A Christmas Gift from the Spycraft Team to You

Last night, the Spycraft design team announced the formation of Crafty Games, the new game company that will be responsible for the entire Spycraft brand, and our plans for the immediate future. The following is our press release:

"Merry Christmas, Everyone!

The rumors started up a short time ago, of a new company taking over the award-winning Spycraft brand, promising a bold, fresh product line testing the very limits of its robust RPG game engine. Well, it’s true, but it’s also only part of a very large and very pretty picture.

This is Rumor Control. Here are the Facts.

The co-creator of Spycraft and the designers of Spycraft 2.0 have founded Crafty Games, which is licensing the brand from Alderac Entertainment Group, Inc. and will hereafter be responsible for All Things Spycraft. Crafty Games’ commitment to excellence is already well established, founded on over 20 years of combined industry experience and dozens of acclaimed products. Its partners are uniquely suited to continue the fine Spycraft tradition that they first invented.

Nearly all elements of the Spycraft brand will carry on, and many new ones will soon be introduced. Crafty Games will continue the Powered by Spycraft license, offering new and established designers the chance to take their own hand at the Spycraft system. The company will also host the ongoing Living Spycraft campaign, which will be updating existing missions to Spycraft 2.0 and releasing new missions and character conversion rules in short order. Indeed, in coming months, Living Spycraft will become a central hub for many of the brand’s settings and releases, allowing players, mission writers, and Game Controls the chance to incorporate all manner of new material — from a wide variety of backdrops — into their sessions.

Which brings us to the details you’re all craving — what Crafty will be releasing. In early in 2006, Crafty Games will bring you brand new Spycraft material in both PDF and print, beginning with a Toolkit PDF series expanding the Spycraft 2.0 system with all-new character options, weapons, NPCs, locations, missions, and more. Toolkit releases will support all core modern play, including espionage, military, and other genres, but for those looking for something a little different, or wanting to spice up their modern day Spycraft games with something a little unconventional…

Crafty Games will also unveil several brand new mini-setting PDF series intentionally developed to take Spycraft into formerly uncharted territory. Delivering on Spycraft 2.0’s promise as a platform for many varied worlds and styles of play, these releases will include modular backdrops and mechanics that can be ported piecemeal or wholesale into any game you like. The first mini-setting will see release in late Spring 2006 and takes Spycraft where it’s never gone before – to the Farthest Star, where the promise of deep space exploration and high space opera collide in a thrilling blend of sci-fi adventure.

More mini-settings and other PDF lines will follow, including the infocalyptic Shatterpunk, the monster-bashing Crucible, and the long-awaited return of Shadowforce Archer! But even that’s just the beginning. Summer 2006 will see Crafty Games’ first new print release, World on Fire, an alternate world setting poised to rock your espionage campaigns to their very foundations. Join the anarchist hackers of Banshee Net, the renegade superspies of the Shadow Patriots, and other Factions new and old in their desperate struggle to seize the future out of the maniacal hands of the Alliance of Evil Geniuses! With over 60 new Talents and Specialties, two new Base classes, a dozen new Expert classes, the introduction of Master classes, many new feats, Allegiance and Reputation options, and a whole lot more, this hefty product is the perfect addition to anyone’s Spycraft library!

And just in case even that’s not enough, watch for the release of Crafty Games’ second new print release: Ten Thousand Bullets, the definitive d20 guide to crime noir action! Set in the mean streets of Empire City, this essential sourcebook contains everything required to transform Spycraft for use in the gritty street genre, including new Base, Expert, and Master classes, new feats, campaign qualities, and Dramatic Conflicts, an alternate mission system, variant gearing up rules, and mechanics for Reputation and legal entanglements. It also presents a complete cityscape ready and waiting for your characters to take their stand — with the beleaguered cops shielding the innocent from the corrupt, with the ambitious gangsters threatening to engulf everything in their ever-growing territories, or with those trapped somewhere in-between.

Of course, all this may leave a few of you wondering about the status of the Spycraft CCG. After careful consideration, Crafty Games has come to the conclusion that the game must go on hiatus. Sadly, CCGs are extremely expensive and risky to produce — beyond the means of our humble operation at this time. We understand that interest in the game remains strong and we’re planning to continue developing the world through World on Fire and its supporting products. We’re even planning a special mini-series of Living Spycraft missions to bring the first story arc to its mind-blowing conclusion!

