OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260721

Things we’ve been watching to set the mood:

• The Sandbaggers Series 1 (1978)

• The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

• The Odessa File (1974)

• The Whistle Blower (1986)

• Enigma (1982)

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260720

The goal is to have the v0.9 core rulebook manuscript fully assembled by the end of the day, so that we can begin final editing to catch any remaining typographical errors, formatting artifacts, and rules inconsistencies. The goal is how have a releasable v1.0 core rulebook ready by the end of the week in PDF and RTF formats.

Character sheets and forms may not be finalized in time for the v1.0 release, but those will be updated with the main download package and listed as separate free download as soon as they are available.

When the v1.0 core rulebook is released, work will begin on the first Factbooks (US, UK, Russia, China). If rules needs are identified that can’t be incorporated into the Factbook format, a v1.1 will be created to assure smooth integration.

• Edited and formatted Characters document v0.9 (final beta).

• Compiled Equipment document v0.9 (final beta). Editing is in process.

• Compiled Operations document v0.9 (final beta). Editing is in process.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260719

• Compiled Core Rules document v0.9 (final beta). Edited, formatted, and saved as RTF file.

• Compiled Characters document v0.9 (final beta). Began editing.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260717

• Added the following to the footer:

No generative AI tools were used at any point in the creation of this document.

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 (“SRD 5.2.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

• Optimized SEO titles and meta descriptions on all pages.

• Created v.01 of the OSINT-6 Style Guide. Final guide to be released with the Core Rulebook for other creators who wish to use it.

• Changed site font from Helvetica Neue to Public Sans, reflecting the font used in tOSINT-6 Style Guide v.01.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260716

• Contact page has been installed and is operational.

• Bluesky account created.

• Operations page (gamemaster advice) page has been installed.

• Donate page has been installed and is operational.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260428

A single feat list would make every specialization equally available at every point in an agent's career. That would weaken the distinction between prior history, broad development, combat training, technical specialization, and social capability.

We divided feats into Origin, General, Combat, Technical, and Social categories. The category states when a feat can be selected and which classes can reach it through ordinary advancement. Prerequisites still control the individual selection, and a feat can be chosen only once unless its entry says that it's Repeatable.

Origin feats belong to character creation. They record capabilities established through the agent's life and Profession before play, such as being Connected, Educated, Linguist, Observant, or Well-Traveled. They aren't normally available through later advancement because gaining a level shouldn't retroactively rewrite the agent's origin.

General feats cover broadly applicable development, preparation, resilience, awareness, and training. Every class receives a General feat at level 4 and can use eligible Bonus Feats for General options. This creates a common development pool without giving every class unrestricted access to every specialization.

Combat feats develop weapon handling, protection, movement, close combat, and tactical fire. Strong, Agile, and Tough Agents can select them through Bonus Feats. Technical feats cover analysis, engineering, medicine, research, security, technology, surveillance, and systems support; Smart Agents receive that access. Social feats cover influence, leadership, sources, cover, institutional access, and other interpersonal capabilities; Intuitive and Charismatic Agents receive that access.

The category boundaries continue after level 6. Post-cap milestone awards grant qualifying feats while the agent remains level 6. General options remain broadly available, and specialized categories continue to follow class access. Origin feats remain tied to creation unless an entry expressly permits later selection.

This structure lets feats add focused exceptions and specialties without becoming a second class system. The class defines the aptitude's development path. Feats refine what the agent has learned to do within that path.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260417

Agency job titles make poor character classes. They vary by country and organization, combine training with authority, and can lock a character into one institutional role. We needed classes that could work for government officers, journalists, analysts, contractors, police personnel, military teams, and independent investigators.

The development register set the direction: build classes around operational function instead of intelligence-agency job titles. The finished rules use six aptitude Classes tied to the six abilities. Strong, Agile, Tough, Smart, Intuitive, and Charismatic Agents describe how a character develops, not where the character works.

Each class requires a score of 13 or higher in its associated ability and grants proficiency in that ability's Saving Throw. It doesn't automatically grant skills, weapons, armor, tools, languages, equipment, credentials, or organizational authority. Those benefits come from Profession, qualifications, feats, equipment records, and the campaign frame.

