I own both version 1.0 and 2.0 of the Spycraft Roleplaying Game. I even remember going to a friends house and playing in a massive session. It may have been a Living Spycraft game or it may have been part of the Game Control (GC is the Game Master) created world. I remember we had to make a raid on a stronghouse and we spent most of the game planning our way to infiltrate and obtain the goal before we had to shoot our way out.
Being a big James Bond fan I had always been interested in espionage RPGs. This fandom was expanded by the video game series No One Lives Forever. Someday I’m going to create a sourcebook for the NOLF characters and events and I’ve always thought that Spycraft would be the system I would use for it. NOLF is where UNITY originated from that is need of new agents. Agents I am creating with this Character Creation Challenge. Today we are creating Oliver Chamberlain, who’s name I pulled from [REDACTED]. So far no one has guessed where I’m pulling these names from.
Spycraft v2.0 is a modified D20 system. The publisher added a few spins to the game to make it fit into the world of super spies and blazing guns. The first step is to create the concept. Originally I was going to make Chamberlain a Hacker since that is one of the classes in Spycraft, but then it hit me, in 1968 they didn’t really have hackers like those listed in the book. So I changed the concept to Intruder. Basically an infiltration expert that is also good at getting equipment by any means necessary.
As a D20 system, it has the standard attributes. STR, DEX, CON INT, WIS and CHA. However you don’t roll the 3d6 to generate the scores. Like the EverQuest RPG, you start out with a base score of 8 and then you have so many points to increase the attributes you want to use. For Spycraft you have 36 points and a chart with a rising score cost (slightly different than the EQRPG) Chamberlain needed a good DEX and WIS score so I concentrated there. Next you selected your Origin which consisted of Talents and Specialties. These would almost make up a background history to build upon, but they would also adjust your ability scores amongst other things. Chamberlain is an Orphaned Criminal. After adjusting the stats he ended up with the following. STR: 10, DEX: 17, CON: 11, INT: 10, WIS: 15, CHA: 10.
I wrote down the information for the Intruder class. The skills were very detailed with sub-skills that are automatically gained underneath and result caps. It was all very crunchy. But I selected the skills I thought that an Intruder would need to be successful. I also selected Burglar for his level 1 feat. I noticed that the feats are just as detailed as the skills are. Very crunchy, which isn’t a bad thing for detailed play. Next you selected interests (hobbies basically) which may add bonuses to certain checks if the GC agrees. Now we are up to step 7 which his selecting a sub-plot. Chamberlain has a nemesis (which I won’t create now) that may pop up every once in a while.
Next step is filling in the missing blanks like Vitality Points (i.e. hit points) and the like. I’m glad that the RAW has the 1st level characters starting out at max VP. I filled in the rest of the items as instructed. Then we got to the gearing up. Again the game had a lot of details here. If I was just starting a campaign, I’d ask the GC for a few items appropriate for my class (lock picks, rope) a weapon (pistol with a silencer) and a motorcycle and I called it good. I’m sure the excess detail will make sense if I was actually playing, but for this challenge, I’m done. Here is the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
I love it when a RPG book contains a quick guide for character creation in one location so you can see all of the steps at once. The Spycraft 2.0 book did this very well with some sections color coded. However even with this helpful section, there were still sections that I would have relied on a GC to answer any questions. I know that there are sections of the sheet that are blanks.
Overall though I could see myself playing this system like I had before. I think the GC at the time was someone connected with the publisher of the game so he explained it very easily. Plus, as I mentioned above, we did more role-playing than dice rolling. But as I was assembling this character and reading the rules, my mind started homebrewing stats for agents I had seen in video games and other media.
Additional Notes:
I’ve noticed that Twitter’s hashtag search is much more efficent and user-friendly than Facebook’s. I haven’t come across any new blogs or message boards yet. But I am very impressed with some of the blog entries. While I’m reading them, I feel like I’m sitting down at the table with the writer as they explain the character. Plus I’m seeing some very interesting insights on some of the different games out there. Keep it up.
Coming Up Next:
The Prime Directive D20 RPG