Tiny Spies by Gallant Knight Games

[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode of Go Bag, we hit up encrypted comms from agents Dan and Digital Hobbit. Harrigan and I go over our covert actions. There's a tradecraft manual crowdfunding campaign. And we get into the smallest of spies, tiny spies. The rpg. Hit it. [00:00:21] 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 decision. And here are your mission leaders, Sean and Harrigan. [00:00:39] Speaker A: Hola, Harrigan. How are you? [00:00:42] Speaker B: I'm discombobulated. How are you? [00:00:46] Speaker A: It's to be expected. We are recording this off our normal schedule, so I get it. [00:00:53] Speaker B: This is Go Bag by Night. [00:00:55] Speaker A: Go Bag by night. [00:00:57] Speaker B: We usually do it on Sunday mornings and I'm all bright eyed and bushy tailed today. I've worked and driven a couple hundred miles, it feels like, and been in traffic and had to get dinner for the family and. And here we are. Yeah. So yeah, I'm a little bit discombobulated, but I'll. I'll survive. We'll persevere. [00:01:16] Speaker A: Good, good. Me too. [00:01:18] Speaker B: What have you been up to with regards to the subject matter we're supposed to be talking about? [00:01:24] Speaker A: Dude, Bond has moved from Amazon to Pluto. And I have Pluto. And they're free on Pluto with a commercial ad every 30 days. [00:01:35] Speaker B: How the hell do you get Pluto? [00:01:37] Speaker A: It's on Roku, man. It's a Roku channel. Oh, you can watch it online. It's free tv. [00:01:43] Speaker B: It's one of those ones where it's like you have to watch like three minutes of commercials in the middle kind of thing, right? [00:01:49] Speaker A: Yes, but it's not bad. [00:01:51] Speaker B: All right, so that's the preamble to something you must have seen then. [00:01:54] Speaker A: I watched Her Majesty's Secret Service. [00:01:57] Speaker B: Nice. [00:01:57] Speaker A: Which I don't. I. [00:01:59] Speaker B: On Her Majesty. [00:02:00] Speaker A: On Her Majesty Secret Service. I failed to remember if I had ever seen that. And as far as I knew, I didn't until I watched it. I'm like, oh, I've seen this before. Of course I have. [00:02:10] Speaker B: Oh, really? [00:02:11] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. It's been a while though. And the things, I think I remember bits, not all of it like, oh, that I remember now. Oh, you know, Bond gets married, right? [00:02:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I had never seen that, man, when I watched it, you know, weeks ago now. Yeah, that was one of the. That was one of the ones. And we, I think maybe we talked about this every or many, many cities in the 80s especially, they had that one video store that was like so much better than the others, right. Where the. Either, either had a side room with all the monster movies or whatever that just the, you know, it was not a blockbuster. It was an independently owned, family owned. And I remember they had a row of Bond. And that's how I saw a lot of the Bond movies after the great money movies, you know, stuff I've talked about already on this show. And I remember the COVID for On Her Majesty, Secret Service had Telly Savalas in a bobsled going down. And I was like. As a 15 or 18 year old, whatever I was, I was like, nope, that's Kojak. I'm not renting that. That's, like, why I didn't see it because of Telly Savalas. And lo and behold, he's a pretty decent Blofeld. He's okay. He's okay. But what are your impressions of the movie now that you've. I know you've seen it, but what'd you think? [00:03:25] Speaker A: Good. It's a long chase. [00:03:30] Speaker B: The ski chase, the whole thing. [00:03:32] Speaker A: Like, it's. I mean, it's brilliant. It's. It's all right. But I mean, come on, come on, let's. Let's wrap it up. Hey. [00:03:40] Speaker B: Ah, man, you're hopeless. [00:03:42] Speaker A: It's fun. It was a good romp. Yeah. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Did you spot Bond lifting the key off the guy? Or like, how did he get in? How to get in? [00:03:54] Speaker A: I did not like, oh, I better watch this part because here it comes. Here it comes. And I did not witness that. I didn't tune in to, to check. [00:04:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, Fair, fair. It is not the best movie, but to be clear, it's. But I think it has some great parts. A part that I liked, again, to reiterate, like, I like that it was clearly the same production team. Like this. The shots are the same. The pan, the panning is the same. They're framed the same way. The music is the same. It's just not Connery. So that part I like a lot. [00:04:25] Speaker A: I like the part where he broke the fourth wall and said that other guy wouldn't. Wouldn't happen to the other guy or something. [00:04:32] Speaker B: Wouldn't happen to the other guy. [00:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah, that's pretty good. And then I watched, which again, I've mentioned, like, I mentioned this to Harrigan, like last week when we were talking about something and then no Time to die. I could have swore I never saw it. I must have rented it at one point and then realized, like, watching it again, I'm like, oh, I have seen this already. [00:04:52] Speaker B: The final Daniel Craig Bond movie, right? [00:04:55] Speaker A: Correct. [00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah. That is one that. In that conversation, that same conversation, I realized, even though I was adamant. No, I've never seen it either. I've never. Oh, I. I mean, the one where he. He's not that below seven anymore, you're like. Yeah, I'm like. I think. I think I've seen that. So I think what happened to me on that, you know, and with all the travel I do. I think I saw chunks of it on a plane. And the same thing with Specter, both Spectre and. I think even less. No Time to Die I had not seen in their entirety. I've seen pieces of them. The same thing's actually true for the last Mission Impossible movie. Saw it on a plane, didn't quite finish it before we landed, that kind of thing. So without spoiling it, because I don't, you know, I know the basics of what happens. Unfortunately, it's a bit spoiled for me. Did you like no Time to Die, though, is it good? [00:05:42] Speaker A: I liked it, but I don't know if it would be my favorite of Craig's or even the Bond series. [00:05:50] Speaker B: What's. What's ahead of it, what's behind it? [00:05:52] Speaker A: I guess there were parts of it that I enjoyed. Like, I did like the fact that, you know, Bond. Is it not. [00:06:01] Speaker B: Did it. [00:06:02] Speaker A: There's no spoilers there. There's a. There is been talk of this in the Bond, like, you know, Roger Moore, Daniel Craig, Sean Connery. Like they're all different actors. [00:06:19] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. They all play a great. [00:06:20] Speaker A: Some would say they play different Bonds. [00:06:23] Speaker B: Yep. [00:06:24] Speaker A: So I will just leave it at that. [00:06:26] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. But nothing. No one's like, Casino Royale is pretty good, I think, and Quantum Solace is not very good. Right, Right. Skyfall I loved, but I think you said Skyfall was boring to you. [00:06:37] Speaker A: I gotta revisit some of these. Casino Royale stood out because there was such a long gap before a freaking Bond had ever been released before. [00:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a lot of buildup to it. Right. And they also went for that. Remember that chase in the beginning where there's almost like parkour in it where he's chasing the guy on the crane and the construction yard and all that stuff. [00:06:55] Speaker A: Yes. [00:06:55] Speaker B: So it's a very physical kind of and visceral kind of Bond. It was good. It was good. [00:07:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:01] Speaker B: It's good film. [00:07:01] Speaker A: Well, and it's interesting to see the Craig series because it's probably. I mean, some of the prior ones might have made a callback to the previous one or probably two prior ones. Right. Oh, it's Spectre. And that was referenced before it or two before it. These are more sequential than I think any of the other previous ones, for sure. [00:07:24] Speaker B: Yep. [00:07:25] Speaker A: We don't even talk about the Dalton ones or the Remington Steel. [00:07:29] Speaker B: No, I'm. I'm going to revisit those as well. I think I told you previously, a friend of mine's like, don't do it. Don't, don't you dare. You know, you'll ruin it. But I, I remember liking the first Dalton one and one of the Remington Steel ones was entertaining, but I think it's the one with Michelle. Yo. I think. I don't know. We'll look at it. All right. Anything else? [00:07:53] Speaker A: No. [00:07:54] Speaker B: I watched as, as I threatened, I watched From Russia With Love. So I did that before the Bond series left Amazon. And I didn't look at Pluto or wherever, I think, because I think it's also on mgm. Plus maybe now I think it went a couple places. [00:08:10] Speaker A: Well, MGM owns it, right. [00:08:13] Speaker B: So I think maybe you could always get it there. [00:08:15] Speaker A: You might be able to. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Okay. So for Washing with love is brilliant. 1963. Terence Young directed it. Same guy who did Dr. No and who later returns after Goldfinger. He also does Thunderball. So different director for Goldfinger. And I think I tortured you with this recently. I was shocked to learn that Thunderball was the highest grossing until Skyfall. And Skyfall actually is number one, which is pretty crazy. I think there's an amazing run of Sean connery movies. Like Dr. No is solid. Right. But I think for Martian With Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball are like, what? Those three movies are amazing to me. Those was really typify. I don't know. They're great for Russia with Love has a fantastic Specter headquarters scene where it's one of those ones where they're the three people walking or having a conversation about how they're going to kill Bond kind of thing. And, and the plot. And in the background there's guys with like MP38 machine, like German machine guns shooting at dummies. And there are dummies that are being flamethrow. There's guys throwing knives and there's guys fight kung fu fighting together. And they're all just in the background. It's. It's pretty great just, you know, training a bunch of murderers basically. Pretty. It's pretty good stuff. I liked it a lot. And I think Dan mentioned this in, on a, on a recent call in. It's the most espionage of all the Bond films that I know of. You know, the Whole until. Until the end, which is hilarious, but until the end, it's very kind of low down, trying to stay out of the. Stay in the shadows. And there's a. There's a cryptography machine that. That Spectre's trying to fool MI6 into. Into stealing from the Russians and just all this very cold, wary kind of stuff. And then at the end, there are a series of chases that involve helicopters, trains, boats, hotel rooms with poisoned daggers in. In shoes. And it's like Inspector tries to kill him like eight times in the last like 12 minutes. It's great. I love it, highly recommend it. And the fist fight he has with Red Grant on the train is brutal and is really, really cool. And also without spoiling, there's some great gadgets from Q. This is the first appearance of Q in the series. On the movies, he's not even called Q yet. He's