My first taste of Top Secret actually came from the late 80s edition of the game, Top Secret/S.I. I really had fun with that game, and used the engine to run a campaign based on the M.A.S.K. cartoon/toys from the 80s. But we’re talking about the OG Top Secret now, the boxed set released in 1980 by TSR, written by The Administrator himself, Merle Rasmussen. Top Secret was, of course, an espionage RPG. It was the Cold War, and spies were awesome subject matter- heck, there was even an official James Bond 007 RPG from Victory Games, and the film Cloak and Dagger portrayed tabletop spy RPGs on screen.
Top Secret used d10s, usually rolled percentile, to figure things out. But it wasn’t as straightforward as, say, RuneQuest or Marvel Superheroes. No, there was a complex set of subsystems for combat that involved charts and knowing the attacker’s maneuver, and the defender’s attempt to mitigate it. In my old age, I find it endearing, but fiddly. As a kid I thought it was awesome- how realistic!
Like many other games of the era, it used a class and level system similar to D&D, right down to titles for each level of each class. Classes, in this case, were different Sections of the Agency, like Investigation, Confiscation, and Assassination. Much like D&D, each had different experience point requirements to level up. Since I had the Companion from the same time I got the OG boxed set, we’ll use the main rulebook plus the Companion for this character. Let’s dive in and create ourselves a spy!
Character Creation System:
In Top Secret, agents have six Primary Personal Traits. These are Physical Strength, Charm, Willpower, Courage, Knowledge and Coordination. We generate them by rolling d100 in order, and consulting a table. The table makes sure none of the rolls are too low, any roll from 01-25 gets a +25 bonus, from 26-50 a +15, and so forth.
After some die rolls and chart lookups, our agent looks like this:
- Physical Strength 49
- Charm 51
- Willpower 87
- Courage 79
- Knowledge 44
- Coordination 48
- Offense 64
- Deception 65
- Evasion 50
- Deactivation 46
- Observation 66
- Shock Resistance 83
- Movement Value 184
- Life Level 14
Finally, the Tertiary Personal Traits
- Perception 72
- HTH Combat Value 99
- Surprise Value 115
Now we roll personal appearance, but height is dependent on sex, so rather than choose, I’ll roll odd=male, even= female. II roll and get even- female. Rolling for height, we get above average, add 1”. Our Agent is now 5’6. Jumping over to the Companion, we get a weight of 128lbs. And while we’re at it, we get an age of 18 (rolling VERY low), righ handed, 20/20 vision, a blood type of O+, a body type of Average, and an Alignment of Neutral Conservative Unionist (?!?!)
Now we compare our Knowledge of 44 with a table for languages, we speak one additional at a score of 56, and roll 3d10+70 for fluency in English. 77. Another LOW roll, but it’ll work. Now it’s time to roll for Areas of Knowledge to see what the spy knows lots about. This agent knows five knowledges, due to Knowledge of 44 divided by ten and rounding up being 5.
Rolling, we get the following:
Player’s Choice at 113
Player’s Choice at 92
Hydraulic Engineering at 125
Medicine/Physiology at 60
Naval Science at 89
Now we choose a bureau. What the hell, let’s go Assassination. So our agent’s title is Punk, and she needs 500xp to level up to Thug. She begins the game with $400. Oh, thanks to the additional details from the Companion, we also know she’s Lower Upper Class.
Oh wow. How to explain an 18-year-old Assassin with grad-level expertise in Hydraulic Engineering and Civil Engineering...
The Character:
Born: 22 April 1963 (Age 18)
PRODIGY is something of an odd tool in the Agency’s toolbox. Born to a Belgian agricultural scientist and American naval engineer, she was raised in a series of third-world nations as her parents took part in more than a decade’s worth of charitable service. She was educated on the road by both parents, becoming proficient in her mother’s trade of medicine and agriculture, as well as becoming her father’s assistant on infrastructure projects and wargaming partner. She absorbed all these topics like a sponge.
In 1978, both parents and all adult members of their mission in Africa were killed by what appeared to be a local warlord. The Agency had suspicions of Soviet backing, and agents investigating found PRODIGY, alone and afraid, but in possession of her father’s pistol and the resolve to defend herself. She was brought back to the US with the Agents to be placed in foster care, but began to suss out just who it was that had rescued her. Once she had pieced it together, she asked to be recruited, so that she might be able to help crack the mystery of who was behind the murder of the 26 Americans killed that day.
In the last few years, PRODIGY has soaked up everything the Agency has thrown at her and shows remarkable courage and willpower, but an odd deficiency at times in more mundane studies. She can field strip an in-line hydraulic turbine in her sleep, but misses out on popular culture references and rituals of daily life in the US having been raised in a grab bag of underdeveloped nations. Her English is still lightly accented despite her best efforts, and while conversationally fluent she is still much more comfortable in French.
We are still unsure what kind of wetwork asset PRODIGY will be. Every test we have thrown at her seems to indicate she will perform well, but there is still a concern that she’s an 18-year-old young woman motivated more by vengeance than any sort of national loyalty or idealism. Time will tell.
<<This is not the OG Character Sheet, it is an Excel sheet I made to help create Top Secret characters>>
My Thoughts:
OK, that was fun. And I used a spreadsheet I created that auto-calcs some things, to make the whole process a bit faster. It does spotlight just how strange and awkward totally random character gen can be, but in the end I think I came up with a backstory that would be fun to play.
I re-read the combat section of the rulebook and it reminded me why I tend to reach for Top Secret S.I., White Lies, or even 007 or Ninajs & Superspies. The combat system is interesting- pick an attack, enemy picks a defense, look up result. Available choices limited by training. The system strains when more than one opponent are involved. Fire combat is a bit needlessly complex. But this is normal fare for a 70s or 80s game design striving for realism.
The mission system is one of those quirky things I just love. Roll up a random mission, determine the opponents randomly, and the XP and payout are calculated using a formula. Base pay for some missions is a paltry amount like $15 or $25, that will be multiplied and manipulated into a final payment. Makes me want to run a campaign just to see if the Agency pays well enough for the agents to afford a damned apartment. Maybe in the early 80s.
I want to run this, just to experience it again. I ran it for a short while after I acquired it shortly after I became a dad in 2011. As I said, I started gaming in ‘86, and I got my start with TS:S/I and James Bond 007 where spies are concerned. And Ninjas & Superspies remains a guilty pleasure.
Thing is, the more I re-read it, the more I love some parts, but find others just too damn crunchy. Which just tells me I’m getting old, because teenage and early 20s me loved crunchy games. If I had more gaming time, it might be different. But these days I keep gravitating toward Old School Renaissance and games with simple systems, because I want to get games up and running quickly. I do love this game, and I loved playing it with the author at North Texas RPG Con, but it is definitely an artifact of its time. A good one, with lessons to teach, but perhaps a bit creaky by modern standards.
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