That separation prevents a Smart Agent from meaning “analyst” or a Strong Agent from meaning “soldier.” A journalist can be Charismatic, Smart, or Intuitive. A military agent can be Strong, Agile, Tough, or something else supported by the concept. Profession establishes prior experience. Class establishes the direction of advancement.

All six classes use the same progression. Agents choose Aptitude Talents at levels 1, 3, and 5, receive Bonus Feats at levels 2 and 6, and receive a General feat at level 4. The shared schedule keeps the classes comparable while their talent lists and feat access produce different capabilities. Multiclassing isn't used, so every agent follows one six-level aptitude progression.

The level limit reinforced this choice. With only six levels, every class feature has to support the aptitude directly. There isn't room for long chains of agency-specific titles, prestige roles, or delayed identity features.

The result gives the team recognizable mechanical roles without pretending that one set of class names describes how real intelligence organizations divide their work.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260411

Modern occupations carry more than skill training. A police officer, journalist, academic, diplomat, tradesperson, or systems administrator may have credentials, professional equipment, institutional contacts, and routine access. None of those benefits amounts to universal authority.

We built Professions to represent education, occupation, institutional experience, and prior training. Each Profession grants two skill proficiencies, two qualifications from a defined list, one Origin feat, a fixed personal-equipment package, and scoped access and authority. Suggested specialties refine the description without adding another mechanical layer.

The word scoped controls the design. Diplomatic credentials can support official channels, meetings, and facilities appropriate to an appointment. They don't automatically grant immunity, classified access, secure communications, or authority to speak for a government. Technology work can support access to assigned systems and functions. It doesn't authorize entry into someone else's device, account, or network. Academic standing opens public and professionally accessible facilities, while restricted collections and confidential research still require permission.

We applied the same limit to equipment. A Profession supplies a fixed personal package, while the campaign frame supplies field gear and organization-issued equipment. Records identify whether an item is owned, licensed, issued, controlled, or requisitioned. Character creation doesn't provide a starting-currency roll or an unrestricted shopping budget.

Qualifications also remain narrow. They record training with a tool or kit, vehicle category, weapon group, armor category, credential, or language. A qualification permits ordinary use when a rule requires it. It doesn't create employment, equipment, legal authority, clearance, or access beyond its recorded scope.

This makes Profession different from Class. Profession answers what the agent did before or outside the current operation. Class answers how the agent's aptitude develops. The separation allows characters with the same occupation to grow differently, and characters with different occupations to contribute through the same aptitude.

The package gives professional history practical weight while keeping every permission legible.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260409

The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale in both book and TV series form, is written as a spy thriller. It’s got a lot of counterintelligence, double agents, a lot of espionage tropes. We again think we’ve chosen the right structure for OSINT-6, because it could easily work for this dystopian setting. All of the speculative elements are cultural and political, there’s no weird technology, and professions/backgrounds could easily be created or adapted.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260407

An espionage game spends a great deal of time finding, examining, and interpreting information. Treating all three activities as one broad knowledge skill would make the list shorter, but it would erase useful differences in method, time, equipment, and result.

We separated Analysis, Investigation, and Research. All three default to Intelligence, and they can work on the same problem, but each skill handles a different stage of inquiry.

Research covers systematic collection and evaluation. An agent uses it to locate, compare, verify, and retrieve information from records, archives, publications, databases, or knowledgeable sources. The result is access to relevant material and an assessment of what that material can support.

Investigation covers deliberate examination. It applies when an agent searches a scene, examines an object or record, reconstructs events, identifies an inconsistency, or determines a useful line of inquiry. The skill works on what is present and asks what happened, what doesn't fit, and what should be examined next.

Analysis covers interpretation. It organizes information, tests explanations, identifies patterns and gaps, assesses relationships, and compares competing interpretations. Its output can turn several collected facts into a usable assessment without claiming certainty the material can't support.