the head of, like, I forget what they call him. Head of something division. And it's not even Q Division. But the articles he gives to Bond, a lot of them don't come in until the very close to the end of the movie. And they're just used in a cool way. It's not that kind of telegraph. Do I see this coming? It's good. It makes the. It makes some of the fights really, really good. Lastly, I remember the AR7 survival rifle that we. We've talked about before on this show. Remember that? You're not allowed to warble my voice here, by the way. [00:10:58] Speaker A: Fair, fair. [00:10:59] Speaker B: That's in this movie. It's in his attache case and he uses it to shoot down a helicopter, which is pretty great. You know, they call it a.25 caliber. It's a.22 caliber rifle. And he ends up shooting down one of the Spectre helicopters. [00:11:14] Speaker A: You know, I think I took Bond more seriously when I was a kid. [00:11:18] Speaker B: I believe it. [00:11:19] Speaker A: Like, I believe it, you know, and you mentioned Austin Powers. I'm like, no, no, no. But now that I look at Bond and some of these. [00:11:26] Speaker B: Not that far off. [00:11:27] Speaker A: It's not. [00:11:28] Speaker B: Not that far. [00:11:29] Speaker A: The gap is not. Not that far, no. [00:11:32] Speaker B: All right, moving on. So, yeah, highly recommend that movie. Really. You know, one of my. One of my favorites. And then I also will say, you know, everything else is sort of status quo. I'm still running the games that I've been mentioning that I'm running play by post style, with the exception that my Operator's Game, which has been sort of on hiatus because one of the players was just a little incognito. He's back and we are launching again. So we got. I got couple spy games going now, so it's good. Shall we move on? [00:11:58] Speaker A: Let's get to SID rep. [00:12:01] Speaker B: Give me. [00:12:02] Speaker A: The sit rep. Sid rep. Got one. [00:12:06] Speaker B: We do. [00:12:08] Speaker A: It's yours, buddy. [00:12:10] Speaker B: Okay, so there's the new. You'll have to remind me the name. Sean, what's the name of the new top secret game New World Order. Yes. So they're, you know, spotty history I think of that game for it's sort of how it was kickstarted and the publisher just all that kind of stuff. Right. Without getting way into that. It kind of took a while for it to sort of find its feet, I think. And more recently I think that. And that was like late 2000 teens. Is that right? 2010s when it was. When it came out originally. Sean's making all kinds of. I have no idea, 17 or 18, something like that. I don't know. Yeah, it's in that. It's in that time frame. There's a bit of a resurgence now of. Of content. People are writing adventures and that sort of thing. So being kickstarted right now. Let me do it. I'll give you Sean's line here. Link in the show notes there is the top secret Tradecraft manual. So check the link out. I'm not sure. I think it's got another week or so so. And that may in fact be over by the time this drops. So sending good brain waves right now. Maybe people. People will get it before we drop the show. Long story short, it looks pretty cool. It's you know, the whole set of extra stuff for the. For the new top secret game, the New World Order game which we will get to. We will cover. I think I already know from. I got the box set and I flipped through it. I know it's not going to be my favorite spy game, I can tell you that. And I know that it's a little vulnerable to the. The area of knowledge death by a thousand skill kind of thing. I don't know if it has to be that way, but I think it lends itself to that sort of abuse if the. If the GM wants to define a million skills, they can sort of thing. So that's just not my. Tends to not be my game. So I'm not sure if I'm gonna back it or not. We might want to go through New World Order first to see if I'm ever going to play that game. What about you? [00:14:00] Speaker A: It is funded, I will say that. And if it's funded and they put it out. I should be able to buy it after the fact. [00:14:10] Speaker B: Indeed. [00:14:10] Speaker A: I don't remember what the actual delivery date is. I think it is estimated Delivery March of 2026. So not that's the PDF. [00:14:23] Speaker B: Hopefully it's already written then. [00:14:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it looks like 2026. [00:14:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:28] Speaker A: So March. That's not far off. Which. Great. Super. [00:14:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And I will have a look at it because, you know, I think people who listen to the show must know a lot of this stuff is. Is system agnostic when you're talking trade craft and different organizations and different means and methods in the espionage side of things especially, you may have to flip the mechanics a bit or whatever for your system of choice. But it may have a bunch of cool information in it that's a little more generic than it is just for new world order. Yeah, y', all encrypted comms, buddy. Take us there. [00:15:00] Speaker A: Sir, we have an incoming encrypted transmission. [00:15:05] Speaker B: Yeah, in fact, we have two encrypted transmissions. [00:15:07] Speaker A: We do. [00:15:10] Speaker B: Who's doing the first one? [00:15:12] Speaker A: I can do it. I guess. It's one I stole. [00:15:15] Speaker B: It is off the social media. This poor guy doesn't know your. [00:15:19] Speaker A: He doesn't listen to the show. [00:15:20] Speaker B: Filling our. Our show with. With his content without his say so. [00:15:24] Speaker A: Thanks, Marco. We know. We know Mirko personally, so I will. [00:15:28] Speaker B: See him this weekend. We're playing board games together. The. Our cup. You know, my wife and his wife and the two of us. So I'll make sure. I'll get the. I'll get the high sign from him. Like make sure everything's okay. [00:15:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:38] Speaker A: Well, sweet. Because if it's not, he can deal with you directly. [00:15:42] Speaker B: He'll. He'll swear at me in German. Right. Which he does frequently. [00:15:46] Speaker A: Right. Let's see. So, just finished listening to the James Bond vignette. Very fun. And I don't normally like actual plays. Hey, and the sound effects added a nice touch. You're welcome. [00:16:00] Speaker B: Well done, Sean. Yeah. [00:16:02] Speaker A: One thing I'm curious about. Both about this particular game, but also about playing in the James Bond IP in general. Now that you dove into the system and played this vignette, how well do you think this would work for a regular RPG group as opposed to a one on one or duet experience with like your vignette? Like we said, Harrigan and I know. Both know Mirko. He is not an IP guy. Just so you know. [00:16:29] Speaker B: He's the opposite of an IP guy. [00:16:31] Speaker A: And that's why I'm. I'm stating this because we know that context continues in James Bond movies. The focus is on him as the main character. It's not super obvious to me how that translate to an RPG party. And mechanically, some of the mechanics you showcased in the vignette, like the seduction mechanic, for example, seem fun and engaging, but they also involve quite a few rolls. It feels like that might be harder to do in group setting. In a more modern system, those roles might be abstracted into a single die roll. Anyway, curious about your takes on this. [00:17:09] Speaker B: What's your take? [00:17:11] Speaker A: Some of these games, man, I wouldn't run parties of six, like four. Hard and fast. Right. Even the one we're going to talk about today recommends two player gm. Maybe two more for me. I would say get some assistant mastery down. Those roles become a little bit quicker. You don't explain them. You just got to make it happen. So I think it would lend itself to be okay. [00:17:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we were going kind of purposely slow in some parts. You know, I think you mentioned to me off the mics that I got maybe a little bit away from that later in the session or in the beginning. I was doing a lot of like explanation. I listened to it again. I listened and caught myself a couple times going, I'm not going to tell you this, Sean, because it's not a role that you would know. And then later, a minute later, I'm telling you what it was because I'm trying to explain this system, contradicting myself. So it's a little, a little out of body GM kind of experience there kind of thing. Anything else you want to answer, Merkel on? Because I do have some thoughts. [00:18:13] Speaker A: No, I don't think so. Like, to me it would be. I'm not. I would have to experience it with three players, two players. But I don't think it would be that big. Yeah, it's. [00:18:24] Speaker B: It's totally. Can do it. Totally. Yeah, but, but he's right to point out like the Bond franchise and the Bond ip, whether it's the books or the movies. Yeah. There's a protagonist band. There's one main character in those stories, like, like Jason Bourne too. There's a dude. He's the guy, he's going to do the cool stuff. He's going to foil the plot, he's going to whatever. But all you have to do is like shift the lens a little bit and look at the Mission Impossible movies and the Mission Impossible show and there's a team of people and they all have specialties and they all support each other and they focused shifts as long as the GM has that. The ability to be deft with their ability to kind of scene shift and share the spotlight and that sort of thing. I think any of these systems that we're about to cover probably air towards a smaller group. I think two or three players is perfect. You could do four. I wouldn't want to do five or six or seven or, you know, it's not a. It's not a D and D party where you're like going around the table like now, you know, I hit it with my ax, I cast a spell. It's not that kind of game. There's more to it. And the GM has to be able to manage those. All those scenes where like, Sean's character is trying to seduce that lady while someone else trying to break in the back door and someone else is in a different city trying to get aboard the submarine and you got to be able to kind of shift around. But that's true for a lot of different genres. [00:19:44] Speaker A: The roles. [00:19:44] Speaker B: I agree. Like, this is just a system mastery thing. And quite frankly, I think we mentioned this when we were covering the game. Like, it's way leaner than I remembered it being even because of the fact that everything goes to the ease factor. You are not having to do a whole bunch of other hoops that you're jumping through. And it's really just that one number that's going up and down kind of thing at a couple of charts to look at. It is not as lightweight as, you know, it's not a minimalist system by any stretch, but I don't think the system would get in the way of having a multi. Multiple players at the table. [00:20:14] Speaker A: There you go, Marco. [00:20:17] Speaker B: In fact, it has some of those cool connecting mechanics where they result of one roll affects the next one. And I think you could probably, if you played this enough and got some real mastery, there's some cool stuff that you could do. Like I. I want to butter the person up. What quality result did you get? I got a this. And that makes it easier for the next person to get their thing done. That kind of thing. Good, good, good comment. And thank you for allowing us to steal your words from Discord. [00:20:41] Speaker A: It's a good