Spycraft 2.0 - is it as difficult as it looks?

[Psion]

Ahh, but the NPCs are scaled by mission caliber compared to agent level, not CR.

Well, it's scaled by Threat level, which is total agent level divided by number of agents. But the GC can scale it up and down. But the XP bonus from an NPC also is an indicia of their power level.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

One other thing worth mentioning about Spycraft 2.0 combat - it is a heck of a lot of fun! For the first time since I last played 7th Sea I had fun running a combat! As a result everyone at the table had more fun.

The Auld Grump

 

[AscentStudios]

Good comments, all. I hestitate to speak up about my own play experiences, but from playtest games and gaming in my own 2.0 Star Wars campaign, I can say - it's easy. I literally ran the game without a book - just 3 packets of information for reference - for 2 months this spring. And that's with 5 players who had never played 1.0. One player started his own 2.0 campaign later on, having never run a game before, and did just fine. Granted, I wrote a good chunk of the damn thing, but to be honest I didn't see a lot of the final draft material until it had gone to the printer.

The even worse news is, since AEG had their layoff, I am worried that the support and the demonstrations for this game will be too scarce to get a look at it.

Spycraft is in good shape. Support continues for the Living Spycraft campaign, there's plenty of rules support out there in our forums, and there's more news coming down the pike in the near future. Fret not, friend

Alex

 

[Denaes]

I've run 5 sessions of Spycraft - 3 missions total.

During play there hasn't been any delay and it runs just as fast as BESM a little faster than D&D and faster than Feng Shui ran for our group.

I agree with Jims 20/80 statement. You use 20% of the rules, 80% of the time. Actually more than 80% of the time for my group, but we're purposefully taking off bites. We didn't want to start our first 3 missions with Stress damage, machine guns, rocket launchers, lasers, acid, standoffs, car chases, interrogations, etc.

If you try to use every rule at once right off the bat your brain will fry. While the 20/80 rule is in effect, the GM has total control over what goes into an adventure. So they could, if they wanted, introduce 100% of the rules in a single game if they had intention to. I think that would bog things down.

Choosing gear I think takes the most amount of time to learn for the least amount of time the rules are used. A player might need to learn 3 different subsystems to figure out how Gadgets, Vehicles & Weapons work. They're pretty simple, but it requires actually reading through the 5 page sections, not skimming over things. The other categories are extremely straight forward. You do need to know what you're going to pick and there are a lot of options here.

The initiative system isn't worse than normal d20, it's just a bit more tactical. Some Standard Maneuvers, Feats, Stances & Tricks modify your - or an opponents - iniative count. For lower level characters (I have 3 & 4) we have only a few init modifiers: Regroup, kicking & shooting guns.

The players might start to make use of more ticks and other stuff.

Honestly combats are very fast and some combats are only 20 minutes long because we stay in "combat mode" while in certain areas. I havn't had a terribly long combat yet and I've had to deal with up to 20 NPCs in a combat so far.

The longest slowdown we have is making plans becuase we have 6 players who range from Soldier to Faceman to Sleuth to Scout, so there are so many options on how to complete a single target.

There are times something comes up that you don't know a rule and rather than look it up you rule on it "I'm going to say I think this is how it should happen" and the players agree or make a quick case on it and you move on.

I think this book is deceiptively complicated looking because it allows for so much. You could boil it down to 200-250 pages and loose much of the more "advanced", "optional", and "special case" rules. Some people don't care for these things. Others do.

BESM d20 has the d20 rules boiled down to like 10 pages (classes, skills & feats aside! just the rules to play the game!). It doesn't cover or allow for anything specific to happen when you're hit by a laser vs a bullet vs a sword vs acid. It's just assumed that the GM will rule it if they care to.

So I wouldn't say that SC2.0 is complicated or bulky in play - but navigating the book takes some getting used to

 

[Henry]

During play there hasn't been any delay and it runs...faster than Feng Shui ran for our group.

