TheRPGSite

What makes a "Spy" RPG to you? Certain mechanics? Fluff? Attitude? Setting? As you may or may not know i've been working on a Spy game, more for myself than anything else. But I'm curious as to you folks thoughts, and ideas of what make s a good one.

I like intrigue, so pretty much everything I run turns into a spy caper at some point.

I tend to like intrigue in all genres as well, but 'Spy' to me screams 'James Bond'

I notice "Funeral in Berlin" is in your sig file. I kind like the other kind of spies for gaming. So Bond but perhaps even more Mission:Impossible or Man From Uncle, just less retro. So basically low level superhero action with a sprinkle of sci-fi and crazy conspiracies.

In fact a rules light spy game that captures the tone of 'Chuck' (but not necessarily the specific trappings) is something I would dearly like to play.

One part James Bond, one part Mission: Impossible and one part G.I. Joe.

For me, you have to have a gadgeteer aspect to the game, like 007 had Q to provide him with nifty toys.  Heroic, but not necessarily pulp type, feel to the game doesn't hurt either.  A really gritty spy and/or intrigue game doesn't hold my interest.

Mood.  The system is almost immaterial.

I think that spy games are like detective games, in that there ought to be some sort of puzzle to solve or mystery to unravel. Except that if it's too easy or too hard it's not much fun. That makes this genre hard to run, in my opinion.

The "Gumshoe" (Pelgrane) game tries to avoid this by having all of the skills divided up among the characters, so they automatically should be able to find clues. Unfortunately, this is a character thing and not a player thing.

"Top Secret" (TSR) was a decent game for spy adventures. Also "Mercenaries Spies & Private Eyes" (Flying Buffalo) and "James Bond 007" (Victory Games) were pretty good. Still looking for one that is awesome instead of just "decent."

Intrigue. Secret agendas. Backstabbing.

A game that I think does it more or less well is Cold City.

But I agree with fynarvin that there is not an "awesome" stance of the genre, only "decent" ones.

I don't think I ever ran one.

For me it is more about the setting and resource material, but also having the right equipment and such. In terms of what spy encompasses, for me it is anything from Bond to Bourne or even more grounded and realistic procedurals. Spy to me involves intelligence agencies, state secrets, Special ops, intrigue and that sort of thing.

The Spy Genre for me is usually of the Bond/ Action aspects or the Supernatural/ Action Aspect (Nobody I know has ever wanted to play realistic spies doing real spycraft).  

So my spy games need to handle "semi-realilstic" action in a modern (or near modern) setting.  

For me, the spy game is all about the secrecy trope.  Nobody knows about what they do. Nobody knows all the pieces.  There are wheels inside the wheels.

I like the Conspiracy Trope, but that is related to the Secrecy Trope.

I like the Gadget Trope as well.  The fun gear is always the best part of things in the spy genre for me.  Even if it is somewhat realistic gear, it is still interesting additions.

Inspector Gadget?



No. Just No.

Spies have been around for hundreds even thousands of years: The Harpers in D&D are often spy characters, and secret codes and such come to us from the Elizabethan era. The key for me would be that the player character is essentially alone -- they may have been supplied with gadgets and such, but they are acting in secret and all of the people around them are the enemy. No trust. No help. Drop your guard and you're dead. Eat with your fork the wrong way and you'll get arrested.

Plus there's usually a specific mission: Find this out, get this back, deliver this. Not much employment for the wandering spy.

For me the very coolest spy (or secret agent) was the man with no name in the Prisoner (the original series). He was always on his guard. He never stopped trying to escape and he accepted no compromise. They had odd futuristic tech in places, but mostly it was very personal struggles and always being one step ahead of the other guy.

Another cool take on the spy genre would be corporate espionage and Shadowrun style incursions into data systems.

Plus I think a big part of any spy story would be the question of loyalty. Bond was never betrayed by M (at least in the books), but Harry Palmer worked for an agency that would sell you down the river in a second. And if you were an agent for a repressive regime and you got somewhere much more free and open, that would start to erode your determination.

Just my two cents.

Quote from: teagan;692544Spies have been around for hundreds even thousands of years: The Harpers in D&D are often spy characters, and secret codes and such come to us from the Elizabethan era. The key for me would be that the player character is essentially alone -- they may have been supplied with gadgets and such, but they are acting in secret and all of the people around them are the enemy. No trust. No help. Drop your guard and you're dead. Eat with your fork the wrong way and you'll get arrested.

Plus there's usually a specific mission: Find this out, get this back, deliver this. Not much employment for the wandering spy.

For me the very coolest spy (or secret agent) was the man with no name in the Prisoner (the original series). He was always on his guard. He never stopped trying to escape and he accepted no compromise. They had odd futuristic tech in places, but mostly it was very personal struggles and always being one step ahead of the other guy.

