World War Cthulhu: Cold War - Convert Actions - Review

I've been looking for a Smiley's People game and World War Cthulhu: Cold War (WWC: CW) delivers. All the books use CoC 7th Edition rules. The setting is 1970s. I ran all 6 scenarios from Covert Actions and really enjoyed the games. I did realize there was a formula to the scenarios though. There's a MI6 mission and a Section 46 mission (Section 46 is a covert anti-Mythos organization), so there's really 2 missions in every scenario which makes for a good complicated scenario. The two missions do not necessarily have to have anything to do with each other and succeeding in one may necessitate failing in the other. So, really cool choices for the PCs.

There are a few minor typos in Covert Actions and not all missions spell out the mission rewards completely. e.g. There should be SAN rewards for completing the mission, Trust rewards/penalties for the MI6 mission, Trust rewards/penalties for the Section 46 mission. Not all scenarios provided a good breakdown of the rewards, so I had to make some up on the spot. Basically it should be +/-1d6 Trust for MI6 success/failure and the same for Section 46 success/failure.

The scenarios have loads of real life locations, but not enough illustrations, so I did massive Googling of pictures for every scenario. And that added a lot of flavor to every game. In some scenarios, 10 locations are mentioned without much description (and in only a few pages), but once I Googled the locations, things came to life.

My favorite scenarios were: The Forcing Move and Puddles Becomes Lakes.
Least favorite: Operation Header.

In preparation for running, I read a lot of real life spy books: "Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service," "Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad," "The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage," "The New Spymasters: Inside Espionage from the Cold War to Global Terror," "A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal," "A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia's War with the West," and "Operation Shakespeare: The True Story of an Elite International Sting." There must be some unspoken rule about using colons in a non-fiction spy book title. 😎

Upon reading these books, I found that WWC: CW lacked some details and I used the details I found in the books to good use. For instance, every diplomat in Russia gets followed and it takes about 4 hours of Tradecraft before you can figure out if you've lost your tail or not (90% certainty). So, it's not a simple, I go out and then try to lose my tail. It's a I gotta meet my asset, so I'll leave 4 hours before our meeting time. If I think I'm being followed, I don't meet my asset. This also explains meeting in parks and graveyards where you can easily spot a tail or watchers.

For those interested, I built a website for the games with recording of the Sessions, lists of PCs, NPCs, and Handouts. Website Link Here.