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The Tradecraft Skill in GODLIKE (and Maybe Delta Green)
🕑 Added 2021-10-21 16:00:07 +0000 UTCMy home (well, Discord) group is playtesting the first scenario of Operation TORCH, a looooooong-gestating GODLIKE campaign about the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942. The opening scenario features American Talents recruited by the OSS's Secret Intelligence division to search for enemy Talents in Casablanca. An integral element is the new Brains skill Tradecraft. Playtest it and let us know what you think.
(As an aside, I'm considering a version of this to replace the Disguise skill in Delta Green. We decided against Tradecraft as its own skill early on as too duplicative of existing skills like Persuade and Stealth, but developing the Tradecraft skill with Allan Goodall for GODLIKE makes me reconsider. Thoughts?)
BRAINS SKILLS
Tradecraft: Avoiding attention and suspicion while gathering and sharing information. Spying in plain sight.
USING TRADECRAFT
Tradecraft identifies and mitigates the risks that others might recognize spying when they see it. Tradecraft is to spying what the Tactics skill is to combat operations. It covers communications, behavior, cover identities, and setting up safe houses, radio posts, or bases of operations. Where Stealth avoids being seen, Tradecraft avoids drawing attention and suspicion during observation. Spies sometimes work against each other with opposed Tradecraft rolls.
Tradecraft is often used in conjunction with other skills. Dropping a coded message where another agent can pick it up is Tradecraft, but coding the message in the first place is Cryptography. Placing an electronic listening device in a room requires Tradecraft, but constructing the device requires Electronics. Searching a room for a hidden letter uses Tradecraft, but sneaking into the room in the first place requires Stealth. Knowing when and how to send a radio transmission without it being heard by the enemy requires Tradecraft, but making it comprehensible requires Radio Operator. Remember that calling for two rolls doubles the chance of failure. When two skills are necessary to a single action, use the smaller of the two dice pools and look for a single success.
TRADECRAFT SKILL FUNCTIONS
- Follow another without seeming suspicious.
- Recognize a person or vehicle that you saw before or that might be following.
- Leave or hand off a message or parcel someplace public without it being noticed.
- Conceal something on your person or another's or in a room.
- Recognize a secret handoff or dropoff.
- Disguising appearance to avoid recognition while looking natural. Exception: A disguise to pass as another character always fails in conversation with or scrutiny by someone who knows them.
- Develop a cover identity to suit the operative's background and knowledge.
- Support a cover with documentation and personal habits to convince experts in that field and society.
- Recognize that a piece of information is best kept secret.
- Avoid letting a secret slip in conversation.
- Use a signal or improvised code to confirm the absence of danger before a meeting.
- Know which steps to take to prove a particular colleague's loyalty.
- Determine a potential agent's or informant's security, what rewards they want, and what risks they can tolerate.
- Communicate in euphemisms and codes that fool eavesdroppers without raising suspicion.
- Destroy incriminating records beyond recovery and without raising suspicion.
- Compose an accurate, specific, detailed, and timely report that indicates each source's reliability.
- Find a safe place to set up a secret radio set.
- Send secure radio communications by using short transmissions and unpredictable transmission times and locations.
Comments
adriangamenerd
My two cents. Sounds like a great idea. If you're playing a game about being spies spying within spy organisations you're probably not going to dislike rolling that Tradecraft skill. Also it's a moment to focus on how well did the DLB or lightening contact go. Did you successfully conduct anti-surveillance on your way to meet your source. Did you help your team run your SV8 contact through a counter-surveillance route. As you say, it isn't really any of the other skills.
Chris Huth
The primary issue I would have is that all of those are already reliant upon skills (in the real-life sense) that are covered by: 1. POW or INT tests (or HUMINT) for keeping secrets. 2. Navigation, Criminology, or Military Science (depending on what 'secure' means) for assessing security of places. 3. Bureaucracy, Computer Science, or SIGINT for covering tracks in documentation based on medium.
Chris Huth
This distinction seems kind of over-specific given the rest of the DG skill list's broadness.
