Character #23: Top Secret S.I. Redux

 

OK, I admit I'm kind of cheating on this one. Hey, on Day 23 this is getting somewhat challenging. It's taking more time than I thought, after work when I need to spend time with my family.

So yesterday I presented Mateo Delgado, former Spanish Policeman turned Secret Agent. I was a little put off by the skill selection process and skill costs, so I didn't feel like my 34 year old former policeman now agent really had the skills to fit his Secret Agent title. Reading a bit around the InterWebs today showed me that folks that played it back in the day felt the same way, and usually house ruled things. So I figured I would do the same.

I also started over with his attributes, using a straight point buy system (275 points), since I knew which attributes needed to be higher for good scores.

I ended up with 

STRength      49

REFlex          55

INTelligence 70

WILlpower   40

CONstitution 61

Yes, I guess I'm min-maxing, which something I usually frown upon. Like with CON: damage capability of each of 10 areas on the body diagram (head, each arm, each leg, each hand, pelvis, left/right chest) is 10% of CON, rounded up. So 61 gets me a 7 in each area.

One mechanic that is really cool in TS S.I. that everyone mentions is the combat system. For a physical attack, one roll with percentile dice gives you whether you hit, the damage, and the hit location. For an attack with a weapon, it gives the hit and location but a separate damage roll is done specific to that weapon. Pretty ingenious! 

So based on my new attributes, my Movement is 52 and my Dexterity is 63 (compared to 57 and 58 before: I was trying to increase my DEX).

Here's my house rules for skills.

1. If you already have a skill, then picking it again through this process increases the rank by one. So if you choose Horsemanship-0 for your Transportation skill, picking it again in Step 4 will give you Horsemanship - 1.

2. Basic Firearms - 0 means exposure to pistols, rifles, and shotguns, useable for all. Any increase after rank 0 must be put towards a specialization. Specialization starts at rank 1 (you don't have to buy a rank 0 in SMG, for instance). The same holds for Basic Melee and Close-Combat Skills.

 

3. Pick one transportation skill for a 0 rank (driving car, off road, snowmobile, etc) or horsemanship. Thinking most people have access to a vehicle, but if not then horses.

4. Then pick two other skills for a 0 rank from this list, plus Language 5 in your native tongue:

    Climbing

    First Aid

    Fishing

    Horsemanship

    Musical Instrument

    Parachuting

    Photography

    Radio Operator

    Sailing

    Scuba Diving

    Sign Language

    Skiing

    Swimming

    Throwing

    Language

    Any Driving skills #4-10

5. Use 22 of your 30 skill points to buy the skills and levels you think are appropriate for your chosen profession. Use the other 8 skill points to buy whatever you want (new skills, increase rank, etc), to include getting the rank you want in a career skill.

6. Get the Agent 101 Package. If you already have a listed skill, you gain +1 to the rank from the Package training. So if you already have Basic Firearms, Agent 101 Basic Firearms - 0 would be a rank towards specialization in the weapon of your choice. 

    Basic Firearms - 0

    Basic Melee - 0

    Pick a Close Combat skill for Rank 1

    Pick a Combat Skill for Rank 1 (can include going Rank 2 in an already chosen combat skill)

    Lockpicking - 0

    Shadowing - 0

    Surveillance - 0

    Pick one other Specialty skill (not yet trained/selected)

So here's what I did for Mateo:

Transportation: 

Auto Driving - 0

Base:

Spanish - 5

Off Road Driving - 0

Horsemanship - 0

Career (Policeman):

Basic Firearms - 0

Pistol - 2

Basic Melee - 0

Blackjack - 1

Basic Tool Use - 0

Shotgun - 1

First Aid - 0

Auto Driving - 1

Surveillance - 0

Others (free time):

Scuba Diving - 1

Off Road Driving - 1

Throwing - 1

Agent 101:

SMG - 1 (from the 101 Basic Firearms - 0)

Martial Arts - 2 (Basic Melee - 0 plus the free choice rank 1 close combat)

Rifle - 1

Lockpicking - 0

Shadowing - 0

Surveillance - 1 (since he already had Surveillance - 0 from the Police Academy)

Demolitions - 0

So here's the final revised Mateo Delgado, 36 year old Spanish ex cop. Decent set of skills, 73% shot with a pistol, 68% with Rifle, Shotgun, and SMG.

