1. What do you imagine the players to do? Are there different roles and responsibilities? If so, which?
2. What do you imagine the protagonists to do?
3. How do you imagine the settting?
4. Which of these answers do you consider most important and which do you plan to present in your book?
5. Who shall play the game where and when?
6. How long does it take to play the game? How is it structured?
7. Which rules have you derived from answers 1 - 6?
8. Finally, summarize what your games is about.
My game is about spies. More specifically, it’s about creating the kind of atmosphere present in a James Bond or Jason Bourne novel (...) But spy novels aren’t just about spies: they’re also about paranoia. Bond never knows exactly who he can trust.
So, we’ve got expertise and trust. (...) But there’s another element of spy films and novels that I dig the most, and that’s planning. Watching Mission: Impossible teaches us that spies spend an inordinate amount of time planning a mission, but the real drama begins when one little thing goes wrong. That, of course, leads to some other tiny thing going wrong, which leads to another, and another, and another, until finally, you’ve got one huge rolling snowball of wrong rolling straight toward the spies. How our protagonists deal with that is why we read and watch. In summary, we have three things that make spy literature so captivating: expertise, trust, and planning. I want players to feel that these three elements are the most important elements in the game. In order to do that, I have to make mechanics based on those elements. Let’s get started.
How does my Game do that? So, instead of having a system that punishes players for their choices, I decided to have a system that rewards them. Also, if you want to be Jason Bourne, you can be. Bourne can do anything, but he’s not the best at everything. If you’re Bourne, you may have to work a little harder in areas that aren’t your area of expertise. So, instead of stats, we’ve got AOEs: Areas of Expertise. Each and every spy can operate inside any of these AOEs, but each spy is the best at one of them. In this game, there are five Areas of Expertise, not based on physical or mental abilities, but on the method a spy uses to get the job done.
What behaviours does my Game reward? 1. Betraying others. 2. Getting the job done quick.
Why is that fun? Well, spies are fun. Not knowing the outcome of a die roll and improvising around the result is fun. And, frankly, being James Bond is fun. You get the car, the gadgets, the danger, the exotic travel, and the Bond Girl. Or, if you prefer, the Bond Guy. Here, at the Brewery, we don’t discriminate.