Back in 2002, when the OGL was young and full of promise, Alderac Entertainment Group released Spycraft, a d20 action/espionage RPG. My local gaming group immediately fell in love with it. I started a campaign, which fell apart after three (excellent) sessions due to a lack of GM focus, planning, and follow-through. My campaign setup document, however, was the writing sample that got me onto the Spycraft design team for the rest of the first edition’s run and the Stargate SG-1 license. I started this blog as a repository for my various older and unpublished pieces (among other things), so this seems as good a place as any to post it. Because of length, this is the first of a four-part series.
This material is 21 years old and not representative of my current writing or design skills, but I’m not sufficiently motivated to clean it up. There’s plenty of my newer material out there if someone wants to assess my capabilities as they stand today.
At the time, this stuff was posted on an older web page of mine that’s long since lost to the bitbucket. Hilariously, though, about a year after I started freelancing for AEG, some toolbag out there decided to apply as an AEG freelancer… and plagiarized this piece to use as “his” “writing sample.” You can guess how that went…
Special Defense Research Agency
“Tuatamen Lego Eruditio (Defense through Knowledge)” (official motto)
“Alone, Unknown, and Unloved” (highly unofficial motto)
Design Notes
The SDRA setting is an attempt to tweak the Spycraft rules for a game with a higher level of supernatural involvement than the default setting allows. PCs are agents of the Special Defense Research Agency, a black organization within the United States government dedicated to maintaining national security against paranormal threats. History and current events are much the same in the world of the SDRA as they are in our world, with one key exception: the supernatural is publicly acknowledged as existing. It is, however, extremely rare, about on the level of bank robberies: events get news coverage on the local level, but rarely make the national reports unless they’re particularly spectacular. Very few people are involved in them, but everyone seems to have a friend of a friend who once saw something happen. The government maintains a high level of denial in an effort to protect the public from Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.
The SDRA operates under a thick veil of secrecy. It’s about as well-known as the NSA in the early 1980s, or perhaps the NRO in the present day. The average man on the street has not heard of it, though those who indulge in espionage and supernatural genre entertainment have heard of it and may know a little bit about what it does. Most SDRA operations are never acknowledged as having been performed by the Agency – other, more public, organizations take the credit. Most SDRA agents are forbidden to reveal their actual employer, instead maintaining a set of cover identities in the military or other federal agencies.
Primary inspirations for this setting include Pagan Publishing’s Delta Green, Eden Studios’ Conspiracy X, the Men in Black comic/film/RPG property, and Microprose’s X-Com game series, as well as the friendly government Web sites of the CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, and State Department.
The setting is intended to be significantly grittier than four-color James Bond-style espionage. Death, dismemberment, and madness are constant risks for SDRA agents in the field. The SDRA and its sibling organizations in other nations are a very thin shield between mankind and the Things Out There. Minimum film rating for this game would be PG-13, with frequent slips into R for graphic violence. OTOH, this is a highly heroic game – the PCs are the best there is at what they do, even if what they do isn’t very pretty.
Agency Background
The Special Defense Research Agency was founded in 1951 to manage federal law enforcement and national security issues as they were affected by paranormal activity. SDRA (more commonly referred to as “DRA,” with the “Special” dropped for casual conversation) was formed by a merger of four existing agencies: the Treasury Department’s Special Enforcement Service, the CIA’s Directorate of Unconventional Studies, the State Department’s Special Research Office, and the Pentagon’s Joint Services Global Meteorological Survey Office.
DRA’s existence has always been public, but its exact mission specifications are classified. Its existence appears in no official government documents outside of its formation in the First Amendment of the National Security Act (itself classified until 1982). DRA derives its budget from various “black project” appropriations and covert licensing of advanced technology through “cutout” corporations.
The government was forced to acknowledge DRA’s existence and mission after the Medicine Bow Incident. In the spring of 1958, DRA agents operating out of the Colorado Springs Field Office became aware of a high level of extraterrestrial activity on the Colorado-Wyoming border. The investigation uncovered a large-scale “harvesting” operation being conducted by Greys. The aliens’ advance base, located in Medicine Bow National Forest, was pinpointed after the entire population of Casper was abducted in a single night. Two civilians escaped and contacted military authorities, who in turn alerted the DRA. On the night of August 18, DRA agents led local law enforcement authorities and an infantry company of the Wyoming National Guard in an assault on the base. During the engagement, an antimatter power source’s containment catastrophically failed, resulting in an estimated 3.5-megaton explosion.
A cover-up was impossible, given the magnitude of the blast and its secondary EMP effects. On August 20, President Eisenhower revealed to the world the history of American conflict with extraterrestrials since the 1947 shoot-down of a Grey reconnaissance craft at Roswell. Eisenhower’s speech marked the beginning of the world’s mass admission of supernatural activity: within a week, over half the nations on the planet had at least tentatively addressed the issues of magic, psychic powers, nonhuman intelligence, or alien visitors in a public forum. Contrary to the expectations of many sociologists, upheaval was surprisingly mild: these revelations merely legitimized beliefs that millions of people had previously been ashamed to hold.
Today, DRA is one of the world’s foremost government organizations dedicated to protecting humanity from paranormal threats. The Agency is headquartered in Kansas City, MO, with 10 additional field offices and several hidden facilities in the United States. The State Department also hosts DRA liaison offices in over 20 nations. DRA employs an estimated 1,800 Special Agents, plus over 11,000 other personnel in various clerical, maintenance, scientific, medical, investigative, logistical, and security roles. Exact details of the Agency’s personnel roster are classified for the protection of its agents.
DRA is officially limited to operations within the United States. However, the Agency has reciprocity agreements with the governments of Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Africa, which allow DRA agents to operate in those nations with the supervision of local counterpart agencies. Hong Kong was a partner until the end of local British rule, but its status is currently under negotiation with the Chinese government. DRA personnel have also been seconded to the United Nations and NATO for various operations.
Although the DRA’s existence is known to the world at large, it does not maintain a public face (with the exception of a handful of public affairs agents from the Administrative Directorate). DRA agents and employees are usually drawn from other federal or state agencies, and officially maintain their previous positions. If such a cover would compromise an employee’s identity, or if he has no previous government service from which to draw a cover, he is issued a government ID for another agency with facilities in his cities of residence. DRA facilities are not marked as such and are guarded by personnel in private security uniforms. An entire subset of conspiracy theory has sprung up around identifying DRA personnel and offices, despite the fact that knowingly breaching a DRA agent’s cover carries a federal charge of obstruction of justice.