#CharacterCreationChallenge

Character #22: Top Secret/S.I.

My gaming buddy Craig bought Top Secret. But of course I had to run it because he didn't like to read the rules. I liked the idea of it, but never got into it. Granted I only tried to run a couple of modules maybe. So fast forward 40 years and somehow I end up with the intro module Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle, and Module TS 002 Operation: Rapidstrike in my stash. Maybe I bought them? Who knows. But I don't have the ruleset. 

I come across a post on my favorite blog Grognardia about Top Secret/S.I. (Special Investigators), and James has a fairly glowing review of it. I misread it though, I think, as I thought S.I was just an updated version that was backward compatible. I guess it technically is, but it's a different game. Top Secret is described as a more realistic, gritty, D&D-like game, whereas S.I. is a skill/percentile-based game, more James Bond super spy.

So I find a complete set of Top Secret/S.I. and buy it out of some type of misplaced nostalgia. Will probably never play it, but let's make a character for it. The set even had the original dice, so I used those.

First up is Attributes: Strength, Reflexes, Intelligence, Willpower, and Constitution, D60+10 for each. If total is less than 275, you can add points to get the total up to 275, but can't plus up any above 70. I roll poorly and end up with 72 points to allocate, and come up with this:

STR 52

REF 61

INT 54

WIL 50

CON 58

The base score in a skill is the Attribute, with each skill level adding 5 or 10%. I'll find out getting high skill levels initially is tough to do, so a couple of key attributes like INT or REF would have helped my skills out. 

MOVEMENT is a derivative of REF and STR, and comes out to 57.

DEXTERITY is a derivative of REF and INT (huh?) and comes out to 58.

You then select sex, nationality, general size and appearance, handedness, and name them. 

I choose Mateo Delgado, a 36 year old Spaniard, of average height and build (5'10", 170 lbs) with brown hair and brown eyes.

Next is a Psychological Profile, where you rate the characters standing in 6 traits from none to Total. My choices:

Cruelty: Low

Sanity: High

Passion: High

Loyalty: Total

Selfishness: Some

Piety: Some

Each character can pick one Advantage and one Disadvantage: I take Sixth Sense, and Color Blindness.

Another character-building item is picking/creating a Trait: Mateo is known to intently stare off into the distance. Only 50% of the time is he focusing on something intently, the other 50% its just a blank stare.

Next is selecting a Career Package, which is a background that will dictate the majority of your initial skills (by category at least). The choices are Military, Professional, Worker, Entertainer, and Other. I choose Worker (thinking a former policeman).

The Skill Categories are Mechanical, Combat, Specialty (the fun ones like Demolitions), Education, General, and Language. Each character gets 30 initial skill points, and 22 of them are going to be slotted into those skill groups for you, leaving only 8 to freely pick from any skill category. Worker puts 10 in Mechanical, 6 in Combat, and 6 in General.

Each skill has a point cost to buy Zero level (where you use the full related attribute as the score), a higher cost to buy levels 1-3, and another higher cost for levels 4-5. Because of the set costs, and the set amounts in the categories to begin with, I was limited to what I could buy if I didn't want to leave points on the table. I guess I could have just included by free 8 points in at the beginning and just made sure I spent at least the required amount in the set categories, but I didn't do that.

I really liked the skill categories and skills, I just wish I could have bought more to start with.

I ended up with Pistol 2 (had to spend a point on zero level Basic Firearms to start), Rifle 1, Auto Driving 1, Climbing 0, Scuba 0, Basic Tool Use 0 (another perquisite in mechanical), Electronics 0, and Computer Technician 0. Every character gets level 5 in their native language, so Spanish 5 also. My best score in Pistol is only 68.

Savings are calculated (2D6x$1000), and Mateo has $5,000. The last step says to purchase gear and equipment. The lists are short, with basic 1980s military weapons up to 105mm Howitzer (I shit you not), various and sundry cool spy gear, and vehicles from a standard car or bicycle, thru construction equipment, up to tanks and airplanes. I skipped spending my money, figuring it would be mission dependent. 

I'll need to read the rules completely to learn about getting into missions.

Overall though, I liked the generation process, especially the psychological profile, traits and such to try and define the personality.

 #CharacterCreationChallenge