#RPGaDAY2026 /31

I want advantages in OSINT-6 to feel temporary.

Good intelligence gets old. Cover gets tested. Access closes. Surprise disappears.

Use the edge while you have it.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

#RPGaDAY2026 /30

I’m proudest of the parts of OSINT-6 where research, surveillance, planning, source development, and analysis become actual play instead of exposition before the action scene.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

#RPGaDAY2026 /29

Research is a large part of writing OSINT-6.

Sometimes I spend an afternoon checking one dull procedural detail that gets two sentences in the book.

Those two sentences are often what make the rest believable.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

#RPGaDAY2026 /28

I’ve spent a lot of design time asking how much fifth edition can change before familiarity stops helping.

OSINT-6 still uses that framework, but the things characters actually do had to change substantially.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

#RPGaDAY2026 /27

Most OSINT-6 missions begin with an information need.

What don’t we know?

Who might know it?

How can we find out without creating a worse problem?

That’s enough to start designing an operation.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

#RPGaDAY2026 /26

I don’t want failed operations erased between adventures.

Bad intelligence, burned access, lost trust, and compromised methods are campaign material.

Regret becomes useful when it changes the next decision.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

#RPGaDAY2026 /25

Using familiar modern objects was a deliberate design advantage.

I don’t need three paragraphs explaining what a hotel key card is. I can spend those words on what the characters can do with one.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

#RPGaDAY2026 /24

Modern distance is weird.

A target can be 4,000 miles away and on your screen instantly, while the nearest person who can physically help is forty minutes away.

That tension belongs in espionage games.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

Heavy Pistols Fact Sheet

#RPGaDAY2026 /23

Planning matters in OSINT-6 because luck still exists.

You can improve the odds, gather intelligence, build contingencies, and choose the time.

Then somebody takes an unexpected smoke break.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

Battle Rifle Fact Sheet

Battle Rifle Fact Sheet

$2.00

Full-power service rifles presented as real weapons and usable game equipment.

Battle rifles pair full-power cartridges with military service histories that often span several decades. Their weight, range, capacity, and handling distinguish them from lighter carbines and intermediate-caliber service rifles.

The Battle Rifle Fact Sheet presents real rifles through a stable reference format. Every entry identifies origin, service period, known users, cartridge, capacity, and OSINT-6 statistics for damage, range, loudness, access, qualification, size, and traits.

Players can compare specific rifles during equipment selection or identify a recovered weapon from its model and history. Game Masters gain prepared profiles for armed forces, insurgencies, security services, weapons caches, and Cold War stockpiles.

Use the Battle Rifle Fact Sheet to give full-power military rifles a clear identity and a defined place in OSINT-6 missions.

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OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260822

Equipment presents a tempting shortcut in an agency reference. Readers expect a list of standard weapons, vehicles, computers, radios, armor, and surveillance devices. The CIA doesn’t publish a current model-level inventory for those categories, and the public record reviewed for the OSINT-6 CIA Fact Sheet didn’t support one.

We declined to turn expectation into fact. Current assignment packages use generic profiles from the OSINT-6 Core Rulebook: Laptop Computer, Secure Phone, Handheld Field Radio, Covert Camera, Concealable Ballistic Vest, Service Pistol, Passenger Sedan, and other functional entries. The sponsoring office issues only what the mission, authority, and qualifications support.

Generic profiles keep the game usable without claiming that every analyst receives one laptop model or every protective officer carries one pistol. A fictional campaign can name a manufacturer and model when that detail matters. The controlling game statistics still come from the applicable profile unless the equipment requires a documented difference.

Historical artifacts receive different treatment because the CIA Museum supplies identifiable objects and contexts. The TAR-224 radio, PRC-112B1 survival radio, Thuraya satellite phone, Minox B camera, cigarette-pack camera, dual-use subminiature camera, and escape-and-evasion kit can be mapped to existing profiles with dated limitations.

Those limitations preserve the period. Film cameras lose remote transmission and digital review. Exposures are finite, and film requires processing. A survival radio can transmit coordinates only when its link and receiving equipment support that function. The kit’s components use their individual tool rules rather than granting one undefined package bonus.

This treatment separates documented history from fictional procurement. The book provides enough equipment to run a mission while remaining honest about what the sources establish. Absence of a public inventory is a research result, not an empty space that needs confident invention.

#RPGaDAY2026 /22

I deliberately kept recovery slower and danger relatively mundane.

An agent who’s exhausted, injured, and three hours from support should feel different from one who started the morning fresh.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

Anti-Materiel Rifles Fact Sheet

Anti-Materiel Rifles Fact Sheet

$2.00

Heavy rifles, verified reference data, and OSINT-6 game statistics in one focused source.

Anti-materiel rifles occupy the far end of shoulder-fired weapon design. Their cartridges, dimensions, intended targets, and limited field roles place them outside the assumptions used for standard rifles.

The Anti-Materiel Rifles Fact Sheet profiles real weapons in a consistent reference format. Each entry records origin, service period, known users, cartridge, capacity, and OSINT-6 statistics for damage, range, loudness, access, qualification, size, and traits.

The individual profiles support arms identification, equipment selection, procurement scenes, and mission planning. They also give the Game Master ready-to-use weapons for military stores, covert transfers, long-range interdiction, and attacks on equipment or infrastructure.

Keep the Anti-Materiel Rifles Fact Sheet with your OSINT-6 equipment references when a mission extends beyond standard rifle fire.

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OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260821

A balanced adventuring party often begins with fixed combat functions. An intelligence team begins with a requirement. The question that must be answered, source that must be protected, system that must be restored, or foreign capability that must be assessed determines which specialties belong on the mission.