Soon, you can expect www.crafty-games.com to go live and start transferring material from the current Spycraft archive, plus build on it with all-new information and support. For now, though, Alderac Entertainment Group, Inc. is graciously continuing to host Spycraft’s web presence and you can seek new information about the future of the brand at www.spycraftrpg.com and on the AEG forums at www.alderac.com/forum. All three of Crafty Games’ partners can be reached there.

We hope to see you all on the web and at shows, and once again wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Stay Crafty!

- Alex Flagg, Scott Gearin, and Patrick Kapera
Partners, Crafty Games
www.crafty-games.com"



Who loves ya? We're incredibly excited about this opportunity and hope that you will be joining us on this grand adventure. Look for more in the coming month as we get some contractual details finalized and our website up and running. Talk to you soon, true believers!

Wh00t!

The illustrious Ken Hite, mad freelancer and writer of the infamous "Out of the Box" webcolumn, has named Spycraft 2.0 on his 3 book list for the Best of Breed d20 for 2005. An excerpt:

"There are people who will tell you, perfectly sincerely, that all valuable advances in game design are occurring far away from the dodecahedrons, in the wilds of the Forge or wherever. But neither assertion holds true. The best current d20 (or OGL, rather, as it's left most Wizards-licensed work behind) game design is keeping pace with the best crazy indie stuff, only it's happening to a game set played by three quarters of the hobby. These three dissimilar books are the proof -- one is a reconsideration of character action and potential, one an improved genre emulation, one an expanded and integrated full-game system [Ed. -- this point is referring to 2.0]. All are among the best that contemporary RPG design has to offer."

Thanks Ken. We like it too. Read the whole review here.

Just One More

CNN.com - Bush: Secret wiretaps have disrupted potential attacks - Dec 19, 2005. Yeah, when the enemy is an American citizen.

R.I.P. Vinnie Gigante

The end of La Cosa Nostra continues - first the arrest of the last of the free dons, and now Mob boss Gigante dies in jail. The courtroom is a less comical place without your antics.

Heil Ahmadinejad

Editor's note: The following contains remarks that disparage US policy abroad as well as the current Iranian regime. We would like to believe it is thoughtful if a bit passionate. Please be advised.

Wow. CNN reported today that Iran's new president and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution has banned Western music. Before you dismiss the significance of this event, look at the first thing that happened in Afghanistan when the Taliban was ousted during the war - music, formerly banned, was played in the streets. Music became a symptom of freedom of expression, the first and most important right of a human being living in a free society. Quashing that kills all the cultural features that come with it - the shared passion of music, the cultural crossover, the connection that belongs to the world and makes you revel in its beats and rhythm and dance - isolating those people from the world in a way more profound than you might imagine.

This Ahmadinejad guy is really starting to scare me, because he's *actively* dragging his people back nearly 30 years, with the advantage of hindsight so he can better avoid public outcry. If he ends up with nukes, I think we will be looking at another Kim Jung-Il situation - someone we have to appease just because we can't really do much to uproot him diplomatically or militarily.

And the sad thing is, the US is to blame for this asshole. It was in 2002 the president of US called Iran - then in an internal struggle between a moderate, liberal president and the disconnected mullahs of the Supreme Council - part of the "axis of evil," one of the most counterproductive and inflammatory pieces of rhetoric spoken by a US president, EVER. We pissed off Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, and what has happened? Those words undermined the delicate position of reformers at work in their nations and empowered the hardliners. Those reformers, who had been empowered through international support and goading by world powers to be brave and stand up to the tyrants in their midst, were told that it wasn't good enough, that their work was for nothing and moreover, they were lumped in the same category with those tyrants they struggled against. So in Iran's case, seeing that there was no hope of appeasing the impatient Western nations with their modest progress, they had a nice little backlash. They elected a guy who would stand up to the biggest bully in the world, who wouldn't take any shit off anybody. He took them back to their "roots" in repression and fear. He purged his goverment of progressives and replaced them with zealots and yes-men. Now, if anybody fucks with Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad starts waving around his potential for mass destruction, goading his enemies on arrogantly. Sound like anybody we know?

What's the end result of all this hubbub? Let's go back 20 years in Middle Eastern affairs. Look at it like this: back in 1985, the intafada was raging in the Holy Land, fought by Hezbollah. The tensions between revolutionary Iran and the more secular Iraq were mounting. The US was involved in the "Bear Spares" and Iran-Contra affair, passing arms to the underequipped Iraqi army in a hope of staving off Iranian aggression in the region.