Another cool take on the spy genre would be corporate espionage and Shadowrun style incursions into data systems.

Plus I think a big part of any spy story would be the question of loyalty. Bond was never betrayed by M (at least in the books), but Harry Palmer worked for an agency that would sell you down the river in a second. And if you were an agent for a repressive regime and you got somewhere much more free and open, that would start to erode your determination.

Just my two cents.

Speaking of Harpers, Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern had the Harpers not only act as, well, Bards, but also as spies for the Masterharper.

Quote from: silva;691231But I agree with finarvyn that there is not an "awesome" stance of the genre, only "decent" ones.

And that's a shame, too, since the genre has so much potential.

I think that the main problem with spy adventures is the same as you have with mystery or detective games -- there needs to be a plot worked out in advance and players need to be able to take clues and figure out the puzzle. If the plot is too simple the players figure it out too quickly. If the plot is too complex they never figure it out at all. Both situations limit the fun factor. Gumshoe tries to address this with their "well, someone in the party has the skills to find the clue" but I think it's hard to pull off without players feeling like spectators instead of participants.

I think that a secondary problem may be that spy adventures don't fit the "party" mentality of gaming. So many RPGs cater to the concept of a party of dudes wandering around en masse to kill something, but spy stories are typically one or two dudes sneaking around discovering something.

Just my two cents.

Quote from: finarvyn;692779And that's a shame, too, since the genre has so much potential.

I think that the main problem with spy adventures is the same as you have with mystery or detective games -- there needs to be a plot worked out in advance and players need to be able to take clues and figure out the puzzle. If the plot is too simple the players figure it out too quickly. If the plot is too complex they never figure it out at all. Both situations limit the fun factor. Gumshoe tries to address this with their "well, someone in the party has the skills to find the clue" but I think it's hard to pull off without players feeling like spectators instead of participants.

I think that a secondary problem may be that spy adventures don't fit the "party" mentality of gaming. So many RPGs cater to the concept of a party of dudes wandering around en masse to kill something, but spy stories are typically one or two dudes sneaking around discovering something.

Just my two cents.

There is a reason for why Spycraft took off, and that reason is "We're explicitly blending the structures of Mission: Impossible and James Bond films together into a playable game."  Why M:I?  Because it is a party-centric example of the Spy genre, and both its classic and current incarnations have a lot of geek traction where gaming and spy-fic overlap.  Why Bond? It's the top brand in the genre, with a structure so fucking codified that even haters know it by heart (and thus it gets copied a lot).  The clincher?  Approaching the genre as a procedural, as the original M:I series did, and not as the drama-laden crap that sometimes crops up.

Now you've got a functional Spy TRPG.  Characters are interchangeable, so if Bob can't make it you go ahead anyway; he can drift in later, with some BS excuse or another to cover his absence.  PCs work as a team because issues that crop up can't be done by one man on his own, even if some PCs suffer from the Decker Problem.  Gear's handled through a Gadget system that does well enough, and is easily altered when corner-cases occur.  The gameplay is externally-focused, with an emphasis on minigames to handle investigation procedures and action scenes to deal with the core of playable spy gaming.  It's as if the makers saw the existing spy games, said "This shit is broken; we should fix it this way." and made that into their game.

There aren't many other Spy TRPGs I'd even consider after Spycraft due to how well it does the genre, and it all comes back to identifying the playable space in the genre and building a structure to box it in and focus attention on it.

Quote from: teagan;692544For me the very coolest spy (or secret agent) was the man with no name in the Prisoner (the original series). He was always on his guard. He never stopped trying to escape and he accepted no compromise. They had odd futuristic tech in places, but mostly it was very personal struggles and always being one step ahead of the other guy.

Welcome to theRPGsite!  For me, the character portrayed on the Prisoner (and the series that predates it.. Secret Agent?) is the quintessential spy, perhaps moreso than James Bond, even, who is more of a superhero at this point.

RPGPundit

Bradford Walker, I must disagree with you. While I never actually played Spycraft, Ive leafed through it and read a lot of reviews, and it always felt like a bad Shadowrun-clone to me. And as everything d20, it tends to shoehorn genres into convoluted system idiossincrasies instead of the contrary, ending up with nonsensical concepts (classes dont make sense - Fixer as a Thief? Pointman as a jack-of-all-trades ? -, and "Departments" as races ? ouch). That coupled with shallow advice on running spy-genre games and lack of structure on such, makes me wonder if the authors really got genre sources right.

So, I dont think Spycraft is a good spy-game. Because if one assume it is, then one must assume Shadowrun and The Leverage RPG are STELLAR spy-games because they do everything better than Spycraft does. (and I dont even consider those games Spy-games at all).

