Ninjas & Superspies: Character Creation

Despite my praise for this game, I can see why people dislike it.

So I went through character creation last night, and everything went well - except for the skills. Oh, the skills. The hour-long slog through the skill lists. Please don't calculate the final stats before you do the skills! The 40% +5% per level, but -10% if the secondary skills thing. Why do we need so many specific skills tracked down to the percentage skills? The two skills are the same skill but have different percentages. The whole why is this skill listed twice thing?

Now I want to make a cheat sheet of skills, listing them alphabetically and then putting the percentages and modifiers after each. I do not want to open that book again for skill calculations, trust me. The amount of flipping and losing my place, even for the PDF, was insane.

But I still like the game.

My character took me over an hour to create, but I still like the game.

I know, d20 people, please give the character a skill set, add their level and ability score mod to the skill check, set a target number, and be done with it! Why does it have to be that much work? That is just...wrong. If I were playing any other spy game, I would be in and done in 10 minutes tops, playing my first game, and not messing around with rules.

You like Castles & Crusades, right? You can do this all in the sister game, Amazing Adventures, with the companion that adds in modern gear, and be playing now. I know! But that game is more pulp, and it is also a more contemporary design.

With Ninjas & Superspies, when I was done, I felt I had something real. When you put a little work into building a character, you tend to feel a greater sense of accomplishment and connection to that hero. With a simple system like B/X, I do not get the same level of connection. The story becomes the focus, and the characters feel generic replaceable anybodies. For those who like stories, great! But there are times I think more complex characters write the story on their own, and they don't need help from a module or storytelling dungeon master.

This is what it feels like with my character. He is so interesting and cool. I want to go out and write stories with him myself, instead of having someone else tell me a story (or a random table providing it), and I have to react. There is something about character design driving the story at play here.

Without Rifts, Does it Hold Up?

One of the questions I ask in my exercise is whether the SDC Cinematic Universe games can stand on their own without Rifts? They can, but they do need a little help, like cheat sheets, quick reference guides, and a few flowcharts. The character sheets, too, needed some love, and I found myself cleaning up my skill list by pulling the languages and weapon proficiencies out of the main skill list and putting them in separate lists. There was a coma/death save to add to my saving throw list.

Beyond ease-of-use optimizations, can they stand on their own?

I feel they can. You start comparing them to other games, and they will look a little less optimal ways of spending limited time. But then again, when I had my completed character, I felt good. I ran him through a sample arrival in a foreign nation, going through customs, meeting his first contact, getting on the road, spotting an ambush, and things went very smoothly. The system melted away, and my character sheet became the "game" I was playing.

My head was not in a rule book.

My head was in my character sheet, where it belongs.

Would I like to see a modernized version, cleaned up, with ease of use put first? Yes, of course. Modern weapons and gear, less of a focus on microfilm and microdots, more on modern spy stuff and drones. An updated weapons list, new vehicles, and communications gear. Also, I feel the more specific game worlds hold up a little better than a generic spy game - anyone can do a world like that - but Nightbane, Dead Reign, Beyond the Supernatural, and After the Bomb are cool and unique worlds I feel hold up a little better than a more generic setting.

Head Out of Book

I contrast this with games like D&D 3e or even Pathfinder 2e, where my head is constantly in a rulebook while I play. Some classic games, such as Aftermath or Rolemaster, also fall in this category. This system falls into a unique category of "complex character sheet and no rulebook needed," and I feel the same way, honestly, about GURPS. A game with involved character creation, but most of the essential parts are on your character sheet when you get done, and you don't really need to reference the book much past that point.

With B/X or other simple games, I don't need a book in my head to play, but the characters are elementary - I could play the entire game in my head.

Back in an era (the early 80s) where you could get a thousand players together in a game center over a weekend and play games all night, this sort of system would be the ideal design. For one, you can play with a lot of people and never need to pass a rulebook around. Everyone does not need a rulebook to play, just a character sheet, and the rules are so simple that anyone at the table can tell new players what to roll or what they can do next. For people trying the game, gamers with limited funds, or a group of kids whose parents could only afford one book, this was great.

And yes, I know in the 80s your character sheets were hand-written and typed, or photocopied ones were a luxury. And yes, this is a lot to hand-write, even on a computer; I was still doing a lot of typing and work to get my sheet perfect.

For character creation? Forget it, you need a rulebook. Everyone does. But once you get through that, and keep a stack of pre-gens handy, you can play until dawn without needing to "pass the rulebook."

While playing my sample scenario, I would do the "solo play" thing, ask myself what could happen next, and check my character sheet for a skill. If not, I would roll the percentage under an ability score, modified, or figure something out.

The book stayed closed.

I recently ran a solo Pathfinder 1e game, and the number of times I had to look up a rule in one of the books physically hurt. It killed the play of the game, always having to go back and reference something, find out how a condition worked, get a combat rule right, or look up a spell or class ability. The game had the worst of both worlds: complex character sheets and constant book references. I felt the same with Starfinder.

Can it be Better?

If I spend the time to make skill cheat sheets for these games, yes, character creation will improve tenfold. Also, a decent checklist that makes sense and works in the order you need to do things would help. My second and third characters will go much better, and I will start to develop my systems and shortcuts.

The above is what I have in mind, but sorted alphabetically so I can just go down the chart as I fill in my character's skills without opening the book. I can add a notes column for ability score adjustments, but that is it. I would need to make one for each game because I half-expect the skills to change or have special ones in each session.

The game needs some love and organization, but it can be improved for faster play and easier character creation. It is not a hopeless game or far too broken to fix; just a minor cleanup and organization is all we need.

Originally published 4/6/22 on the SBRPG blog.