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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2011163" data-attributes="member: 172">The 1960's Decade BookThe 1960's Decade Book is a new concept in setting books for AEG's Spycraft game. It takes historical events relating to the intelligence environment in the 1960s and makes it into a setting book for Spycraft, complete with historical overviews, mechanics, and campaign ideas.The book is written by Robert J. Defendi, B.D. Flory, Scott Gearin, and Clayton A. Oliver.A First LookThe 1960's Decade Book is a 240 page hardcover book priced at $26.95. Considering 128 page softcovers are approaching the 25-dollar mark these days, and many hardcovers are breaking the 30-dollar mark, this stands out to me as a good value.The cover of the book is silver like the generic (non-SFA) covers. The cover illustration is, as is the norm for the Spycraft line, done by Veronica V. Jones. The illustration depicts a man in a convertible (complete with Bond-style machineguns behind the headlights) firing a pistol at an unseen target.The interior is black-and-white, illustrated by Drew Baker, Chris Grun, A. Bleys Ingram, Scott James, Lief Jones (who I still don't forgive for mangling the Alu-demon in Tome of Horrors), Michael Kaluta, and Lee Smith. Overall, the work is a bit more detailed than most other Spycraft books to date, with more shading and subjects than the more common simple line art in the line.A Deeper LookThe 1960's Decade Book is organized into eight chapters.The first three chapters are mostly background and historical material and have little game mechanical text. The first two chapters detail the US and the USSR respectively, and the third covers other military and espionage rivals in somewhat less detail. The material is essentially a selective history of the detailed states and their conflicts during the 60's, including the reins of various important leaders, important events, agencies, and espionage operations. Most of the material is non-fictional, but some ideas are discussed for directions you might go with some concepts of a more questionable nature, such as UFO research and psychic research.This historical material helps GC's not too fresh on their 60's history in defining the background for a game set in the era. There is some directly game pertinent material in the form of defining resources available to agents working for the major historical intelligence agencies such as the GRU or CIA, in addition to chase maps for Washington D.C., Moscow, and Berlin, as well as a few smaller location maps.The fourth chapter, entitled Turning Points, begins the adaptation of the era to the Spycraft game in earnest. The chapter starts off with a bang, with what I think is one of the most intriguing new mechanics: espionage climates. Espionage climates are descriptions of the political and espionage trends that affect the world of spies, with attached mechanical effects. The mechanical effects serve to add a sensible effect to the game environment in the hopes to recreate a certain mood. Examples include "death to spies" which makes threats easier, and cooler heads prevail, which makes combat a less viable option.The espionage climates are immediately put to use in the following section of "crises" year by year. This is a run down of major espionage events, accompanied by plot hooks for each event providing potential missions for PC agent. The outcome of each of these results in a different espionage climate depending on whether the PCs are successful or not in the mission (or in some cases, depending on how the mission is handled.) This seems to have a great deal of roleplaying potential, improving immersion by creating very real outcomes from the player's actions.In the same vein that the Spycraft core book provides a variety of variant campaign styles, the fifth chapter of this book provides variant campaign styles based on the some 60's espionage material. These include the 60's military campaign, the "Swinging 60's" campaign (with groovy agents whose style has tangible effects) and the telefantasy campaign (based of over-the top low budget 60s espionage serials.) Each of these has some variant rules to help fit Spycraft to the genre better, a sample campaign setup, sample NPCs, and plot hooks for each. They even include a secret moonbase for the over-the-top telefantasy campaign.The sixth chapter has new agent options. Unlike most such books, a good deal of the chapter is actually spent taking options away. As should be apparent, there are a lot of differences in technology and government between the current era that Spycraft was written for and the 1960s. The biggest change is that a sizable amount of the gear selection is not available or is reduced in efficiency in the 1960s. Many departments and classes/class abilities are affected as well, especially if they are related to modern computer technology.Gadgets are a bit more complex consideration, given that some campaign styles are willing to stretch plausibility more than others when it comes to gadgets. Accordingly, the list of gadgets available in a 1960s game is split into three different categories, depending on whether the campaign uses plausible science for the era, super-science, or future-science.A new mechanical concept introduced in this book is that of allegiance. Very simply put, this is the major political body that the character ideologically supports (directly or through allies) - American, Soviet, or Neutral. The main effect this has in game, other that the obvious matter of disclosing one's true master (and the consequences that would hold) is that some feats are related to one's allegiance in this book. One of the biggest expansions to agent options is in the area of departments. In addition to refinements of existing departments to better fit the era, there are a number of new departments, primarily associated with the major agencies as they operated in the era (such as the CIA, KGB, FBI, and GRU), including different departments for different branches and specialties. There are a variety of other common fiction or actual sources for major characters, such as astronauts/cosmonauts, foreign military advisors, and journalists.There is one new base class, the wire. The wire is the 60s era high tech espionage expert, specializing in bugging, surveillance, and evidence analysis as it existed in the 60s. There is also a small selection of new prestige classes (the attache, the codebreaker, the menace, and the spymaster. Some of this have mechanics that give a backdoor nod to genre conventions. For example, the menace gain action dice for not killing an enemy agent, or for revealing their plans. Bond villains explained at last!Other new options includes new feats, skill uses/categories, and new gear appropriate to the era to replace all that got taken away earlier in the chapter.The 7th chapter provides new rules, including rules for handling specific situations and NPC options. Here the book shows its Bond roots; much more detailed rules are provided for gambling and other competitive games like billiards. A number of games are given very specific rules for handling using d20 rules, including classics like blackjack and baccarat. The detail provided give players specific options, such as "putting english" on dice rolls to improve their chances.Also in line with Bond, there are more detailed rules for seduction to change a target's disposition. Other new rules handling sections include long term contacts (a straightforward system that costs skill points, a bit like backgrounds) and effects of stress for more gritty 1960s games.The new rules chapter provides a number of new options for the GC as well, including new threat agendas (as introduced in the fixer/pointman guide) and new NPC classes appropriate to the era, such as CIA field operatives, conscripts, and contract killers.The final chapter of the book, similar to many SFA chamber books, contains threats, pre-defined challenges and associated missions derived from plots mentioned earlier in the book. The threats here are written up using the expanded system in the Pointman/Fixer Class Guide.ConclusionsOverall, this is a surprisingly well contained setting book for Spycraft, containing a large amount of useful source material, Agent andGC options, as well as some great new rules material to help bring the setting to life. The most intriguing of these to me is the espionage climate rules, though the seduction rules are nicely detailed and potentially useful in a variety of spycraft campaigns.Overall Grade: A -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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