question. I liked it. That's why I wanted to steal it on the pair. Yeah. [00:20:47] Speaker B: Agreed. [00:20:48] Speaker A: Next one's from Dan, which we. I will humbly apologize because he had written this a couple weeks ago. A few weeks ago. And then we came to a QA and we had it in there and then we didn't put it in there. So that was on me. Eric Harrigan was like, hey, put it in. I'm like, totally spaced it. So. [00:21:07] Speaker B: But yeah, well, well remember we covered like, I don't know, a lot, like four or five questions in that Q A and then we frankly just forgot this one. And then, you know, at the end I was like, maybe we should, you know, report, record another little piece and append it kind of thing. But when Sean and I looked at it, it's pretty long. Dan, you've got. It's. What it is is a great breakdown of the movies that Dan is suggesting for our appendix end file. So Sean, I don't know if it'll be on this show or another one. But, but let's, let's eventually put it up on the website so people can peruse it. What, what Dan has done here, he's covered from Washer with Love. Funeral. Funeral in Berlin. No way out. Deutschland 83, 86 and 89, which I think we know. Sean Wayne is a big fan of our, our buddy Wayne. Right. He's mentioned this before. Person of interest, Tinker Taylor. Soldier Spy. The BBC series, not the movie. Riley. Ace of Spies, which Dan has mentioned before. He's got a little write up on each of them but kind of describes what, you know, what they are, why he likes them. So without us regurgitating all that here, let's get that up on online and people can peruse it because, you know, I think Dan is proving, at least to me, that he knows a hell of a lot more about this stuff than I do. So, you know, I'll be the loudmouth who ransom raves about things and once in a while we can put his content up and say here's a more measured approach to the genre. [00:22:25] Speaker A: I started watching Deutsche. Oh, I know why he had recommended it. I would say that because it is. If you haven't watched it and you want Cold War. Ish. Ish. Cold War, you know, 80s. [00:22:40] Speaker B: When were they produced? [00:22:43] Speaker A: It says 20, 15, 18 and 20. Yeah. Is in there. [00:22:47] Speaker B: Okay. [00:22:48] Speaker A: Takes part in like 83, 86 and. [00:22:50] Speaker B: No, I get it. But they're. But they're relatively recent. [00:22:52] Speaker A: They are, but they do look 10 years. [00:22:55] Speaker B: Do they? [00:22:55] Speaker A: Yeah, and I don't know if that's just the way they filmed them, I think kind of. Yeah. But it is interesting how the guy is recruited out of East Berlin to. Yeah, it's interesting. [00:23:07] Speaker B: How far did you get? [00:23:08] Speaker A: I know I at least watched the first three episodes maybe. [00:23:14] Speaker B: Oh, okay. So reasonably far. [00:23:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I know the dynamics that he references in his post here like the young East German border guard. Martin gets sucked into the working for the Stasi and promises his mother will go into treatment ahead of. Yeah, like all that I've seen. [00:23:31] Speaker B: Cool. [00:23:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a, it's a good show. [00:23:33] Speaker B: And yeah, I don't know if we're going to talk about it tonight, but we're gonna, we are gonna focus on the Cold War here at some point and I think in a relatively dedicated way. Right. Without spoiling anything. So I think we'll get to stuff like that. Well, not only will we switch gears on the systems and the sort of things and get away from more of the. The high flying Bond Mission Impossible type action, but we'll for systems but we'll also do the same for the media that we're consuming and that kind of thing. Switch it up. So we're, you know, doing the whole pickle yourself in the, in the juice that you want to, you know, want to impact the way you're. The lenses you're looking through the world with. Yeah, Pickle juice lenses. It's very beneficial. [00:24:12] Speaker A: Pickle yourself in the juice of the lenses. [00:24:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep, yep. [00:24:16] Speaker A: There you go. [00:24:17] Speaker B: Take it to the bank. Sean, you can patent that one if you want to. We should move to the. The mission. Have a seat. Let's get on with the mission brief. [00:24:30] Speaker A: Oh boy. So we're doing the RPG with the smallest covert action player characters to ever be created. It's Honey I Shrunk the Kids, the espionage covert action game. [00:24:52] Speaker B: It would not surprise me if that was your takeaway. [00:24:57] Speaker A: Well, it's called Tiny Spies, so I imagine you play very small covert action agents like 3 Footers or maybe even smaller. [00:25:10] Speaker B: Sometimes I wonder about you, Sean. [00:25:11] Speaker A: Tiny Spies, it's in the title, right? [00:25:15] Speaker B: It is, yep. Tonight we're covering one of the smaller of the and shorter, more minimalist of the espionage and covert action games that we've mentioned on the show and that we have listed on the website that we're going to, you know, kind of get into. I would say though, and let you cover some of the specifics in terms of who was published by and who wrote it and when and all that good stuff. But I will say this, it is a what I would call a maximal minimalist rpg. This is not a game like lasers and feelings where there's like a single mechanic. So even though it's a 50 page book and the mechanics are in about, you know, 10 pages and it's also, it's six by nine in format and the pages are large print. So the 50 pages are not even like. This is not a tough read, people. This is, this is pretty, pretty straightforward. But it's a traditional game. Look at, there are. We're going to get into it. But it has combat rounds, it has initiative, it has archetypes. It's not like the, you know, a two page game kind of thing. Even though it really is kind of a minimalist kind of game. So. But go ahead Sean, tell us a little bit about like the, the background of it and that sort of thing. [00:26:22] Speaker A: So it's published by Gallant Knight Games, headed up by Alan Barr. And Alan's, you know, he's done quite a few things in the RPG hobby. It was published, I have a copyright down as 2022. Why do I have 2021? Oh, I see what happened. It says published by gallant knight in 2022, but the copyright is 2021. [00:26:47] Speaker B: Ah, I was wondering if that had to do with the PDF versus the print. But. [00:26:52] Speaker A: And I am right. No, but I'm reading the PDF. But that's what I just realized that now I'm like, what? I have the PDF up and I just looked over. So there's two dates. [00:27:00] Speaker B: He copyrighted the name in 21. [00:27:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And it is based on Tiny Dungeon of Smoking Salamander games, which is interesting because I thought the Tiny series was all done by the same shop and I did not know they were different. [00:27:16] Speaker B: I'll give you the history there. I'm gonna give you the history there right now. Is that what you want? [00:27:24] Speaker A: I'll give you the history there. [00:27:29] Speaker B: So the Tiny Dungeon was put out by Smoking Salamander games. I think it was like 2010 or something that it came out. Allen bought that game to do the second edition is what happened. And credit Alan Barr for this. The man has a business plan for his company. Like for those who don't know Gallant Knight and Alan Barr, that dude cranks out games and he publishes games for a lot of other people too. Like a whole bunch of people have now hooked their wagon to Alan because Alan knows how to put product out like on a regular basis. I can picture Alan's got whiteboards and slide decks for his business plan about how, how much content he has to create to run a profitable business. Some of his games are great and some of his grams games I think show that rush to market. Kind of like, I gotta get something out. Unfortunately, Tiny Spies is actually pretty, pretty decent. I think in that regard. There's some of the other Tiny games where I felt like, oh, I wish they had taken a little more care. What they do is they take tiny dungeon and they re skin it into tiny frontiers, which is sci fi, tiny supers, tiny wastelands, tiny Cthulhu, tiny gunslingers, tiny living dead, tiny Mecca monsters. There's like tons of them. And some of them are like, like tiny dungeon and Tiny Frontiers I think are like really good games. They are very good lightweight games. Some of the ones that came a little later in the run feel a little more like lip service to me. There's a little, some of it actually has to do with what does not get removed. So as we'll talk about tonight, there's. There are proficiencies in Tiny Dungeon that flow into games like Tiny Spies and Tiny Supers. And I'm like, Alan, why is there, what is your supers game have weapon proficiencies. That's kind of weird. And there's a, there's a little bit of that sort of, I don't know, jankiness that kind of goes, permeates a little bit. But long story short, he bought the property with the intention of not only publishing a second edition. And the second edition, quite frankly is better. It's all, it's all cleaned up, it's got great art. But then he went from there and just launched and has built, you know, must be, I don't know, 20 or 30 games or something at this point. Maybe not 30, but it's in the, it's in the, it's between 10 and 20 at least something like that. And I own a lot of them. I like these games a lot. So. Yeah, so you were, you're not incorrect. Someone else came up with the original. Really the core mechanic is what they came up with and the like the system itself. But then Alan built on it. [00:29:57] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:29:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Anything else you want to say? [00:30:00] Speaker A: So in the forward of the book, he did mention doing Cold Shadows for specific. Yes, specifically for paranoia, betrayal, trust and deadly violence. So Tiny Spies is dedicated to the James Bond action hero. Spies. Less Le Carre and more Mission Impossible and James Bond. I don't think I put two and two together. As far as timeline goes, Harrigan's holding it up. I don't think I put two and two together about the Cold Shadows coming out and then Tiny Spies. I never even thought about it. [00:30:39] Speaker B: Yeah, Tiny Spies is more, it's more recent. Yeah. The COVID of the book, this little tiny six by nine book has an agent with a scar on his face. Bondish looking for sure. An attractive looking exotic lady. An explosion. A racing exotic Car a series of ICBMs about to like hit the planet. Some folks in like ninja type sort of dark garb that they're sneaking. Yeah. There's a lot going on. Bottom line is this is a pick up and play espionage covert action game that's meant to emulate. Like Sean said. It's in fact bar even, even throws. Get smart in there. Get smart Bond Mission Impossible. It's meant to be high action. Right. So the basics of tiny D6, like what's the system all about? Right? Like why is it called Tiny D6 Etc. [00:31:28] Speaker A: Because there are no. At a lot of D20s and no D6s. [00:31:32] Speaker B: Yeah. It's gonna be one of those nights. [00:31:33] Speaker A: And you don't. If they're D6s, they have to be small. [00:31:40] Speaker B: Oh, okay. There are no attributes. So if for your character, there are no skills. Weapons don't really have stats. Weapons are categorized into like light and heavy and melee and range. But