SC + FC = Plausible Game mechanic?

[TheTSKoala]

Okay.. so.. gearing up for a brand new campaign to herald the arrival (if I'm still alive.. ) of FC.  Is FC and SC completely compatible?  Weapon vs. weapon comparible, etc?

(Btw. I know it was elluded to that Mastercraft products were interchangable, I just wanted to make sure.  We're going to try to run a SC and a FC group and then have them crash together into one big group after FC is released.  Thus, ask now, and plan later.  ))

[Crafty_Pat]

Okay.. so.. gearing up for a brand new campaign to herald the arrival (if I'm still alive.. ) of FC.  Is FC and SC completely compatible?  Weapon vs. weapon comparible, etc?

(Btw. I know it was elluded to that Mastercraft products were interchangable, I just wanted to make sure.  We're going to try to run a SC and a FC group and then have them crash together into one big group after FC is released.  Thus, ask now, and plan later.  ))

Awesome! Should be perfectly doable, though a very small amount of kit-bashing - or a few on-the-fly decisions - will be required. Spycraft and Mastercraft are essentially different approaches to the same system, though we're presenting and promoting them as separate systems because enough is different that you can't really run them in tandem "out of the box."

We like to call the two systems "portable" as opposed to "compatible." They have the same underpinnings and use (mostly) the same information, though Mastercraft uses it in ways that are easier to memorize and rapidly process, allowing for a cleaner, faster game. Not all the terms are the same but virtually all of them have ready parallels. By necessity, many of the same rules do work differently, which most of you improvisers out there will find is a huge advantage.

Those who want more granularity can port stuff from Spycraft into Mastercraft and those who want less can port the other way. We've made every effort to ease this process but in some cases it simply wasn't possible. Remember that Mastercraft needs to succeed on its own merits, not as a Spycraft expansion.

When all is said and done, we expect most folks will choose to use Mastercraft though a few will go full Spycraft and a few more will merge the two to meet their specific needs. We'll continue to support both games independently and offer insight and periodic review here on the boards for those who want to merge them.

Hope that helps!

[Desertpuma]

Good to know. Thanks, Pat.

[TheTSKoala]

Okay.. so.. gearing up for a brand new campaign to herald the arrival (if I'm still alive.. ) of FC.  Is FC and SC completely compatible?  Weapon vs. weapon comparible, etc?

(Btw. I know it was elluded to that Mastercraft products were interchangable, I just wanted to make sure.  We're going to try to run a SC and a FC group and then have them crash together into one big group after FC is released.  Thus, ask now, and plan later.  ))

Awesome! Should be perfectly doable, though a very small amount of kit-bashing - or a few on-the-fly decisions - will be required. Spycraft and Mastercraft are essentially different approaches to the same system, though we're presenting and promoting them as separate systems because enough is different that you can't really run them in tandem "out of the box."

We like to call the two systems "portable" as opposed to "compatible." They have the same underpinnings and use (mostly) the same information, though Mastercraft uses it in ways that are easier to memorize and rapidly process, allowing for a cleaner, faster game. Not all the terms are the same but virtually all of them have ready parallels. By necessity, many of the same rules do work differently, which most of you improvisers out there will find is a huge advantage.

Those who want more granularity can port stuff from Spycraft into Mastercraft and those who want less can port the other way. We've made every effort to ease this process but in some cases it simply wasn't possible. Remember that Mastercraft needs to succeed on its own merits, not as a Spycraft expansion.

When all is said and done, we expect most folks will choose to use Mastercraft though a few will go full Spycraft and a few more will merge the two to meet their specific needs. We'll continue to support both games independently and offer insight and periodic review here on the boards for those who want to merge them.

Hope that helps!

I'll definately be one them groups that merge MasterCraft and Spycraft with the ethos "Why throw out what you enjoy?".  Now.. a follow up.  Without asking for the super squirrel secret algebraic equation kept hidden by the Gormogon... are the two Weapon tables comparable?  Crossbow vs. Pistol, granted, clip size will be an obvious bonus, however, is the damage at least comparable?  That's the last peice of info I need to make sure I can pull off a 4 player, two team turning into an 8 player, 1 team Campaign without 1 team feeling like they got robbed because they're all' Old school. lol.

[Aldus Vertten]

I'm thinking that Maybe you have some kind of document or guide about the changes made from one system to another to work with while the writing was being done. Any chance of seeing this presented like a Conversion Guide in the download section or something like that?

[Crafty_Pat]

Weapon stats are not identical but they're close enough that you can use the values in one system or the other without anything breaking. Mixing and matching weapons in a single category will require decisions at your end as a) the quality lists and in some cases individual quality rules differ, and b) Spycraft weapons have some stats that Mastercraft weapons don't (like base error ranges greater than 1).

I'm thinking that Maybe you have some kind of document or guide about the changes made from one system to another to work with while the writing was being done. Any chance of seeing this presented like a Conversion Guide in the download section or something like that?

Such a document does not exist. The changes are many and varied - sometimes subtle, sometimes not - and all decisions were made independently of Spycraft.

We will not be releasing any form of official conversion document.

[gaghiel42]

We will not be releasing any form of official conversion document.

I mean, not that I want you to spend your precious hours finishing FC on it but... Why not?  It seems like easy money to me.

[Wolverine]

Why not?  It seems like easy money to me.

I can come up with a couple of reasons....