The boundaries keep one successful roll from performing an entire intelligence cycle. Research might locate access logs. Investigation might identify alterations or anomalies in those records. Analysis might connect the anomalies to a recurring credential and frame the next information requirement. A later procedure can require different agents, tools, intervals, or consequences at each stage.

We used the same principle elsewhere in the skill list. Security concerns protective measures and the methods used to examine or defeat them. Technology concerns practical use of computers, communications equipment, sensors, electronics, and networks. Qualifications then record training or authorization with particular tools, weapons, vehicles, armor, credentials, or languages that skill proficiency alone can't supply.

The list stays compact, but the distinctions follow what agents actually do with information.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260328

Character creation in OSINT-6 CORE RULEBOOK had to produce an agent who could enter an operation with a defined place in the world. Ability scores, Hit Points, Armor Class, and proficiencies describe capability. They don't establish identity, obligations, institutional standing, or the limits of an agent's authority.

We made those facts part of the creation procedure. After choosing ability scores, Profession, and aptitude Class, the player records identity, appearance, relationships, obligations, authority, and operational notes. The final review checks prerequisites, duplicate proficiencies, equipment, and totals. It also confirms that the character fits the campaign frame.

The distinction between descriptive and mechanical information matters here. OSINT-6 assumes human agents with Medium size, a Speed of 30 feet, and ordinary human senses. Age, appearance, identity, nationality, residence, beliefs, and personal history remain descriptive unless another rule makes one relevant. This allows the player to define the agent without turning nationality, culture, or personal identity into automatic game bonuses.

Profession then supplies the mechanically scoped history. It records prior education, occupation, qualifications, equipment, access, and authority. Class records the aptitude the agent develops through play. The two choices answer different questions, so an intelligence analyst, journalist, police officer, or technician can still be Strong, Agile, Tough, Smart, Intuitive, or Charismatic.

The resulting sequence also makes omissions deliberate. Character creation has no species package, alignment, supernatural traits, random ability-score method, unrestricted shopping budget, or automatic cultural abilities. Those elements either belong to another genre or would make an agent's operational standing harder to read.

By the end of creation, the group should know more than what the agent can roll. It should know who the agent is, why the agent belongs on the team, which doors the agent can approach, and which permissions still have to be obtained.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260320

The featured mission had to demonstrate the Factbook rather than merely occur in the United States. Operation Dead Letter therefore uses the book's fictional agency, American institutional constraints, new operational procedures, equipment mappings, principal characters, and record handouts inside one normal session.

The mission begins when an unauthorized signal enters a communications system that ACO retired six years earlier. The agents must identify the sender, determine what the transmissions contain, and prevent protected information from reaching an unknown recipient. The initial briefing remains incomplete, and the sponsor withholds a fact that changes the meaning of the assignment.

We didn't organize the mission as a fixed sequence of scenes. Its phases respond to agent decisions and defined triggers. The team can request protected records, examine communications metadata, seek domestic collection authority, coordinate with another organization, trace a federal record footprint, negotiate with the suspected sender, or revise the objective as the evidence changes.

Authority is part of the problem. The Mission Brief permits investigation, Office support, consensual recovery, and lawful custody. It doesn't authorize intrusive domestic surveillance, forced entry, detention, seizure, or false representation as federal law enforcement. Players can seek additional authority, place an action under an authorized partner, narrow a method, or accept the consequences of proceeding without approval.

The handouts make those decisions visible. Information Records separate confirmed facts from assessments and gaps. Authority records show which actions have support. The Interagency Authority Matrix records responsibility. The After-Action Report preserves custody, deviations, unresolved questions, and continuing consequences.

That structure lets the mission test the whole book. Setting information shapes the available methods. Fictional personnel have their own objectives. Rules resolve access and uncertainty. Records preserve what the team knew and why it acted. The operation becomes a demonstration of researched institutional play rather than a plot placed over researched scenery.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260314

Espionage fiction often treats the right badge, clearance, or assignment as a universal key. Real institutional access is narrower. A person can belong to an organization, hold a security clearance, and still lack access to a particular compartment, system, mission, facility, or record.

