Episode 86: Al-Qaeda Doesn’t Read Their Comments
April 25th, 2014 | Robin
Pull up an extra special chair in the Gaming Hut as we look at ways to put guest players to good use.
In the Tradecraft Hut, Ken helps listener Rick Jonzz start a beginner’s tradecraft bookshelf.
In Ask Ken and Robin, Joshua Weiss wonders what we might say about miniatures in narrative-based gaming.
Then we flip Ken’s Time Machine to mythic setting, assigning him to stop Circe from turning Odysseus men into pigs.
It’s yo ho ho and a pocketful of doubloons as Atlas Games surveys the seven seas from the crow’s nest that is our coveted anchor sponsor slot. Parrot on its shoulder, it orders up another special deal for Ken and Robin listeners, this time in the form of their innovative game of piratical nautical warfare, Pieces of Eight.
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Here are a few links to some tradecraft ideas, but they aren’t very action focused:
– https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/02/24/art-deception-training-new-generation-online-covert-operations/
– https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation
Bibliography
Dulles, Allen (1963) – The Craft of Intelligence: America’s Legendary Spy Master on the Fundamentals of Intelligence Gathering for a Free World.
Furst, Alan (1991) – Dark Star.
Furst, Alan (1988) – Night Soldiers.
Le Carre, John (1979) – Smiley’s People
Wallace, Robert and H. Keith Melton (2009) – Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda.
For the last several years, I’ve been running a solo game set in the mythological Greek world for my wife. When her character Kynthia decided to try to find a cure for Scylla, she had to petition Circe, who was responsible for the monstrous curse. Kynthia took advantage of her (IC and OOC) knowledge of the Argonautica to promptly claim status as a suppliant (as Jason and Medea did) which invoked the sacred rules of hospitality that Hestia and Zeus enforce. As a result, Circe was not able to directly harm her, and heard her out. Then, to get rid of her unwelcome guest, Circe sent Kynthia on an impossible mission to collect fabulous ingredients for the antidote. Which, this being an epic game, Kynthia eventually accomplished. The witch grudgingly brewed the cure, but she *really* despises our heroine now.