ESPION - the game of spies (CLOSED)

Thanks for the comments, they show a great grasp of character which promises to result in a geat game for us all!

I will change to the Breakfall speciality. Originally I had infact considered including Parachuting in Marcus' talents but noticed that no one had yet considered aircraft piloting in their selections so opted for it (because being a helicopter pilot is kewl:)). However you are correct that parachute (and the extension to Breakfall) is a better choice and fits more with the character.

The Camo was intended to apply to Urban areas as well as wilderness and I thought this would fit in with his CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue) training. So for instance Marcus might be trying to extract hostages from a Factory/Hidden chemical weapon plant on the edge of a small city in Iraq (ie a built up area) or in his 'contract protection' roles he may have had to stand by in a hotel lobby and then suddenly 'disappear' when he spots a known suspect - that sort of thing...

As to knowledge skills I had considered linguistic talent (to tie in with his looks like a local one) ie he knows basic phrases in many different languages in order to better help him blend in (however didn't want to trespass on Jason Paquin multilingual specialty. The possibility of some knowledge of chemicals (ie Farm Supplies + SAS) also presents itself

PS Did Festy Dog cc you about the oposible link between Carl and Marcus? (which I will include in Marcus' history)
 

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Ah, Tonguez... I understand. Hmm... well, how about this idea. Why don't we split up your idea for what you wanted Camoflauge to do and put parts of it into Looks Like A Local and Survival? And we'll change the name of LLAL into "Unobtrusive". What this is is the ability to meld in the background of populate areas and to not draw attention to yourself. You don't have the ability of "stealth" per se (where you can move quickly and silently across all manner of ground cover and in all types of shadow), nor do you have the ability to impersonate people should you be confronted (which Carl has with his Disguise specialty)... but like Indiana Jones did in Raiders in the sub, you can knock a guy out, put on his uniform, and walk through an area without immediately being hassled.

For Survival, we can assume that part of the process of the speciality is also being unobtrusive in the wild as well. Here, however, you WILL have more stealth capabilities (being able to hide and move with little sound, plus avoid leaving tracks) because you are more in tune with the outdoors.

Without a major change to your history and how you were trained... I'm trying to avoid Marcus getting all "ninja" on us... moving from shadow to shadow in all manner of area completely unseen... because that takes mucho training... especially when it applies to all kinds of enviroments (snow, forest, city, interiors, desert etc.) However, if you are familiar with videogames at all... I'm thinking that while in urban areas, Marcus is like "Hitman" rather than "Thief". Hope this makes sense and let me know if you're cool with that.
 

Defcon,
Is it possible to also be considered? I noticed you had a couple of people drop out. I would love to give you references, but alas I have none. Instead, if you do not like my writing style, than treat me like a star trek red shirt and kill me off. Hopefully an offer like that is a win win situation for you. You either win by liking my style or you win by having an early death to create a plot hook.

I just found out about this forum today. As to my game experience, I have only played D&D 1e & 3E, nothing else so I have no bias about other game systems. I started a d20 modern, but the DM pulled out. It was done at nothingland, but that place is no more. I currently live in DC so doing those details is super easy.

Before I build up a big character I have an outling of a male, former/current military, with specialties of explosives, photographic memory, linguistics, TBD & TBD and hubris - reckless. His hook for being in his his work within the US intelligence community. Through them he was noticed and picked.

So what say you?
 

Well, I edited a bit, and you'll notice I did change the multilingual to multicultural, kind of a cosmopolitan type thing. Also, seeing where you were headed with the envious thing, I decided to change it to a serious need for recognition. I think that fits a little better with why he would want to learn everything he could. Lemme know what you think.
 

Ranger Rick...

Sorry dude... but because this is a formless game, I really need to check people's previous work to find out if their writing style will fit in with how the game is going to play. If you haven't done any online-rpging... your best bet is to start with any of the regular games that pop up on occasion. This Espion thing is really for experienced rp writers who are able to work and create without needing the actual D&D (or any game) rules to serve as a backbone to the story. Even if you are a really good writer... I still need to check to make sure that your particular STYLE of writing will mesh with both my own picadillos and those of the other players. Sorry about that... but it's the only way I feel comfortable.
 

Hey shadowbloodmoon...