The United States Factbook adds three forms of support built around that distinction: Office Compartment Authorization, Interagency Mission Designation, and Sponsored Cover Package. Each entry records its issuer, eligibility, access, limits, verification, termination, and interaction with the core rules.

Office Compartment Authorization grants access to one defined body of ACO information, personnel, systems, facilities, communications, or resources. It remains tied to an assigned function and Need to Know. General clearance, senior rank, or Office membership doesn't substitute for the named authorization.

Interagency Mission Designation records temporary participation in one approved mission. It can open specified briefings, facilities, communications, transportation, equipment requests, and coordination channels. The designation can't transfer police powers, military command, diplomatic status, surveillance authority, spending authority, or another organization's statutory powers.

Sponsored Cover Package supports a false identity through employment, records, communications, financial activity, travel history, credentials, and verification contacts. The package grants only the access that the recorded identity can plausibly receive. It doesn't supply professional competence, immunity, unrestricted system access, or powers absent from the role.

We could have represented each of these as Advantage on a broad category of checks. That approach would make access feel portable and permanent. The entries instead ask a series of concrete questions: Who issued the status? What does it open? How is it verified? When does it end? What remains exposed after termination?

This structure makes credentials useful without allowing them to override authority, cover, Exposure, Alert, Need to Know, or Compartmentation. Access becomes a documented relationship with limits rather than a bonus printed on the character sheet.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 250308

The featured agency needed to support missions involving intelligence, diplomacy, military resources, law enforcement, finance, technical surveillance, and covert action. Giving one fictional service permanent control over all of those capabilities would simplify play by creating an organization that couldn't plausibly fit inside the verified American system.

We built the Administrative Coordination Office as a small interagency organization. ACO maintains a permanent planning, legal, security, technical, and support structure, then assembles mission teams through details, agreements, findings, appropriations, liaison permissions, and borrowed personnel. The arrangement grants access to national resources while preserving dependence on the organizations that own them.

That dependence supplies the agency's central limit. ACO coordinates authority; it doesn't manufacture authority. Its administrative connection to the CIA doesn't provide domestic police powers. A federal agent assigned to an Office mission retains the powers and restrictions of the agent's home organization. Contractors don't gain detention or search authority because the Office needs a result.

The fictional history reinforces the design. Earlier coordination failures led to permanent legal review and written assignments of responsibility. A contractor data compromise produced stricter compartmentation. Improper retention of information about American journalists gave compliance personnel stronger grounds to suspend domestic queries. Those events create procedures and institutional pressure rather than serving as background decoration.

ACO can also fill several campaign roles. It can employ the agents, sponsor one mission, provide allied support, compete as a rival service, become hostile, or create complications through review and divided authority. Its usefulness doesn't depend on portraying the organization as uniformly competent or benevolent.

The result is an agency built for espionage play whose weaknesses come from its institutional position. The Office can reach across government, but every reach creates records, permissions, dependencies, and people with the power to refuse.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260305

Country Factbooks and Agency Fact Sheets use some of the same research, but they don't make the same claims. The end of The World Factbook pushed us to define where the archived material belongs in each line instead of applying one source procedure indiscriminately.

An OSINT-6 Country Factbook needs a broad national baseline. Geography, government, law, infrastructure, communications, transport, economic conditions, security institutions, and international relationships shape the fictional agency and its missions. The archived CIA entry helps establish that initial field. Current sources then verify and update every material claim before the volume adds fictional personnel, facilities, priorities, game options, and mission material.

An Agency Fact Sheet has a narrower job. It concerns a real organization, its verified mandate, organization, oversight, public history, qualifications, and documented equipment or practices. The archived Factbook can supply national context, but it can't establish the agency's current authority or internal arrangement. Those claims require statutes, executive instruments, official agency material, oversight reports, budgets, procurement records, and other sources appropriate to the organization.

We decided to share the discipline rather than the template. Both lines will record research cutoffs, distinguish stable facts from time-sensitive claims, preserve recoverable citations, and separate fact from game interpretation. Country Factbooks will also mark fictional material clearly. Agency Fact Sheets won't invent access, doctrine, equipment, or authority to fill gaps in public information.

