Non-Comic: Silly Spycraft 2.0 Book Rant

Okay, you may or may not know I like role playing games. I grew up playing them in some form or another and they're fun. Okay, that's established.

Anyway, last time I was at the comic book store I ended up taking home a copy of Spycraft 2.0. This is because I have a thing for spies. Especially cheesy sixties spy shenanigans. Sit me in a room with a bunch of Mission Impossible, Get Smart or Man from UNCLE DVDs, I'm a happy camper.

I was looking curiously at the alternate campaign sections, because I'm never happy unless I'm trying to do something much more ridiculously complicated than the standard, apparently. There were some of the obvious settings/themes: Military, Conspiracy, Espionage, Near-Future, Light-hearted, Street. Some more surprising ones like Apocalyptic, Horror, Pulp or Western.

What I was really looking forward to was something historical themed though. I'm not a huge stickler for historical accuracy and any game I run is undoubtedly going to be at least a little bit silly/cheesy anyway, but I thought it might be an interesting idea. Certainly there's a lot to work with. There are a lot of pretty infamous Revolutionary War or Civil War figures after all. Or my favorite era for espionage: the Elizabethan Era.

Considering all the pots Sir Francis Walsingham had his fingers in, you'd think there'd be all sorts of possibilities worth at least a BLURB in the Alternate Campaign section, right?

Nope. Nothing. They have don't have any blurbs on tweaking the game to fit the era that pretty much INVENTED modern intelligence (let's just say there's a reason Neil Gaiman used him as the base for Nick Fury in 1602) but they have blurbs on the WILD WEST.

Come on! I like shootouts and gun-slinging in the ok corral and outlaws and that sort of thing too, but it's not really well suited for SPYING. The kind of campaigns center on "renegade saviors" and "personal quests".

Okay, admittedly, something like the Bourne Identity would suit Spycraft, I'd say, and IT has renegade saviors and personal quest(s) up the wazoo. But it's also got the evil shadowy corporation to fight against! I'm pretty sure that you need some kind of scary commanding type organization to either work for or fight against seekritly to be a spy thing.

Okay, admittedly, if I stop and think about it, I can find some potential in the setting, but I still resent the fact that it got a blurb over various other historical settings that are ACTUALLY KNOWN for involving spies.

Oh well, it's a perfectly good book otherwise and worth the money. I'm just irrationally irked.

I guess I'll just have to tweak an Elizabethan era campaign myself. Hmph, stupid book. Making me actually get off my ass and do my own damn thinking. Yeesh.