Poocho, New GC, seeking friendly guidance

[Sletchman]

There's plenty of ways to produce vast quantities of cash - it just depends on what the teams Control will allow.  They could aquire expensive items and sell them on the black market [either legit or elaborate duplicates].  They could steal it [from rival outfits, criminals, banks, whoever fits the agenda].  They could liquidate some reputation [which could in game be represented as getting a huge favour from their friendly local money launderer, who resents this particular favour].  If Control approves it they could have an expensive piece of military hardware as a gear pick [say an attack helicopter] and organise a sale to an arms dealer [this sale could go down, perhaps with a tracking device in the item, or it could be a sting operation - to both shut down the arms dealer and get his cash].

It all comes down to what suits your setting, what sort of missions you want to run, and how much cash you actually want them to have access to.

[Poocho]

Ah, I see.  I can either let the players get creative and come up with ideas themselves, which I could either shoot down or give the green light for, or I could give them certain opportunities they could take advantage of.  I certainly don't mind creative methods coming from either them or me.  The main reason I asked was that there's usually a game mechanic for virtually everything, and I didn't want to imbalance anything by making something on my own.  Thanks to both of you for your help with that.

Here's something it wouldn't hurt to bring up here.  Along the way of the campaign the characters will encounter artifacts, inscriptions, and prophecies (some of which mention them, though they won't realize it at first, hopefully) from an ancient civilization.  Instead of telling them 'You see glyphs from an ancient language that you can't even begin to comprehend,' I'd love to produce actual excerpts from said language.  It can't be a modern language, since I'd have to actually learn that language in order to translate; nor can it use characters taken directly from any known language, since that could cause the PCs to go down the frustrating dead end of trying to translate the excerpts themselves.  Rather, I need a semi-complicated cipher involving unique characters and grammar rules, perhaps even writing from right to left.  Eventually I may want the characters and/or the players to be able to decipher the language, but not without clues I give them.  Having a key to be able to speak the language would be very welcome.

Now, I've learned to speak a decent amount of Spanish, so I understand some of the fundamentals of language translation.  That said, I in no way think the above undertaking would be easy.  I have no desire to re-invent the wheel.  Thus if anyone has created a fictional language that I could use for my purposes, I'd love to use it.  A program that would write the fictional language as I type English, or at least a font that I could plug into my word processor, would be great.  Does anyone know of a resource that fits my desired parameters, or anything remotely close?

As always, thanks in advance for your direction.
Poocho

[doneatrawhagis]

My suggestion is create a simple English Code. Create a key of 26 different symbols that correspond with the Alphabet. You could have it as emoticons or stick figures if you want. This way a player with an culture or analyze skill could do a decipher language check.

If you want to create one for you players to speak I suggest doing a more modern language, like French, German or Spanish. Speaking languages in game always end with my group speaking English and pretending the other people do not understand.

To create More COMPLEXITY all words are backwards. This will trip them up for a bit, but they should notice eventually.

Side Opinion:
I try to avoid Prophecies because immediately people in games know they are the ones being talked about. To disuade them from thinking its their characters give names to the ones in the prophecies instead of saying the Chosen One or the Four Heroes of Light. Make the first prophecy only a fractured account(rubbed off letters and such)

Try taking their names and re-arranging the lettering. Gray coudl be Yarg or to be funny Gary. Basil could be translated as Sabli(Sable). This way they don't think its them, also mix up the gender of one of the characters in the prophecy.

I usually do a reversal with prophecies, where the player is actually the villain or that the prophecy was actually a trap placed by a villain. Most times if a player examines an object that is faked for storyline purposes I will only allow them to know it if they critical on it. Other wise Ill just say it is an artifact with a prophecy reading "blah blah blah..."

[Trigger]

Poocho, I know you registered on TheAgencyStar website.  Did you look at any of the mission downloads for possible sources for your missions?

[Desertpuma]

Keep in mind you can also create new Cultures focuses. I did this with my D-Gate game since it was akin to Stargate in some ways.

