Class Design: Superspy Game I

Class design is one area we are very familiar with, having written it into SBRPG. I am reading a lot of OGR old-school type games based off the OGL, and many of them use the old 3d6 method and strict character class templates, even for modern games such as sci-fi and superspies. It is an interesting choice, and I would like to focus on class design, specifically OGL d20 style class design in these games.

Let's take a spy game, and rig this along d20 style OGL concepts. We could say we need an assassin, investigator, and possibly a thief class in our spy game. If we split the thief into a con artist and technician class, we would have a cool "team of agents" design, which is good for group-based play. So our classes are:

• Assassin
• Investigator
• Con Artist
• Technician

Interesting. Let's block out the assassin design first. Obviously, this class deals in combat the most, so lets give the class the best attack modifiers. We have an instant problem now, the assassin is the most attractive character in the game to combat-oriented players. In some groups, combat determines success, so this class will naturally be the best at the exciting and adventurous aspects of the game. I say let's do this, in our game, let's flatten the combat modifiers, and make every class the same at fighting. Let's assume this is dangerous work, and let every agent get training in fighting. So attack modifiers will be the same for every class.

Now what do we do with the assassin? Let's give this class specialized methods of attack, experience with poisons and traps, and a cool stealth ability. Take the generic "he's a fighter" thought out of the class, and design the class to play how we would like it to play. Fill up the class' toolbox with cool and interesting choices to give the players options and cool things to do.

With the Con Artist, not much is needed beyond blocking the powers out and doing a good job. This class is extremely fun, highly-role playing, and something everyone will want to play. If they are equally good at combat as they are sneaking around, doing the swindle, and pilfering goods, you won't have much trouble with them at all.

We have two boring choices, Investigator and Technician. There was a fun design discussion around the original Star Wars d20 game, where players did not like playing the techie or pilot classes in that game. The pilot could not contribute on foot, and the techie's job was to fix the starship in the background while everyone else explored the planet. I can see complaints about the Investigator being 'he just looks for clues' and the Technician as 'he just sets up the spy gear.'

So maybe these two classes need to pivot, and we should shift them to something more engaging. Or maybe they are fine, depending on your players. This is one of the tough parts about designing classes for a wide group of players, you have to start making assumptions and generalizing those to a more popular audience. With our d20 example, we need to go down this route. In SBRPG, you design the classes at play time, so if all you need is Investigators and Techies in your game, that's all you design, and your players are happy.

We will get to our Investigator and Technican class in a later post, and find out what would make them fun in our sample design in a later post. In the meantime, how would you pivot these two classes to make them fun?