Quote from: silva;693661Bradford Walker, I must disagree with you. While I never actually played Spycraft, Ive leafed through it and read a lot of reviews, and it always felt like a bad Shadowrun-clone to me. And as everything d20, it tends to shoehorn genres into convoluted system idiossincrasies instead of the contrary, ending up with nonsensical concepts (classes dont make sense - Fixer as a Thief? Pointman as a jack-of-all-trades ? -, and "Departments" as races ? ouch). That coupled with shallow advice on running spy-genre games and lack of structure on such, makes me wonder if the authors really got genre sources right.

Spycraft plays a lot better than it reads.  I ran a campaign for about a year, got well into the system, and worked with the crew I had the time to explore the structure's limits.  My recommendation comes from actual play experience:

• Classes: Yes, they make perfect sense. The classes are based on the roles in an operative team, informed by the need for sound gameplay.  It is one of the things that actually sells the game to new people, because (as with D&D) "You're the Faceman." makes crystal-clear sense to people and ensures that they have a protected niche in the group, keeping them relevant at all levels of play.
  
• Races: The initial implementation is fatally flawed, but later replacements made it clear that "Department" could be (and is, later) replaced with "Origin" or "Background".  Again, this makes perfect sense to newbies, and it adds to the game's appeal.
  
• vs. Shadowrun: Having played both games over the years, and used the same playable space (because, at its heart, "Crime" and "Espionage" is a matter of scope and scale- a caper is a caper), Spycraft is actually far better and has superior structural support for its playable spaces than Shadowrun.  Using elements from Fantasycraft is all that needs to be done to make a d20 hack of Shadowrun playable, which is one of the reasons for why I don't bother with Shadowrun anymore.

QuoteSo, I dont think Spycraft is a good spy-game. Because if one assume it is, then one must assume Shadowrun and The Leverage RPG are STELLAR spy-games because they do everything better than Spycraft does. (and I dont even consider those games Spy-games at all).

Fuck no. Those two are inferior to Spycraft, as they are far narrower in scope, less intuitive to new players, and not as friendly to the core paradigm of TRPG gameplay in general.  Spycraft does both games better.

I am guessing you two have pretty fundamental differences in taste and you are not going ti be able to convince each other that spycraft is good or bad. Personally I think spycraft is a fine game. There are quite a few spy games out there I like.

Silva, is there a game you think does the spy genre well?

No, unfortunately.

Thats why I've been writing my own. Something to make me happy. I love top secret from back in the day. But the system is fundamentally broken out of the box. James Bond is a great game I just don't care to much for the system, and I personally want a grittier game. Spycraft is great as well. But its a crunchy monster of a system. I'm looking for a far lighter system nowadays. Thats why Ive stolen things I like out them all and have been kitbashing my own thing.

Quote from: teagan;692544Spies have been around for hundreds even thousands of years: The Harpers in D&D are often spy characters, and secret codes and such come to us from the Elizabethan era.

Cryptography and steganography have been around a hell of a lot longer than the Elizabethan era.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;693885Cryptography and steganography have been around a hell of a lot longer than the Elizabethan era.

Back in ancient days they used to wrap a strip of cloth around a cylinder and write across that, so that when the cloth was unraveled it looked like garbage.  (Thank you, Herbert S. Zim for that little tidbit.)

Would those recommending systems also know of any classic published adventures that can be cannibalized for ideas? A spy/stealth/social intrigue game is something I'd like to run, but I feel that kind of thing rewards prep heavily, and not the "crawls" I usually prep.

EDIT: Started reading Spycraft 2.0, which really amazed me with its adventure structuring advice, puts a lot of other authors (I'm looking at you, Fantasy Flight Games) to shame.

I'm a big fan of Spycraft. Both editions were really well done.  

And Top Secret from back in the day.

For my money, Blowback (http://theunstore.com/index.php/unstore/game/88) and Night's Black Agents (http://www.pelgranepress.com/?cat=153) are what I would use. I've heard great things about Spycraft 2nd ed., but have not found a copy when I have looked.

Blowback takes the ideas from USA Network's Burn Notice and incorporates them in to a rpg. It's about 70 pages and a purchase of only $10 for the .pdf...the cheaper of these two books.

Night's Black Agents is all about the spy versus vampire conspiracy, but you can easily drop the vampires and keep the conspiracy. The Double Tap supplement is also good. I've played the game and the rules work very well for something like Bourne, Bond, or M:I. I think Ken Hite did a good job packing the books chock full of material you can use. I think the vampire pyramid

While I have not picked up Spycraft's corebook, yet, I have picked up a couple of the supplements and they are good stuff. Lots of info you can pick and choose from to enhance your game.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;693900Back in ancient days they used to wrap a strip of cloth around a cylinder and write across that, so that when the cloth was unraveled it looked like garbage.  (Thank you, Herbert S. Zim for that little tidbit.)

So-called "scytales," which date from at least the third century BC.