Spycraft and Fantasy Craft may seem daunting at first--it is a BIG BOOK. But remember, this book is the same thing as the D&D Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide plus some of the Monster Manual all in one!

If you are familiar with d20, you can play Spycraft with ease by just understanding a few key differences:

Skills and Feats: Spycraft and Fantasycraft do feature a different list of Feats and Skills. These were created to better balance out the functionality and usability of the different options. Skills especially see a much wider variety of uses in the Spycraft system. While skill Ranks are tracked normally, most skills have more than one function, and each function may add a different attribute modifer, generating a different skill bonus. This system adds a wonderful level of depth and variety to skills. If, however, this is too confusing to begin with, following Rule Number One, the players at a Wyrmstone table can decide to just use the basic skills.

Vitality and Wounds: Instead of Hit Points a character tracks both Vitality and Wounds. Vitality increases with each level and it represents your character's ability to avoid injury, where the Wounds represents his ability to sustain injury. Wound points do not generally increase with level. When taking damage from an attack, the character first subtracts from Vitality, and after Vitality is exhausted then subtract from Wounds.

Subdual and Stress Damage: D20 has featured subdual damage (aka non-lethal) since its inception, this damage total represents the character's ability to withstand knockout situations. Stress damage is added to the mix as a way to track your character's ability to withstand the rigors of combat and stressfull situations. Every time a stress threshold is surpassed, the character must make a saving throw or suffer negative modifiers to continue actions.

Action Dice: Action dice represent your character's knack for great luck or the periodic superhuman action. They can be added to most die rolls. You start the game with a total number of action dice based on the character level, and action dice can also be awarded throughout the game. Action Dice can also be used by the Game Control.

Dramatic Conflicts: Probably the most inventive addition to Spycraft are the Dramatic Conflicts. These are methods for managing non-combative encounters. Dramatic Conflicts include chases, infiltration, seduction and more. These rules work simply. There is a predator and prey in each Dramatic Conflict, and a set of standard strategies. Each round of the conflict the players select the appropriate strategy. Modifiers are added (such as Dexterity in a foot chase), and a die roll is made based on the relevant skills, the highest die roll wins, and the outcome is determined by the selected strategy.

Each Dramatic Conflict has a length of time associated with it, for a chase one round is equal to one combat round so they can be run parallel, where a Manhunt takes four hours per round. Dramatic Conflicts are inventive and great methods to involve other forms of conflict in a simple and abstract manner.

Talents and Specialties: When creating a character you get to choose a Talent and Specialty, which together are called the character's Origin. These represent some of the background of the character. These are also where Races are applied, as if you wish to play a non-human race, such as an Elf, you select it as a Talent.

Spell Casting: In Fantasy Craft Spellcasting uses a die roll. Spells have a difficulty modifier and any Meta-Magic feats can make it even more difficult to cast. If the spell is successfully cast, the spell points for that spell are subtracted from the character's spell point pool. Spell points regenerate every scene in Fantasy Craft, instead of every day.