there's no like accuracy, damage, you know, weight, there's none of that kind of stuff. So like I said, go ahead. [00:32:01] Speaker A: No guns. I like this game already. No, no, Super. Fantastic. [00:32:07] Speaker B: Oh, there are guns. [00:32:08] Speaker A: No slide single action. Are there? [00:32:12] Speaker B: There are ranged weapons. Yes. [00:32:14] Speaker A: Light ranged, heavy ranged. Boom. [00:32:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Pistols and rifles. [00:32:18] Speaker A: Yeah. But there's not like the MK2 single. [00:32:22] Speaker B: Action, double pump.45 long slide with laser sighting, 12 gauge auto loader. There you go, 9 millimeter, that kind of thing. Yeah, there's. There's none of that. Yep. There's no plasma rifle in the 40 watt range. Sad. It's not that kind of game, Jim. In fact, you know what, remember what, what game was it we were reviewing? I think it was, I think it was Agent Provocateur. You were doing the whole like this has individual models of car, man. Remember that? [00:32:50] Speaker A: Yes. [00:32:51] Speaker B: Which is a James Bond thing. Like it's the Aston Martin, it's the, the Peugeot. It's you know, the like right down to the year and the model kind of thing. This is the total opposite of that. When we get to that section, this has sedan, motorcycle, helicopter. They're. They're much more generic. The whole thing is meant to be pick up and play, like just get after it kind of thing. Right. There's one dimechanic. I want to know what you think of this dice mechanic, Sean, because I. When I first found found tiny Dungeon in like 2018 or something, I was like, oh boy. Oh baby, I love this and I still like it a lot. But what do you think of the die mechanic? Describe it and let Us know what you think of the. Because there's one core dice mechanic at the heart of everything. [00:33:30] Speaker A: Yes. So you roll 2d6 is the default. If you are at disadvantage, you roll 1d6. If you are at advantage, you roll 3d6 and you succeed. If any of the dice appear on a five or six. [00:33:47] Speaker B: Yep. [00:33:48] Speaker A: Advantage though is interesting because if you say, for example, if something would put you at a disadvantage, even though you have an advantage, then you would be at disadvantage. Unless you have a piece of gear that would allow you to be at advantage. [00:34:07] Speaker B: Yep. So in other words, if you have a trait on your character that allows you to have advantage, that won't work. Disadvantage usually trumps advantage in this game. It's not one of those games where they balance out because most of those games are like there are two factors that out for advantage, but two off that offer disadvantage or whatever. This isn't like that. This is like if the lock is is hard, it's at disadvantage to pick it, period. Unless like Sean said, you've got the lock pick, freezer size one that gets craned into the room in on Her Majesty's Secret Service. [00:34:38] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. [00:34:39] Speaker B: You have that. [00:34:40] Speaker A: And that never changes. No, in the game, the 1d6, 2d6, 3d6 never change or you don't up the amount of dice. [00:34:49] Speaker B: In fact, yeah, there's never, never a time you'll roll four dice, there's never a time you're all D8s etc, correct. [00:34:55] Speaker A: So that is interesting. Easy to teach. [00:35:00] Speaker B: Very. Bottom line is when the GM asks for a test, those are called tests and that is sneaking, influencing, shooting, driving, parachuting, whatever. They're all 2D6. Unless there's some reason why it's hard you're at disadvantage. Or if you have something on your sheet or a piece of gear, or you have approached the situation in a way that the GM just gives you advantage. You got the 3D6 going on kind of thing. The way the odds break down are pretty neat. Like the disadvantage of pretty long odds, 33% chance to succeed. And if you, if memory serves, if you have 3D6, you're at about a 70% chance. So you're never going to get up into that like 80, 90% chance of succeeding. Even at advantage, there's a pretty decent chance something's going to go wrong. There's some other nuance here. Like I don't know if you read about like focus and that sort of thing, but we can talk about that maybe when we talk about combat. There are five different archetypes. Agent, face driver, hacker and soldier. And in addition to your archetype, you get three traits. You get a weapon proficiency, you get weapon mastery in one specific weapon. So you can choose light ranged for your proficiency and you can choose pistols for your mastery, that kind of thing. You have a background, you have a single trait. Excuse me, a background trait. And you have a belief. Am I getting that right? Yes, those are the core components. The part that's interesting is that the archetype you choose drives some of that stuff. [00:36:32] Speaker A: Well, the big one is the HP. [00:36:34] Speaker B: And it also drives your hit points. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You need to provide unique traits. [00:36:39] Speaker A: Yeah, you see, you don't roll them. I don't think you just get them based on the architecture. [00:36:43] Speaker B: Correct. All tiny dungeon games work more or less the same, which is if you roll to hit somebody, Sean rolls two two D6 to hit somebody and he rolls a single five. It's a hit. They take one damage, they lose one hit point. The hit points tend to be in the 4 to 6 range for most of the archetypes. So you can see you have a little bit of staying power, but not a ton of staying power. And this is one of the relatively few tiny, tiny D6 games where heavy weapons actually do two damage. Like in many of them, the heavy weapons offer some other benefit. Like they push you back or they knock you down or they might disarm you, those sorts of things. In this game, he just goes straight for nope, two damage, which is pretty beefy. [00:37:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And you have to use two. Two hands on the heavy weapons. That's the dis. That's the drawback of using a heavy weapon. You need two hands to operate it. [00:37:31] Speaker B: Of all the things I just mentioned. Right. The archetype, the traits, the proficiencies and mastery. And then the belief. Oh, go ahead. [00:37:39] Speaker A: I was going to say the. The one thing that did come up was you can reward additional damage based on role play. [00:37:47] Speaker B: If you narrate like you throw the wall switch and drop the car that's on the magnet above somebody and the magnet turns off, you drop the car on them, they can do. You can do more than two damage or whatever. Right. For sure. What I was going to say is those. So those traits you guys can. People who are listening can picture, these are the relatively typical. [00:38:06] Speaker A: They're very fetish. [00:38:08] Speaker B: They are charismatic, dark fighter, die hard, doctor educated, eidectic memory, fleet of foot, follow up attacks. They are all the classic feat, like slightly rule breaking. Kind of thing. Many of them offer advantage in a certain situation, but some of them also offer focus. And you remember what focus is, Sean. [00:38:27] Speaker A: Focus is you can carry over until you attack or end of the combat. That's the effective time. And then your target number can go down to four, five and six. And not just five and six. [00:38:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm not sure what language you were speaking in the first part of that because none of that made sense to me. But the latter part, when you, when. [00:38:50] Speaker A: You do, when you do focus. [00:38:52] Speaker B: Yep. [00:38:53] Speaker A: It doesn't end. You keep the focus is what I'm saying. The duration of the focus, that's as. [00:39:00] Speaker B: Part of a combat round. [00:39:01] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Overall. [00:39:04] Speaker B: Overall focus, yes. Like from a trait. So in other words, you might be out of combat. If you have focus on something, it just means you succeeded on a four as well. That's all it means. Oh, in combat there's a focus action. Yes, as well. [00:39:18] Speaker A: That's what I'm talking about. The special actions. [00:39:22] Speaker B: Picture it this way. Sometimes if you have some sort of like pistol, pistol arrow trait, it might say you have focus with pistols, you know, in other words, you succeed on a four, five or six as opposed to just a five or a six. What Sean is talking about is in combat, one of the action types is also focused, like aim. Basically, I use one of my actions to focus my, my fire and I point the pistol and the next, your next action, you will succeed on a, on a four or five or six, same kind of way. And I think what you were getting at, which I now understand, is even if the combat round ends, you keep your focus. If the last thing you did was focus your, your attention on something, it. [00:40:00] Speaker A: Ends at the end of combat, but not at the end of the round. [00:40:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, okay. [00:40:06] Speaker A: Or until you attack, which is when you probably would use it. [00:40:10] Speaker B: Traits offer advantage. They often focus. Sometimes they even offer a limited number of auto successes. It might be like once per scene you succeed at X. It's, you know, it's a pretty traditional style of doing that type of character trait. And you get, like I said, you get three of them. Right. Generally. Anything else you want to talk about for the characters or like the basics or should we move into combat? [00:40:30] Speaker A: I think combat. We can move into combat. [00:40:34] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, there's, there are, there are sections in the book that I think are a little bit needless. In all the tiny, tiny D6 books which are like there are no say, you know, a save would be still a test. Like, you don't even need to get in to say that it's. The tests are everything in the game. So there's not really a difference between an attack and a save. And all Those sort of DND 3.5 isms, you know, don't. They don't need to be here. [00:40:56] Speaker A: I was a little surprised at that because you're right, it doesn't change from one to the other. But they. He. He does make note of when you're doing something, it's a test. When it's something being done to you, it's a saved. Still doing the same thing. [00:41:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a save test. It's just like. It's bizarre. One of my favorite parts of this game, even though it is pretty darn minimalist. I think combat's really interesting for one reason. Maybe let you. I'll let you cover some of the other basics, Sean. In fact, why don't you give us the breakdown on what you think about the combat and then I'll weigh in on the part that I think makes it kind of a head and shoulders above some other minimalist games in terms of making the combat interesting. [00:41:34] Speaker A: Head and shoulders even. Strong words, Harrigan. [00:41:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Becoming a mantra of yours, Sean. [00:41:43] Speaker A: Combat starts with initiative in tiny D6 the success. So you roll a test and whoever wins goes first. [00:41:52] Speaker B: Then where's that from? [00:41:55] Speaker A: Where's what from? [00:41:56] Speaker B: That's. That's both like. That's Barbarians of Lemuria and Black Hack style. Initiative is what that is. [00:42:00] Speaker A: I know a couple. [00:42:02] Speaker B: In other words, it doesn't matter