Special Agency Interview: Juancho Duma

 

Today we have a very special interview, as it is the first interview with an RPG designer. As soon as I saw this game it caught my attention. Its designer has put a lot of effort and passion into creating this game and all the supplements. Let's see what he has to tell us.

- Who are you? What games do you like?

My name is Juancho and I'm from Madrid, although I live in America. In recent years I have developed a role-playing project with the help of patreon, which already has many books on the street, which are then published on various online role-playing platforms. The project is called Special Agency and aims to publish simulationist, current, historical or science fiction role-playing games, with an emphasis on that dirty, spy, criminal or war movie mood. If I could play a movie, it would be Heat.

- Tell us about your game

Our project includes a main game, developed during 2021, called Special Agency, which gives its name to the project. But we also developed other games, such as Revolution -which takes place between 1700 and 1825-. Special Agency is based on a modified d100 system, with traits, special training and mechanics that make it suitable to simulate "reality", but also the more pulp 80's hero movies. Special Agency is multienvironmental and can be played at any time between 1850 and 2099. In this project we have developed a dozen of supplements that include adventures, modules, rules, campaigns of any length, character books, sandbox... and that are based on how things were done in the past, but with a modern layout. Thus, you can play with almost any setting you propose, and you have dozens of adventures and landscapes in which to develop games. In addition, we include maps and props in all the books.

- Why did you decide to create this game?

A few years ago I found that many of the rules that we used at our gaming tables were being implemented in some new wave simulationist games; but I felt that they did not develop the simulationism properly. In the end we had about a hundred written pages of rules, and I decided to put them together in a book with the help of patreon. It worked, and right now we have twelve books in twelve months. In the end it has become a full time job, very rewarding.

- Tell us about the supplements.

They are many and varied. There are supplements of pre-generated characters -Protagonists-, adventure compendiums -Open Case-, post-apocalyptic sandbox, purely police or with mafia setting -The Day After Tomorrow, The Boys in Blue, Summers of Love-; long war campaigns -The Ranger Campaign- and other more modest and pulp -Luck and Destiny-. There are also long campaigns that have nothing to envy to the classics, such as Special Agency: The Series, or rules supplements to give a paranormal touch to the games, such as Meta Section. Nowadays we are translating the first manuals into English.

- What is your favorite supplement?

The supplement I am most fond of is Special Agency: The Series. It's two 230-page volumes and is a very long-running campaign in which we established our understanding of the game and the game world. The characters start as outsiders and end up saving the world as real action heroes. It's like mixing Jason Bourne with Dutch from Predator in a game, and adding Olivia Durham and Fox Mulder.

- Tell us about what you offer us on Patreon.

In Patreon you can find all the books for a minimum contribution. You pay 5€ and you have access to everything published, no more. There are also smaller levels to choose only certain supplements. I think the concept is not well understood, and I would like to point this out: In patreon, you pay one month and you can download digitally ALL that has been published, and you get access to patron benefits, such as a direct chat and extras in the publications. Then, every month you get one or two more publications, if you decide to stay. You can also download it on platforms like Itchio, Drivethrupg or Lektu, although you will pay the same for a single supplement. On the other hand, all our books are in physical format in lulu; a small royalty, a special layout and the covers are added so that you have it in physical format with the format of our edition; it is not ofset, but it is still a good option to buy. And always cheaper than from a publisher.

- What difficulties do you face when publishing your games in this way?

Many and varied. When someone writes a role-playing game and a publisher publishes it, they don't take into account the work behind it until the book comes out. The raw text is corrected and edited. It's mocked up, illustrated, proofread, publicized with outreach and published in various formats; and you have to deal with sales, customer service.... Each of these phases costs a lot of time and money; in our case, almost everything is done by me. Patrons help with corrections, and I have occasional collaborators, but this is not a spare-time or weekend job. I've been working eight hours a day Monday through Saturday for two years now, determined to carve out a niche for myself in the world of role-playing games. Leaving the real world to pursue this dream has had and still has many difficulties. You have to tighten your belt to extremes that few people understand, but when things work out it is very satisfying.

-Tell us about the future of the Special Agency.

In the next months we will continue with the translations and we will publish the second volume of The Series. The pace of physical books will slow down a bit, because we are going through a period of publishing installments, but we have twelve books in twelve months!

In the next months more chapters of Revolución and La Red Omega will be released and we will remake some adventures and supplements, correcting errata and giving the new format. We have also prepared a Cold War operations campaign called Genocide and Napalm, a science fiction campaign called Planet Antarctica, and a war campaign, the second part of The Ranger Campaign. There will probably be some surprises in between...