Throwing curveballs at the spies

[Agemegos]

G'day

 

Now as you may have read in another thread, I am planning to start up an espionage campaign set in 1979, with the PCs working their way up to "00" rank in the British Secret Service. The premise of the campaign is that the SIS (MI6) has been going through a bad patch of scandals and lack of success, and that Margaret Thatcher has appointed Sir James Bond the new M with a brief to rebuild the Service.

 

So we suppose that Bond hands over SIGINT to GCHQ, and makes a radical return to HUMINT. We also suppose that he recruits a lot of new people from sources that the KGB will not have thought to infilitrate. This is going to have to involve recruiting people of ability from areas of endeavour that have not traditionally been thought of as fertile breeding grounds for spies, and hoping that their special professional abilities will give them capacities that will turn out completely unexpected to the professional spies. What are likely places for Bond to recruit from?

 

- The medical profession?

 

- RADA graduates?

 

- The film and television industry?

 

- Fleet Street?

 

- Professional sports?

 

Brainstorm!

 

Regards,

 

 

Brett Evill

[Agemegos]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

FWIW: One of the inspirations I have in mind is the Bryan Brown movie FX: Murder by Illusion in which a movie special effects specialist ran rings around crooked FBI agents and the Mafia using his professional skills.

[Steve Long]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

Law schools: the FBI already recruits there.

[freakboy6117]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

media and computer technicians

refrigeration and enviromental system technicians{lots of british workers go out to the middle east to install systems like that, having someone who can plant bugs in a targest air conditioning systems all over the world would be handy}. have you checked out the MI5 recruitment website?

 

oh donforget linguists there really important.

 

others specialities meterologists{essential for ops planning}

biological, chemist and nuclear scientists for WMD analysis

finally what you really want in an agent is some one who has proffesional skills[or can fake them] that will make it easy to create a Legend[fake id] that will allow them to travel aroudn the world photogrphers fashion designers etc might well have good reason to travel.

[Agemegos]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

Law schools: the FBI already recruits there.

 

Indeed. The British secret service has been recruiting from the universities as a matter of habit since at least the 1930s. That's where they picked up Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Blunt. The universities, navy, army, Foreign Office, and banking industry are the 'business a usual' recruiting grounds that I think Bond might try to broaden away from.

 

And of course you have to be aware that vocational training in Britain and the Commonwealth are organised differently than in the US and Germany. In England Law and Medicine and so forth are (generally) undergraduate (bachelors) degrees, taught at universities rather than at specialist graduate schools. This is an irritating mistake in Victory Games' Q Manual: the brief personal history listed for one of the characters has her doing a quadruple (!) degree at Cambridge as a qualifying course to enter medical school, which is not the way things are done in Commonwealth countries (or at least wasn't in period: some Australian universities have recently introduced four-year medical courses for university graduates alongside the standard six-year undergraduate medical degrees).

[Agemegos]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

How about circus performers?

 

Wildlife photographers?

[Turin]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

One that I know most people overlook is missionaries that have served in a foreign country or worked with a foreign language.

 

Here in Utah there are a large number of them and that is one of the reasons that perhaps the largest collection of military linguists in the world is located just south of Salt Lake.

 

As for spies instead of just translators, most missionaries are fluent (with native accent), have lived in the country (2 years) and know the culture and local customs. They usually don't have relatives or partisan affiliations that can complicate things. And lots have an ideological influence that is typically more difficult to turn then say money, romance or power.

 

Just a thought.

[oroborous]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

most missionaries are fluent (with native accent)' date=' have lived in the country (2 years) and know the culture and local customs. They usually don't have relatives or partisan affiliations that can complicate things.[/quote']

 

Are you speaking of LDS missionaries? Most Mormons I know are conservative and family-oriented. However, they are patriotic, so if the government approached them with something that didn't clash with their religious beliefs, then I think they would be apt to say yes.

