DwD Studios

We do have an official acronym for SECTOR, but haven't shared it publicly. We wanted folks to do as you did and have fun with it for your own campaigns :-)

Well, that's rather intriguing. Any chance you might be prepared to share it via PM or are you going to continue to keep it "secret and safe"? :) I'm still going to stick with my version because it works for the style of game I will be running - just interested in knowing the "official" acronym.

Also, what about CITADEL?

Sanctioned Executive for Counter Terrorism & Operational Reconnaissance.

One of the more entertaining aspects of this is that fact that of course Bill has created and TC and I have helped (which honestly means Bill did it with our input and feedback)design the Agents of SECTOR board game, and in that we had to use the SECTOR acronym as well and we in the rules said what it means. However, before you try to find out what we said there bear in mind even that has changed a bit as AoS has evolved into a less US based game and more international. So that is one more variable. We had a lot of fun bouncing different possibilities off the wall until we decided on one.

Truth is you probably will like whatever you came up with yourself better.

Mark

An interesting alternative - certainly a little less aggressive than my version; well worth consideration :)

in Agents of SECTOR board game, we specify that it stands for: Strategic Elite Commission for Threat Opposition and Response. But yours might be better ;-)

That's less embarrassing than our vigilante organization's name:

The OA.

What does it stand for? Not Overeaters' Anonymous. (Even the National Enquirer wouldn't believe Overeaters' Anonymous was hunting down Palestinian terrorists for hosting fat hostages, but we did try.)

You see, when we went independent, we started a private detective agency. Had lots of fine adventures, made lost of money. But it got a little boring, always obeying the law, and we kept running in to things that we couldn't really deal with legally, not being officially sanctioned any more (and being in hiding). So within the detective agency, we slowly built a shadow group, who handled the illegal stuff. On night, we got to talking about the fact that it had become a big enough thing that it needed some formal organization, and that meant it needed a name. So we discussed what to call this other agency, and came up with . . . The Other Agency.

We (the players, that is, though the character probably did, too) had t-shirts printed and everything.

That, sir, is classified.

The next question - the meaning of CITADEL? Acronym, or just a word to represent/signify/imply something else?

CITADEL was intended to be fully described in a supplement. I have a lot of notes on it, and it *is* an acronym. I'm not going to release it just yet (partially because I am planning on revealing more in a series of published missions... but also partially because my notes have 3 slightly different acronyms spelled out and I'm not yet satisfied) hehe

Well, that is interesting. Besides the new missions you plan to publish, do you also still intend to publish the CITADEL supplement?

Interesting you should ask that. The three of us were just discussing the past couple of days how much to tease CITADEL in the new CO manual coming out. I like just giving dark clues and references and save the meat for a future supplement.

MARK

So, how long before the new CO manual is likely to be available? It certainly sounds like you guys have some good plans for CO moving forward.

We have been working on it every day. Bill sends out several messages a day about style, content, layout. TC and I give our input, throw out new ideas and make ourselves a pair of overall nuisances for Bill. I seek the advice of my middle son, Casimir, as he has read extensively on a variety of Role Playing Game systems. The actual timeline is still up in the air. Among other things we are looking to find a way to distribute and market CO as well.

Mark

Well, as long as you guys are working hard at it then I'm happy :) Do you anticipate many changes to the game mechanics or will it essentially be the same system and remain compatible with the present iteration?

This is more of a Bill question. But I would say no, mechanics stay essentially the same. We have tinkered a bit with ability/skill checks and to tell you the truth I do not know the final outcome on that, we have discussed it at length and Bill and TC are much more involved in that construction than I. I am the proverbial fifth wheel in most of this. They just keep me around to pay for the cider.

Mark

Well, you've gotta have priorities in life.

The game mechanics are MOSTLY the same, though tweaks have been made as a result of feedback from the community and the vast amounts of additional playtesting. Agents are more capable now when they begin play, partially due to the ability/skill tweaking we've done, and partly because we decided it was appropriate to this genre to have slightly more competent starting characters than we'll allow in BBF, for instance. Some things changed dramatically (like the Leader skill), and some things changed only cosmetically (calling the GM the "handler"). There are six ability scores instead of 4 because of the number of times we've heard how too heavily weighted DEX and LOG were in this game. So yes, the game has changed. Compatibility with the previous edition won't be so bad though. The worst case scenario will be when reading a previously published rule or adventure and having to figure out if the "LOG check" it specifies should use Perception or Intelligence (the two scores which have replaced LOG). I don't think that's so hard.

The change in ability scores is actually disappointing to me. Are you going to update BBF the same way? One of the things I like about the two is how they cross over so easily.

I'm sorry to hear that disappoints you. The fact is - anyone who made their agent have a high DEX and LOG sorta ruled game play. We saw this over and over at convention and home games, and it was fed back to us here and on G+ as a way the game was "broken." I defended the game for over a year but when we get repeated criticism on the same point, we start to listen. Truth is, anyone lucky enough to have a high DEX and LOG had the highest INIT, likely the best MOV, and the highest chance of success at the majority of skills. Also, it produced some other problems, such as a scout concept having to be a genius in order to have good perception. Most missions center around clue/detail acquisition, thievery activities, and shooting it out with the bad guys. All of which use LOG and DEX for nearly every roll.

Anyway - the new spread allows for more diverse character builds. The goal of Covert Ops was a team of specialist spies all with unique talents doing the impossible... and this allows for such diversity among agent concepts. In play test it has been very highly received so far.

