Brainstorming a James Bond campaign

[Agemegos]

G'day

I am planning to start up a new campaign for agents of Her Majesty's Secret Service, in the spirit of the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming (as distinguished from the films from EON productions on one hand and the Smiley novels by John Le Carré on the other).

The premise is that James Bond was born in 1918, retired from field work in 1963 and with a KCMG, and was recalled to take the post of M in about 1978. Sir James is on a commission to reorganise and rebuild the secret service after a time of perceived ineffectiveness or failure. The PCs will be new agents, recruited from outside the intelligence community, to as part of a 'clean start' rebuild of the Operations Section.

The events of the novels will not be treated as canonical. Still less those of the movies or the organisational details in the RPG by Victory Games (excellent though it is in general).

Please help me plan the campaign.

1. What might Bond have been doing between 1963 and 1978?

2. What events of the late 70s might have been behind Sir Maurice Oldfield being sacked and Sir James Bond being appointed to replace him? (It might of course be something unknown to the publis or to history.)

3. What new arrangements and focus might a man like Bond introduce in the late 1970s?

4. Is there anything in what I have specified that you think could be improved?

5. Does this post belong in Dark Champions or in Other Genres?

Regards,


Brett Evill

[Nevenall]

Dang this sounds like fun!

Afraid I can't offer much help this late at night.
Nothing intellegent anyway.

[Steve Long]

Does this post belong in Dark Champions or in Other Genres?

This much, I can answer. It unequivocally belongs here; had you posted it in Other Genres, I'd've moved it. DC has several mentions of James Bond-style espionage games.

[Killer Shrike]

G'day

Please help me plan the campaign.

1. What might Bond have been doing between 1963 and 1978?

2. What events of the late 70s might have been behind Sir Maurice Oldfield being sacked and Sir James Bond being appointed to replace him? (It might of course be something unknown to the publis or to history.)

3. What new arrangements and focus might a man like Bond introduce in the late 1970s?

4. Is there anything in what I have specified that you think could be improved?

5. Does this post belong in Dark Champions or in Other Genres?

Regards,


Brett Evill

Bond might very well have gone into a well deserved retirement. He's too much of extrovert to go into a QUIET retirement however.

Posit this: he keeps going to his usual haunts, all the European hotspots such as Monte Carlo, the Riviera, etc. He's jetsetting. Of course without HMSS to foot the bill, he needs some income so he becomes an information broker and middle man. He knows everybody, and has all the info-gathering skills of a top flight spy. Eventually he has effectively formed his own personal spy network, although it is purely apolitical.

He does a few favors for HMSS now and then to keep them off his back, but he's always careful to keep his organizations hand's clean to maintain the vaneer of non-partisanship. Over time he becomes a reliable nuetral ground for a lot of different agencies and private concerns as well.

Lacking the alure of patriotism, the endless budget, and access to top flight cutting edge spy tech, Bond's organization goes the low-tech route and uses relatively normal people for the bulk of it's eyes and ears. Bond becomes adept at turning skilled professionals' talents to espionage ends, and deals in a lot of favors. Rather than having a team of top tier uber-skilled agents, Bond might get a guy who's an expert in AV equipment and already works at a hotel to wire up some surveillance equipment, or a janitor to plant some bugs and sift thru garbage, or a taxi driver to tail a subject. An army of everyday people doing specific low-risk medium gain "favors" using their own mainstream skills.

Being more of a mover & shaker than an administrator, Bond gets some talented people working for him to delegate to, and operates on a very high level from his virtual network of underlings. 99.9% of them don't even know who they are working for; everthing is delegated to a delegate thru another delegate and so on. After a few years the network runs itself, leaving Bond and other members in the inner circle quite well set up from their various clients.

Meanwhile, in HMSS, with the loss of their best field agent and the changing times the double-0 program has been failing, as have many other top tier programs. Some suspect a mole, others suspect simple incompetance. Either way by the early 70's sufficient people have lost confidence in M to see him removed. The obvious question is who to replace him with?

Bond of course; his private intel network actually works.

When approached Bond initially refuses; his life is on easy street and who needs that kind of stress? However repeated appeals to his patriotism win out and he eventually capitulates. He is knighted by the Queen herself privately, and he takes office as M. He brings with him a good chunk of his private network (though some of the inner circle have no interest in working for any government and go their own way taking their downlines with them). Building upon the success of his own intel network, Bond downsizes many of the in place covert operations and relies more heavily on less trained specialists and grass-roots assets.

Perhaps from nostalgia, perhaps because he felt he could turn it around he did retain the double-0 program, but altered it's profile a bit. At any given time the double-0's are agents working on top level assignments but as teams rather than solo; in effect they are a revolving roster of agents working on the most important matters currently going. The double-0 status carries with it various perks such as increased access to tech, funding, clearance, and lattitude. However, the status is not a personal privilege, it only applies to a person while whatever they are assigned to is prioritized.

Thus it is possible for a person to be working on a project for quite some time, but if it suddenly heats up and becomes a top priority, that person might be tagged with one of the double-0 billets and for a while have much greater authority, resources, and attention from on high to call upon.