 

MY TWO CENTS

 

As far as non-traditional places to recruit people, think like the movie XXX. Athletes and petty criminals could be a useful resource. Perhaps MI6 could also troll through hobby shops and find gamers and rescue them from their parent's basements. They could be used for their creative thinking skills.

[Turin]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

Are you speaking of LDS missionaries? Most Mormons I know are conservative and family-oriented. However, they are patriotic, so if the government approached them with something that didn't clash with their religious beliefs, then I think they would be apt to say yes.

 

 

For the most part yes I am talking about LDS missionaries. I met a former FBI Deputy Director that said the reason they recruit from BYU so actively is that to Mormons "it's not just being patriotic it is being religious".

 

Another source could be from fringe elements of organized crime, that have a stake in the cold war. I saw a documentary a while back about how much help the Mafia provided the (US) Army and Navy especially with the invasion of Italy during WW2.

 

edited - Added US for clarity.

[freakboy6117]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

dont froget concvicted criminals with sepcialist skills con artists and hackers especially but catburglers forgers and others coudl all be offered an early realses and employment on certain conditions like in 'catch me if you can'

[TheImperialKhan]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

dont froget concvicted criminals with sepcialist skills con artists and hackers especially but catburglers forgers and others coudl all be offered an early realses and employment on certain conditions like in 'catch me if you can'

 

I believe you're thinking of It takes a Thief the TV series with Robert Wagner and Malachi Throne. A very good possibility too, another might by professional gamblers who if nothing else will have nerves of steel.

[freakboy6117]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

actually I was thinking of the one with Ice T working for the Eff Bee AIII

[Basil]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

Sorry if I duplicate what someone's already said.

 

Are you doing this more like the movies, or more realisitically?

 

Movie-like:

Models, photographers (both of models and of nature), travel writers, some kinds of athletes, professional gamblers, casino workers/croupiers (spelling?), pilots, stewards/stewardesses, ship captains, cruise-ship workers, train engineers and such (tho' not in the US), the independantly wealthy (esp. if they travel a lot).

 

more realistic:

small time hoods (esp. if adept at making connections with local gangs), thieves (if good at breaking into places), con men, secretaries, wait staff, laborers, street bums, anyone most people don't notice, minor workers at embassies/consulates/etc., long-term visitors (tourists, specialty workers, etc.).

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

How about circus performers?

I was just about to post this (having not visited the thread in a while). Just imagine a spy using the skills of a circus clown....

[Starwolf]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

Along the lines of the FX show, I used to enjoy a series called The Magician starring Bill Bixby as a stage magician that used his magical abilities to fight crime, solve myteries, and such...

[tancred]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

How about circus performers?

 

Wildlife photographers?

 

 

The late, great Alistair Maclean's Circus used exactly this as a plotline. The main character was Bruno, an amazing high-wire artist who happened to be a spy.

A great among Maclean's many great novels.

[Wombat]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

I'd put another vote in for travel writers and journalists, just look at Fieldings 'The Worlds Most Dangerous Places' to see just what you can get away with when you try.

 

I also highly recommend this book for anyone running modern games, it's a veritable treasure chest for the GM.

[Agemegos]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

Are you doing this more like the movies' date=' or more realisitically?[/quote']

 

I am planning to do it like the novels (which I am re-reading). That means that it is distinctly romanticised, but not in the same way as the movies are. On the whole I would say that it will be more realistic than the movies, but not as furtive and shabby as real intelligence work. The PCs wwill be dealing with short-term 'operations', not with developing and running sources, patient counter-espionage work, etc.

Fnord

[Storn]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

For local talent, and especially in cities of confined geographical location (San Fran, New York City, Boston), I highly recommend the Bike Messenger.

 

I was a bike messenger in NYC for 2 years. I did quite a bit of spying... although, it was who had the open bathroom.... or the combo lock code for the bathroom. Hey! Knowing where access for a public bathroom is a big deal in NYC when you are on a bike 8 hours a day... ya just don't want to go take a wiz in Penn St Station... much nicer to use the executive bathroom at Conde Naste! At the end, I probably had about 20 combo codes for various bathrooms around Manhatten and knew of another 20 more that I could just walk in and use.