The OSINT-6 CIA Fact Sheet therefore builds example teams around mission requirements. Developing a human source puts the Case Officer in the lead, supported by targeting, staff operations, and technical personnel. Answering a strategic intelligence question centers the Analyst, with collection management and targeting officers helping define gaps and evaluate reporting.

Other requirements produce different combinations. A threatened source may need protective movement, technical support, and headquarters coordination. A suspected penetration calls for targeting, analysis, security, and technical investigation. Restoring compromised mission systems puts a Mission-Systems Officer in the lead while technical, security, and support specialists protect continuity.

The lead role owns the immediate objective. Supporting roles provide access, information, tradecraft, protection, infrastructure, logistics, or authority. Leadership can change when new intelligence changes the problem. A Case Officer may lead source development, then hand the central task to a Protective Officer during extraction or to an Analyst when the collected reporting reaches assessment.

This approach also gives support careers a defined place in play. Communications, contracting, records, medicine, finance, facilities, transportation, and legal work aren’t background decoration when the mission depends on them. The specialist’s contribution becomes visible through a requirement the team can’t meet without that capability.

Team composition is therefore an operational decision rather than a universal template. The Game Master states the objective and available intelligence. Players select the roles, access, equipment, and relationships needed to address that specific problem.

#RPGaDAY2026 /21

One thing I didn’t want OSINT-6 to become was a game where every useful relationship is transactional. People help each other for friendship, loyalty, principle, gratitude, and professional respect too.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

Service Pistol Fact Sheet

Service Pistol Fact Sheet

$2.00

Military and police sidearms documented for reference, identification, and OSINT-6 play.

A service pistol can identify an organization, a procurement program, a national standard, or a period of issue. Model, cartridge, and capacity can turn a routine sidearm into useful evidence or a meaningful equipment choice.

The Service Pistol Fact Sheet profiles real military and police handguns in a consistent format. Each entry records origin, service period, known users, cartridge, capacity, and OSINT-6 statistics for damage, range, loudness, access, qualification, size, and traits.

Use the profiles to equip agents, officers, soldiers, guards, contacts, and adversaries with specific sidearms. The same entries support weapons identification, procurement research, recovered evidence, and missions where the model in a holster provides valuable context.

Replace generic duty handguns with researched, recognizable weapons using the Service Pistol Fact Sheet.

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OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260820

The CIA publicly describes more than 160 career paths. Espionage games usually concentrate on case officers, analysts, and paramilitary personnel, leaving engineers, security officers, data specialists, physicians, attorneys, logisticians, and administrators somewhere outside the character rules.

The OSINT-6 CIA Fact Sheet begins with documented roles, then converts ten representative careers into occupational packages. Case Officer, Collection Management Officer, Staff Operations Officer, Targeting Officer, Analyst, Technical Intelligence Officer, Mission-Systems Officer, Protective Officer, Paramilitary Operations Officer, and Support Specialist cover different ways of contributing to an intelligence mission.

An occupational package is guidance rather than another character layer. It recommends suitable classes, Professions, skills, qualifications, Origin feats, later feats, and an assignment focus. The package grants none of those benefits by itself. Every selection still comes from the ordinary character-creation and advancement rules.

That distinction prevents “CIA agent” from replacing the rest of the character. Class describes developed aptitude. Profession records the character’s educational and occupational foundation. Assignment identifies the current institutional job. A Smart Agent with the Technology Profession can serve as a Mission-Systems Officer, while another Smart Agent with Analysis can work as an Analyst or Collection Management Officer.

The packages also avoid declaring one mandatory build. A Case Officer may rely on Charisma or intuition. A Protective Officer may emphasize agility, endurance, or situational awareness. Support Specialist remains deliberately broad because legal, medical, financial, logistical, facility, personnel, and communications work can’t share one credible aptitude profile.

The result connects public career descriptions to legal OSINT-6 choices without claiming that a game package reproduces an actual hiring standard or training curriculum. The documented occupation establishes the work. The core rules establish the character.

#RPGaDAY2026 /20

Operational planning gets interesting when commitments conflict.

Protect the source. Preserve cover. Follow the authorization. Finish the mission.

You probably can’t guarantee all four.

#RPGaDAY2026 #OSINT6

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260819

Intelligence fiction often treats agency affiliation as permission to enter any building, read any file, carry any weapon, or direct any official. The public record describes a more constrained institution. The OSINT-6 CIA Fact Sheet makes those constraints part of play.

The CIA is a civilian foreign-intelligence agency. It collects foreign intelligence, produces analysis, coordinates authorized human-intelligence collection outside the United States, and conducts covert action when directed by the President. It has no general police, subpoena, law-enforcement, or internal-security powers. CIA employment doesn’t let an officer make ordinary arrests or exercise domestic police jurisdiction.

Even extraordinary activity follows an authority path. Covert action requires a presidential finding and congressional notification under the governing statute. Defined collection or support activity involving United States persons remains subject to law, approved procedures, purpose, coordination, and review. Firearm carriage and protective powers attach to specified duties rather than agency status alone.

Oversight therefore belongs in the reference. Presidential direction, the Director of National Intelligence, congressional intelligence committees, appropriations review, legal counsel, the Inspector General, and privacy and civil-liberties functions all affect what an operation can authorize, fund, conceal, investigate, or stop. Classified briefings may keep much of that work outside the public record without removing the oversight relationship.

These limits create useful decisions. An agent may have clearance without need to know, access to a facility without access to a compartment, or responsibility for collection without authority to detain a target. Cooperation with the FBI, Department of State, military, or a foreign liaison service can supply access while adding another reporting chain and another set of restrictions.

Secrecy changes who knows about an operation. It doesn’t convert the institution into unrestricted power. OSINT-6 treats authority, access, and accountability as separate resources because real missions depend on all three.