But today, the stakes are even higher. The stokers of the intafada are Hamas, who are home-grown and have had 20 years to win hearts and minds as a social service organization in the Occupied Territories, making uprooting them (or support for their policies) much more difficult. We're building that new Iraqi army ourselves, as an an arm to stave off a more fervent, wealthier, and possibly nuclear armed Iran. Our international reputation is in the shitter, we're overextended militarily, and we no longer fight enemies who wear uniforms or drive tanks, who are unwilling to engage in any diplomacy and seek death with a fervor unmatched by love of Party or comrade or country.

Mr. Bush, as a member of the generation to follow you, I thank you for another 20 years of trouble to look forward to. Fuck you very much, Georgie.

The Favor Check is Dead, Long Live the Favor Check

Today we're going to talk a little shop about Spycraft and why we did with what we did with 2.0 vs. 1.0. In response to many complaints or confusion over in the Spycraft Forums, I've decided to frame this discussion in terms of a dead mechanic, the favor check.

The favor check was one of the fan-favorite 1.0 mechanics. It allowed agents to quickly and easily requisition resources, clearance, and many other mechanical intangibles from the Agency with an action die and a phone call. But the mechanic was open to abuse, thanks to many follow on feats, departments, and class abilities that allowed free checks. It got so out of control that many Spycraft forumers, most notoriously Equinox and RegularGuy, would build entire character concepts around a guy who could essentially sit in the van for the entire mission, calling in check after check with exceedingly high average results and get the shmucks of the world to do the work for them, at nearly no risk to themselves. The problem also trickled down into Living Spycraft, much to the frustration of GCs and module designers who's plots could be foiled with a few action dice and a wily PC.

Needless to say, the design team saw this problem years before work on 2.0 began and were determined to fix it this time around. First, we mutated the game from a gear-rich environment of 1.0 to the gear-limited environment of 2.0. By making gear "pre bundled" by giving batches of items, add-ons, or writing it off as Common Items, we were able to speed up Gearing Up and turn the focus back to players doing the work (thus discouraging favor-check dependant behavior).

Secondly, we codified all existing favor checks into Resource picks. By firmly grounding the mechanic of the check as gear (and thus, more limited) and precisely limiting exactly what it was that the resource does mechanically, players could still get favors while not totally foiling or confusing the GC. Both sides of the table knew what to expect.

Finally, we flat-out replaced the favor check mechanic with Request checks. This one hurt the most to lose, but was the most necessary. Request checks allow the player to call in resources in the field, albeit at the cost of a Reserve Gear or Common Item pick rather than the much more plentiful (effectively limitless) action die. This made calling in a favor later in the mission both more difficult and more dependant upon planning rather than an easy way out from a sticky situation.

The end result was that we reduced the favor check from an ubiquitious, cheap, "no-brainer" sort of metagame resource to one that was more specific, required thought, and had an actual cost attached to it in the mind of the player. This has not been an easy thing for many 1.0 players and GCs to get past - they don't know what to do when a game gets bogged down, or the player team needs assistance. The most common issue seems to be the concern that the team simply CANNOT ask for help from anyone (common example: getting help from local authorities in a background check) without making a Request check.

Although the favor check is dead in name, it is not dead in spirit. Finding these new options simply requires both player and GC to bend their minds to meet the new mechanics available to keep games flowing. Though mechanically the Request check is the most direct descendent of the favor check, it is not the only route to get resources in the field - 2.0 offers two useful and overall better options to the old favor check mechanics:

1) Networking skill. Hey look, it's a Favor Check I can invest skill points in! Thanks to the contact rules, consultants with Investigation (as mentioned earlier), Computers, Analysis, Streetwise, Bureaucracy and even Tactics can be tremendous resources for the team to get things done. Likewise, Behind the Scenes and Backup specialists are huge resources for a team in frequent need of "just one more thing" when in the field. While the limited nature of the Networking skill prevents the serious abuse the old favor check was susceptable to, I'm a firm believer there should be one dedicated Networker per team in 2.0.

2) GC Hint: You know when players are stuck trying to get that mug shot run and don't know what to do without it? Give them the assistance and count it as a hint. Let them use one of their "free hint" Origin abilities or simply give them the info they need and take an action die for yourself. This is easily the most overlooked solution to the "favor check situation" in all of 2.0. Plus you get a tighter reign on when players have to do the work themselves or when they can delegate.

I think the framework is there for characters to get just as much as they used to be able to out of the old favor checks - it just requires a reframing of your mindset. Reserve picks are handy, but Networking and hints are truly where it's at, and what's better, they don't even need gear to use them.