HA! You thought all of these modules would either involve dungeons or dragons, didn’t you?
Well … think again.
Top Secret isn’t a great spy game (the criminally under-rated James Bond 007 RPG wins that particular honor), but it’s a very good one. I never played it all that much, at least not in comparison to D&D or some other games, but I enjoyed the hell out of it (along with Gamma World) when I first got into gaming. I first played Top Secret in an adventure that I think was called “Whiteout” that was published in Dragon Magazine … and then, later, I ran and played a few other modules, including one standout called “Operation: Rapidstrike!”.
The rules for Top Secret are a typical example of the TSR games published in the late 1970s and early 1980s – a mishmash of systems and subsystems, some related to one another, some not. Top Secret actually doesn’t hold much resemblance to D&D, apart from its loose usage of “classes” (player characters can belong to one of three espionage bureaus – Investigation, Confiscation, and Assassination). If anything, it’s reminiscent of a more complicated and detailed version of Boot Hill, with a reliance on lots of percentile-based rules, and with a pretty nasty and lethal combat system, especially when it comes to firearms.
The main rules and the early adventures didn’t provide much details for the campaign setting of Top Secret, but that was okay – like most of the games of that era, I think it was kind of expected that DMs (or Administrators, in the case of Top Secret) would be making up their own campaign worlds. About the only thing I found frustrating about the game, then and now, is the relative lack of technology. If you wanted a gadget-filled campaign that would make James Bond envious, Top Secret was not the spy game for you. (Said gadgets only came in later supplements, and only for the revised version of the game, Top Secret S.I.). It’s not necessarily a bad thing … it just means that choices are limited. Any Top Secret adventure is going to run more along the lines of the stripped down “Casino Royale” than the over-the-top “Moonraker”.
And speaking of adventure … this one was my favorite.
Besides being a module that’s just plain fun, “Operation: Rapidstrike!” is a shining example of one of my favorite tools when it comes to writing adventures: the Ticking Clock. Used sparingly, the Ticking Clock is a great way to nudge players in a certain direction without railroading them. It basically means that unless the players do something in a certain timeframe, dire consequences occur. (I also call it the “Or Else” method – you need to do this, or else …)
A badly written Ticking Clock is one that involves black-and-white consequences – do this, or die. Do this, or the bad guys get the atomic bomb and blow up the city. You never want to pin players back to something truly horrible if they fail, especially if the reason they fail is just plain bad luck. Rather, the Ticking Clock should mean that success makes future actions easier, and failure means things become tougher later on, but not impossible. As a tool for the DM/Administrator, the Ticking Clock provides a way to keep the adventure moving, and to keep the players from either preparing for every possible contingency, or from arguing over plans, details, and other minutia that in excess can detract from the adventure. (Don’t get me wrong – I love sitting behind the game master’s screen, watching the players concocting plans! – but when it takes an hour to decide something simple like what door to take, things need to be pushed along, and a Ticking Clock serves nicely for pushing.)
A spy adventure, of course, is a perfect place for a Ticking Clock – and “Operation: Rapidstrike!” features four of them running simultaneously. The players’ mission is to rescue a kidnapped scientist, Dr. Felix Fendelmann, who (of course) inadvertently created a deadly drug known as Zucor. The evil Mademoiselle Larreau abducted Fendelmann and forced him to create large supplies of Zucor on a secluded island. The players are expected to rescue Fendelmann, destroy the supplies of Zucor, learn about Mademoiselle Larreau’s evil plans (and possibly neutralize her), and also locate a mole on the island known only as “Gregor”, who has been supplying information to the player character’s agency. It's a tall order, but it's not impossible.
What makes things interesting is how the players choose to approach achieving these goals. Depending on what they choose to do first, later goals may become either easier or more difficult. It might be easier to rescue Fendelmann early on in the adventure, for example, but having to drag him along throughout the adventure might pose some problems, and might cause Larreau’s guards to up the security on the Zucor supply if news of Fendelmann’s rescue spreads across the island. Also, if the players take too long in accomplishing their goals, Larreau and some of her henchmen might leave the island with their supplies of Zucor, causing the players’ mission to end in failure.
There aren’t any particular “WOW!” moments that make the module truly stand out, and I suppose that’s my main complaint about the adventure – there’s no signature moment that’s particularly memorable. But it’s very good all the way through, and there aren’t any weak moments in the adventure, either. If anything, I think it’s a better version of “Keep on the Borderlands” in that it seems to be designed to show off the rules of the game and what they can do, so that players in the adventure can better learn how the game works. There’s plenty of fighting, plenty of investigation, plenty of roleplaying opportunities, and plenty of action … depending on what the players choose to do, there’s even a potential chase scene involving a helicopter, which is kind of cool. It might not be the best spy adventure ever written, but it’s action-packed and always fun.
Better yet, it’s solid. Like a lot of the other modules being covered in NaClaMoMo, it hits that great balance between being open-ended and covering all contingencies. The players are free to do a lot of things in “Operation: Rapidstrike!” and the module is written in such a way that the players can do all of them in many different ways, in many different sequences of order – there’s not a lot of railroading going on in the adventure. But it’s also not so open that it’s a total free-for-all, which might be a disaster for somebody new or inexperienced running the module. It's got goals and direction, just not a specific order in which they need to be accomplished. It’s got that nice balance of firm guidelines that are flexible enough to let players make a lot of choices, but still keep the adventure on track towards a grand finale. Not many modules hit that sort of balance, but “Operation: Rapidstrike!” nails it perfectly.
I picked up the boxed set of “Top Secret” about a year ago on eBay on a lark, mostly to see if the game was as good as I remembered, or if my fond memories of the game were colored with nostalgia. It wasn’t quite as good as I remembered … but it was still pretty good nonetheless. And so was “Operation: Rapidstrike!”
Both are great examples of a different age of gaming. Not better, not worse … just different. And fun.
I’d love to run “Operation: Rapidstrike!” at GenCon someday for some friends.
Maybe I’ll see you at the table.
Assuming, of course, you choose to accept the mission.