If it runs faster than this then AEG has really turned water to wine; to me, that game is the definition of "fast running."

If you try to use every rule at once right off the bat your brain will fry.

This may be part of my problem; I'm looking at it as an unbroken whole, trying to figure out how init counts, recoils, 20 status conditions, new skill rules, dramatic conflicts, etc. all come into play, because it feels like the game suffers if I leave a part of the integrated whole out.

Sounds like play is the only thing that solves this little Chinese Puzzle Box.

 

[Denaes]

If it runs faster than this then AEG has really turned water to wine; to me, that game is the definition of "fast running."

Which game? BESM or Feng Shui? Certainly not d20

SC2.0 combat is just attacking (we roll for damage at the same time as the attack), if you hit, then opponent makes a damage save with the damage as a penalty and/or marking off those wounds if they survive or are a Special NPC (and thus not making a damage save).

Really, even with the fluid iniative rules, it rarely comes up during play. I make sure players know the rules for their own maneuvers/tricks/feats/abilities and take their word on it. If it seems funny, I make a note to look it up later - not stop combat for it. So someone will just just modify their initiative or ask to modify the opponents iniative.

This may be part of my problem; I'm looking at it as an unbroken whole, trying to figure out how init counts, recoils, 20 status conditions, new skill rules, dramatic conflicts, etc. all come into play, because it feels like the game suffers if I leave a part of the integrated whole out.

Sounds like play is the only thing that solves this little Chinese Puzzle Box.

It's not that you're leaving them out, you decide if they'll come into play.

Do you need to have - in the same mission - laser weilding Guerrillas, Flame Thrower enabled Helecopters, Acid Spewing sprays, rocket launcher turrets, a car chase, interrogations, hacking sprees, martial artists with 4 styles and 8 tricks and a gamut of traps to avoid?

Probobly not in the same mission. Can you imagine watching a movie like that? It would be 'stunning'... but trying to make sense of it all within a time frame...

As GM you can define what comes into play in a given Mission. If you don't include mutant animals or laser weapons, you don't have to worry about those rules right now.

If you don't let players choose explosives and don't have any for NPCs, you don't have to know the rules for those yet.

If you think worrying about automatic weapons off the bat is too troublesome, then don't give any to players/NPCs for the first mission. Honestly, I'm three missions in and players havn't chosen an automatic weapon yet.

You really only need to worry about that 20% of the rules that come into play every adventure.

 

[Henry]

If you think worrying about automatic weapons off the bat is too troublesome, then don't give any to players/NPCs for the first mission. Honestly, I'm three missions in and players havn't chosen an automatic weapon yet.

Yeah, but a spy movie without automatic weapons is like a wizard with no attack spells - kinda weird-looking.

I can understand what you're saying, but in some cases a bunch of situations are bound to come up - the new status conditions (somebody's gonna get sprawled at some point, because somebody going to get knocked out or knocked down), there's the recoil rules, there's strafing, etc. I guess it's just down to reducing as many elements as possible and seeing how it works.

 

[Denaes]

If you think worrying about automatic weapons off the bat is too troublesome, then don't give any to players/NPCs for the first mission. Honestly, I'm three missions in and players havn't chosen an automatic weapon yet.

Yeah, but a spy movie without automatic weapons is like a wizard with no attack spells - kinda weird-looking.

Automatic weapons are popular in spy movies, not not nearly a requirement and are actually more condusive to action movies (spy or otherwise).

I chose to run the first Mission without automatic weapons. We added them into the 3rd mission.

Automatic weapons are very cirucumstantial. A player might not want to use one in many cases because of the civilian factor and they're not condusive to staying under cover. Villains may not want to use them in public because they're very illegal, tend to draw massive amounts of attention and they too could have morals regarding civilians as well.

That all depends on how you want to run your game.

There are spy movies that don't use automatic weapons and some that use them very selectivly. Some use them very heavily.