how good your opponent is. Test your stat make up. In this game, just roll a test. If you succeed, you go first. If you fail, you go after. [00:42:12] Speaker A: Yes, that's it. And it's fixed. Round. Round stays. Doesn't change. Round around. [00:42:17] Speaker B: Yep. [00:42:19] Speaker A: You get two actions per. Which I have something to say about this. I think potentially. Okay, there is a move and attack. You can do two moves, two attacks or one or the other. [00:42:31] Speaker B: Yep. [00:42:32] Speaker A: And when you. Yep. [00:42:35] Speaker B: Are you going to talk more about the other action types? The special actions like evade. [00:42:40] Speaker A: Yes, yes. I mean I could touch on them if you want. [00:42:45] Speaker B: The notes that I've got. Basically because you're spot on. It's the two actions you basically choose from, like attack, move, evade, test. So test might be some other ability. Like if you're trying to influence somebody or you're trying to not attack them but trip them or you're trying to like race somebody to the control panel and beat them. There's. That's a test in the middle. That's one of your actions and then the last one is take cover. And take cover is something they've added to the tiny spies game like Tiny dungeon does not have take cover. And what that means is if you roll it and are successful, picture this. All arranged attacks against you are at disadvantage. [00:43:27] Speaker A: I didn't have the test for some reason. [00:43:30] Speaker B: No. [00:43:31] Speaker A: I had evade, focus and take cover. [00:43:33] Speaker B: But maybe I, I added that just because I know that all the other tiny T6 games fair. They do it that way. Basically. If you have a, any other kind of ability or anything. Well on your action you can, you can roll a test to do that kind of thing. [00:43:46] Speaker A: Right, I got it. So keep, keep going though the damage we mentioned, if you do a light weapon, it does one damage. If you use a heavy weapon two handed, you takes, you know, it inflicts two damage and then of course extra maybe for good role playing and then the special actions. So interesting enough, evade. It's a test, you know, 1D6 test. If you succeed, you take no damage. But you can't do it if you decide to take cover, which is the ne another one. So if you take cover against you, attacks against you or you make are at disadvantage. So any attacks against you are disadvantaged. Any attacks that you make are disadvantaged because you're taking cover and then you can't evade. [00:44:35] Speaker B: Yeah, you're crouched down behind the boxes, you're around the corner of the door, that kind of thing. [00:44:39] Speaker A: And then focus is the one we mentioned previously. So carry over and 4, 5, 6. [00:44:45] Speaker B: Yeah, so, so picture, picture this because people have broken down the math on this many, many times. Let's put it this way. You have two actions. You can focus and then shoot your gun. So in other words, you spend a whole action just focusing. And when you shoot your gun, you go from that two dice on a five or six, you succeed to two dice on a four, five or six exceed. The math actually says just shoot twice, just attack twice. That's what if you break down the percentages, it's actually more advantageous to do it that way. But there are times in the game like maybe you've got one rocket left, you're trying to shoot down the helicopter. So you, that first action, you focus, you get it in your sights, right? And then when you fire, you get the additional, you know, you succeed on the four as well. It's just kind of a cool colorful thing as well. [00:45:29] Speaker A: The one thing I could not figure out was does it take something to evade, to do focused or to take cover? Because it didn't really say like it. [00:45:36] Speaker B: Takes, it takes an action. [00:45:38] Speaker A: It does. Okay. [00:45:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. [00:45:40] Speaker A: I don't know, maybe I glossed over it, but that's where it was like, okay, I understand the two action types, but where do the special actions come in as far as cost goes? [00:45:48] Speaker B: Reaction economy is the part I want to talk about. And you said you also had something to talk about. [00:45:52] Speaker A: That's the thing. That's the thing, yeah. [00:45:54] Speaker B: Do you have anything else in kind of combat generally? I have a couple of little things that I could get into. [00:45:58] Speaker A: I mean, the cinematic auto is pretty cool. [00:46:01] Speaker B: Describe that. [00:46:02] Speaker A: So cinematic auto, at the end of a fight, this is kind of like resource dice, kind of similar, but at the end of the fight you do a test and if you fail, you're out of ammo. [00:46:11] Speaker B: Yep. [00:46:12] Speaker A: If you, you can share ammo, which I thought was interesting. So typically in a resource, die type or system, if you have a die type and you share it, then your die type goes down, but you convey it or the other person gets the same or the lowest. In this, it's interesting because the lender tests makes a test and if they failed, they can retest, but with a disadvantage. If they decide to lend and they fail, then they're both out of ammo. [00:46:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't remember. I don't remember that part. No, no. [00:46:51] Speaker A: Am I wrong? [00:46:55] Speaker B: Probably not. Probably not. We can bring it up, look at it. Tell you what, you. You snoop for that bit to make sure it's right and I'll talk about. I think we, we already mentioned these are pretty low hit point characters. Right. And to recover the hit points, you have to rest for six hours. So your hit points are going to be. Generally, I think most, most of the archetypes are either five or six hit points. Most your foes are in that sort of 2, 3, 4 range, I think as well. So the hit points come back pretty easily. Like if you get six hours of rest, they go. It'll go from one to all the way back up to your maximum, basically. So relatively abstract and death is pretty nasty. So if you hit zero, and I forget if it's hit points or health in this game, I think it's hit points. If you hit zero, you have to make a normal save to not die. And if you don't make that first save on their next term, when your turn comes around again, you make another death save, but now it's at disadvantage and if you fail that one, you're dead. So this is a pretty deadly little minimalist Game. But while Sean's looking for the. The ammo sharing rules. I guess the point I would make here is people can probably tell this is a pretty abstract little fast moving system. Like the guns are not specified in terms of what you're shooting. You can share ammo even if one person is an ak, the other has a shotgun. You know, it's that. It's that kind of game where that stuff is abstracted away. Are you finding anything, Sean? [00:48:20] Speaker A: I am. It says cinematic ammo at the end of every fight. Have each player make a test for each ranged weapon they used. Anyone who fails is out of ammo until they do something to refill their supplies. Super spies can share ammo with allies who have failed, allowing them a retest. But if they do both, must test for cinematic ammo with disadvantage. [00:48:45] Speaker B: In the moment. [00:48:46] Speaker A: I. That's all it says. [00:48:47] Speaker B: Or. Or the next time they. All right, let's not. Let's not drill further on this. This. This sounds like a barism that I'm talking about where there's certain things that are not super well thought through or at least not clearly explained. Yeah, super spies, by the way, that's the PCs. The PCs are super. And that tells you a little bit about the game as well. They're called super spies. [00:49:08] Speaker A: Oh, I think this is how it is. I kind of ran through it pretty quickly. So if Harrigan's character is out of ammo, I can share it, and it allows Harrigan to reroll, do a retest. But if you do both, must test for a cinematic ammo with disadvantage. [00:49:34] Speaker B: You can read that as many times as you want. And I. I'm not gonna like it because what it means is I've got. I've got ammo left. I'm out here, have a mag, and as you throw the mag to the person that vanishes, and neither one of you have ammo left. What happened? [00:49:49] Speaker A: I. I would say that is rules as written. [00:49:54] Speaker B: No, no, don't throw me the. The ammo bag. The sewer is right there. It's gonna. Oh, it went down the sewer. All the bullets are gone. [00:50:01] Speaker A: Off the cliff. [00:50:02] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so another couple of examples of little tiny spies is actually pretty good for not having DNA from the other tiny D6 games creep into it. That doesn't belong there, but there are a couple of examples. Like, for example, I'm not so sure weapon proficiency belongs in this game. Let me put it this way. [00:50:23] Speaker A: We didn't touch on it. [00:50:25] Speaker B: We did not. [00:50:26] Speaker A: No, I don't think we mentioned proficiency Non proficiency. [00:50:30] Speaker B: We did touch on it, but we did. Right. We didn't talk about what it means in detail. I mentioned that it existed right here and here's the part I don't like. They're super spies, Right. I think you'd be pretty good at most weapons, wouldn't you? [00:50:42] Speaker A: Well, no, not if you're not proficient in it. Harrigan. [00:50:45] Speaker B: No, explain. [00:50:47] Speaker A: Well, say for example you are proficient in a light ranged weapon, for example, then you would use a, I believe 2d6 for that. [00:50:57] Speaker B: Yeah. That means you test normally. Correct. [00:51:00] Speaker A: And if you had a heavy ranged weapon and you were non proficient, you. [00:51:04] Speaker B: Would test at a disadvantage with just one D6. Correct. Meaning if you're a super spy, you get to choose one of four proficiencies that you can be decent at. Because there are light melee. Heavy melee. Yes. Light ranged. Heavy ranged. Choose one to be decent at. [00:51:30] Speaker A: Right. [00:51:31] Speaker B: I don't love it. So that's. [00:51:33] Speaker A: Yeah, well quit being, you know, a min maxer and you'll be fine. [00:51:39] Speaker B: It strikes me that super spies should probably be able to test normally with almost everything they pick up is all I'm getting at. If you were to play one of these games, rolling a disadvantage is not that much fun. You're trying to get a 5 or 6 on a single D6 and let's play. Let's. Let's say you're playing Bond or, or what's your guy's name? Vincent. Yeah, Vincent probably would probably be a pistols. But light range weapons that he would, he would. To specialize in. Right? [00:52:04] Speaker A: Right. [00:52:04] Speaker B: But that means if he gets into a knife fight or he picks up a rifle, he's totally screwed. [00:52:09] Speaker A: But you know what Vincent plays in James Bond by Victory games. That's different. Arrogant. If you were to play in Tiny Spies. This isn't a J. Oh, never mind. [00:52:21] Speaker B: It's. It's supposed to emulate James. [00:52:23] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [00:52:24] Speaker B: So that's one example of some DNA that I think is in the game that probably doesn't belong. Or you could kind of do the thing where like, you know, regular characters have one proficiency, but if you're a super spy, choose two. Choose three maybe. In other words, what's the one thing you're not good at? I can see that being a little more in genre. And you know, here's one thing that's cool about tiny D6 