I have this idea about assigning character roles in a TSOY game based on Dark*Matter or X-Files via how you were ‘hired’ – if you were a Witness, an Internal Hire, or a Field Agent (something supernatural unto yourself). Witnesses tend to be naive to the true nature of the organization, Internal Hires are much more jaded, and Field Agents used to be hunted themselves and their loyalties are highly questionable and can change over time. However, there are alternate views of these employees: Witnesses are very new to this world and don’t have too much influence, Internal Hires are taught from the beginning and have lots of influence, and Field Agents have prejudices to deal with, but some connections, too. Finally, if you look at it in terms of supernatural power, you’d have Witnesses in the middle, being exposed but new, Internal Hires as sub-par, suffering from their banal surroundings, and Field Agents with high power.

That is:

See how it’s just like the sides of a Fudge die? Yeah, me too. What to do with this?

Here’s a sheet I drug up from a while back. Comments welcome.

Here are some changes I made since I posted the original:

Here are some ideas I’d like to try out.

Character Creation

The player will begin by deciding to be one of three kinds of characters:

- Field Witness: The character was a Zero (a normal person with no known supernatural connections) who witnessed an Instance (a supernatural event or situation) and showed promise.

- Field Agent: The character was a Negative (an agent of the supernatural or something unknown) who demonstrated a willingness to cooperate.

- Internal Hire: The character was a Positive (a person who worked for the Sub-Agency [below awareness of the purpose of the Agency] or a related agency) who performed well on a field test.

Character creation begins with everyone at the table acting as your interviewers. Your interview depends on your character type. The answers to your questions will fill in spots on your character sheet. When the interview is done, there will one spot left on your sheet wherein you fill in a connection to one of the other characters. This will be resolved by the group as a whole before gameplay begins, but you will have at least one connection to someone in the group.

Did you notice the Zero, Positive and Negative terminology? It reflects a few things. First, it mirrors the faces of the FUDGE dice. This will become useful inside the game mechanics further on (read: it’s damn cool and I want to use it somehow). Second, since the operative teams are called Sigmas, your sum will mean something as well. Three Field Agents would mean Negative 3. This should have an influence on what kind of mission the GM brings to the table. You can also refer to other teams by this and have everyone at the table both in and out of character know something of what to expect. For instance, a Sigma Zero team would be either a team of all three types of operative or three Field Witnesses.

Pool Refreshment

I’ve thought of two kinds of Pool Refreshment for the game. One would be an interactive flashback (recruit people at the table to be NPCs in your flashback) wherein you show some part of your life that relates to the Pool you’re refreshing. The other is an Inspectres-style confessional where you are being debriefed about the mission you’re on and you’re being asked to rat out on one of the other team members betraying the Agency in some way. The key thing is this: you could be lying, sure, but if you’re not, the player that acts out those confessions of yours gets an Advance.