spycraft, apartment buildings.
Sep. 13th, 2005 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
issaferretFirst, Spycraft. I mounted an assault on the book this evening, trying to get a solid overview of wtf these maniacs were attempting. It _is_ a unique creation, I think, in gaming. Over the last decade or so, I've seen game systems go from the relatively limited and straightforward Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition system, where combat had few possible actions, and relatively simple rules, to systems like D20 and the contemporary White Wolf systems, where any action is possible, and the poor DM/GM/GC/storyteller is stuck trying to determine how to make a complex action fit into the damn rules, and what dice to roll and stats to add up to give it meaning.
Small wonder RP-heavy types are throwing their hands up and retreating to the simplicity of a GM-fiat system: It's not worth the trouble if the dice seem arbitrary anyway, despite all the efforts of the authors.
So, Spycraft 2.0 is tightening things down. For the basics, they've taking the skill system, knocked out a few skills, and for the rest, defined rules for how to handle the majority of actions one might undertake in a game. Yeah, it ends up meaning some extra tables that a GC's stuck handling (oooh, they're _so_ going to get money out of me for the GC Screen), but if it means I can tell them yes or no on rules questions that used to be judgement calls and get back to narrating the dramatic scene, I won't complain. The customization also makes it feel like specific expected actions have some careful thought put into them as far as risks and potential contribution to the game session insofar as points for dramatic success, failure, and turnabout.
They've put in rules which I can immediately see common use for, for how to handle situations which clearly should require a series of rolls to clear. Yeah, obvious stuff, but putting in solid rules to work from takes away, again, the need for GM fiat or trying to remember the way you handled the situation last time. Consistent system means the players can trust your narrative and the metaphysics underneath, so they can start picking at your plotholes instead of wondering if you're going to change the way you handle this or that _again_.
The expanded 'Dramatic Conflict' system is also pretty nifty. The basic concept's illustrated with the original Chase model, which runs on standard 6-second rounds and generally doesn't need extensive roleplay - it's a combat system dealing with dramatic actions usually taken in chases, without bringing it down to a Pilot check (oh, sorry, I mean a Drive (Car)/Maneuver check).
They included several more in SC2.0. Brainwashing, Infiltration, Hacking, Seduction, Interrogation, Manhunts, all common dramatic hooks. Instead of Interrogation just having a list of information that can be garnered at each DC, you have your information, and you give it out in response to good tactics, and, if you're a good GC, you use the different actions ('Good cop', 'Bad cop', 'Worse cop') as cues in the RP, rather than just stringing together opposed rolls. Since between rounds you can have other characters doing more investigation, fact checking, and other whatnot, it becomes a way to neatly pace things and still have system to keep it dramatic, make it feel like the characters aren't just reading a script, or that their success is assured, or, worse, that the GM's going to fuck them anyway. Players like it when GMs are bound by rules too.
I believe much of the general combat system was in SC1, as well, but it feels like there are a ruddy _stack_ of combat actions with rules attached - not just the silly shit like grapples and bull rushes and all that, but 'Tire', 'Threaten (I know this was there before, but it still rocks)', 'Pummel', 'Diversion', 'Stand off'... The moves which every group makes in combat situations, or wants to, are there, with consistent rules written down, so you don't have to guess how to deal with it correctly, or how it'll work with game balance. Stress damage makes a nice system to grind down characters in tough situations, make them crack. Subdual now provides a reasonable way to drop some poor fucker without having to kill them or beat all that vitality out of them. Little things.
Campaign rules includes a specific set of common variations you might want to try, depending on genre, including getting feats more or less often, making the characters rich or poor, and so on - things which're obvious, and we all think about, but those of us who like system tend to overthink the ramifications of. I _like_ system. A lot. It's one of the reasons I get neurotic anymore when I think about running WW. Not that I want to be able to write a GM program or anything and step aside entirely, but I'd really rather be able to write anything I expect to need hairy system bits in advance, so at least I've a script to run from.