games. You recall that I mentioned how many of them are. There are different traits in many of these games. Lots of shared traits too. So the traits are the things like, you know, really good at sneaking Good at heavy weapons, that kind of thing. You can borrow those traits from all over the place. So if you have multiple games you can easily mix and match the traits. But all it does make me scratch my head when I'm looking at a high flying espionage covert action game. And one of the traits is called Berserker. Like why does that belong in a spy game? What's it doing there? [00:53:19] Speaker A: I am Berserker. [00:53:25] Speaker B: I don't know. There's just the editing passes and yeah, here's the description. You can choose to make an attack with disadvantage. If that attack does not already have disadvantage. If the attacks it's successful, it deals plus one damage. That's like a thing you do frequently in a Santa spy game. It's kind of, it's just kind of weird. I don't know. Now having said that, I think Tiny Spies is one of the better versions of these later tiny D6 games in that it doesn't have too much of that stuff that comes from the earlier games. Action economy. Let's return to that just briefly. I love it. I think the fact that it is not you can move and take one action, it is so much more flexible. And let me actually, let me back up. Many games have that you can move and take one action and as your action you can also take a move. So that's how you do the double move thing. That's how you run in many games. But in very few of those games where they let you actually say you can take, you know, here's your little menu of actions and you can take any of them twice at no penalty. So you can shoot twice, attack twice, run twice, run and evade, shoot and evade, take cover and then shoot like there the way you mix and match them. This is the part that I think like it actually rises above even much more complex trad games trying to do some of this stuff and that the action economy become. Can become pretty cool. And you might save your evade. Like let's say you're in a, in a sword fight with somebody, you're like, you know, the chips are down, the two of you are dueling. You can attack light ranged or excuse me, light melee if it's rapier or something or a foil that you're using and you can save your evade. So in other words, when the other, when your opponent on their turn attacks you, you roll your evade that one D6. And if you get a five or a six, you avoid the, you avoid the damage. So you can save one of your actions essentially and make it defensive. You can even if you're trying to defend all out, evade twice and you get to roll your evade on two occasions. It's pretty like the way it, the way it plays out is more sophisticated then it seems like it would be for a little game like this that has this very simple dice mechanic. At Sprinkle in some traits you've got hit points. But as soon as you say you're allowed to do these two actions but they can be anything and including duplicates, I think it kind of rises up. It's pretty cool. [00:55:50] Speaker A: I'm sold. [00:55:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:52] Speaker A: Take my money. Tiny Spies, Gallant Night Games. [00:55:55] Speaker B: Well, why don't we play this game and we'll see. [00:55:58] Speaker A: Fine. [00:56:02] Speaker B: All right. So another way I think we're leaning towards. We're going to probably play most of these games that we cover. [00:56:08] Speaker A: Whatever. [00:56:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So we'll see this in action. [00:56:11] Speaker A: We will play them if we like them. [00:56:14] Speaker B: That is true, actually. That is very true. Because we might get to some of that. We're like, nope, nah. So for example, we should cover Cold Shadows because Cold Shadows has some incredibly cool bits in it, but it has some parts that are like, oh boy, there's some stuff that should have been filed off here before it went to. Went to press. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:56:35] Speaker A: Wait till we get to Spione or Spion. [00:56:39] Speaker B: I don't even have that one. [00:56:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:43] Speaker B: Is there much more you want to cover on Tiny Spies? I've got a few more notes. What do you. What have you got? [00:56:47] Speaker A: XP listed under optional has two different systems you could choose. You could do 1 to 3 per points per session, which is the advised way and it applies to each PC for good role playing, advancing the plot, etc. Yep, I think that's it. [00:57:08] Speaker B: And well, they. And XP allows you to like add traits. I think if you use the milestone version, you're adding traits. And if you're using the XP version, you can also increase your hit points and add weapon performance proficiencies and weapon mastery. We haven't talked about weapon mastery yet. Weapon mastery is when you get to roll your test at advantage. If Vincent the character has proficiency in light ranged and pistols, he has mastery. He's rolling 1d6 when he's fighting with a sword, 2d6 when he's fighting with a slingshot, some other kind of like light range thing, throwing a knife, etc, and 3D6 when he's shooting a pistol. Pistol. So there's, there's kind of tiers. Tiers of proficiency is what I would say. What else? [00:57:56] Speaker A: Mods, vehicle Mods. [00:57:59] Speaker B: Let's talk about that. Generally speaking, this is the part that you wouldn't have picked up on because you don't know the rest of the tiny D6 games. There's three big chunks chapters that, that Alan adds to this game that are spy oriented and one is vehicles, one is gadgets and gear, and one is chases. [00:58:16] Speaker A: Chases, yes. Ripped right out of Victory Games is James Bond. [00:58:21] Speaker B: Yes. [00:58:22] Speaker A: He even says it right in the book, like no shame. Boom. [00:58:26] Speaker B: He does. It's. Yeah. I mean it's a, it was a facsimile. But it does work differently than the Victory game, I think. I think the Victory Games one is better, frankly. [00:58:35] Speaker A: And everybody that didn't check out the James Bond actual play or even our review about James Bond. But the chases you bid, there's different. The sick. What is it? [00:58:52] Speaker B: What are you trying to say? [00:58:52] Speaker A: I'm trying to explain the chases. [00:58:54] Speaker B: Tell you what, let's. Let's get to the chase system in a minute because I think we can, we can kind of deep dive on that a little bit. In general, there's a whole section on vehicles, motorcycles, sedans, sports cars, trucks, jet skis, boats, helicopters, blah, blah, blah. And then like Sean said, there's a, there's a vehicle creation thing and a whole thing to add smoke dispensers and make them off road capable and add armor in a lightweight way, which is pretty neat. And I'll tell you, the action economy that I just kind of raved about a minute ago, the two actions makes the vehicle so cool. How many games have you played where they're not. When you're driving a vehicle they're not explicit about, does that take up your action or not? Can you also shoot a gun? Do you have to make a roll or are you just driving like there's all this, like, oh, you're doing two things at once because you're get your eyes on the road, you're driving. This game is super cool because it just says one of your actions. Remember you have two. You're driving. You still have another action. What do you do? Do you evade? That's swerving the vehicle around. Do you attack? You're shooting your gun out the window. It's, you know, or you're elbowing the person in the back seat. That kind of thing. [00:59:56] Speaker A: Everyone. [00:59:57] Speaker B: Yeah, perfect. That makes a lot of sense. [00:59:59] Speaker A: I watch. [00:59:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And I can't wait to game master games for you. See what I'm getting at though? Like it, it fits together, it plugs together nicely. [01:00:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's that's all I have for my end. Like, the rest is up to you. [01:00:15] Speaker B: Let's go. Let's dive into the chases. Then on the gear side of things, it has things like. It's actually pretty limited. I was a little disappointed in the gear section. There's like an umbrella gun, a laser watch, exploding pen, a bulletproof tuxedo. But I think there's all of one six by nine page for the gear. It kind of establishes, like, this is how you would make more gear. But there's not. Not like a big catalog of it. Do you want to break down the chases in more detail or do you think it's worth doing that? [01:00:43] Speaker A: I don't know, but it's your point. It's, you know, momentum, and there's. Is this happening? Add this. This is happening, subtract that, and then momentum, momentum. [01:00:54] Speaker B: So. So here's. Yes, here are the steps. Establish the momentum in the first round, and I will talk about how to do that then. You bid first round in any round where a previous maneuver did not determine the order. So some maneuvers will set the order. Then the winner does a maneuver, the loser does a maneuver, and you repeat the process. It is heavily inspired by the James Bond stuff. But here's an example of like the momentum part of it that the starting momentum is the number of super spies. So versus one of you. You start with one, Right. If you're outnumbered, you have minus two momentum. If you're in a faster vehicle, you get plus two. If the opponents are in a faster vehicle, you get minus two, minus two to your momentum. Do you have a head start? Are you in a crowded area? So there's a little table that figures out, like, what does that number start at? There is this bidding phase. Maneuvers include floor it, overwhelm, fast turn, flip a U stunt reminiscent of what we were doing in Bonn when you had the motorcycle and I had the tuk tuk. Yeah. Link, link in the show, notes to the. To the vignette. And then at the back of the book, there is a very lightweight setting. The task force is covert. Clandestine operations, Vigilance and espionage Response Task Force. Covert. And who are they going against? Sean, do you have that note? Who are the bad guys? [01:02:11] Speaker A: Ah, I don't have it noted, but I did see it, and I can't remember what it was. [01:02:15] Speaker B: Well, it's disaster. [01:02:16] Speaker A: Disaster. Oh. [01:02:18] Speaker B: This is the department of Intelligence, Security, Aggression and subjugation towards everyone in reality. [01:02:27] Speaker A: Everybody in reality. [01:02:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know what? This finishes on one of my least favorite things in Role playing games. [01:02:37] Speaker A: Oh. [01:02:38] Speaker B: When a designer includes a random table and doesn't understand that the dice are giving him a bell curve and not evenly distributed results, he has a 3D6 table for action target. So in other words, it's a. Sorry, sorry, folks. I'm getting ahead of myself. There's a table that describes roll three times on it and it will build a little mission for you. Build a giant moon base with the objective being to control and corrupt all satellites. And you roll the dice to establish each of those. What are those called? The word. [01:03:12] Speaker A: Oh, Mad libs. Ad libs. [01:03:14] Speaker B: These are mad libs. So in fact, grab 3D6, Sean, and roll them. Go ahead, please. [01:03:20] Speaker A: Only have two at my desk for now, but. Okay. Three, seven. [01:03:26] Speaker B: So your mission is to turn or