That last limit matters. Public sources rarely describe a security or intelligence organization completely. Silence can reflect classification, ordinary nonpublication, outdated pages, or a subject outside the source's purpose. It isn't permission to convert a plausible assumption into a factual statement.

The discontinued Factbook remains useful because it identifies subjects, vocabulary, and historical baselines. It no longer carries the burden of keeping either series current. That burden belongs to the source register, the research cutoff, and the editorial decisions made for each individual claim.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260228

A national Factbook can make the United States look more uniform than reality supports. Federal agencies are visible, national systems connect the country, and the same constitutional framework applies across it. Missions still move through states, territories, tribal jurisdictions, counties, municipalities, ports, airports, and federal property with different authorities and procedures.

We treated federalism as the setting's controlling institutional feature. It affects records access, police procedure, licensing, surveillance law, emergency powers, and administrative practice. Crossing a boundary can change who has authority, which records exist, how a credential is checked, and what approval an operation requires.

That decision changed the Setting chapter. The book doesn't stop after describing national institutions. It identifies operational places whose scale and jurisdiction produce different problems: Washington, New York City, the Port of Los Angeles, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the San Diego-Tijuana border region, Hampton Roads and Naval Station Norfolk, and the Dalton Highway and Alaska North Slope.

Each place provides more than color. A port concentrates customs systems, private operators, freight records, labor, and several enforcement bodies. A major airport combines federal screening, local policing, airlines, commercial records, and restricted infrastructure. The Dalton Highway adds distance, limited communications, severe weather, industrial access, and delayed support.

The same principle governs domestic authority. An interagency mission designation can place several organizations on one team, but it doesn't transfer police powers, military command, surveillance authority, or another organization's statutory powers. Coordination changes who can participate. It doesn't erase jurisdiction.

We could have summarized the country through one national operating environment. That would have reduced research while removing many of the decisions that make an American mission specific. The Factbook instead asks where an action occurs, who controls that place or record, and what changes when the team crosses a boundary.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260226

Replacing The World Factbook with another single reference would recreate the same weakness. No source has equal authority over constitutional law, population estimates, transport infrastructure, military organization, communications access, election results, and current security conditions. We decided to update the archived baseline claim by claim.

The source depends on the subject. Constitutions, statutes, ministries, election authorities, and national statistical offices control many official facts. International organizations provide comparable demographic, economic, health, migration, and development data. Regulators and technical bodies can supply communications, energy, aviation, shipping, and infrastructure records. Reputable academic and local reporting can explain disputed events or conditions that official material omits.

Authority alone doesn't settle every conflict. Two sources may use different reporting years, boundaries, definitions, currencies, or estimation methods. A population figure can refer to a census, an official projection, or an international estimate. Military strength can count authorized personnel, active personnel, reserves, or a broader security establishment. Copying the newest number without its definition would create false precision.

Our source register will preserve the claim, publisher, publication date, access date, definition, and any material disagreement. Each time-sensitive claim receives a verification date. When sources conflict, the text will identify the difference or select one figure for a stated reason. Editorial inference will remain separate from reported fact.

The research cutoff gives that process an end point. It states how current the volume intends to be and prevents a manuscript from remaining open forever while statistics continue to change. A later revision can reopen affected claims without forcing a complete rewrite of stable material.

This decision produces more work than importing a country profile. It also produces a source record that can be audited and revised. The archived Factbook tells us which subjects need attention. Current sources establish what we can responsibly say at publication.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260221

The OSINT-6 United States Factbook combines three kinds of material that readers need to distinguish at a glance. It describes real places, institutions, laws, infrastructure, and equipment. It introduces a fictional intelligence organization and fictional missions. It also adds game rules. Mixing those categories without control would make the book easier to draft and harder to trust.

We assigned every passage to Verified Information, Fictional Material, or Game Rules. Verified Information covers the United States and its documented institutions, practices, and physical environment. Real organizations keep their correct names, authorities, jurisdictions, and public relationships.