I advise creating your own cipher in the process so that the players, not the PCs, will have the opportunity to try and decipher or break the code. Sometimes this needs to happen for their own good.

As for prophecies, make them vague and appear to be about the PCs when it really refers to one of the NPCs.

[Poocho]

If necessary, I guess I'm willing to make the language myself, but to do it right I think it would take too much of my preparation time.  Simple is exactly what I DON'T want.  It will have to be complicated in order for it to serve its purpose.  I suppose I plan to create it, let the characters decipher it with time, but eventually reveal it to the PCs for more fun.

For the prophecies themselves, yes, I intend to keep them vague especially in the beginning.  I may have it refer to one person, but have that One actually be 4 unified people, though they won't know that for a while, maybe even up till the end.  I also hope to throw them off however I can.  For example, I'm considering putting together a rival team of 4 that also has the chance of fulfilling the prophecy.  In fact, I'm hoping my end game will involve a race between the 2 teams to be the one to control the artifact/device.  If the bad guys get it, they'll basically destroy the world or conquer it.  This could lead into a follow up campaign/season in a post-apocalyptic setting.  If the PCs succeed in securing the device, they'll basically save the world and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.  That would probably complete the game, but if the PCs wanted, and if I felt like it, I might consider continuing the story by introducing a new "threat from the stars" or something.

If/When the PCs realize the prophecies could refer to them, I'll have to make sure they don't think that makes them invulnerable.  Just as the rival team could fulfill the prophecies, so could their team made up by 2 of the original members plus 2 more that came in to replace the 2 that died from that foolish leap of faith they took.

So, should I figure that no one here has undertaken the task of creating their own usable language, or that there is none available to be borrowed?

Trigger, I know I looked briefly at your list of missions when I first registered weeks ago.  Since then I've mostly been delving into the core rulebook to fully understand the game mechanics before actually putting my campaign together.  I'll get back into reading through the LSpy missions and probably some of yours once I've got the essentials down and am looking for inspiration and missions to adapt.  From what I remember, you guys had a whole bunch of missions, but in the limited time I had to look them over I gave up for the moment.  My memory is kind of foggy, but I believe I had trouble distinguishing the PbP missions from the table-top ones just from the titles, and I didn't want to have to open each file to find out.  I can't remember if you had brief descriptions listed for each file, or if I had to open them to get anything beyond the title. 

As of right now, I'm kind of swamped with rewriting the history of the world as we know it without making any real apparent changes to the world as we know it, creating multiple international organizations, and learning the game inside and out, all the while remembering that I have to get up for work in less than 6 hours.

It's all good fun though.

[Trigger]

Trigger, I know I looked briefly at your list of missions when I first registered weeks ago.  Since then I've mostly been delving into the core rulebook to fully understand the game mechanics before actually putting my campaign together.  I'll get back into reading through the LSpy missions and probably some of yours once I've got the essentials down and am looking for inspiration and missions to adapt.  From what I remember, you guys had a whole bunch of missions, but in the limited time I had to look them over I gave up for the moment.  My memory is kind of foggy, but I believe I had trouble distinguishing the PbP missions from the table-top ones just from the titles, and I didn't want to have to open each file to find out.  I can't remember if you had brief descriptions listed for each file, or if I had to open them to get anything beyond the title.  

As of right now, I'm kind of swamped with rewriting the history of the world as we know it without making any real apparent changes to the world as we know it, creating multiple international organizations, and learning the game inside and out, all the while remembering that I have to get up for work in less than 6 hours.

It's all good fun though.

If you click on each section (Missions-SMP, Missions-Mini-SMP, or Missions-PBP) there is a list of each mission in that category with a brief description.  These are mainly executable files for the Spycraft Agency Database 2.0.  If you dont want to use the database, you can download any missions in the (Missions-Bundles) section which are just the PDF and audio files.

The PBP missions are a little different than the other SMP and Mini-SMP missions as they have web links in them to actual locations and files that pertain to the mission.  They are specifically geared towards playing on the internet and in a forum.

Hope that helps.