Classic Spy Games

[snake]

Hi.

Anyone remember this classic ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Secret_%28role-playing_game%29.

The third game I ever played and one of the best. As it came out in 1981, I guess the release of SC 3.0 in 2011 could be considered a sort of anniversary for espionage games. 

Other good spy games like Danger International, James Bond 007 and Ninjas and Superspies followed but I still remember TS, a Russian spy PC, an English Spy PC and their mission to capture a deadly laser weapon in a small town called Sprechenhaltestelle. Ah, nostalgia !!!!!!!

What was your best Spy game or adventure ?

[Aldus Vertten]

For me was a spanish Rpg, Mutants in the Shadows (1991)... Government agencies from all over the world struggling for control of the psi's, treating them almost as slaves, and in the middle of it a mercenary agency, Prometheus, created by a mutant that escaped and created is own agency to fight back... I only played, not Gm'd, but later i got the second edition book. Still waiting for a rumored third edition...

[Goodlun]

Hi.

Anyone remember this classic ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Secret_%28role-playing_game%29.

The third game I ever played and one of the best. As it came out in 1981, I guess the release of SC 3.0 in 2011 could be considered a sort of anniversary for espionage games. 

Other good spy games like Danger International, James Bond 007 and Ninjas and Superspies followed but I still remember TS, a Russian spy PC, an English Spy PC and their mission to capture a deadly laser weapon in a small town called Sprechenhaltestelle. Ah, nostalgia !!!!!!!

What was your best Spy game or adventure ?

I still remember being introduced to top secret by one of my Sisters boy friends and boy did it blow me away up till then all I had played was AD&D 1st edition it was nice to get out of the fantasy realm and into the realm of spys.  Unfortunately for me my gaming group at the time pretty much only really wanted to do fantasy stuff.
I still have the two books around here it was a fun game but really is dated when you go back and look at it.
 
I am still a fan of Ninjas and Superspies(all though to be honest more for the ninjas than the superspies).  In fact NSS is actually becomes a reasonably decent game with  this netbook http://www.kuseru.com/  and the couple of rifters that had more martial arts and rule revisions.  I still even play it from time to time in fact have a game coming up this weekend.
I think Lee Casebolt's grappling changes presented in rifter #3 as well as the styles he has added to that netbook.  To be honest I would really like to see that Kuseru fellow and Lee Casebolt do up a martial arts book for mastercraft it would interesting to get that sort of detail in a system that is just inherently better.  

[Bill Whitmore]

I loved the setting for Top Secret.  We had our group which consisted of a former members of the FBI, KGB, LAPD and I think we had CIA.

Us: "So you think your KGB buddies may know anything about this?"
Russian: "There is no such thing as the KGB."
Us: "Yea we know, but would they?"
Russian: "I'll check."

[mathey]

Top Secret!

Weirdly, I didn't get around to playing it until the S.I. boxed set came out. I dug pretty deep into it once I did, though. They had some neat tweaks to what it could do with all the genre-based source books; I was especially fond of the Agent 13 stuff that transformed it into a pulp adventure RPG.

Ninjas and Superspies had a pretty terrible system but I could pretend to know about martial arts after making a few dozen characters with it. The Mystic China sourcebook was particularly cool, as it introduced a bunch of authentic Chinese philosophy, myth, and setting.

I wish I had gotten into the old James Bond RPG back when it was out. Years after it was out of print, I got a strategy game based on the volcano base attack at the end of You Only Live Twice and a boxed set called Masterminds which were both pretty nice. I know the car chase rules were meant to be pretty nifty and informed some of what Dramatic Conflicts worked like in 2.0.

[Desertpuma]

I love Top Secret!!

I still have all of my old stuff including the Companion and all the mods (not just Sprechenhalstelle but also Rapidstrike, Lady in Distress, Ace of Clubs, Fastpass, and Orient Express). One of the things I really enjoyed was the information in there about the retribution enemy agents could render to the PCs and how they could be chased down or located.

[snake]

Glad to see someone else remembers TS. For some reason, it did seem to encourge groups of agents from different counties to team up. Still it was the era of detente and the thaw in the Cold war. The Adventures were brilliant. Must have played it almost every week for a year back then.  

There was  lot of good inspiration in fiction too then - John Gardners Bond Novels and Adam Halls Quiller stuff.

Mutants in the Shadows sounds cool.

I remember the Mystic China setting for Ninjas and Superspies rocked and the gadgets (jetpacks !!!) in NSS were good too.

The best thing about JB game were the supplements - Thrilling Locations (low down and maps on exotic settings like Casino at Monte Carlo, Bermuda etc) and the Q manual (every Bond gadget with stats !!!)

Some of the mechanics in these games were excellent too. TS had a sort of Martial Arts Dramatic Conflict (Separately choose attack and defense then compare).    

[tracker7]

Heck yeah Top Secret/SI! The first game I ever played with hit locations and advantages/disadvantages.

Want a high-profile cover? High Stakes Gamble has that for you - operating as a Formula 1 racing team.

Heavier-grade butt-whuppery? Commando, with some very cool rules for what happens when things don't go at all according to plan.

Proto-cyberpunk? F.R.E.E. Lancers, with a broken-up United States and limited superpowers and some early cybernetics.

I love this thing, still.

[Grimace]

My group played Top Secret every weekend for at least 2 years.  We went from being the "John Wayne Gang" (we did a lot of frontal assaults in broad daylight) to "The Sunshine Boys" (Made a bunch of cash and used it on plastic surgery to increase our looks).

After our surgeries we got into the habit of praying "not the face" when we got damaged in combat.  LOL!

Another good system was Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes.

[Golden Dragon]

Nobody has mentioned my favorite TS/SI supplement: Agent 13, part noir, part superhero.

EDIT: My error. Noted below.

[Big_Jim]

Really? 

...I was especially fond of the Agent 13 stuff that transformed it into a pulp adventure RPG.

My first Spycraft 1.0 campaign was dusting off my old TS adventures and running those. I especially enjoyed running the three adventure arc from Dragon magazine... The Floating Island Mission (AKA Doctor Yes), Mad Merc: The Alulu Island Mission, and the capstone adventure: Whiteout. The team then ended up nuking Los Angeles in Operation: Seventh Seal, I believe, and ended the campaign.

[snake]

Ah, Doctor Yes, Mad Merc and Whiteout - classics. Its strange but I played those adventures years ago and then more recently I bought half-remembered ideas from them together in an SC adventure for my current group of players. And it was a hit !!. Guess a classic is a classic is still a classic.