No, there is no intent to back-change BBF. These changes are genre-specific to the spy theme and are not what we're doing for all other products. Each product has its own slight modifications of presentation while the core mechanics remain unchanged. Adaptation of content between BBF and CO will be easy enough.

Will there be guidelines for conversions?

I was just talking to Bill about that. lol

Mark

The disappointment isn't in the fix the balance -- I'm not going to even pretend to argue that, when I've never played or run the game, I've only read the rules.

I just liked how well the two systems meshed. Hopefully the possible conversion rules will work well. :-)

Tod,

First off, welcome to the site.

Secondly Bill, TC, Walt, and I will talk about this and I am sure since the changes are minimal an easy conversion should be doable.

Not played the game????? For goodness sake why not?

mark

Conversion rules are pretty simple.

Convert from BBF to CO2:
AGL and CRD = original DEX score.
PER and INT = original LOG score.

Convert from CO2 to BBF:
DEX = average of original AGL and CRD
LOG = average of original PER and INT

That's about it...

I've been talking with Bill for a few weeks on the G+ groups. I'm the one working on a BBF CharGen program.

I haven't played COvertOps because my wife is in grad school, which means we're pretty busy. The other member of our summer BBF group is back in town and out of college, so as soon as my wife submits her paper to Nature at the end of summer, we should start back up.

Wouldn't that make BBF character's in CO2 overpowered? Maybe roll 1D10 for DEX and another for LOG and add/subtract that, so you have one higher and one lower score in each of the CO2 abilities?

You can do that if you want, but for a simple conversion I wouldn't want to tell a player who was used to being able to use his high DEX for everything DEX-related that suddenly he has a lower chance of doing certain DEX-related things, ya know? For a simple conversion, I say just do it straight up. However, shifting points between them might be fine as long as the GM approves.

Thank you for explaining all of this. My players saw the same thing in the Covert Ops/ Stargate game I ran. DEX and LOG totally ruled.

Though the tough Jaffa could still shine with STR being important.

Thanks also for indicating this was a genre specific change. Makes sense: ;)

I think you have an excellent point. I certainly think it would be a mistake to inject any kind of randomness in to the process, since someone will end up rolling poorly.

But in the interest of player choice, I'm inclined to let people trade up to a certain number of points (maybe 10 or so) from one to the other, or not, as they choose. They'd still be pretty good at everything they used to be good at, but be better as some of it, and not quite as good at the rest. But it should be entirely up to the player.

I must have been unclear. Sorry. There is no "bad" roll. It's OK if you still don't like it--it just seems I didn't explain it well, and I want it disliked for the correct reasons. :-)

If your BBF DEX is 60, you roll 1D10. Say, a 6. Your two CO2 scores are now 54 and 66. And you can assign them to AGL and CRD as you wish. You're a bit better in one ability and not quite as good in the other. I thought it would help keep a BBF character with high scores in the two transferring those two high scores into four.

Taustinoc's trading points idea is similar--I though of that approach, but enforcing 5 points, again, to try to balance the character.

I find this discussion interesting. Bill, TC, and I have had very similar discussions when we were working on the Frontier Space ability mechanics. I am not sure there is a wrong way to go. It is so much a matter of personal taste.

It reminds me of the discussions on the different ways to roll D&D characters. I prefer rolling them in order, living with whatever you get and building your character around that. Others obviously prefer rolling the six sets of dice and then applying them.

I always liked, for me, the characters with one bad score that really effected my play, and then figuring out ways around it.

Mark

So long as it isn't taken too far (by GM or player), there's a lot to be said for flawed characters. Even Superman is more interesting when he's not perfect. The flaws are where the personality seeps through.

(I once watched a guy rolling up a Top Secret character roll three 01s in a row. I wanted desperately to run the character, even though he wouldn't have lived through a heavy rain storm.)

You are exactly right. In one of my games a player has a low charisma, and he deliberately plays the character in an abrupt, sometimes overly anxious way. He makes the character hard to deal with (particularly with NPCs) deliberately to role play the low charisma. The others now make it a point to not allow him to wander about on his own. lol

That is all part of the fun of the game. Some folks I know like to basically play the same character over and over finding the challenge in the adventures or the setting, I like to find the challenge in the characters.

To each his own. Maybe that is my acting background coming out.

Mark

I definitely like games that allow for PCs that aren't awesome in every aspect without making them useless. I played a character once that had a really low intelligence but was a battle tank. Most of my dialog consisted of "can I eat it, boss"? It was a lot of fun. Oh, he was also an experienced woodsman--could track anything anywhere.

Our general rule of thumb is that if everyone's having fun, we're doing it right. Sometimes, that means everybody needs competent characters. Sometimes, not so much. We have a Chivalry & Sorcery game that was divided in to two groups of adventurers, who eventually were dubbed the Heroes and the Zeroes.

The Heroes went Nazgul hunting (in a game that is very, very true to the source material - nothing is more badass) and walked away with no dead PCs. And the king of the kingdom (my character) did penance with sackcloth and ashes for contemplating the murder of a priest (who, frankly, had it coming, but it was still a sin).

The Zeroes had a character whose warhorse was killed by a three legged cow that wasn't attacking it (and wasn't The Evil Cow, as it turned out), and another character known as Sir Matthew Chickenhelm, after being critted in the face with a live chicken, leaving permanent scars.

We had a hell of a lot of fun with both groups.

The only way to do it wrong is to not have fun.

We have a player in our group who plays a half orc who grew up in the wild but has a high intelligence. He is prone to saying things like, "Vroke do trajectory math and rock need to have big arc to smash giant." and "Vroke think drop in air pressure mean big wet and noise soon."

Mark