
Top Secret/S.I. Character Generation Aid v1.1
Public Domain 1993 Jim Vassilakos (jimvassila@aol.com)

Introduction

Top Secret has been lauded as a "good system" in the sense that
it's easy to run. I think the reason for this is that the rules
are very streamlined. Everything is skill-check oriented, all the
skills are tied directly to primary or secondary attributes, and
other than GM-imposed modifiers, there isn't a whole lot a
variation for special circumstances. In short, it's tight and
very rules-light (and considering the company that produced it,
this is a feat worthy of notice).

To make-up for this apparent simplicity, however, the game makes
you do some work during character generation. You need to do a
whole lot of repetitive calculations and table checks so that
everything is legal and so that when you need to know your chance
to accomplish something, you have the number already sitting in
front of your nose. Handy, but it can make generating a character
a real chore.

That's where this program comes in. Before I tell you what it
does, let me start with what it doesn't do.

The program will not generate a complete character for you. There
are so many rules that it does not even consider, I am hesitant
to begin naming them all. Advantages and disadvantages for
starters. Aging rules. Psychological profile. Starting savings.
Equipment. Basic physical characteristics. I'll stop here because
this is starting to get embarrassing.

But let's look at what the program does do. Basically three
things:

                 1. Attribute Determination
                 2. Career Choice
                 3. Skill Selection 

Short and sweet, but these are the number-crunching parts of the
character generation process. One might argue that these three
things are the heart of the game just in terms of its mechanics.

Consequently, the program is divided into three stages, each of
these stages covering each of these three areas in turn. And just
to keep people from min-maxing, once you finish one of these
stages, you can't go back (you can always quit and start over
again, but it's more fun to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageous decisions :-)

Now I'm going to run through a very brief overview of what you
can expect from each section of the program.


Attribute Determination

The computer roles your five primary stats. If the rolls total
less than 275, you get to spread the difference between your
attributes in the manner described on page 6 of the Player's
Guide. You can also void these rules to create the less than
realistic character.


Career Choice

The computer prompts you to choose one of five career packages
supplied in the Player's Guide for the purpose of determining
initial skill points (see page 29). If you select the "Other"
career package, you will use the optional (page 31) rules
concerning designing your own character background (or
determining your initial skill points). These rules can be voided
in order to create extraordinary characters (i.e. super-heros and
arch-villains). You can also edit the data file "careers.dat" in
order to add new careers or change the ones that are currently
there.


Skill Selection

You start with an empty repertoire containing thirty skill slots.
You then proceed to purchase skills (from the data file skills.dat)
by typing in skill reference numbers. You can modify a skill's
level, unselect a skill, view the skill lists, and modify the
"prerequisite rule" to your liking. Once the character is accepted
at this stage, the program will save the character to an ascii data
file which you can import to your word-processor of choice. Make
sure to specify a file name which does not already exist or you'll
end up overwriting another file.


           _   /|          Jim Vassilakos
           \`o_O'          San Bernardino, California
             ( )           jimvassila@aol.com
              U            jimv@empirenet.com
           Aachk!          http://members.aol.com/jimvassila

