So, first things first, let's talk basic mechanics so you know what all this is about. There are no attributes, just abilities, and there are two kinds, Investigative and General. The points in these abilities can be spent as you see fit through the course of play, and refresh at various rates. Physical Abilities, like Athletics, Driving, Hand to Hand, Piloting, Shooting, and Weapons, refresh every 24 hours. You take a day, you get them back. Health and Stability recover with time and medical or psychological attention. Most other General abilities can refresh by following your character's Drive into danger or story complication, getting captured, or certain abilities or special rules. The exception here is Network and Cover, which are never refreshed. Once you have committed resource to a Cover or Network resource, they are used. If you need more, you can buy more with XP, but it encourages you to not throw away Covers or Assets, because getting them back is a problem.
Aside from the exception of Cover and Network, all other abilities, General and Investigative, refresh at the end of an "Operation", which by the book are on average about 2-3 sessions, depending on pacing. In practice, it could be 1 session, or it could be 6.
You spend points on die rolls you really want to make. Difficulties range between 2-8 and you roll a single D6 for the checks. Average difficulty is 3-4. Shooting at someone, for instance, is a baseline difficulty of 3, modified by cover and a few other things, like having high Athletics. So if there's a guy behind cover and he's been pulling some Parkour stuff during the chase, you can reasonably expect the target number to hit him being around a 5, so if you've got a lot of points in Shooting, you can afford to spend 2-3 points to make the chances you'll hit him even better. Spends happen before the roll, so you have to gauge them carefully, but since Shooting refreshes every 24 hours, you can feel better about spending it right now, especially if you really need that guy dead.
So on to the actual character creation:
Every player starts with a few things right off the bat for free, Health and Stability at 4, Network at 15, Cover at 10, Tradecraft and Streetwise at 1. These are basic things that all operators, regardless of their speciality, get as a baseline. You've been doing covert ops for a while now, so you understand the cores of the trade and how to get around the underside of cities all over the place. You may not be the best at it, but you know the basics. You also have a set of Cover Identities and Contacts you've established over the course of your career. Health and Stability are quite literally your Physical and Mental Hitpoints, and are to be neglected at your peril.
So where do I start with my character? Well, first I start with a concept. Since I recommended Burn Notice and Leverage above as starting points, I'll start with this:
"My name is Daniel Easton, I used to be a spy until..."
Since I'm using the main character from Burn Notice as a baseline, I should focus on what he was really good at, what stuck out in my mind as being essential to his character in the show. Now, I could go and grab some backgrounds that sound about right from the main book and slap them together, in which case I would come up with Asset Handler, Cuckoo, and Investigator, which would give me a good baseline I could manipulate from there, but let's focus on the free form. Three things Michael Weston was best at is a good place to start.
First up is Disguise. Daniel will need a good Disguise skill to go deep cover, act like different people, impersonate notorious criminals, and so on. With a high enough Disguise, he can slip into roles connected to whatever is being investigated, perhaps because he is reviving an old cover, or perhaps because the person he is impersonating is known only through reputation, and has never been met. Either way, I'll earmark this one as very important.
Next up is Surveillance. Shadowing, staking out, and gathering information before infiltrating a group is massively valuable, and without it, you're as good as dead. It also matters once under cover to turn up valuable information by following around important people who would otherwise be hard to spot.
Third, I'll want a combat skill, but one I can rely on under any circumstance. Going into dangerous situations often means going in unarmed, no gun, no knife, no taser. Criminals and black ops specialists are equally paranoid, and pat downs will happen, so Hand to Hand is going to be my top combat skill. I'll probably put points into Shooting because guns are always lethal, and it never hurts to have a backup, but in a bathroom, few things beat breaking a sink with someone's face.
So let's see how my character looks right now. I have 70 points to spend in General Abilities, and 20 points in Investigative. General skills top out at 20, though Health and Stability top out at 12.
So far, I've only spent 24 points from General Abilities, leaving me with 46 more to spend. I'll want to spend some in Health and Stability, but you may also note I have a point in Electronic Surveillance. That's from having 8 points in the Surveillance General Ability. Most General Abilities have what's called a "Cherry", a special ability that unlocks once you've invested 8 points in the ability. Hand to Hand lets me size up opponents to see if their Hand to Hand is better or worse than mine, but with Surveillance, I get a free point in an Investigative ability, so let's move on to those.Name: Daniel Easton
Concept: Burned Spy
General Abilities
Cover: 10
Disguise: +8
Hand to Hand: +8
Health: 4
Network: 15
Stability: 4
Surveillance: +8
Investigative Abilities
Electronic Surveillance: 1
Streetwise: 1
Tradecraft: 1
Electronic Surveillance is the art of tracing calls, GPS signals, planting and finding bugs, making listening devices by cannibalizing cell phones, and so forth. A useful skill for any spy to have, but what about the cornerstones of Mr. Easton's investigation repertoire?
Same as before, I'm going to think of the three cornerstones for Mr. Easton. This won't be the limit of my investigation skills, not by a long shot, but it gives me a good base to work from.
The first thing that comes to my mind is languages. Being a deep cover agent for so long means he's got to have picked up more than a few languages in the course of his career, and he has to be able to speak them well enough to lie in them. Plus, what good is listening in on a Russian conversation if you don't actually speak Russian?
Next up is BS Detector. I need to know when someone is lying to me, but more importantly, what motives they might have for lying to me, so that I can work out some way to get them to spill the beans, which leads to the next skill...
Reassurance. You might think interrogation would be a natural followup to BS Detector, and it is, no question, but with Reassurance I can get people to do things for me through fast talk, a calming presence, and generally being their friend. If I know what's motivating them to lie to me, I can then use the same sorts of motivators to get them to do things for me, and I can use this to make it seem like that's the right thing to do.
Investigation skills are usually rated 1-3, but Languages is a special one with a higher cap, because you can learn a lot of extra languages. Forgery is similar, with both skills generally being rated between 1-6. So with the investigative skills, let's look at the character now.
This leaves me at 46 General Points and 14 Investigative Points. Still a lot left to spend, but it goes pretty fast because a lot of the skills are useful. As a Spy, I'm going to be spending a lot of Investigative Points on Interpersonal Abilities to grease the wheels, get information, develop assets, and so on. On the General Side of things, I'm going to invest in things that would be useful under cover. Sense Trouble comes to mind, so I know what things are about to go very badly for me, Infiltration may get some points for if I have to sneak out of a place undetected, Filch for stealing useful flash drives or other things I may need, some extra points in Covers to burn through as needed, and of course some additional points in Health and Stability, but I have my starting point now.Name: Daniel Easton
Concept: Burned Spy
General Abilities
Cover: 10
Disguise: +8
Hand to Hand: +8
Health: 4
Network: 15
Stability: 4
Surveillance: +8
Investigative Abilities
Electronic Surveillance: 1
BS Detector: +2
Languages: +2
Reassurance: +2
Streetwise: 1
Tradecraft: 1
And since I have decided I'm going to be relying on disguises fairly regularly, and my life may very well rely on the disguise holding up under scrutiny, I think I'll tag Disguise as my MOS Ability. An MOS (Military Occupational Speciality) is a single General Ability (not Investigative) that you have as your primary specialization. That is your bag. Once per session, you can choose to have the roll automatically succeed. There are limitations, like you can't do something actually impossible with the skill (I couldn't disguise myself as Andre the Giant or sell a disguise of being Don Corleone to Don Corleone, for instance), and Supernatural threats may still trump you, because Supernatural, but it's a once per session automatic win. Whatever your primary skill is, that should be your MOS.
