Level 1

[Sletchman]

Actually, as far as I'm concerned Firefly only has 3 PCs, the rest are supporting NPCs. Mal, Zoe, and Jayne are the only ones that regularly go out on missions and do stuff. Everyone else? Background flavor. Delicious, delicious background flavor.

Ya know, I'd never thought about it like that.

How does that work?  Does each PC have two Personal Lieutenants?  Are the others part of the holding (Serenity)?

Zoe has Wash as a Personal Lieutenant (emphasis on the Personal - ka-chow), Mal has a Mechanic and Doctor Contact (Kaylee and Simon).  Inara is a textbook Courtier, but doesn't get involved enough to be really put down as a PC.  Book I'm not sure of.

River is a sometimes GM-PC Mary Sue / sometimes flavour text, depending on the adventure itself.

[Mister Andersen]

I disagree. 

Mal: PC
Zoe: PC
   Wash: Zoe's PL
Kailee: GC NPC used to get a rise out of all the other players
Jayne: PC
Inara: PC, but player is less regular than the others so GC creates the whole independant sub-letting idea to accomodate them
Book: PC run by GC's partner when they're at home during a session
Simon: PC -- the opening episode of the series is clearly his first session
   River: Initially NPC run as part of character's subplot, expanded into a full PC for partner when Book gets killed off

[Crafty_Pat]

/thread

ROFL! Nice one Glim.

As to the master plan, all I can say at this moment is that the ideal template is "Burn Notice full of Bond," by which I mean the team focus and composition of Burn Notice with Bond as a template for individual agents (and then, most specifically Craig-era Bond).

I've never personally seen the need to equate levels and advancement with linear story progression - I think you can play through pretty much any story at pretty much any level and playing "globe-trotting superspies" at Level 1 is a great way to avoid ability saturation and option paralysis. I am, however, very much in the minority on that, and so we're looking at levels far more traditionally in Spycraft Third. As such, Level 1 agents will be viewed mostly as new recruits - fully trained and ready for the field, of course, but definitely not as experienced as their higher level colleagues and superiors.

We're also approaching this part of the game structure a bit differently this time around, but that's about all I can say on that for now. Expect an upgrade, I guess. I can say that as well.