Character classes. Whoa, I almost forgot to touch on them. First, though, Departments. They're gone. Instead, a two-tier system is set up, a Talent and a Specialty, to give a rather significantly more flexible set of bonuses for starting characters. Then the classes - while you'll find your familiar friends, a fair collection of new classes have been added - the Scout for those times when you're working in hostile terrain and need a trained ranger; the Intruder for all your ninjing needs, the Hacker for your computer BnE, Sleuths, Advocates, and Scientists, for those times when a more subtle touch is needed. The Expert classes have been expanded as well, covering the range from Brawlers to Schemers.
When I was looking at all this mindboggling quantity of choice, I realized something else: In Spycraft 2.0, the Standard Five Man Party is dead. You could quite easily pick a party consisting of a Sleuth, a Pointman, a Scientist, a Hacker, and an Advocate, and when the terrorists came in shooting, you'd be greasemarks on the pavement. _Because_ of the character classes in the game, the breadth of plot possible is huge, but by the same token, you cannot write a plot without considering the character classes you're looking to cater to.
This realization reinforces my intention to _write_ the characters for a Spycraft campaign and give the players to them(sic), rather than letting my players decide what my campaign flavor is by the characters _they_ choose to write.
To make a long story short *pauses for laughter, realizes that only the truly masochistic are still reading this gibberish* -- Spycraft 2.0 is 475 pages of rules and scary charts and systems which should provide a good home for modern day plots of any sort, and if you enjoy rules, you can nestle as deep as you like into the system and still feel comfortable. Almost every situation has at minimum a strong framework assigned to it, at maximum a table you can keep yourself warm with, and yet, I'm not grossly intimidated or even terribly hampered by it. It's at minimum a magnificent safety net for when you wonder whether the numbers work.
um... okay, the stuff under the cut is terrbly verbose. The apartment buildings part of the above topic referred to when I _started_ writing this post, wherein I was being vaguely irked by the person _somewhere_ in this complex who's using AIM with all the sound effects on and his/her volume wwaaaaay up. I heard every time a message came in and went out for an extended exchange. Both people were either fast typists or exchanging one word at a time. Why was the sound still on? It wasn't like they were leaving the computer, or even forgetting the other was there for a moment. Mmmnh. Nevermind, I probably don't want to know.
Small wonder RP-heavy types are throwing their hands up and retreating to the simplicity of a GM-fiat system: It's not worth the trouble if the dice seem arbitrary anyway, despite all the efforts of the authors.
So, Spycraft 2.0 is tightening things down. For the basics, they've taking the skill system, knocked out a few skills, and for the rest, defined rules for how to handle the majority of actions one might undertake in a game. Yeah, it ends up meaning some extra tables that a GC's stuck handling (oooh, they're _so_ going to get money out of me for the GC Screen), but if it means I can tell them yes or no on rules questions that used to be judgement calls and get back to narrating the dramatic scene, I won't complain. The customization also makes it feel like specific expected actions have some careful thought put into them as far as risks and potential contribution to the game session insofar as points for dramatic success, failure, and turnabout.
They've put in rules which I can immediately see common use for, for how to handle situations which clearly should require a series of rolls to clear. Yeah, obvious stuff, but putting in solid rules to work from takes away, again, the need for GM fiat or trying to remember the way you handled the situation last time. Consistent system means the players can trust your narrative and the metaphysics underneath, so they can start picking at your plotholes instead of wondering if you're going to change the way you handle this or that _again_.
The expanded 'Dramatic Conflict' system is also pretty nifty. The basic concept's illustrated with the original Chase model, which runs on standard 6-second rounds and generally doesn't need extensive roleplay - it's a combat system dealing with dramatic actions usually taken in chases, without bringing it down to a Pilot check (oh, sorry, I mean a Drive (Car)/Maneuver check).