It's getting there... it's certainly getting there. I really like many of the aspects you are beginning to play up.. and as you do, I'm finding some of your other choices are slowly falling by the wayside and which we can change in order to create a cohesive whole. Having read the whole thing now edited... I'm thinking that it could do with a "re-write" as it were, rather than a simple edit. This way you can recreate the story as a cohesive whole, rather than leaving it a bit disjointed where you added/sbtracted certain areas in certain drafts. Plus, there's some timeline problems I found in there, which I'm sure you'll want to fix up. So let's go through the current incarnation step-by-step, shall we? :)

I think the new intro to Jason really works. Having Mark (presumably an older brother) following his father around and learning the family business, while Jason remained at home twiddling his thumbs is a cool concept and it really sets the groundwork for the character. I'm wondering whether you want to leave it 14 years old that he leaves (with the hired guns following him) because of what you have happening to him later on... but we can figure that out as we go along (another option might be him just running away at like 16 or so with no one following him).

Then he goes on his travels. Here is where I think you need to go some reconfiguing of your story, because you tried to squeeze both my suggestions into the same character... world traveller PLUS eight years in a Buddhist monestary. It really needs to be one or the other, because your timeline had him leaving home at 14, he spent 8 years in a monestary learning Buddhist ways, he then spent 12 more years spanning the globe before returning home two decades after leaving, then he spent countless years working criminal activities before taking down his family's syndicate then somehow getting into the CIA. This would make the character probably upwards of 40 years old... which is not what I think you were going for, if I'm not mistaken.

The problem I think you've run into is that you're trying to keep your five specialities you selected and jury-rig a history to encompass all of them. And your five specialties are so different from one another, it's not making much character sense to keep them all, and thus is hanstringing your history.

As I've said previously... your characters already know how to do EVERYTHING... and do them all very well. In D&D terms... every one of your characters have max ranks in all the D&D skills. You all are master marksmen, you all can fly jets, you can all sneak through darkened areas, you all have contacts around the world, you all can speak multiple languages, you all can influence people. You have every skill you might need. All the five specialties are, are those five skills in D&D that you not only have max ranks in, but also have the Skill Focus feat in as well. You're just that much better at that one particular thing than the agents around you. But the only way you gain that skill focus is having it be an integrated part of your character's history... something that is very specific and has been an integral part of your character's make-up from the beginning.

So that being said... you need to decide which history you want to go with... world traveller OR Buddhist monk (or some other plot you might come up with). It doesn't matter what. The important thing though is to create a history outside the perview of "what specialties will I gain by doing this path?" The specialties are secondary. They should have no influence on the history you create. So if we go by the way of "Monk", here's what happens...

"Multicultural" is taken out automatically because it's way too vague a specialty. You're already a spy... you've spent years studying all the different cultures as part of your espionage training. Just like every other spy out there. And there's just way too much culture out there world-wide for anyone to be more "multi"cultural than someone else. Now if you wanted to selected a SPECIFIC culture and a specific part of that culture... that's more than cool. Like if you kept your Buddhist monk training part of your history... "Eastern Philosophy" makes terrific sense, and it's a specific specialty that you might have over other spies in the agency.

"Hand-to-hand combat" is fine if you also keep your Buddhist monk part of your history. No problems there. However if you go the route of the "world traveller" history... you wouldn't have spent enough time and enough years working at your hand-to-hand to be any more appreciably skilled than any other agent out there.

"Evasion" doesn't really work for this character as written. Your basis for the skill was avoiding the hired guns that were following you... however, if you stick with the monk history, you said you spent eight years in the monestary, and there's no way in hell the monks would allow two or three guys with guns to hang around watching Jason meditate for years on end. So there's be no reason for him to know how to evade people (moreso than any other regular spy). Even with the world traveller option... at some point having chaperones becomes useless because as you yourself said... his father didn't care about Jason at all, so why waste men to follow his galavanting son across the globe (especially after he reaches the age of 18?) Thus having Evasion as a specific specialty doesn't really work.

"Human Networking"... again, it's too vague a specialty, especially for someone as anti-social as Jason. Why is Jason better at making friends and contacts across the globe than any other agent? Just because he's gone to many different places? Nope... his life would have to have entirely geared towards networking for him to have a specialty above and beyond any regular field agents. A salesman I could possibly see having "Networking" as a speciality... but even then, the people he networked then probably would do him no good in the spy business.

Finally, "Military weapon identification". This I'm sort of okay with... because knowledge skills are a lot easier to justify having because it's simply a matter of studying up on the subject... reading hundreds of books on it and so on. However, I would say that Jason would need to have more interest in that subject and have spent more years learning up on it than just the finally couple of years he spent in the CIA before joining Espion. You don't become an "absolute expert" on anything unless you have an overwhelming interest in the subject above and beyond the normal person studying up on it. I like to think I'm an expert on D&D... but you put me in a room with other roleplayers, there's probably hundreds of people who have more rules completely memorized (with page numbers and everything) than I could possibly have. I would certainly not consider myself to have a speciality in "D&D", even though I've played it for fifteen plus years. And that's the same way you need to think of the knowledge specialties.