Simultaneously, a top priority mission might need to be executed, and a team of agents assembled to take care of it. The core members of the mission might all be given double-0 billets for the duration of the mission.

Occassionally an agent is so good or so in demand that they are assigned from top mission to top mission and retain a Double-0 ranking for quite some time, but it's just a coincidence. As soon as they are cycled to a lower priority job they'll lose the double-0 ranking until such a time if they become involved in another top level project and get it again.


Of course this opens the door for the PC's, who can be from all walks of life, to be part of this new organization Bond has developed -- many of the might not even be in HMSS directly; Bond relies on people of any origin who have the right skill set afterall; their loyalty is secondary and traitors can be dealt with. Since none of the assets are allowed too deep into the organization, and they dont have as many on-staff operators, the danger of a deep mole is greatly lessened, and since less valuable resources are being used, any incidental losses are less costly to the organization.

Thus Joe Lunchbox the Electrician from Hoboken might be in the perfect place to do some work for the organization. He is acquired as an asset by a field operator. A few years go buy, and Joe L. has been used on a few other missions. Joe doesnt know much, but he has useful skills. Later on, a similar job to what Joe has done before comes up, but it's in Munich. Joe has the skills, he's proven capable in the past. He doesnt speak German, but Q has a gadget to fix that fast. They bring Joe up a rung as an asset. His handler invites him to a meeting; Joe is spun up -- a job needs to be done in Munich, he's the man for the job. There is a price tag involved. Joe accepts, gets a subliminal language treatment, goes to Munich and does the job. He goes home. A few months later another job comes up; Joe is used again. After a few jobs Joe shows that he is dependible and he is brought "inside", becoming a full time operative. His specialty is obviously electronics and security systems, but as time goes on he is given additional specialized training as needed. A couple of months later there is a top-priority mission going down and Joe's electronics skills are needed; he's assigned to the job. For a brief while he becomes 003 and has broad access, lattitude, and support, as well as scrutiny. Over the next several years Joe continues to work for the agency and holds a double-0 rank a couple of times.

And so on. This kind of set up would work best if the Players had several PC's with different specialties and rotated between them for various missions.

[Agemegos]

Bond might very well have gone into a well deserved retirement. He's too much of extrovert to go into a QUIET retirement however.

Right. And he isn't rich enough. His pension isn't going to run to Taittinger and custom-made cigarettes.

Eventually he has effectively formed his own personal spy network, although it is purely apolitical.

He'll need an extraordinary rep to come back to head a national intel agency after having brokered political and military intel on a free-lance basis. Perhaps we would do well to suppose that most of his work was with comercial and industrial intel rather than political and military.

Lacking the allure of patriotism, the endless budget, and access to top flight cutting edge spy tech, Bond's organization goes the low-tech route and uses relatively normal people for the bulk of it's eyes and ears.

Good line. This is the sort of unconventional ability that would give Bond an edge over conventional rivals for the post, and that would make him a strong candidate as a reforming M.

Meanwhile, in HMSS, with the loss of their best field agent and the changing times the double-0 program has been failing, as have many other top tier programs. Some suspect a mole, others suspect simple incompetance. Either way by the early 70's sufficient people have lost confidence in M to see him removed.

This is of course not the same M who was in the top job while Bond was active: Sir Miles Messervy is twenty-five or thirty years older than Bond, and will long since have been replaced.

He is knighted by the Queen herself privately, and he takes office as M.

Bond was offered (and refused) a KCMG at the end of Moonraker, and even though I will not be treating the novels as absolutely canonical in detail he is working at the level at which a KC** is expected at retirement. A KCMG (he works for the Foreign Office, so the Michael and George is the appropriate Order) is a knighthood.

Of course this opens the door for the PC's, who can be from all walks of life, to be part of this new organization Bond has developed

That is something of the idea I was aiming for. More State School alumni, and a fair number of people who had developed useful and unexpected skills outside of the intelligence community. One of the inspirations in the back of my mind is SF: Murder by Illusion: not for Brian Brown's acting, but because of teh idea of someone with special skills unknown to Intel fieldcraft throwing curves at the professional spies.

[freakboy6117]

One of the big problems in current real world spy practice is the reliance on high tech gizmos and not human intelligence. I think if Bond were in charge he would be very much into human level work and improvisation and flexibility as key assets in agent training. He has a friends and contacts everywhere and if he doesn’t he creates them I think he would want his agents to have this ability too.

I’m loathed to say this but the best example I can think of what is being described would be the execrable comedy bond movie ‘Casino Royale’.

In which the original old school James Bond is pulled back from retirement when the secret agents of all the main powers are being assassinated.

While the movie is a comedy[not all that funny I admit] there are some quiet good ideas amidst the psychedelic sixties madness. Bond without gadgets relying entirely on his wits and personal skill and fortitutude using agents culled from specialties or people he can manipulate who will have the correct in to the target etc.

