DC: Queen & Country

[KawangaKid]

Well, Tara Chace is now Minder One and she's gunning for the Director of Ops post. If you don't know what I'm talking about well..

... it's one of my favorite comic books out now and it details a group of Minders that server British Intelligence. More real world stuff being done here - interagency deals, politics and personal agendas mucking up the works, and Minders being sent out to do intelligence work. And they only get to draw weapons on site when told to. More Sandbaggers and The Professionals and Dangerman / Secret Agent man than Bond... where the agents try to hold on to some shred of integrity in a murky world of lies and subterfuge.

While rules for guns and martial arts figure into this, clearly there is a greater need for intelligence skills and interpersonal skills. Cool tech equipment is used, but tends to favor the reliable and mostly invisible tech than the fancy doo-dads of Q.

Heck, there's even some corporate intrigue when the daughter of a major British media conglomerate is used to blackmail her father into making concessions to certain French interests...

Has ANYONE set up a Dark Champions game along these lines yet?

What resources do you pore through for plots and plausible spy-speak?

[Storn]

I love the book too.

RDU Neil's Secret Worlds was sold to me as a cross between Q&C and Ed Brubaker's Sleeper. So, we kinda dipped our toe towards that, but definitely at "we have low powers and high skills beyond that of normal men" level. But the skullduggery was pretty much in line with Q&C. Certainly my character, ex-SAS cum assassin, was influenced by Q&C.

But as far as actual influences to draw upon? It is one of my favorite genres. I liked the Bourne Identity movie quite a bit. But as an influence? Not sure. Loved the short run MI-5 series from BBC, much inspired by Sandbaggers. I love Casino Royale... which is Bond at his most inept (the book, not the movie). But spy stuff comes to me easily.

I listen to a lot of NPR during the day. Always good for getting some plot ideas for the struggle of geopolitics, recently wrote up a plot for a kidnapped DNPC in Poland along the lines of Columbian kidnappers (they are in it for the money, not the political statement, to fund their activities). That plot came to me after listening to NPR and how columbians were looking to kidnap Europeans in order to get the ransom.

[Titan59]

If you're looking for some very down at heel British spy stories, a little dated but still brilliant, you can't do better than Len Deighton's early work, particularly The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain. The movies are fine but the books are great. If Raymond Chandler had written spy stories about British secret agents they would read like these books. I've been to many of the places described in these books and Deighton was superb in his depictions of them. Colonel Stok is a villain well worth ripping off as well.

[JSweeney]

You can't go too far wrong with John Le Carre...Start at the beginning with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Although the settings are not modern, Alan Furst has given us some great novels about the intelligence operations of the 30's and 40's throughout Europe. Night Soldiers follows its protagonist from recruitment into the NKVD in the 30's to the end of the war. Great stuff.

[Wombat]

There is an excellent TV series made by the British called 'Spooks' (though I think in the US it got another name). It deals with a group of MI5 agents doing their stuff. I'll be stealing a few ideas from it myself.
The first (and maybe the second) series are available on DVD, and another series is in production.

[Steve Long]

I've recently been enjoying another British spy series, Sandbaggers, which is available on DVD. It's from the late 70s, and so a little dated, but still lots of fun and easily mined for ideas.

[Titan59]

Anybody ever seen Callan? It was a UK series from the late 60's/early 70's about an ex-convict who works as an assassin for British Intelligence. It was a brilliant if very dark and grungy series. Callan's hobby (very symbolic) was war-gaming. Apparently the series was hugely influential on the revival and growth of the historical miniatures hobby in the UK. Very cool series if you can catch it. There was a movie too (not so good).