They included several more in SC2.0. Brainwashing, Infiltration, Hacking, Seduction, Interrogation, Manhunts, all common dramatic hooks. Instead of Interrogation just having a list of information that can be garnered at each DC, you have your information, and you give it out in response to good tactics, and, if you're a good GC, you use the different actions ('Good cop', 'Bad cop', 'Worse cop') as cues in the RP, rather than just stringing together opposed rolls. Since between rounds you can have other characters doing more investigation, fact checking, and other whatnot, it becomes a way to neatly pace things and still have system to keep it dramatic, make it feel like the characters aren't just reading a script, or that their success is assured, or, worse, that the GM's going to fuck them anyway. Players like it when GMs are bound by rules too.
I believe much of the general combat system was in SC1, as well, but it feels like there are a ruddy _stack_ of combat actions with rules attached - not just the silly shit like grapples and bull rushes and all that, but 'Tire', 'Threaten (I know this was there before, but it still rocks)', 'Pummel', 'Diversion', 'Stand off'... The moves which every group makes in combat situations, or wants to, are there, with consistent rules written down, so you don't have to guess how to deal with it correctly, or how it'll work with game balance. Stress damage makes a nice system to grind down characters in tough situations, make them crack. Subdual now provides a reasonable way to drop some poor fucker without having to kill them or beat all that vitality out of them. Little things.
Campaign rules includes a specific set of common variations you might want to try, depending on genre, including getting feats more or less often, making the characters rich or poor, and so on - things which're obvious, and we all think about, but those of us who like system tend to overthink the ramifications of. I _like_ system. A lot. It's one of the reasons I get neurotic anymore when I think about running WW. Not that I want to be able to write a GM program or anything and step aside entirely, but I'd really rather be able to write anything I expect to need hairy system bits in advance, so at least I've a script to run from.
Character classes. Whoa, I almost forgot to touch on them. First, though, Departments. They're gone. Instead, a two-tier system is set up, a Talent and a Specialty, to give a rather significantly more flexible set of bonuses for starting characters. Then the classes - while you'll find your familiar friends, a fair collection of new classes have been added - the Scout for those times when you're working in hostile terrain and need a trained ranger; the Intruder for all your ninjing needs, the Hacker for your computer BnE, Sleuths, Advocates, and Scientists, for those times when a more subtle touch is needed. The Expert classes have been expanded as well, covering the range from Brawlers to Schemers.
When I was looking at all this mindboggling quantity of choice, I realized something else: In Spycraft 2.0, the Standard Five Man Party is dead. You could quite easily pick a party consisting of a Sleuth, a Pointman, a Scientist, a Hacker, and an Advocate, and when the terrorists came in shooting, you'd be greasemarks on the pavement. _Because_ of the character classes in the game, the breadth of plot possible is huge, but by the same token, you cannot write a plot without considering the character classes you're looking to cater to.
This realization reinforces my intention to _write_ the characters for a Spycraft campaign and give the players to them(sic), rather than letting my players decide what my campaign flavor is by the characters _they_ choose to write.
To make a long story short *pauses for laughter, realizes that only the truly masochistic are still reading this gibberish* -- Spycraft 2.0 is 475 pages of rules and scary charts and systems which should provide a good home for modern day plots of any sort, and if you enjoy rules, you can nestle as deep as you like into the system and still feel comfortable. Almost every situation has at minimum a strong framework assigned to it, at maximum a table you can keep yourself warm with, and yet, I'm not grossly intimidated or even terribly hampered by it. It's at minimum a magnificent safety net for when you wonder whether the numbers work.
um... okay, the stuff under the cut is terrbly verbose. The apartment buildings part of the above topic referred to when I _started_ writing this post, wherein I was being vaguely irked by the person _somewhere_ in this complex who's using AIM with all the sound effects on and his/her volume wwaaaaay up. I heard every time a message came in and went out for an extended exchange. Both people were either fast typists or exchanging one word at a time. Why was the sound still on? It wasn't like they were leaving the computer, or even forgetting the other was there for a moment. Mmmnh. Nevermind, I probably don't want to know.
