Pitching a New Campaign

The time came to pitch a new campaign to my players and see what they though and if anything interested them. I decided to take a page from Matt Coville’s book. (Find the video where he talks about it here.) I decided to send out ideas for three separate campaigns. I later amended this and added a fourth.

I picked each of these to appeal to different levels of ideas and play styles. Through the Breach was meant to be more thoughtful and role-play based. There would be a little bit of combat but overall I wanted to focus on solving mysteries and puzzles.

X-Crawl was used because I wanted a setting that would be mostly combat but could still give players the ability to roll play. Even with the focus on combat encounters can still have puzzles attached to them.

With the Cypher system pulp game I wanted to go with a more balanced approach. I figured some combat and puzzles with a fair amount of easy pulpy roleplay could work.

I added the spy setting a few days later when I was watching a video where they asked about old cancelled PC games. It reminded me of an old spy game called the Agency. I was very disappointed at that games cancellation and was struck by an idea for a campaign.

Here is the first list I sent out with the added campaign idea tacked on to the back.

Through the Breach

The story begins: you receive a letter from Doctor Hershel G. Beaufort. He’s a well-respected member of society. Trained in the forensic sciences and criminal law he is known in certain circles for dismantling several criminal organizations. He has invite you to join him in Malifaux.

A series of disappearances has overlapped with a case he’s working on and his investigation has lead him into territory he is unfamiliar with; the supernatural. Do to your knowledge, reputation, or history he has invited you to join him at the Beaufort Manor in Malifaux to aid in this case.

Types of characters: someone who can lend skill and knowledge to a supernatural investigation. Mages, professors, researchers, and such would be useful here. Additionally, the mystery could involve dealing with more mundane threats as well so anyone with skills in that area are necessary. Also, in Malifaux, a legitimate strategy for dealing with ghosts is to shoot them in the face.

Types of problems: Most of the story will revolve around the mystery at hand. People are disappearing and Beaufort needs to find out why and if it’s connected to his case or something else. To this end combat will be light. It will happen, there will be shooting and punching, but for the most part wits and ingenuity will be involved. There will also be a series of puzzles that become a part of the story.

Cypher System

The story begins: You are a team of archeologists/adventures rolling around the 1930’s. You travel the world finding lost artifacts from forgotten cultures. While going through a dig in Brazil you come across a new group that appears to have a no regard for history. It’ll be up to you to beat them to the artifact and get it to the British Museum so the world can learn from it. Of course, there is also the mystery of the Egyptian hieroglyphs on the walls of crypt in Brazil.

Types of characters: Adventures, researchers, and social persons. You’ll need to be able to survive running through dart traps as well as punching a mysterious foe. You’ll also need to be able to interact with the locals making a linguist or translator of some sort necessary. A good smuggler or someone who has lots of friends in those sort of places could be useful. Honestly, look to Nathan Drake, Lara Croft, Indiana Jones, Evelyn Carnahan, and Ben Gates for inspiration.

Types of problems: Puzzles and fighting; sometimes simultaneously. You’ll need to be able to hold your own in a fight against the group put against you. You’ll also have to deal with criminals, mercenaries, and more esoteric threats. Puzzles will be more of the: what switch, pictogram, or spot do I press, step on, or avoid. I look to have a more pulpy adventure here.

Possible issue: I’ve not used the Cypher system before but I think for the purposes of the story I want to tell it should work pretty well here. I like a lot of the item rules and how checks are done. It comes with one shot items, decent dice system, and challenge ratings that should make throwing stuff at you on the fly pretty easy.

X-Crawl

The story begins: you are the new up and coming team headed to Division 3 for the first time. Entering the full lethal category of X-Crawl is nerve wracking but exciting. You’ve trained, worked as a group, and are ready to go. It’s time to run that dungeon.

Types of characters: X-Crawl uses Pathfinder rules because they haven’t translated the X-Crawl classes to DCC yet. That said, pretty much standard adventure classes here, though I would recommend trying to work in a little bit of the X-Crawl specific classes. Instead of a cleric maybe go for a messenger; that sort of thing. Even multi-class could be useful here as you’ll all start at I believe 4^th level. One thing’s for certain charisma is important. It’s at least a secondary stat for X-Crawl so you can get the crowd on your side.