Fictional Material covers the Administrative Coordination Office, its personnel, facilities, internal history, priorities, and missions. The book identifies ACO as fictional when it first appears and wherever a reader could mistake its activities for claims about an actual organization.

Game Rules cover Character Options, equipment mappings, agent statistics, operational procedures, and mission mechanics. These rules establish what happens during play. They don't claim that real institutions or equipment operate according to OSINT-6 mechanics.

The three categories can occupy the same section. A mission might use a real airport, a fictional Office team, and a game procedure for access or surveillance. We didn't solve that overlap by isolating reality, fiction, and rules into unrelated books. Labels and transitions identify when the category changes, while source notes support the factual claims.

This decision also limits the authority of the finished book. It can provide a researched operational setting, but it isn't an authoritative source about the United States. Readers can follow the citations to the underlying material when they need research rather than game preparation.

The classification system therefore performs two jobs. It protects the factual material from invented detail, and it gives the fictional material enough verified context to remain plausible.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260220

A citation to a live website can look complete until the page disappears. The World Factbook shutdown removed the original browsing path, redirected familiar addresses, and left researchers dependent on preserved copies. We needed a method that could survive another archive moving, changing its interface, or losing an individual capture.

The available preservation work gives us several useful forms. The Wayback Machine retains archived pages and now provides searchable access to thousands of Factbook captures. A preserved machine-readable snapshot records the final public data from January 23, 2026. Other archives collect earlier annual editions, which can help trace changes and identify when a claim entered or left the source.

We won't treat those copies as interchangeable. A rendered web capture, a JSON conversion, and a reconstructed historical database can preserve the same underlying publication while introducing different risks. Navigation can fail. Fields can be transformed. Images can be omitted. A parser can place text under the wrong heading. A later archive can correct its own processing without changing the source edition.

Each OSINT-6 research record will therefore preserve provenance at two levels. First, it identifies the CIA edition or final site snapshot that supplied the claim. Second, it records the archive or dataset used to recover that material, along with the capture or access date. Important discrepancies will be checked against another preserved form when possible.

This method also separates a source from its delivery system. The CIA remains the publisher of the archived Factbook material. The Internet Archive, Mozilla Data Collective, or another repository preserves or transforms access to it. Citing only the repository would conceal who made the original claim. Citing only the vanished CIA page would leave no recoverable trail.

The extra recordkeeping is small compared with the cost of rebuilding a source chain later. A recoverable citation should show what was published, when it was captured, and where the preserved copy can be checked.

OSINT-6 CHANGELOG 260212

The first problem after The World Factbook disappeared was deciding what an archived entry could still prove. A preserved page doesn't become unreliable merely because the live site closed. It does become fixed in time, and that limit matters differently for every field.

Some information changes slowly. Coastlines, borders, major terrain, official languages, and the broad organization of a state can remain useful after publication. Other fields can age within weeks or months. Officeholders, population estimates, exchange rates, military leadership, election schedules, telecommunications figures, and current security conditions need new verification.

We decided to treat the final archived country entry as a baseline document with an explicit capture date. The entry establishes the CIA's published description at that point. It doesn't receive a blanket label of current, and it doesn't control when a later authoritative source records a change.

That decision rules out two easy approaches. Freezing every Factbook at the last CIA edition would produce a historical product while presenting it as contemporary. Discarding the archive would waste a broad public-domain reference whose organization still helps define the initial research field.

The production record will therefore identify the exact archived entry, archive date, and recoverable location. Each material claim then receives separate treatment. Stable facts can remain when no credible change has occurred. Time-sensitive facts require verification near the volume's research cutoff. Conflicts stay visible until a stronger source resolves them.

This is also why the OSINT-6 books won't describe themselves as updated versions of the CIA publication. The archive provides source material and a starting structure. Our Country Factbooks select information for operational play, add sources the Factbook didn't use or expose, separate verified material from fiction, and apply OSINT-6 rules.

An archive preserves what a source said. Editorial currency comes from checking whether the world still matches it.