So all in all... I think what you should do to help yourself out is create a timeline for yourself as to when and where did each step of Jason's life take him on his journey towards joining the CIA? And you don't need to skimp on his history once he joined the CIA either... his work with them would probably have more of an impact on his career in Espion than anything he learned as a teenager jet-setting from place to place. Once you've got a cohesive history banged out of when he left home... the specific places he went to on his travels... when he returned home... what he did against his brother... how and when he joined the CIA... and what he did in the CIA before moving to Espion... then you'll be able to re-write your history and take out all those extras bits from earlier drafts that don't really have a place in the character as he stands. And don't worry so much about finding places to put specialties inside the history... we'll be able to find them ourselves after the history is completed. Cool? Sweet!

Yes, this is hard damn work and not something any of us could just bang out in twenty minutes... but this is why I said you'd have to get used to me, as I'd get used to all of you. It's working together to create characters of depth that are half the fun of playing the game in the first place. :)
 

Hmm... I'll have to think on that a bit. I like the idea of starting out as a world traveller until he reaches the East, there finding something akin to what he was looking for. You're right about the hired guns bit though. Hmm... I wasn't sure about an actual age, but mid-thirties I thought sounded about right for a spy. Let me look at it a bit closer and I'll get something up for you. You sound like an editor I once knew when I was short story writing ages ago.... ;)
 

Taking me longer to find time for my re-write than expected, DEFCON. I have some free time on Thu-Fri this week, so I'll get some new info up then. Thanks for your patience.
 

sorry its taken me so long to write up my first draft. Computer is still dead so I need to start from scratch... which is something I'm absolutely terrible about. Wish I had gone ahead and posted some of the partial write up I had originally considered posting but said "Naw... just finish it up then post" ... now what

Through this weekend still looks bad but next week might be better.
 

OK, Defcon, here's my re-write. I'm still short a specialty, so any insight you might have would be appreciated. I'm sure I made some mistakes or even contradictions in this; I used the original one as a starting point then expanded.

Elzbieta “Elz” Olesia Taszyck
Age: 29
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Blue
Height: 5’ 6”
Weight: 110
Nationality: Dual citizenship, United States and Poland


History:

Elzbieta Olesia Taszyck was born in Warsaw in November of 1975, in the midst of the cold war. Elz’s father, Artur, was a diplomat serving in the communist Polish government, which at that time was dominated by the Soviets. The Polish government was comparatively tolerant and progressive when compared to other satellite states, and the Taszycks enjoyed a good life. Elz studied in one of Warsaw’s finest private schools, and then attended language courses around Europe; visiting England, France, Russia, Spain, and others in a whirlwind of travel. She had little difficulty with her schooling, proving an excellent student, if a bit unchallenged by the tedium of text learning. Her father trained her even as a child to recognize the small signs that a person was lying; a clenched hand, and sideways glance, or even the blinking of the eyes could clue Elz into a falsehood. He was proud of her progress, and after her graduation, Elz was expected to take a position serving as a liaison between Poland and the Soviets. She secretly held reservations about her father’s choice of a career path for her, but kept silent to please her parents. Elz lacked the patience and calm demeanor that her father possessed. She had an addiction to the excitement of travel and fresh experiences, and knew she would be stifled in the diplomatic corps of Warsaw, a conservative and staid group of old guard conformists.

By 1990, the independents had swept the majority of the communist presence from the parliament and presidency, and her father lost his cushy job in the party. The Taszycks fell on hard times. Artur Taszyck’s party benefits were stripped away. Elz was pulled out of the expensive Warsaw University, and suddenly the family was destitute. There was little support amongst the new administration for a traditionalist like Artur. He went into an early retirement, living off the scraps of the network of ex-communists scattered throughout the nation. Elz was left to find her own way, and suddenly had the added responsibility of helping provide for her mother and father.

