DwD Studios

There is a war going on every day. Its soldiers don’t march in lines or report to a large obvious pentagonal building. It is a shadow war where information and bullets hold equal weight, and enemies don’t always wear uniforms. This game is about clandestine Special Forces parachuting behind enemy lines to carry out a discrete mission that no government will claim ever happened. It is about special agents receiving their missions from men and women whose names and identities won’t turn up on any database. It is about mercenaries. It is about spies. It is about secrets, seduction, stealth, deception, assassination, bribery, infiltration, action, and adventure. Welcome to BareBones Covert Ops, a role playing game of espionage and paramilitary operations. This game takes advantage of the d00Lite system, a fast and simple set of game mechanics created by DwD Studios. Expect more games using this same system.

This book will weigh in around 100 pages of content. Inside, despite its small size, you'll find a wealth of helpful stuff designed to help your creativity as a GM and inspire you as a player.

• Origins: 20 types of versatile categorical backgrounds which take the place of races for characters in this modern-era game
• Skills: 10 skills specific to the genre
• Outfitting: Robust equipment section complete with guns, gadgets, equipment packs (to take the tedium out of equipping your operative), vehicles, backup personnel, etc.
• Martial Arts: a cool new system containing more than 30 special maneuvers that can help set apart a highly trained operative.
• Base of Operations: a team of operatives who achieve enough clout in their organization can have their own Base of Operations from which to plan their missions.
• Combat: familiar combat rules, along with some added rules for chase scenes, vehicle combat, losing control, automatic weapon fire, and more.
• Security and Traps: what heist mission would be complete without a host of security and traps at a GM's disposal?
• Major NPCs: a method for GM's to create major NPCs of varying ranks to serve as enemies and allies to the players.
• Master Villains: a system to create a master villain to spearhead the plots your operatives will have to thwart!
• Enemy Organization: a procedure for creating enemy organizations for your master villains to impose their nefarious plans on the world.
• Mission Generation: a system for creating limitless missions with minimal prep time. Roll dice, then fill in the details with your own brand of imagination.
• SECTOR: A broad brushstroke world-wide espionage organization campaign setting for you to use as a launching point for your missions. Use it or make one of your own!

Also included is a separate book (called Usual Suspects) containing 20 pre-generated and illustrated character archetypes ready to drop into your sessions as operative allies or enemy henchmen!

And as if this wasn't enough, the core rulebook will include a bonus Game Master's Operations Manual. This is a similarly-sized book containing all the optional stuff we WANTED to put in the book but felt it made the page count too high. Full of great options to help a GM customize his own type of setting a-la-cart:

• Rounding Out Your Operative: some additional tables to roll on to help determine your operative's height, weight, vision correction, handedness, gender, hair, eyes, and number of native languages.
• Detailed Examples: Step by step examples of using the systems presented in the book, along with commentary and suggestions. Examples include operative creation, general game play, enemy organization generation, master villain creation, and mission generation.
• Origins: An optional replacement for the Origins system presented in the core book, allowing a bit less structure and more player choice.
• Skills: Notes on how to handle some situations, how to create new skills (with an example new skill: Merchant, ready to drop into any campaign).
• Outfitting: Guidelines on how to model real-world firearms rather than use the simple categorical solutions from the core rulebook, along with six examples. Includes 10 example gadgets from the real world, which are surprisingly cool. Also includes variant ammunition types, for those who want a bit more detail in their campaign at the expense of the added complexity. Finally, this section concludes with an optional rule for using dollars instead of the "Equipment Allowance" rules from the core rulebook, for those freelance types of settings where operatives aren't necessarily being issued gear from a parent organization.
• Moral Code: A suggested alternative (or addendum) to the moral code system from the core book, where loyalties mean more than morals.
• Martial Arts: Optional rules to add more to the martial arts system, in case you want your setting to focus more on this fun side of modern combat.
• Rank Benefits: an optional system that gives operatives a special benefit when they achieve a new rank, such as access to a black market, a munitions contract, an offshore account, or access to a R&D lab. Give some incentive to achieve higher ranks!
• Game Guidelines: more optional subsystems, including but not limited to: extended actions, Bones, conducting chase scenes using flowcharts, social interaction guidelines (bribery, charm, deception, interrogation, intimidation, persuasion, seduction, etc.) and more!
• Initiative Cards: Optional rules for using a special deck of initiative cards (which, by the way, are also included in the product download in a print & play form, ready for printing to Avery Business Cards).
• Hit Location: For those wanting a bit more detail in their combat system, a hit location system is presented. Heavily tested to be fun and fast-paced, while still providing some additional detail!
• Game Mastery: Storytelling techniques and thematic elements - ways to master your GMing!