corrupt. Roll again. [01:03:29] Speaker A: Oh, you do it for each column. Oh, okay. Five, six, six. Yeah. [01:03:38] Speaker B: Turn or corrupt a top secret laser satellite. Roll one more time. [01:03:44] Speaker A: Six, eight. [01:03:47] Speaker B: And the villain is doing this so that they can destroy or destabilize all of covert operations. So in other words, your agency. So kind of cool, right? Like, I like the table, but the fact that it's 3D6, it kind of means that the ones that are at 9, 10, and 11 are going to come up a lot more often than anything else. So that part's not as good. It's what I would say. Like, Alan, these should be nested D6 tables so you can make it so that they come out evenly distributed. But it's easy enough to fix that. But it is funky. When I see a Designer Throw a 3D6 table up like this and I'm like one of the Destabilizer destroyers. A small country. That's 18. You're not going to roll that very often. No. However, you are going to be doing the. Get this. Guess what number 10 is for. Destroy or destabilize the popular perception of the monarchy. [01:04:41] Speaker A: What? [01:04:42] Speaker B: That's the most common thing that these bad guys are. It's. Yeah, it's kind of fun. Oh dear. However, the table itself is gold. Right? Has some good stuff on it. [01:04:52] Speaker A: It's good. Yeah. [01:04:54] Speaker B: I like it. Parting shots here. There's a pretty cool silencer rule. Just see that it's optional. [01:04:59] Speaker A: I did not. [01:05:00] Speaker B: If you are unseen by somebody. So one of the weaknesses of the tiny dungeon games and we'll get to this. You know, we're going to do our like scoring system here. Like, does it do all the things. One of the weaknesses of tiny original tiny dungeon games is that the. Even the low level enemies have like three or four health. So if you're doing one damage, the fights can be grindy. You have two actions so you can hit them twice in a round. So there are ways around it to make it less grindy. But the silencer optional rules say if you're unseen and you shoot someone with your silence pistol, they test or they die. Which is kind of cool. I kind of like that you don't have to be a special class or anything. You're just a covert badass agent who's just, you know, walking around going, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, I like it. I kind of. I kind of like that part of it. That's the gist of the game. 50 pages or so, small format, take you half an hour to read the thing, breeze through it kind of thing. Fantastic game to have at a con, I think. And this is how I played tiny dungeon. Before someone busts it out. It takes you 10 minutes to make characters and you play for a couple of hours kind of thing. So this was a game I had in mind, Sean, in our first or second episode when I. When I said I want to see how light I can go and still feel like this game has enough like, you know, gravitas enough weight, enough, you know, goodness in it on the spy side of things and the COVID action side of things to feel like it can do it without with still being interesting kind of thing. This is one of the games I had in mind. All right. Do you. Do you have the list or should I rhyme it off for you? [01:06:39] Speaker A: The whole like I don't have the list and I meant to keep that. Ah, actually I. It's probably in the notes somewhere. I could grab it if you want. [01:06:46] Speaker B: Unless I'm looking at it right now. [01:06:48] Speaker A: Oh, then you're good to go. Let it rip. [01:06:50] Speaker B: You're gonna get you to answer here. [01:06:51] Speaker A: Oh my. [01:06:52] Speaker B: Are spies competent? [01:06:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. [01:06:57] Speaker B: Even with the weapon proficiency stuff, I. [01:07:00] Speaker A: Mean I just would always do two handed weapon to smash people in the face and. [01:07:07] Speaker B: And take the berserker trade and your two handed sword. Yeah, very, very in genre you. [01:07:14] Speaker A: I mean I could play a ninja in tiny spies. [01:07:17] Speaker B: I would argue that they are not particularly competent, that they're okay, but they are not super spies as they are named. Right. [01:07:25] Speaker A: Sorry Alan. [01:07:27] Speaker B: How does it handle tradecraft? Is there. Or tradecraft elements? No, dude, there's no skills. [01:07:35] Speaker A: Oh no, no. [01:07:36] Speaker B: Well. [01:07:38] Speaker A: I suppose like that the traits. Maybe the traits are more to your point. [01:07:47] Speaker B: I think the traits could have introduced the trade craft around like understanding Signals and you know how to do dead drops and all the sort of things that let you communicate out of, you know, out of sight and all that kind of stuff. Marshall, I don't think it doesn't do any of that. [01:08:01] Speaker A: Be like water flowing through cracks. [01:08:05] Speaker B: You can be insightful, you can be lucky. You can be a marksman, a martial artist. You can be perceptive, resolute, sneaky, strong, a survivalist, tough tracker. [01:08:13] Speaker A: All right, all right, fine. [01:08:15] Speaker B: It's just not in there. I mean, the Test though, the 2D6 test at the heart of all this covers an awful lot of ground. [01:08:23] Speaker A: Yes. [01:08:23] Speaker B: I walk up to that wireless radio and you know, do I know how to put the bug in it? Yeah. Make a test. Sure you do. You're a super spy. So I think it has a way of getting around all of that. But it's not called out. Does it have chase or tailing or vehicle combat rules? [01:08:38] Speaker A: Yes. [01:08:39] Speaker B: Hell yeah, it does. Does it have social rules to interrogate, persuade, deceive or seduce? [01:08:45] Speaker A: I don't know if there is a trait for that. I hackers. [01:08:51] Speaker B: It's charismatic, I think. [01:08:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Bodyguard, brawler, Charismatic. Yes. Charismatic would do the trick. [01:09:00] Speaker B: I would say that in the same way that it has tradecraft by virtue of saying you're a super spy and make a normal test. You can do social stuff by just making a test and there's a couple of traits that will affect it. But it also does not have you need to make three tests to seduce somebody or to interrogate them. Like it's not even mentioned. It doesn't go to the same level of detail, which is not, not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not in there. Same thing for infiltration and security systems hacking. I don't. It's not called out, but the test mechanic covers an awful lot. Right. Especially if you have the right equipment. The GM could easily say you can hack a system with a normal test if you have, if you have a certain gear and you can even do it at advantage if you have like the high end gear. [01:09:47] Speaker A: I cannot believe there's not a hacking trait. [01:09:49] Speaker B: I know. Wow. I know. This is, this is kind of what I'm getting at. Like this. There's an opportunity here to take that trait list and to make it soak that in the spy. The spy brine. Like leave it in overnight, don't ring it out, put it on wet, you know, like why. [01:10:08] Speaker A: Okay, we got it. [01:10:09] Speaker B: Dude. I'm sorry. [01:10:12] Speaker A: We're different people at night. [01:10:15] Speaker B: We are. There's an opportunity to Take the trait list and to drive the espionage and the COVID action part of it. And instead it's a collection of stuff that applies in an action game. It applies, it works. Except for Berserker. And it's a, it's a missed opportunity. I think. There's no multi part challenges because the tiny Z6 games are just lighter than that. The GM can easily introduce those and say I want you to make three tests before you reach the end of the whatever or disarm the bomb or whatever. Easy to do that. Are there gadgets and vehicles? Yes. Is there reputation recognition or fame? [01:10:52] Speaker A: There is not. [01:10:56] Speaker B: Don't like that because I think that's one of the cooler parts of some of some of the other games that we've reviewed. [01:11:00] Speaker A: Well, you know, maybe in this game nobody knows who you are. Arrogant. [01:11:04] Speaker B: You're a super spy, my friend. Well, you're a super. Oh you know what? But you're a spy, not a covert action agent. So there you go. No one will ever know who you are. You're so good. Yeah, yeah, dig it. Easy Bake enemies. Did you happen to run across those? [01:11:20] Speaker A: I did not. But they are in the back of the book. There's a few examples, but I did not look at the stat blocks and I can't imagine that they're too crazy. [01:11:28] Speaker B: Easy Bake enemies. It does have actually like they're. They have like they do one damage. [01:11:34] Speaker A: They. [01:11:34] Speaker B: They have a few hit points and that's about the whole stat block. Right. Some of them may have a trait sometimes where they influence like a roll one way or the other. Like sometimes you run into a foe that will have an evasion roll or many. In many tiny D6 games, the lower level enemies only get one attack action. Even though they get two actions. They're only allowed to use one of them if they're like a minion kind of thing, that sort of thing. But that's, I don't think that's in this game. But that's in some of the, some of the tiny D6 games. I will, I will say for those who are want to roll this out to a table. If you outnumber the PCs in this game even with like minion type characters and they all can attack twice. It can get bloody very quickly, very quickly. And I've seen it in games where you know, the party's like no problem. I'm like, there's five of these things, there's only three of you. That's 10 attacks. If everything is attacking, I mean it. [01:12:25] Speaker A: Is an Economics thing when with most trad games anyway. Right. Like get the big dragon and you have a party of seven people. [01:12:33] Speaker B: So it is amplified in this game because of the multi. You can attack twice kind of thing. Is there metacurrency? No, no there's not. Is there metacurrency for the gm? No, no there's not. Is there any mention of failing forward or any of the more modern sort of concepts around games where there's no metacurrency? How do you keep the plot going? How do you keep the story moving? [01:13:00] Speaker A: Just Sol. There isn't. [01:13:01] Speaker B: There's no mention of it. [01:13:02] Speaker A: No. [01:13:03] Speaker B: It's a lighter and to be fair to it it's a lighter game than that. I do think things like the metacurrency miss the reputation myth. Like there's some pieces that really should be here and would add like one or two pages to the game if they added it kind of thing. Are there fun and or dangerous firearms? This is a such a Harrigan question. Sean doesn't care about this. [01:13:25] Speaker A: Not per Harrigan standard. [01:13:28] Speaker B: No, there's not. They're. They're super abstract, right. They do one damage to damage. That's it. Are there solid hand to hand rules? [01:13:36] Speaker A: There is martial artists, but not. [01:13:39] Speaker B: There's a martial artist trait. I would also say the evasion thing and the proficiencies. [01:13:44] Speaker A: Yes. [01:13:45] Speaker B: Can lend themselves into. There's a bit more of a mini game going on there than it's some other games. Are there rules for assisting? [01:13:51] Speaker A: I did not see that. [01:13:54] Speaker B: They're not called out directly in tiny D6 games but there are. There's various advice in different places around. Just give the person advantage. Right. If there's two agents, one's