[Agemegos]

One of the big problems in current real world spy practice is the reliance on high tech gizmos and not human intelligence. I think if Bond were in charge he would be very much into human level work and improvisation and flexibility as key assets in agent training.

Exactly the thought I was planning to pursue!

I’m loath to say this but the best example I can think of what is being described would be the execrable comedy bond movie ‘Casino Royale’.

It's funny that you should mention that, because it was watching this very movie that inspired me to run this campaign.

And I'd call it 'deeply flawed' rather than 'execrable', perhaps because I watched it in bed with my girlfriend and through a warm post-coital glow of universal goodwill. I thought it was pretty funny, though very silly.

[Maelstrom]

1. What might Bond have been doing between 1963 and 1978?

2. What events of the late 70s might have been behind Sir Maurice Oldfield being sacked and Sir James Bond being appointed to replace him? (It might of course be something unknown to the publis or to history.)

3. What new arrangements and focus might a man like Bond introduce in the late 1970s?

1. He'd be busy with the Cold War. Very busy indeed.

2. Sir Maurice could have been caught up in a Philby-type scandal, or may simply have had a heart attack.

3. He may have expanded counter-terror and the 00 program, or gone the other way, into SIGINT.

[Agemegos]

2. Sir Maurice could have been caught up in a Philby-type scandal, or may simply have had a heart attack.

Googling for Sir Maurice's career I found this: <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SSoldfield.htm>

and this:

"APRIL 23, 1987. Margaret Thatcher announced to Parliament that Sir Maurice Oldfield, who headed Britain's M16 intelligence service from 1973-1978, was gay. Thatcher also said that there was no reason to suspect that his sexual orientation made him a security risk."

The end of Sir Maurice's career looks a lot like a bureaucratic hatchet-job. First you second someone to 'higher duties' on some sort of 'special program'. Then, when the person 'acting in their position' has got their hands firmly on the target's bureaucratic resources, you abolish their position, cancel their program, merge their office with something else, or pull their security clearance. Nice smooth succession.

OTOH, Sir Maurice was born in 1915, so when he got the axe he was very close to retirement anyway (at least I think so: was retirement at 65 the rule in the British Civil Service in 1980?)

[Agemegos]

1. He'd be busy with the Cold War. Very busy indeed.

In what sort of capacity, do you think? A desk job at the SIS in London? Chief of an important station? Liaison with the CIA in Langley? Something else?

[Killer Shrike]

1. He'd be busy with the Cold War. Very busy indeed.

Why -- whats the rationale

3. He may have expanded counter-terror and the 00 program, or gone the other way, into SIGINT.

Why would Bond go in to SIGINT? His expertise was pure HUMINT.

Also, the double 0 program has a slight problem with expansion...it only ranges from 000 to 009

[TheImperialKhan]

1. What might Bond have been doing between 1963 and 1978?

Possibly he returned to service with the Royal Navy. Possibly joined Felix Lieter as a PI not for Pinkertons but rather with their own agency and operating internationally. Another posiblity is working as a consultant with many friendly agencies, not MI-6 for the reasons detailed below.

2. What events of the late 70s might have been behind Sir Maurice Oldfield being sacked and Sir James Bond being appointed to replace him? (It might of course be something unknown to the publis or to history.)

When Sir Maurice took over the department from Sir Miles Messervy he brought in several of his old chums for key positions. Bond suspected one was a Russian double agent and protested strongly eventually resigning in protest. Years later MI-5 exposes the old chum for being exactly what Bond said he was. In the ensuing shake-up Sir Maurice is either forced to resign or blows his brains out.

3. What new arrangements and focus might a man like Bond introduce in the late 1970s?

Well first off he would bring back the 00 section which Sir Maurice (at the suggestion of his old chum) abolished in 1965. Bond would expand operations back up to full strength as Sir Maurice had been cutting things to the bone for years. Correctly evaluating the Middle East as the next major hot spot and state-sponsered terrorism as a growing threat Bond would create a new section within MI-6 designed to counter this threat. At the same time he will not ignore the Soviets as they've just proved that the cold war isn't over yet.
Bond would allow his field agents more freedom of action once more, in an effort to maintain control Sir Maurice had his people practically requesting permission to go to the loo by the end.

4. Is there anything in what I have specified that you think could be improved?

Just one thing, Bond was born in 1920 not 1918. on Armistice Day November 11th in Germany while his father, Andrew Bond an engineer for Metro-Vickers, was dismantling the Kaiser's armaments industry. Check out John Pearson's James Bond the authorized biography of 007 it's long out of print but you might be able to get a copy at your library or online at ebay.

[TheImperialKhan]

Also, the double 0 program has a slight problem with expansion...it only ranges from 000 to 009

Not so, according to Fleming one of the agents Bond shared his office at MI-6 HQ with was 0011. The other being 008.

[Killer Shrike]

Not so, according to Fleming one of the agents Bond shared his office at MI-6 HQ with was 0011. The other being 008.

No kidding? Which book was that in?

[TheImperialKhan]

No kidding? Which book was that in?

Moonraker. 1st chapter.

But now that I've told you I have to kill you. Sorry about that old boy.