Re: [RPG]: Conspiracy X Second Edition, reviewed by C.W.Richeson (3/4)
Excellent review, Christopher! You do a great job of providing information plus analysis.
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Re: [RPG]: Conspiracy X Second Edition, reviewed by C.W.Richeson (3/4)
The Beautician skill is the one you use when:
a) You're disguising yourself or your colleagues.
b) You've been ordered to assassinate someone you don't want to assassinate (either while undercover amongst the enemy or because you're disobeying your superiors), and you need to make that bullet wound in his face look convincing on the photograph.
c) You're going undercover in a way that gets you into General Meyer's home office. Yes, you're an Avon lady, showing Mrs Meyer how to get the best out of your products. In a moment, that pill you took on the doorstep is going to kick in and you'll vomit on the floor. Head off to the bathroom (via the office) while she mops it up.
Re: [RPG]: Conspiracy X Second Edition, reviewed by C.W.Richeson (3/4)
Or a person could use the Disguise skill. Though Beautician does state it does everything Disguise does and then some, so I guess the elite infiltrators are being trained as Beauticians.
Re: [RPG]: Conspiracy X Second Edition, reviewed by C.W.Richeson (3/4)
One thing I do in my games is, if you have two closely-related skills, you can roll the lower of the two, then add success levels as a bonus to your check on the higher skill.
So if you have a Beautician of 2 and a Disguise of 3 and an Int of, say, 3...to do a really bang-up job of disguising someone, you can roll Int + Beautician first. Let's say you get 11, 2 success levels.
Then, you add those successes as a +2 bonus to your Int + Disguise skill to concoct the final disguise.
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The 'Beautician' skill would be far more useful if the point of the game was to make characters beautiful.
It isn't. At least not for most players it seems.
The purpose of this skill is to make people appear more...appealing, but I noticed that most of the examples apply the skill in a way that misses this point. Using the skill to become an Avon lady to sneak into a house is akin to Homer Simpson getting a book about "How To Break Out of Jail" while in jail and then using the book to knock someone out and escape.
Successful use of a skill like this should affect the way other characters FEEL about a character.
To make it applicable to 'Disguise' just feels like a feeble attempt to justify its presence in the game to players who don't see the point to being able to enhance a character's natural beauty. And this is probably because most game mechanics do not support in game effects beyond killing something, stealing something, detecting something, or enabling a character to avoid such occuring to them.
Re: [RPG]: Conspiracy X Second Edition, reviewed by C.W.Richeson (3/4)
Excellent review, which I enjoyed reading.
A few quick questions -- are the Zener Cards from Con X 1st still involved in psychic powers? Are they an option? They were one of my fave parts of the game. How compatible is 2nd ed with my first ed supplements? Also 1st ed was very much limited to the default American setting, via the occupation templates - is there more scope for British European agencies this time?
Re: [RPG]: Conspiracy X Second Edition, reviewed by C.W.Richeson (3/4)
Quote:
Originally Posted by cj.23
Excellent review, which I enjoyed reading.
A few quick questions -- are the Zener Cards from Con X 1st still involved in psychic powers? Are they an option? They were one of my fave parts of the game. How compatible is 2nd ed with my first ed supplements? Also 1st ed was very much limited to the default American setting, via the occupation templates - is there more scope for British European agencies this time?
cj x
Thanks cj.23!
Yes, Zener cards are still included and there is limited support for their use. The mechanic for them is simple but no doubt fun for many groups. Sampe Zener cards may be photocopied out of the back of the book. Keep in mind that support for them involves about two paragraphs of text explaining that the players of psychic characters can guess which one the GM has drawn in order to succeed at a psychic task.
As to compatibility, i'm not the best person to ask. I have Con X 1.0 but have never played it. I have AEGIS as well. Both books have material I would draw upon for a Con X game simply because the setting material in Con X 2.0 is sparse, so i'd say they're useful. Compatible though, I just don't know. I'm sure lonegunman could answer!
No, there is no support for European agencies. This book is very clearly focused on the United States.
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