00 '79 : A campaign idea

[Agemegos]

Here's a James Bond 007 campaign idea I'd like to discuss, with a view to refining it. I'm sure I've discussed something like this before, but I can't find the old thread.

• It's late 1979.

• Thatcher has been PM in the UK for about six months.

• The British Secret Intelligence Service has been gutted, like the "Circus" in Smiley's People. The senior staff have mostly been fired, arrested, transferred to 'harmless' positions, or murdered, or have defected.

• Thatcher has appointed a retired field agent to take over as the new Control/C/M: Sir James Bond.

• Bond is rebuilding the SIS by recruiting new agents, field controllers, analysts, and station chiefs from unsullied wells: places that won't have been seeded with moles by the Russians because the SIS never recruited there before. Fleet Street, for instance, or the Bar. He has even recruited new armourers, new combat trainers etc., mostly retired sergeants of the Royal Engineers, Royal Marines, Royal Corps of Signals, Brigade of Gurkhas etc.

• The PCs are new field agents who have been recruited because of extraordinary skills that they developed in unconventional places: Royal Engineers and Royal Commandos NCOs, and that sort. One PC might be an ordinary decent criminal; another a stage magician; or an American private investigator; or a pentathlete; or a foreign correspondent; or a safari guide. They are people the Russians won't have thought to recruit, and they have skills that conventional counter-intelligence types would be expecting.


Was it really Russian moles who were purged from the old SIS? Or Labour Party supporters? Or did the last M try a coup?

[Whitestreak]

This sounds pretty interesting.

Having James Bond be the new M would certainly be different - considering that more than once, the last M and Bond didn't get along due to 007s attitude towards his superiors in the Service.

So, you're looking at using VG's Bond game? That was always a fun game - I expect I'm way too far away to play in your campaign, it sounds fun!

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Whitestreak

So, you're looking at using VG's Bond game? That was always a fun game

It is a wonderful little game, especially the encounters system. Sometimes I am tempted to upgrade the mechanics to ForeSight*, but I'll probably stick with JB007.

I expect I'm way too far away to play in your campaign, it sounds fun!

I'm not planning on running it any time soon, owing to circumstances. I'm more likely to prep it and stick it in a document satchel ready for short-notice scratch games. I hope to enjoy the discussion though, and that other denizens of these forums will find it fruitful.






* ForeSight is an obscure SFRPG based on JB007, Commando, and Universe, with more attributes, more skills, and more detailed handling of fields-of-knowledge than JB007 has. It lack the Fame System, the rank system, the hero point system, and the encounter system. I reckon that a hideous grafted hybrid would be best.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Brett

Thatcher has appointed a retired field agent to take over as the new Control/C/M: Sir James Bond.

I'm imagining a scurrilous office rumor that Sir Bond retains a license to kill ... inefficient subordinates.

Originally Posted by Brett

Was it really Russian moles who were purged from the old SIS? Or Labour Party supporters? Or did the last M try a coup?

I'd probably go with something a little off the wall, like "all personnel who had been contacted by the KGB via back channel about bigger threat X, regardless of their co-operation." All such contactees were sacked because bigger threat X is the sort of thing that obviously needs co-operation to deal with, and Very Serious, so the PTB doing the sacking decided to get rid of everyone who might possibly have second thoughts about putting ideology over the survival of civilization.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by martinl

I'd probably go with something a little off the wall, like "all personnel who had been contacted by the KGB via back channel about bigger threat X, regardless of their co-operation." All such contactees were sacked because bigger threat X is the sort of thing that obviously needs co-operation to deal with, and Very Serious, so the PTB doing the sacking decided to get rid of everyone who might possibly have second thoughts about putting ideology over the survival of civilization.

Then why retain and advance Bond, who has already displayed a willingness to prioritise opposing bigger threats over a blind opposition to the Soviets?

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Then why retain and advance Bond, who has already displayed a willingness to prioritise opposing bigger threats over a blind opposition to the Soviets?

Because Bond is a name, not a man. (No, this is not canon, but it makes so many other niggles go away.)

Alternately, people change, and Bond is the one behind the thing. (The overzealous sacking, or even the overarching threat. It is a spy game after all, and the odd sexiquintuple cross is to be expected.)

Admittedly, part of the fun of the idea, at least for me, is the image of half of MI5 hanging out in The Village.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by martinl

All such contactees were sacked because bigger threat X is the sort of thing that obviously needs co-operation to deal with, and Very Serious, so the PTB doing the sacking

The first thing that comes to my mind is that the PTB is in league with the Very Serious Threat, and using the excuse to gut the department for the benefit of the VST. (Naturally, Bond's handpicked team of PCs gets to figure this out, expose the PTB, and defeat the VST.)

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Brett

...
• The PCs are new field agents who have been recruited because of extraordinary skills that they developed in unconventional places: Royal Engineers and Royal Commandos NCOs, and that sort. One PC might be an ordinary decent criminal; another a stage magician; or an American private investigator; or a pentathlete; or a foreign correspondent; or a safari guide. They are people the Russians won't have thought to recruit, and they have skills that conventional counter-intelligence types would be expecting.
...

This sounds to me like the Impossible Missions Force. This is not a bad thing; the original Mission: Impossible was an excellent TV series, and not like the other spy shows of the period...

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by robkelk

This sounds to me like the Impossible Missions Force. This is not a bad thing; the original Mission: Impossible was an excellent TV series, and not like the other spy shows of the period...

Yeah, I wanted to add a bit of procedural interest, and thought that PCs manoeuvring to make use of abilities other than fieldcraft and violence would do it.

I forgot to mention in the OP that nearly all field agents have been captured of have defected, or have been withdrawn, and that, as in Smiley's People, the Service's offices have been trashed (ceilings and wall linings torn out, staff fired, electronic equipment hauled away and not yet replaced).

The obvious explanation is that, as in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the Service was "turned inside out", and had become effectively a British-funded organ of the KGB. Bond is now M because the Americans trust him.

Perhaps I ought to have mentioned that November 1979 is when Thatcher announced to the House of Commons that Anthony Blunt had been a Soviet spy at the heart of British Intelligence for thirty years.

[quarkstomper]

Sounds like a fun campaign setting.

Have you ever read John Pearson's James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007? It does a good job of building a plausible background for Bond based on the biographical bits Flemming included in the novels as well as fitting Bond in the historical era in which they were written.