The new Polish Army was looking for educated young people, and Elz joined in 1993, hoping to learn a trade as a doctor. She trained in the medical field for nearly a year before her skills in language and quick mind were noticed by a superior outside the medical corps. She was quickly transferred to the recently established GROM (Operational Maneuver Reconnaissance Group), intended to serve as a translator and linguist. After 3 years of training, Elz so impressed her officers, she became one of Poland’s first female combat operatives, serving in an assault squad specializing in hostage rescue and counterterrorism. Elz was first deployed in Bosnia, hunting war criminals in during UN peacekeeping operations. She assisted in the capture and interrogation of eight persons eventually convicted of genocide and war crimes, and was unofficially involved in the killings of a few others that never made it to trial. Her expertises was then employed in Algeria, helping the government root out and destroy extremist militias that continue to operate since the Islamic Salvation Army disbanded in 2000. She was then called upon in Morocco, assisting the Moroccan Security Forces in their efforts to crack down on Islamic extremists illegally moving into Europe through Spain. Elz then led a team of assault specialists in Iraq, partaking in direct action against extremists in urban areas and training the new Iraqi Special Forces. When Poland announced was withdrawing its troops from Iraq, Elz was furious at the lack of commitment. She had made many comrades within the US and Iraqi forces, and felt that pulling out was a betrayal of her personal commitment. Her hot temper led to a misplaced argument with GROM’s senior officer in Iraq. Furious at Elzbieta’s lack of restraint, GROM placed her on suspension. Elz pulled all her strings to get a new assignment that would get her back in the field. The Polish government finally assigned her to a new international covert task group known as *insert group name here*, organized by the *insert name here* government. Little information has been given regarding the new assignment, but Elz has been given US citizenship and a sizable allowance to live in Washington DC until her activation. While Elz still holds the rank of Porucznik (1st Lieutenant) in GROM, at this point it is largely a formality.

Appearance/Personality:

Attractive and slender, Elz is fit and resilient from years of military service, rarely troubled by illness or fatigue. While she is too slight to have the strength of many of her comrades, she is able to use her fast reflexes to her advantage in combat, surprising her opponents with speed and grace. She was the object of much affection while in school, and still carries herself with the knowledge of what her stunning looks can do to a man. Elz prefers to let others lead if a strong personality is in charge. She still holds a deep affection for her father, even though he has become withdrawn and insular since his fall from power. On one hand, Elz is grateful that the communist regime was ousted from power. It has given her the opportunity to do the things she truly loves. Adventure, travel, and excitement are part of her daily routine. On the other hand, her father, whom she visits often, has been destroyed by the new world order.

Excitement is the primary motivation for Elz. She despises inaction and gets bored very easily. Her position in GROM ‘saved her soul’, as she puts it. A life of boredom as a low-ranking diplomat or doctor would have slowly drained her spirit, and she relishes every moment of her new life as a soldier. She is still angry with the Polish government and GROM for the lack of commitment in Iraq, but in the back of her mind, she knows her anger is due to the fact that she was to lose her fix for excitement and action, not because of any devotion to the cause.

Specialties:

Counter-terrorism/Urban Assault- Elz has trained extensively and seen direct action in her deployments, mostly tracking down and taking out terrorist cells around the world. Elz is widely regarded as Poland’s premier Close Quarters Battle expert.

Gunplay- Elz is an expert shot with small arms, particularly pistols. Her training has been reinforced with plenty of real world experience over the last eight years.

Contacts- Years of working in the special operations and counter terrorism world has given Elz a network of contacts and acquaintances throughout all the places she has served, including Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East. This is further reinforced with a list of ex-communist allies scattered throughout the world, mostly friends of her father. Few of them are in positions of true power, but they are always willing to help, and often possess secrets from days long past, including the information about Soviet support of various organizations in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Insight- Elz is an expert judge of character, often able to ‘read’ a person and quickly determine their relative experience, expertise, and intent. She has a near supernatural ability of sensing a person’s true motives and whether or not a person is lying. Instilled by her father, a career diplomat, this ability has been honed to a razor’s edge after years of investigation and interrogation.

Hubris:

Rash/Reckless- Elz often tends to leap into action sooner than her allies expect, and makes snap decisions, especially in combat. She feels the initiative must be taken to succeed, and waiting to react is a sign of weakness. This has led to conflict within GROM; many of her superiors feel she lacks the respect for the chain of command that makes a good soldier. Her record is full of reprimands and chastisements, but the results speak for themselves, in Elzbieta’s opinion. She gets the job done, often without regard for the consequences of her actions.

Righteous: It is a rare moment when Elz looks back on her actions with regret. She acts decisively and without doubt that her decision is the right one, and will defend her choices adamantly as long as the goal was met. (DEFCON- I’m going to pick this one as a secondary Hubris. It is of less importance than the ‘Rash’ one, but still could cause serious trouble eventually. Elz has an alarming lack of compassion and empathy for someone with such incredible insight into people, and finds it very easy to dismiss the loss of property and innocent lives if she feels it is needed to complete her goal.)

Common Gear:

-Twin HK Mk23 SOCOM pistols with integrated laser sights/illuminators, slide locks for silent operation, and detachable Knights Armaments sound suppressors. They are worn under a long jacket in tactical holsters on her thighs.
-Glock 26, worn in a concealed holster in the small of her back.
-2 slim fighting knives
-Passport with Polish and American citizenship
-Concealed/restricted weapons permit
-Washington DC and EU driving license
-PDA with encrypted satellite phone, Bluetooth equipped
-Black ’00 BMW M3 European with DC plates
 

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