Types of problems: This is going to be mostly a combat focused game. There will be puzzles but they will be in the realm of looking good on tv. I like to do stuff that takes part outside of the dungeon but nothing too strenuous. This will mostly be quick character moments with little beats of getting to know the locals.

Task Force Theta

The story begins: world-wide corruption has reached a new peak, nations are tearing themselves apart with civil wars, and new extremists groups are rising to power with unprecedented power. Some believe that there may be an as yet unknown shadow organization behind the entire thing. This is shrugged off as an internet conspiracy by everyone, well…almost everyone.

Damien Samuels, ‘former’ security chief for the UN, wants to see if there’s any truth behind the rumor. You’ve been selected and recruited from the best of the best regardless of nation to form this group. Your first mission, infiltrate a charity event in Monte Carlo. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

Types of Characters: Like Egypt game above, I’d like to use the Cypher system here because I like the rules for enemies that will allow me to give you enough disposable mooks while still throwing the occasional lieutenant in your direction to challenge you. The skill system is easy enough to create scenes on the fly without having to over think it too much or look up a lot of charts and architypes. Plus the “artifact” rules make it easy to include things like grenade cufflinks, tricked out cars, laser pens, and tracking devices.

For characters, I’d basically use any type of spy character from whatever country you feel would be fun to play. Want to be a Russian, awesome. French, sure. American, what the hell. North Korean, we’ll figure it out.

Types of problems: let’s be honest, at this point you already know what sort of stuff you’ll have to face off against. Hulking brutes with metal teeth, Japanese guy with a deadly hat, and an acrobatic young woman who’s replaced her legs with razor sharp stilts.

I’m not saying I’m going to rip off every spy movie ever, but I’ll certainly be looking in their general direction.

The Meeting

After I sent this out we met for our regular game group and discussed which setting we preferred. People and their favorites and the settings they didn’t like. One person hard passed on Through the Breach because they didn’t like that there wasn’t an organization that were the good guys. A couple of people passed on X-Crawl because we’d just finished a dungeon crawler and they wanted to try something else. The final person passed on pulp adventure because they felt that they didn’t know enough about those type of stories to contribute. This left us the spy game. Which met with only one criticism. Someone didn’t like the name. Which I had intended to change anyway.

From here I sent out a list of questions.

Modern politics

Is the President of the United States Trump or Jackson?

Who’s developing nuclear weapons, North Korea or a rogue African dictator?

Is Isis or Oxomo a major terrorist organization?

PC’s

Do you want to play just one character or do you want to have a stable of characters and choose which you’ll play before or after the mission briefing? This setting can easily be the IMF method where everyone is good at everything but fantastic at one thing or the GI Joe method where everyone is specialized to the nth degree and you pick who fits the mission and Snake Eyes.

Level of cheese

There will be a level of gadgets and technology where on the scale would you like to be?

Matt Helm

A Team

Moore Bond

The Avengers (Peele and Steed)

Brosnon Bond

IMF

Dalton Bond

Connery Bond

Craig Bond

Bourne

An additional question came back, and that was which era were we playing in? I had assumed modern day but put the question to everyone else.

In the end, we went with the 1950’s which removed the politics from the game. Since we wouldn’t be reflecting modern life we didn’t have to worry about causing any uncomfortable conversations to occur. We’ll be focusing on the Eisenhower era so no one has any particular feelings about his as president and we can just play the game.

For PC’s we’re going with the IMF model of everyone being all-rounders with a specialization. This let’s each player focus on playing a specific character and not trying to remember bits and pieces of a stable of characters.

For level of goofy, I think we’re touching down somewhere between the Avengers and the Roger Moore era Bond. This gives me access to some fun gadgets while still having threatening villains with dark stakes. I’m quite happy with all of this.

Finally, there has been some question as to the system we would be playing. I recommended Cypher in the initial email but Genesys from Fantasy Flight Games has come up and that could be a possibility.

To this end we’re going to try a one shot to see what people think of what I have planned. We’ll try Cypher and see how that works. I’m creating some PC’s for the adventure. I’m looking to do a men on a mission sort of story.

I think I’ll save that for the next time I write about this.

I’d love to hear what you folks think. Are there any good spy RPG’s with the right feel I’m looking for that could work here? I’d love to hear your thoughts.