Traveller Spy Campaigns?

[Enoff]

Thinking of organizations like the Scarlet Brotherhood, my article about creating a Top Secret campaign points out that before starting the referee should have sketched out an espionage organization for his players.

"The organization is responsible for sending the agents on missions, paying them upon successful completion of said missions, and disciplining them for rules infractions, among other things."

Later in the article he goes into more detail on how to handle agents obviously out of control and gone rogue from their organization.

There is a short list of questions the referee asks himself on creating a spy organization.

1. Who started the organization, and why?
2. What are its goals, and how does it go about achieving them?
3. Is it a known agency, or is it secret?
4. Where is it located?

The author of the article goes into describing how he developed his spy organization for his players. At the end of the article he presents this organization in a tight format. I've cherry picked the criteria headings out of this description to be used as a template.

1. Nature of agency
2. Governing body
3. Personnel
4. Annual budget
5. Established
6. Activities
7. Policies
8. Objectives
9. Areas of involvement
10. Allies
11. Additional data
12. Bureaus
13. Alignment profile

I think you mentioned something Washington about the NPCs in the players organization. Yes some of these that the players have most contact with should be fleshed out. Case officers, Bureaus chiefs etc.

 

[Enoff]

Found this great outline on rpg.net on the The Scarlet Brotherhood

"The Scarlet Brotherhood is a strange, evil, mystical group of people known as the Suel driven from their homeland by a great war and who have taken refuge on a peninsula. They are racial supremacists who jealously guard their bloodline and the integrity of their country. They rely heavily upon spies, assassins, monks, and the enslavement of others."

Wow how great to use as a bases of a Solomani organization trying to regain territory lost to the Imperium.

I do have a lot of the Traveller supplements but sometimes they seem to lack the emotion that the old D&D adventures aroused.

 

[Washington]

I think you mentioned something Washington about the NPCs in the players organization. Yes some of these that the players have most contact with should be fleshed out. Case officers, Bureaus chiefs etc.

This is definitely good advice on writing believable organizations. To help make the template a little more dynamic there are a couple small modifications I would use.

I would change “nature of agency” to “nature of organization” to emphasize the need for organizations that are not government espionage agencies or not government agencies of anytime. For example, various levels and types of crime organizations are important sources for player character contact resources and adversaries. There are levels within agencies too. The layering of power may be furthered with separate descriptions of branches within a single agency adding to the over-all layering of power. With a fair number of organizations developed, then address their relationship to each other. This relationship is termed alignment profile in the template you provide Enoff.

Also, it’s one of the important ways to establish the style of the campaign by the level of exposure the player characters have to the full organization. Limiting this information is part of the intrigue in the campaign. If more information on organizations is provided without effort beyond their direct contacts, it will create more of a James Bonds style. However, less information will tend toward a more realistic style. The classic example of knowing much more are the scenes where Bond walks into the testing lab a Q Branch. It’s an over-the-top scene. It’s cool, but it also brings that style more to the campaign.

With a good number of different organizations and potential contacts developed, the player characters have a wealth of contact resources to acquire in game. By limiting direct effortless information on these organizations, the extra-realty of conspiracies is fostered.

 

[Enoff]

Yes slowly revealing information, we like puzzles.

 

[Washington]

Yes slowly revealing information, we like puzzles.

Yes, it's cool to pull from as many sources as possible to help build layers to a campaign. Like drawing upon some of the D&D content, it's fun to pull from others as well. Shadowrun, Conspiracy X, Dark Conspiracy, Hunter: The Vigil, Corporation and others are great resources for espionage campaigns. The rules light systems are the easiest to completely convert, like Conspiracy X or Hunter: The Vigil. However, if Traveller: New Era is in use, Dark Conspiracy uses for the most part the same system as Traveller: New Era. So, it’s an easy way to develop some conspiracy intrigue organizations over to Traveller through New Era.

Edit: The first edition of Dark Conspiracy from GDW.