 

But seriously, I was invisible. I was able to walk the hallways to deliver packages to many, many businesses and I got to see the backdoors of lots of places (Like CBS news, who was a regular client of Meyer's Messengers). You meet lots of other "invisible" people, the mail room clerks, the maids in hotels, the middle management, the executive assistants.

 

One of my regular runs was to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The drop off point was WAY in the back, past all the roman and egyptian antiquities. No one escorted me. What an easy way to start of an archeological thriller.

 

I can respond faster to a incident (that i would know about) than any cop in probably a 30 block radius... traffic prevents more than 15 miles an hour, where I was doing 30 miles an hour thru traffic easily. Messengers are in great shape, carry large bags useful for that mac 10, totally mobile in an urban area, and all look alike (shades, bike helmet, spandex).

 

But heck, the *package* itself is SUCH a macguffin trope of espionage...

[Agemegos]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

For local talent, and especially in cities of confined geographical location (San Fran, New York City, Boston), I highly recommend the Bike Messenger.

 

 

I can respond faster to a incident (that i would know about) than any cop in probably a 30 block radius... traffic prevents more than 15 miles an hour, where I was doing 30 miles an hour thru traffic easily. Messengers are in great shape, carry large bags useful for that mac 10, totally mobile in an urban area, and all look alike (shades, bike helmet, spandex).

 

That's an interesting thought, but I think I will be using it more for contacts and local staff, or as an occasional disguise, and less as a source of recruiting globe-trotting effectuators. If anyone wanted to play such a character in the campaign I am contemplatig I might suggest that the character ought to be an internationally-competitive triathlete or racing cyclist as well as a bicycle courier. That way he or she would be at least familiar with a bunch of countries, might have a smattering of languages, etc.

 

And by the way: by the conventions of this genre, villains use Mac 10s: a hero would have a Ruger T-512 in the parcel.

[freakboy6117]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

have you checekd out globval freqency agemos

 

principle thetre is there are 1001 agents on the freqency specialist in many fields and field agents all around the world and there called and brought in for what ever the emergancy is using high tech comms gear and an ops center run by aleph teh punky cyber phiel operator.there aglobal rescue service which deals with left over super wepaons alien incursions and bioterrorists plots its a lot of fun.

[Agemegos]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

have you checekd out globval freqency agemos

 

Nope. Nothing came up when I googled it. Where can I read more?

 

principle thetre is there are 1001 agents on the freqency specialist in many fields and field agents all around the world and there called and brought in for what ever the emergancy is using high tech comms gear and an ops center run by aleph teh punky cyber phiel operator.there aglobal rescue service which deals with left over super wepaons alien incursions and bioterrorists plots its a lot of fun.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of an espionage campaign for agents of the British Secret Service set in 1979, when Sir James Bond has just been appointed the new M.

 

The thing about this Globval Freqency is that there would be premise be different specialists called in for each different operation, so players would not have a single on-going character the way I like.

[Agemegos]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

I'd put another vote in for travel writers and journalists' date=' just look at Fieldings 'The Worlds Most Dangerous Places' to see just what you can get away with when you try.[/quote']

 

Sounds good. But the only "The World's Most Dangerous Places" I can find on Amazon is by Pelton, not Fielding. Is that the one?

[freakboy6117]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

oops tahst what i get for posting in a hurry here's the web page im sure you can find more stuff under warren ellis.

oh and there looks like there will be a tv series starting next year the just started on a pilot on the 9thand the tv show site has a good synopsis of the premise

[Agemegos]

Re: Throwing curveballs at the spies

 

oops tahst what i get for posting in a hurry here's the web page im sure you can find more stuff under warren ellis.

oh and there looks like there will be a tv series starting next year the just started on a pilot on the 9thand the tv show site has a good synopsis of the premise

 

Thanks. It looks like fun, but not what I had in mind for my nostalgic Espionage campaign.