For the next party I will use DoubleZero by Lightspress Publishing; as far as I know, the game is based on an old espionage RPG, is pretty lightweight, and very, very modular. It comes as a series of PDFs, which can be bought and assembled as needed, and as far as I can see allow the creation of pretty much any modern setting. I will use the base rulebook plus a few core expansions to create modern espionage characters. The game is regularly being updated, and the version I have is V3; I might look at some older V2.3 files as well if I need inspiration. The game will be set in New York, ca. 2010.
Not to start with a superlative, but Henry Peck has always excelled at what he did. As long as it involved his brain, that is. Math, physics, geopolitics, all topics on which he became incredibly competent rather early in life, and due to a variety of scholarships could easily improve on with some scholarships. Physically no slouch, he was less interested in sports and partying than figuring out complicated puzzles. With his father a retired Navy officer and Henry possessing an excessive sense of precision and wish to follow rules and regulations, Uncle Sam became aware of his abilities pretty soon, and certain people started carefully nudging his career into a specific direction. His high school guidance counselor, for example, got certain strong recommendations shortly before she met Henry for the first time. That kind of thing. As a result, Henry has become a model employee of the NSA, working in a hidden facility close to the UN in New York. He was happy and felt that he made important contributions to keeping US citizens, Western Society, and people in general safe. Until he noticed some irregularities - it started with an instance where a decision was made about taking out a presumed terrorist cell without him being able to find the basis of the decision, though the evidence was found on location after the fact. Sitting as he was in a core facility for that kind of analysis, finding out what happened should have been easy. It wasn’t.
Henry Peck was incapable of letting such a nagging little thing go. He found more evidence, ultimately finding that there must be a secret third party that had access to NSA data feeds and was somehow feeding unprecedented analysis to high-ranking officials in certain intelligence organizations one would be pressed hard to find in official documents.
Henry Peck decided to talk to some of these people, a decision he would regret very, very soon.
Let’s stat him up, shall we? First, he needs a Profession, which is essentially a package of suggested Skills, Advantages, and Disadvantages. They are also ranked. The normal way to do this is to take one profession and use it as a basis. But there is the suggestion to choose multiple ones and combine them. This is possible for more advanced characters, and since I want a game of at least Competent PCs this would fit - it allows characters to take two starting professions. But let’s aim even higher - Henry is an Expert, I would say. And since Henry is somewhere between a Scientist and Secret Agent let’s go with those two. The focus will be on Scientist, though.
Before we continue let me explain the basic roll. When a PC tries something, they roll 2D10. One die determines the success, the other the outcome, i.e. how well things worked out. To succeed, the first die has to beat a target number; depending on what needs to be compared, the second die might need to beat a number as well. Let’s say a PC wants to climb a wall. The GM says they need a 4 to do so, so if the first die rolls a 4+ they succeed. The second die could determine speed. If they are racing another person, let’s say as part of a chase, they might not only have to succeed but also beat the second person's second die. And now let’s move on.
Next in the creation process, we get to distribute points among the Aptitudes, which seem to be pretty much Attributes. When rolling, the respective Aptitude determines a number the PC gets if they do not want to roll, i.e. for an automatic success. So, someone with Athletics 4 would just automatically succeed in climbing the wall, but not rolling also means no determined speed, etc. Experts get to distribute 35 points, with no Aptitude higher than 6. Henry has:
Athletics 3, Creativity 5, Fighting 2, Influence 2, Knowledge 6, Perception 6, Technology 6, and Transportation 2.
Next up are Skills; these determine the Outcome if a PC decides not to roll. So, let’s say a PC has the Aptitude Athletics 4, and skill Climbing 6, they could decide not to roll for climbing the wall in my example, and would automatically succeed with an Outcome (read: speed) of 6. The skill list isn’t determined, though there are lots of suggestions in the book(s), especially in the Professions. Expert characters get to distribute 60 points, with a maximum of 6 in each skill. I will just copy the lists from the two Professions and see how far we get with those.
Codebreaking 6, Counterintelligence 6, Espionage 4, Evasion 4, Firearms 2, Infiltration 2, Stealth 2, Surveillance 4, Undercover Work 4
Data Analysis 6, Hypothesis Testing 4, Research 6, Political Science 6, Technical Writing 4
That seems quite fitting.
Next are Advantages and Disadvantages. Advantages add a +2 to specific success rolls determined by the Advantage, but it needs to be bought in each instance using the metacurrency, so-called Hero Points. Disadvantages can be invoked to create Hero Points but subtract 2 from a roll. I am not sure how many of those are supposed to be added at character creation. Later they are both earned from the narration. Let’s assume two each, just for some color. As with skills, there are no complete lists, but some suggestions.
Henry has Keen Intuition and Pattern Recognition as his Advantages and his Disadvantages are Can’t Let A Puzzle Go, and Too Focused.
Finally, an Expert character gets 4 Hero Points to start the game with. Former editions used Injury points, essentially HP, but this system is not in place anymore. Instead, injuries are treated as Disadvantages associated with a specific body part or something else (like a destroyed cell phone), and a specific malus that can be invoked as usual.
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