trying to climb a fence, the other one goes to help the agent over the guy gets advantage or the agent gets advantage kind of thing. But it's not called out. Do they have adventure or mission design advice or a framework in the book? No. Well, the table, that crazy 3D6 table at the end and then the last one. I should reorder these so they make a little more sense because I should put this last one with the easy bake enemies. Are there mob, rebel or mook rules? So that one, you know you can like go to go to into combat and take a lot of guys out at once. Right. Really be a hero. Do those exist in the game? No, no they do not. [01:14:38] Speaker A: One by one. [01:14:40] Speaker B: I think they list a couple of foes. [01:14:43] Speaker A: They do. They have the disaster thug, disaster soldier and Jean Pierre St. Clair. [01:14:51] Speaker B: So how many hit Points do they have? [01:14:53] Speaker A: The disaster Thug has two and then it has attacks. [01:14:58] Speaker B: The soldier has four. I gotcha. [01:15:00] Speaker A: Well as you so comment on that. The thug has two hit points, attacks, firearm, light ranged, standard test and traits zip. That's it, that's the block. Soldier has four hit points, attacks. It also has firearms, light range test with advantage, melee, light melee, standard test. Then it has traits stealthy. And then there are a couple like mods to that. You can make them a sniper, a brute, a ninja. And then of course the those come with different traits. Like sniper will come with marksman does a brute will come with tough and Die Hard. And then Jean St Pierre St Clair has more of a description of who he is. And then it's a archetype. [01:15:49] Speaker B: He's an agent, right? [01:15:50] Speaker A: Yeah, he gets an archetype and is basically an agent. It's the same as a PC. Yeah. [01:15:56] Speaker B: You know what, seeing this, I would even kind of question the Easy Bake enemies because you're having to do that cross reference thing where as soon as you get out of the like lowest level enemy you're adding a bunch of traits and every trait has a write up. That's a unique rule. I don't love it. [01:16:13] Speaker A: I think if you're doing, if you're doing the criteria of Easy Bake enemies get the level of a thug pretty straightforward. Two hit points. They're rolling at standard or disadvantage on a firearm because they have light and then it's modded. But if you get into a main one, he's a full fledged character. [01:16:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So yep. And I forget if I, if I looked at the traits or you know, if there's a trait like this or not. I think in Tiny Dungeon there actually is the ability to take out more than one like foe at a time which would lend to this kind of mob or rabble cannon fodder type rules that we're talking about. I don't think that's in the book. And I will say the thugs having two health. That is an adjustment from Tiny Dungeon. Some of the other games where usually every foe has like 3, 4, 5 hit points. Which really means like, like you're not kicking, you're not an ass kicker. Like they've got as many hit points as you do. Especially in the other games you're only doing one damage every time you hit them. So it can make for these slightly slower, slightly more grounded combats. Like these are. This is almost Cold War you know, angle as opposed to get into a room with eight people in it and take them all out quickly. The game does not do that. Even though it says super spies and high octane and the picture on the front is all the explosions and cars and girls and all that stuff. I like the game more than like, I complain about it as we go through the. The. Does it have the pieces we're looking for? I still want to play it and I still think it's so lightweight the GM can just bend it over backwards and get what they want out of it. All the pieces I mentioned that are missing. It is so easy to add that stuff. [01:17:50] Speaker A: Right. [01:17:50] Speaker B: What's your. What's your overall impression? Because I. I've been kind of dying to do this one because I know these. This series of games pretty well. I like them. I think they're flawed, but I like them. But what, what is your. Like just. Just anything interest you? Are you like, oh, I want to play this? Or is it kind of like a classic Sean moment where it's like, it's okay? [01:18:07] Speaker A: Well, I do like it because it's thin, small, and it has a universal kind of application. As we talk about the mechanics, that mechanic is good. It is. And it's simple. Like it doesn't. There's not a lot of complexity to it, which I can appreciate because I'm getting tired of some of that to some degree in other games I do like it. But to your point, I also find it like. Well, I would run a standard spy craft. Ish. And when I say spycraft, I mean the RPG D20. But use these mechanics. [01:18:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:18:45] Speaker A: And with that means. Well, they don't have Easy modown the NPCs, so that's a bit spycraft. [01:18:53] Speaker B: Spycraft didn't have that either. [01:18:55] Speaker A: No. Spycraft had the same kind of stat blocks as a D20 game. So it was just like 3, 0. So the shortcomings that you mentioned are probably the shortcomings that would be nice to kind of tweak within this and just say, well, okay, if you just hit, they just. They're gone. Or if you have five mooks, they. You roll all of them at once. Like kind of like the FFG Star wars where each one gets tougher and does more damage, but because they're a mob. [01:19:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So here's where it gets really easy. Have you played outgunned yet? [01:19:29] Speaker A: Outgun kind of does this, but I'm not as well versed in some. [01:19:32] Speaker B: So outcome would have the mob just have a set of hit points. [01:19:35] Speaker A: Right. [01:19:35] Speaker B: And as you whittle down the hit points, you're just Narrowly describing that guys are dropping, dropping. [01:19:39] Speaker A: Right. [01:19:39] Speaker B: They're still just as effective. But when that mob of five, five hit points goes down to zero, they're all done. When you get down to one or two, there's only a couple of them left standing. But it's not, it's not one for one kind of thing. [01:19:49] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:19:49] Speaker B: That's one easy way to do it in the tiny tiny spies is there's just a mob of guys and they have, they have, you know, six hit points instead of two. And there's a. It's a pack of them. You can also super easily give, give those, those mook guys the cannon fodder. Give them one hit point. Any hit takes them down. Even having them have two, that changes the whole balance of combat. It means if you have a pistol or a knife, you are never taking one of them down in one hit. Never. No matter how well you roll. And, and that. [01:20:21] Speaker A: And that's unless you role play. [01:20:24] Speaker B: That's true. That is true. And the role playing I guess could be like, you know, I get around behind him and put him in a grapple first. Then I put the gun to his head, you know, and you've succeeded at that one test, blah blah, blah. There's all kinds of ways to do it. You know, this is an interesting thing. There's a. There's a fellow by the name of Siriako that I play a lot of play by post games with. He first raised this when we first started playing tiny D6 games and play in the play by post setting. He's like, there's an awful lot more information encoded to that role that they're not using. In other words, five or six succeed. Okay, but what if a six is a little bit better than a five? Does a six give you plus one damage? Or what if you're rolling? You roll two 2D six as is the test. What if you get two fives or two successes? What does that mean? Bar has kept it very lean and mean on purpose so that you can robo dice and just you have the result instantly. Right. And I've even seen some people do like a three or four is actually like either a partial or you get a little bit of what you want kind of thing because it's not. The mechanics are not totally unlike some of the Forged in the Dark games. There's a lot you can do with it. One of the things I like so much about the system is I can fix these mook rules. I can add metacurrency, I can add hacking Da da da da da. With. With like a couple of pages of notes and you've added the bolted on what you want. But I think out of the box, this thing requires a little bit of TLC to run the way that you or I would want. Yeah, we'll play it. We'll see. [01:21:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:47] Speaker B: I'm just glad you didn't hate it. You're not like, oh, no, thank you. [01:21:51] Speaker A: Not at all. It. I mean, and it. In contrast to Cold Shadows. [01:21:55] Speaker B: Wow. [01:21:57] Speaker A: Just say wow. You guys, wait, because a lot of folks that may listen to this know how much I really wanted that, to love that game. [01:22:10] Speaker B: We didn't give it enough of a chance, man. Yeah, we didn't. [01:22:13] Speaker A: I still got plenty of copies. [01:22:15] Speaker B: Well, some of us knew from reading it that it would be a disaster. [01:22:18] Speaker A: It's weird. It's a weird one. But we'll get into that at some point. [01:22:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, we will. I think that's all I got on Tiny, Tiny Spies, man. Which is probably more. More than enough. Our. Our coverage of it is longer than the book, I suspect probably is. [01:22:33] Speaker A: You know, I was thinking to myself, well, if it's a 50, if we did James Bond and it was X amount of pages and Top Secret was Y amount of pages and we did it in two and a half hours or then, then tiny spies should be like 45 minutes, right? [01:22:48] Speaker B: Nope, not for these guys who like to talk. [01:22:50] Speaker A: That's right. [01:22:51] Speaker B: We're verbose for that. I am sorry. [01:22:54] Speaker A: That's all right. Nothing to apologize for, man. [01:22:57] Speaker B: All good. [01:22:58] Speaker A: A podcast without talkers. Oh, come on. True enough. [01:23:03] Speaker B: Tune in for Go Bag. Yeah. So maybe talking is okay. It's not such a bad thing to do about these. These games that we love. [01:23:16] Speaker A: That's right. On that note, I'm sean. On behalf of my buddy harrigan, this has been go bag. Check on the next one. See ya. Want more of sean and harrigan? You can find sean at YouTube.com @rpg sean, where he streams every Saturday at 8am central time. You can find more of harrigan's rpg musings at harriganshearth.substack.com links in the show notes this episode of go bag brought to you with help from the following field operatives, special agents, black ops directors, and front friendlies. Joe swick, roger french, merkel froehlich, tony sugarloaf, baker hus caro, laramie wall, eileen barnes, heptalima, aaron railia, wayne peacock, old school dm jeff walken, yorkis rex, eric salzweedle, phil mcclory, jason hobbs, michael o', holland, remy billido, crystal egstad, eric, avia voronak, brian kurtz, chad glamen, jim ingram, orchis dorcas, chris shore, brian rumble, victor wyatt, kevin k. Keneally, andy hall, jason weitzel, salt heart, kelly k. Ness, tad lechman, nicholas abruzzo, matthew catron, curtis takahashi, angela murray, Mr. White 20 jason connerly, shannon olson, ryan west, kristen mclean, larry hollis, glenn seal, jake at faded quill gaming tess trekkie, tim jensen, kelly ness, nubis christopher lang, crow log, peter skaines and 1d4 khan james thank you, agents. We appreciate it.