I can understand what you're saying, but in some cases a bunch of situations are bound to come up - the new status conditions (somebody's gonna get sprawled at some point, because somebody going to get knocked out or knocked down), there's the recoil rules, there's strafing, etc. I guess it's just down to reducing as many elements as possible and seeing how it works.

Recoil "rules" are just noted somewere on the sheet by the weapon or on a list of bonuses. If the player is too weak they mark "-1 to hit". If it's a burst weapon they mark "-X (difference between strength & recoil) to hit on burst" If it makes a difference, they might make not of bonuses when "Braced". This is something that adds time to character generation but not to playing.

I havn't had Sprawleded come up yet. Just paperclip or bookmark that page (or print out the page with the table on it). If someone is KOed, there isn't anything to do. If they're Knocked Down, then you'll have to look up the status condition once and you'll know what it does.

Thats why you might want to run a basic mission - Caliber I or II - which isn't supposed to be a "Base Assault" (which, by the way, has nothing to do with spies as much as being an action movie staple) so the players only have sidearms.

So what if the first mission you run isn't 100% spy-action movie? There are so many spy movies around I'm sure you're fitting one of their molds.

There is just more there in the book than you're going to use in any single adventure/mission so there's no sense burdening yourself learning too much at once. Like trying to stat out a whole campaign world when your players are just in a small town.

Note on Movies, character & PCs

Bad news is that everyone is going to say "I want to play a character like..."

you're going to worry about why a first level character can't be a two weapon fighting machine from a John Wu film... and then why their PC isn't as great as X character from some movie.

Most Action/Spy movies are awful for group RPG sessions. You often have one character doing everything and then possibly a fill in sidekick or two helping out.

But a RPG is a group/team effort, not an individual effort. Unless you want 3 players "waiting in the van" the whole game, you're going to have to think carefully about the team and what sort of game you want to run.

The Itallian Job is a good group movie, but even then, whoever plays "Napster" is going to just be making a few skill rolls. Thats pretty boring.

I'd plan to expect players to compare themselves to movie equivilents. I've had people comparing themselves to Bond & that dude (Tom Cruise) in MI and we have to remind them that it's a group game, not all about one player who does it all.

 

[Henry]

you're going to worry about why a first level character can't be a two weapon fighting machine from a John Wu film... and then why their PC isn't as great as X character from some movie.

Oh, for certain - same thing in GT or Spycraft 1, for that matter. I'll usually start the PCs a few levels up in the beginning to curb this, mainly because in the Spy genre you rarely send out a rookie for a mission - though the skill rules in GT make me think they've tried to accomodate this more than any d20 game has tried before, with the "can't fail" ability of some of the classes doing their core skill.

 

[Denaes]

Oh, for certain - same thing in GT or Spycraft 1, for that matter. I'll usually start the PCs a few levels up in the beginning to curb this, mainly because in the Spy genre you rarely send out a rookie for a mission - though the skill rules in GT make me think they've tried to accomodate this more than any d20 game has tried before, with the "can't fail" ability of some of the classes doing their core skill.

Well there are plenty of spies going out on their first mission, but movies focus on their later missions which are a lot more exciting. The hero's/villains almost always refer to past experiences spying. They're cops who have been on the force for 10 years or hitmen who have been doing hits for years before having their change of heart (god I love The Big Hit).

Like Bond. He's high level, but he started off somewere. My friend read the books and apparently he got into the spy biz (or at least his liscense to kill) by accident when he was in the military. In his first few missions he was a bumbler.

Spy movies focus on "high level characters". Most players don't want to play Bond when he was on his first mission, but what they see on the screen.

BESM/Feng Shuei both can do a hero at the peak of their career and are great for one-shots, but seem boring to me as continuing characters because if you start off at your peak... where do you go from there?

In my Spycraft game I started players off at level 3 and they're still not super suave yet. One player wrestled a Puma to the ground and snapped it's neck... But he was built pretty focused towards being tough in melee combat.