What does (psuedo-)2018 Modern Espionage look like?

[The Colonel]

On the bright side, the modern fetish for recycling makes the snoopers job a lot easier - now the paperwork he steals is a lot less likely to be mixed in with rotting food waste and nappies...

[tanksoldier]

On the down side somebody has to listen to 10 billion hours of domestic kitchen conversations recorded by Alexa that were flagged for the keyword "nuke it"....

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by tanksoldier

Thinking more about it, if you want a more exciting espionage campaign set it in a neutral country during a hot or serious cold war.... Casablanca style. Things can be a bit more edgy and violent, to a point... can't upset the locals and get yourself kicked out or interned.



...until they reached the frozen land of Nandor, where they were forced to eat Sir Robin's minstrels.... and there was much rejoicing.

Casablanca was set during a Homeric bloodfest. Fortunately for humanity in other aspects but unfortunately for cinema those come along only ever so often. And because of the mixed kindness of Oppenheimer they are even less likely.

What we have in 2018 is in many ways more like a giant bandit hunt. In some ways that is good, because it brings covert action to the forefront. On the other hand, however villainous ISIS is, one cannot pretend it is not the underdog compared to Western Powers. On the other hand the nature of war is that anyone can be the underdog in any given moment.

You can probably find plenty of Casablanca like places in the world with a weird paradox of luxury and nearby violence. So you can still get that atmosphere going.

There are other paradigms. An open-air arms bazaar so far away from the law that no one even bothers to hide it is an idea. That can be put out in the backwoods. Or your adventure can take place on the train to Bangkok aboard the Thailand Express. There are plenty of ways to make a setting.

One mission your PCs can be given is unraveling the infrastructure of terrorist groups. Bumping off the top guy can be satisfactory to be sure, as long as you don't make to much mess in the process. But there will always be other top guys. And capturing or killing mooks is even less economical. Finding their sources of money and draining it is an effective task and can be made interesting. It is certainly something your in-house Colorful Computer Nerd can be busy at.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by tanksoldier

On the down side somebody has to listen to 10 billion hours of domestic kitchen conversations recorded by Alexa that were flagged for the keyword "nuke it"....

"Alexa, mind your own damned business!"

[Daigoro]

Ridley Scott's/Leonardo di Caprio's Body of Lies is from 2008 and is based on a slightly earlier book, so it shouldn't be too dated. It's the most realistic of recent espionage films that comes to mind. Scanning this list, I can't even find anything in the same genre.

[tshiggins]

If you want skull-duggery and daring-do, leavened with a heaping-helping of violence, skip international epionage entirely.

Set the campaign in Miami, in the 1980s, and make the players members of the Miami-Dade law enforcement community.

That was pretty much, "All Casablanca, all the time."

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

If you want skull-duggery and daring-do, leavened with a heaping-helping of violence, skip international epionage entirely.

Set the campaign in Miami, in the 1980s, and make the players members of the Miami-Dade law enforcement community.

That was pretty much, "All Casablanca, all the time."

I recall the RPG Millenium's End took a similar approach - although PCs were expected to be PMCs/PSCs rather than law enforcement as their Miami setting had a Cyberpunk vibe without the cybernetics.

[KevinJ]

G'day all,

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a great espionage movie with little Bondian shenanigans and it's on Netflix.

HUMINT is still a big thing, but it is often less glamorous that it is portrayed in movies and books. Now, the guy at the news stand, the barista, and any of the Senate shoe shiners are likely to know things they don't know they know. The skill of the handler is not just getting them to talk, but being able to identify what is important and what is gossip.

One aspect of modern HUMINT is that you don't have to write it all down when it is so easy to do short range voice and video transmission. A handler could 'interview' his unknowing source and the interview can be recorded and analysed later for duplicity and verasity.

I think NCSI is, while not completely accurate, a good example of what a government can bring to bear through a small cadre of investigators. Sure, it's a 'drama' and some of the spywork is a little over the top, but for not being able to show actual methods they do show a lot of methods for gathering Intelligence and investigating suspects.

[KevinJ]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

If you want skull-duggery and daring-do, leavened with a heaping-helping of violence, skip international epionage entirely.

Set the campaign in Miami, in the 1980s, and make the players members of the Miami-Dade law enforcement community.

That was pretty much, "All Casablanca, all the time."

Miami Vice!

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by KevinJ

Miami Vice!

Ayup.

I also had a distant relative (my mom's second cousin, or some such) show up out of the blue in Denver, in 1982. Vietnam veteran, great whistler, stayed with my mom a few weeks and then stayed with me a few weeks in my tiny studio apartment

Good guy, great stories, and I didn't mind him staying with me, even though I didn't really know him.

Here's the thing. The cocaine cowboys dealt in wads of cash so huge that, were they to try to spend it, the DEA, the Treasury, and accountants with Miami-Dade PD would be all over them in white-hot second. They had to launder it, and they used any number of methods to try to conceal how they made that money.

One way was to purchase valuable legal commodities from someone willing to take cash, and then turn around and sell that legal commodity to those who would never have anything to do with drug money.

Gemstones were a good choice, and diamonds were the best choice -- as long as one could dodge the DeBeers paper trail. Cousin Bill had apparently made a pretty good living from short jaunts across the Atlantic to Africa, and back again.

Then he had to dump a shipment.

So, he came to a place where nobody knew he had family, and tried to figure out what to do. He finally went back to Florida to try to work it out.

He was dead less than a month later.

True story.