Pat mentioned that there are a lot of changes, so it is a fair bet that compiling them all would take some time. Time which could instead be spent on other books

The other is that I'm sure there'll be plenty of people here on the forums who are happy to provide advice to anyone wanting to convert a character.

[Crafty_Pat]

Pat mentioned that there are a lot of changes, so it is a fair bet that compiling them all would take some time. Time which could instead be spent on other books

The other is that I'm sure there'll be plenty of people here on the forums who are happy to provide advice to anyone wanting to convert a character.

Both true. Also, it wouldn't be easy money. No one would pay for a conversion document. They'll pay for new books and PDFs - which we have to keep making if we're to keep doing this.

Fortunately, this works to your advantage. We envision the Mastercraft/Spycraft divide as a fertile playground, not a concrete abutment. Back when we were (very briefly, ages ago) looking at possible conversions, they all seemed rather lifeless. They robbed the process of any creative spark and simultaneously made it that much harder to produce the game you actually want to play. We decided it was best to let each of you determine what was best for your game, making choices as you ran into them and as appropriate to your worlds and stories.

We're looking forward to seeing the various choices you make, actually. We think that will be one of the most compelling aspects of the License to Improvise in the weeks and months to come.

[TheTSKoala]

Why not?  It seems like easy money to me.

I can come up with a couple of reasons....

Pat mentioned that there are a lot of changes, so it is a fair bet that compiling them all would take some time. Time which could instead be spent on other books

The other is that I'm sure there'll be plenty of people here on the forums who are happy to provide advice to anyone wanting to convert a character.

Also, I could be wrong but the 'need' for a conversion document might not be even necessary.  I think we may be looking at Mastercraft incorrectly, once I go back and read everything the Crafty folks have put up there.  It's not like we're going from D20 to a D10/D6 system. The premise stays the same, they're just taking what had already previously worked and tweaking it to one engine to span across all their products.  Now, Crafties feel free to correct me if I'm way off here, but that engine, while 'new', I'm envisioning is very 'similar' to Spycraft.  So, a conversion document may already exist in the embodiment of common sense once we get our hands on Mastercraft and say.. "Oooooh.  Okay! Got it now."

[Desertpuma]

Exactly my thought Koala. ... Spycraft has gone from a semi-good engine to a better engine and is going to a master engine design that is streamlined and travels much faster more smoothly.

I know I'll be pouring over the book in detail and looking what I think may need or should be changed for a home game. The questions I have now are whether or not XP chart will be identical and how soon Spellbound will be finished after FC is released.

[brazen_saint]

To expand on the thread's premise, what sorts of campaigns are people working on that might leverage (corporate-speak!) the interoperability of the two games?

For me, I got inspired by an RPG.Net thread about porting Planescape to d20 Modern, and that got mashed up with GURPS Fantasy's Yrth and some Feng Shui into this idea:

There's a city that exists on another plane.  A wizard did it.  As an immortal, preoccupied with his inscrutable experimentation, he needed servants, and found it expedient to obtain servants from Earth rather than make his own.  As time went on, the numbers grew; the servants needed helpers, and they needed servants, etc.

Rather than grabbing an individual here and there, he started grabbing whole towns and city blocks.  To prevent their being missed, he grabbed from places that were about to be destroyed, sometimes moments before.  There are elements of Atlantis and Lemuria there, and Camelot, ancient China and Japan, Pompeii, San Francisco before the fire.  Whole cultures, religions, ethoi persist in his city, that died out on Earth aeons ago.

Today, this sprawling interdimensional metropolis is a sort of Casa Blanca to every conspiracy, cult, fraternal order, and sect from throughout history.  And they maintain ties to Earth, ...

Yeah, I could probably do this in Spycraft, but it'd lose the whole flavor of ancient world meets modern world, I'd think.  Plus, there's only a little magic available yet for SC, until VAO is out, and I really like the whole 'occult conspiracy vs. fists and bullets' angle for this campaign.

Anyone else?

[Desertpuma]

My D-Gate campaign is on hiatus at the moment for a few reasons. But basically, it is a cross between Stargate and Sliders where the team is dimension jumping to different locations. As a result, the Crafty Engine becomes a multiverse engine like GURPS or Palladium allowing me to send the players just about anywhere to any environment. I actually have a detailed mythology involved where some of the gods of old were actually the real Ancients and created places like Atlantis or were represented as Thoth or even "mortals" like Merlin. King Arthur, it was said, would return someday to save the British Isles and perhaps will, having left through a dimensional gate when he "crossed the sea". All manner of worlds can be opened up with all manner of races (of which I have created a few as Talents) to be explored.

[Morgenstern]

One thing that will likely help with hybrid settings is we tend to tackle new "powers" as descrete chunks. We don't make everything even vaguely supernatural fit into the spell-casting system for example. If magical tatoos strike our fancy (and they strike mine from time to time ) they tend to be set up as a 2-5 page block of rules that can plug in by themselves with or without other 'types of magic' being in play. Throwdown's rules don't require you to have Spellbound, and visa versa. While they are designed as seperate undertakings, most character power systems of that sort are tuned to the same level of bad-assery, and thus offer comperable rewards for comperable investment if a couple of option sets are turned on at the same time.

[Desertpuma]

Are rules for magic tattooed characters in FC? ... Is there a Base Class devoted to them? Or are Throwdown's rules in a separate pdf to be?