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I'e posted elsewhere that at one point we even converted our 2e D&D characters to 007 rules, we liked them so much. Armor and spells were sort of clunky that way, though. Ultimately we evolved a 007/2e Hybrid game that we'd still be playing to this day if Paizo hadn't done such a good job supporting 3.5.
Any read the Top Secret/S.I. and Agent 13 comics? Or the Double Agent novels? The novels were about Sebastian Cord.
Yes I have all of them. The novels were very much so-so but if your a big Top Secret/S.I.fan like I am, you'll still enjoy them. One of them was advertised but was never actually printed, so there are three novels available.
I have the two Agent 13 novels as well. The second one picks up where the first one leaves off as I recall. Absolutely loved the 1st one, I had a hard time putting it down. The second was ok.
The comics that came out put Agent 13 in the 1990's. They were ok as well.
I have the novels and read the first two (the Web vs Orion stories only so far) and I have all the comics, too. Yeah, they're ok. I don't have the Agent 13 novels other than the stories included in the Double Agent novels. So I haven't read them yet. I do have the first Agent 13 graphic novel. That was pretty cool.I wish there was more support for TSSI. Such a great game. The only gaming book I'm missing is F.R.E.E. America. I think I also misplaced the gadget booklet that came with the original box set. I wish all that was available in PDF. Hard to find.
Did you play pretty much by the rules as written or did you house rule a lot of things? Just curious, I like to see what others did or do with their Top Secret/S.I. game. Any particular areas of the game you found particularly great to on the weak side?
My favorite memory of Top Secret/S.I. was when a buddy of mine in the Air Force took our actual top secret stamp and stamped all the pages with it. Then he three hole punched it and stuck it in one of the black official looking binders. The guards stopped him on his way out the gate and he was still at the station three hours later when I came on shift trying to explain what was going on. Good times.
My favorite memory of Top Secret/S.I. was when a buddy of mine in the Air Force took our actual top secret stamp and stamped all the pages with it. Then he three hole punched it and stuck it in one of the black official looking binders. The guards stopped him on his way out the gate and he was still at the station three hours later when I came on shift trying to explain what was going on. Good times.
Wow, sound similar to the inverstigation TSR had back in the day by the FBI.
Here's the piece....
A note written on TSR stationery about a fictitious assassination plot (part of a playtest for the Top Secret espionage game) brings the FBI to the offices of TSR Hobbies.
For those who want to link it here you are. Go to the year 1980 and down to the fourth bullet.
My favorite memory of Top Secret/S.I. was when a buddy of mine in the Air Force took our actual top secret stamp and stamped all the pages with it.
Not terribly smart.
One of my old army buddies was great at espionage campaigns. He ran a Top Secret campaign where I was a Mossad agent. I then converted him to G.U.R.P.S.
My favorite memory of Top Secret/S.I. was when a buddy of mine in the Air Force took our actual top secret stamp and stamped all the pages with it.Not terribly smart.
One of my old army buddies was great at espionage campaigns. He ran a Top Secret campaign where I was a Mossad agent. I then converted him to G.U.R.P.S.
He was a vehicle mechanic, what can I say?
My favorite memory of Top Secret/S.I. was when a buddy of mine in the Air Force took our actual top secret stamp and stamped all the pages with it. Then he three hole punched it and stuck it in one of the black official looking binders. The guards stopped him on his way out the gate and he was still at the station three hours later when I came on shift trying to explain what was going on. Good times.That would be a pretty cool copy to have, though. Where do you think it is now? Filed away in some government warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant?
No, once everything was straightened out he got to take it home with him, so long as he did not try and bring it back on base. It's probably on a shelf in his home in Illinois.
Any read the Top Secret/S.I. and Agent 13 comics? Or the Double Agent novels? The novels were about Sebastian Cord.
I had the Agent 13 Sourcebook and at least one of the novels. That takes me back. We had a great Top Secret game that we updated to to SI once it came out. We never played it as much as D&D, but it made some of the adventures more memorable because of that.
I used the same modules but adapted them for Top Secret/S.I. I can't say I ever played Top Secret itself. Certainly some modules were better written or easier to follow than others. My experience is that the success of the module (in part anyway) has a lot to do with the style of play the Administrator and players enjoy.
We played strong plot oriented games, others were essentially commando missions, others were 33% combat 33% investigative, and 33% interaction. To me it's all good, but I do think players have their preferences.
One of my players very much preferred the straight forward..."Here's your goal, now go get them" type of approach. Thinking just wasn't in the players area of preference.
The other two players were a better mix and enjoyed the investigative sort of play.
Boils down to play style I think.
I never really played a module straight as written. I did find the original Top Secret modules to be much like a dungeon crawl and in order to peak player interest, I'd remotivate the villains and include a module as a small part of a much larger mission.
As for the Top Secret/S.I. I did the same, though the very first module was a bit tougher, as I thought it didn't link sections very well and quite frankly, I thought the injected humor (the whole movie scene thing) was terrible. I ended up editing that stuff out.
