Classified Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

One thing that I'm doing as I go through Classified is making changes where I think appropriate to update the system to better reflect the modern period as opposed to the 1980's. For example, Photography is no longer an Ability as the digital revolution has, IMO, enabled everyone to be a passable-enough photographer without the need of specialized training.

In its place, I'm allowing the player to choose one Skill from a subset list of Skills and turn that into an Ability of choice. This provides a bit of customization to the player and can help create a good group dynamic where individual characters start with a rather high chance of success on one particularly chosen Skill.

Additionally, I'm adding Language as a Skill as I think the source material focuses very heavy on one particular style of spy/covert action movies wherein the protagonist never had language issues because of narrative construction. I think a more broad-based game should include languages (as does the real world, after all) and a beginning character starts with his or her Native Language as an Ability. Of course, the character could pick Language as their Skill choice for their pickable Ability and start the game with true fluency in two languages.

Both of these changes, IMO, improve the game and I hope that fans of the system are not disappointed by the changes. I suspect I'll have to make a few other such changes as I go along, but I'll never do anything that renders Classified incompatible with its source material and supplements. Time has just moved on.

And because the song's on my mind now...