already covered a bunch of the cat stuff, right. You've established the tone, the subject matter, what the game's about, some of the rules. Then you could actually take a 10 minute, like get back into out of character and say, you know, so, so here's where we are, we've just finished this. Here's what we're going to try to accomplish in the next little while. You can kind of break it up that way.
More like literally a teaser before you even like discuss the game. Run the little session don't have people introduce themselves and then in the middle, 20 minutes later, you can do a little bit of what I like to see people do, which is the whole, like, let's talk a little bit in a meta sense about why we're here, what we're doing today, that kind of thing. I can see that working.
[01:06:04] Speaker A: Number eight on my list. Let failure be flashy, but not punishing. Failure in the cold open should push the scene into a new direction. Force improvisation, create story hooks.
So it should never kill the campaign at minute one. Use the failure to make things cooler, not worse.
[01:06:29] Speaker B: For this type of game, I think that unless you're playing cold war and really, really gritty, I think this is true for all of the scenes. But yes, including the teaser. Don't have failures suck.
[01:06:41] Speaker A: Right?
Yes, I would agree. Yeah.
I mentioned ending on a cliffhanger or punchline.
The last one I have 10, which is tie it to the main mission in a light way.
It's not a plot dump, it's just a breadcrumb.
[01:07:00] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[01:07:01] Speaker A: These are some of the things that you could tie into the main mission right after this. Or even a mission down the road would be like an insignia on a crate.
Simple, simple detail like that. A face matching cctv. Still photograph of that in a later briefing. A code phrase repeated by a villain.
A dead drop location reappearing.
This is the. The Specter ring moment.
[01:07:32] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a business card that you find. It's an invoice that you find. It's recognizing a certain signature weapon that someone has, even to the point where you don't understand it. In the teaser, like, you drop the clue and the player's like, I don't know what this means. Right. Well, in the briefing.
Well, 007, we've done the analysis and what we've discovered is, you know, and you go on and on and it just wires it all together.
I dig it.
[01:08:00] Speaker A: Yes.
That's all I have on my list of things.
[01:08:07] Speaker B: We're through my list as well. I don't have a whole lot more. What I think the takeaway should be is they don't have to be the same. There's a whole bunch of different avenues to explore with this opening scene.
[01:08:18] Speaker A: I think I'm going to try to put a worksheet together for this.
[01:08:21] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, you should.
[01:08:23] Speaker A: I think I'm going to try to put a worksheet together where people can go to the website, download it, to just come up with some things. Like some fill in this, fill in the blanks, you keep it in your campaign and then you just can reference that somewhere down the mission if you've got it tied to a particular mission. But it doesn't have to be too elaborate, it's just something to help you organize your thoughts.
[01:08:42] Speaker B: Well, so far I haven't seen anything like that. I think our discussion today is way more far ranging and far reaching and in more in depth than what I've seen in the Bond game in Asian Provocateur. I need to look at Operators again, but I think Operators is similar. I think it gives you like a page or a few paragraphs on why you might want to use these openers and they touch on some of the things that we talked about, but not all of them. So if you want to, you want to do that, I'll help you. That'd be cool.
[01:09:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that would be. That would be cool. And then once we put it out there, we'll let everybody know that you can go and grab it and you could use it for any covert action, role playing games.
[01:09:17] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
I do think today we leaned pretty hard into the. I mean, for a reason. Most of these cold openers that we're talking about are in Mission Impossible and Bond. In my head, those are the ones I'm thinking of. I wasn't thinking about Star Trek at the time and some other ones like that. But so in other words, we're leaning towards the high action side of the genre. So maybe we want to give a little bit more thought when we do the sheet about what does the cold open look like in East Berlin in 1963? What does it look like in Munich in 1970 when you know the Russians are trying to do something because it does not have to be this, this high energy, frenetic stuff. It can also be really gritty. And again, you're establishing the tone that way. And this is where maybe if you're playing those schlub, maybe you're playing a career who gets shot with a silenced pistol in the head and what you had handcuffed to your wrist, they take your hand off to take the, to get the documents right. That kind of thing. Again, setting a different tone for the, for the game ahead.
[01:10:18] Speaker A: Quite a bit of foreshadowing and I think it's some of those lower action.
Yeah. Games for sure.
[01:10:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:25] Speaker A: Well, excellent. I think that wraps up that mission brief for this episode of Go Bag. If you are using cold openings, if you've experienced that as a player or you had something in mind that you've run an espionage cold open, an action rpg and you've used one and has have incorporated some of these elements. Please write into us. We were interested to hear how it kicked off and you know, how it might have trickled into something else or maybe it went sideways. We'd be interested in hearing that too.
[01:10:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. The the not horror story. The maybe it is horror story. Like tell us tell us those where it didn't work out so well and why not and like if you mistrust this methodology, why do you mistrust it?
[01:11:07] Speaker A: So thanks for tuning in. Much appreciated on behalf of my counterpart Harrigan. This has been an episode of Go Bang. I'm Sean. We'll catch you on the next one.
See ya.
Want more of Sean and Harrigan? You can find Sean at YouTube.com PG Sean where he streams every Saturday at 8am Central Time.
You can find more 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, Merkle Froehlich, Tony Sugarloaf, Baker Hus Caro, Laramie Wall, Eileen Barnes, Heptele Lima, Aaron Railia, Wayne Peacock, Gold School DM Jeff Walken, Yorkus Rex, Eric Salzweedle, Phil McClory, Jason Hobbs, Michael O', Holland, Remy Billido, Crystal Egstad, Eric, Avia Voronak, Brian Kurtz, Chad Glamen, Jim Ingram, Orchest Dorcas, Chris Shore, Brian Rumble, Victor Wyatt, Kevin Keneally, Andy Hall, Jason Weitzel, Salt Hart, Kelly K Ness, Tad Lechman, Nicholas Abruzzo, Matthew Matthew Catron, Curtis Takahashi, Angela Murray, Mr. White 20 Jason Connerly, Shannon Olson, Ryan West, Kristen McLean, Larry Hollis, Glenn Seal, Jake at FadedQuil Gaming Tess Trekkie, Tim Jensen, Kelly Ness, Nubis Christopher Lang, Crowlog, Peter Skaines and 1D4 Khan James thank you, agents. We appreciate.