The San Cristobal modules were a huge hit, as was some of the shorter adventures in Brushfire Wars, the Orion Rising, and The WEB books.
Still, all in all, the best game I've played. The amount of extra work I put into the rules of coarse gave me a great apreciation for it which definently influenced my feelings about the game.
I'd say Top Secret/S.I. was easily are dominating game in the past 22 years. Originally I started playing D&D, but after Top Secret/S.I. I felt it just wasn't as interesting (and the rules not near as good). D&D will always be second to Top Secret/S.I. for me and one of the other players (the same one who preferred straight on fighting/roleplaying (not the investigative). The other two players have gone on record several times for saying "The rules of the game are far better than anything else they have played".
Top Secret S.I., back then for me, was the best for a spy, local, or commando scenario.
To this day, one character is still in jail, for chucking a flaming cocktail, during a shoot out, in Hard Rock Cafe, Manhattan NY, during a firefight. He threw the firebomb, straight at the upstairs serving bar.
And I asked him, 3 times, to make him understand to what he was doing.
So he did the action, after an investigation by Fed & Local law enforcement. He got busted, went to trial, and got sentenced for 20 years+.
That character was never played again. :)
And oh, he was a private dick (character wise).
Weird coincidence. I was away for the weekend, come back and sitting on my desk is the Agent 13 Sourcebook and Orion Rising. My wife found them in a box of old Mac magazines she was sending to recycle. I wouldn't have been able to find these if I'd tried. Now I'm partly excited about looking at these again and finding my box set, and partly afraid of what other gaming material has accidently gotten misplaced into the wrong boxes...
You should go and look for it know, find it, break it open and play. At least that's what I would do if I were you.
By the way, did you know that ORION stands for:
Organization Resisting Imprisonment of Nations
I did not know that. But how the heck do you lock up a nation. ;)
Unfortunately, this is a 100+ hr work week and between trying to keep at least some contact with my kids, wife, and occasionally some sleep, I won't get any time to indulge until maybe next week. But I gotta admit, I'm getting the itch...
You should go and look for it know, find it, break it open and play. At least that's what I would do if I were you.
By the way, did you know that ORION stands for:
Organization Resisting Imprisonment of Nations
I did not know that. But how the heck do you lock up a nation. ;)
Actually a friend of mine came up with the "Organization Resisting the Imprisonment of Nations" because I wanted a name that matched the letters. The imprisonment follows up on the WEB which I dubbed World Enslavement Brotherhood. So both names are homebrew, one by my friend and the other by myself.
The enslavement concept comes from WEB attempting to run governements and how they orchestrate events to meet their goals of world domination. A dominated country is essentially enslaved or imprisoned through the machinations of WEB.
I remember when I was first heavily getting into gaming, I found the original Top Secret on the used rack at my FLGS. I was enamoured of TSR at the time, and trying to discover the history and origins of RPGs (when I get into something, I GET INTO it) so I just had to have it.
It was a fun game, the rules were kinda scatterbrained, but then again, so was everything TSR back then.
MisterSlanky
(Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
Man this brings up some memories. We played the hell out of Top Secret/S.I. and I still have a monstrous collection of books. I remember going all over the Twin Cities looking for the Agent 13, Superhero (forget the name of that one), and Commando books.
Mister Slanky, a Top Secret/S.I. Fan? Great, you found my thread. What is even greater is you live in my neck of the woods. Do you do all your gamer shopping at the Source Comics and Games? Ever use any of those Top Secret/S.I. articles out of Dragon Magazine?
Your elusive book was entitled Free Lancers. There was also a companion for it called F.R.E.E. America.
Eileen, are you still playing TSSI?
Not playing it currently, its my favorite game but right now I'm busy designing my own game based on the Legion of Super-Heroes. Although I just recently bought another 007 drawing poster of Sean Connery (thanks to the Mall of America). Got to decorate the walls of the gaming room you know. I've considered a Top Secret/S.I. PBP but my work on the game has inflated the rules so much I think it would be hard to teach over Paizo, I'm having the same problem with my Legion game. It's tough for people to learn a new game and then try and play PBP style.
How about you? What corners are you lurking about these days?
MisterSlanky
(Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
Mister Slanky, a Top Secret/S.I. Fan? Great, you found my thread. What is even greater is you live in my neck of the woods. Do you do all your gamer shopping at the Source Comics and Games? Ever use any of those Top Secret/S.I. articles out of Dragon Magazine?
Your elusive book was entitled Free Lancers. There was also a companion for it called F.R.E.E. America.
I try to spread my shopping around to the game stores I like in the cities. The Source has always gotten the bulk of my money, but I also do some at Dreamers and Village Games. I actually bought most of my Top Secret SI collection at The Source before it was the current incarnation (it was the version that went out of business due to awful business practices). I haven't actually seen a lot of the Dragon Magazine stuff though; somewhere I have the old Dragon archive on CD, maybe I'll have to dig through it.
Yes...I remember having both. I remember it taking me years to figure out what they meant by "social vampire."