00 '79 : A campaign idea

martin_rook · 12-18-2012, 12:12 AM

I would recommend, for inspiration, watching the early 80s BBC series Sandbaggers. It's about MI6's Special Branch, and the series was created and written by a fellow who held the same job as the main character, the director of ops. This isn't quite the M position I think, but somewhere between M and the field agents. It's much more realistic then Bond, but it could give some good ideas about managing the internal politics. Most episodes seemed like their real nemesis wasn't the KGB but MI5!

What made me think of it in connection with this is that the D-Ops was once a Sandbagger -- that is, a field agent -- himself. There's an episode where a foreign dictator has arrested a British couple and intends to execute them as spies. When the D-Ops was a field agent, this guy had tortured and killed one of his friends. So, on the political side, he writes up a proposal that Her Majesty's Gov'ment assassinate the dictator, even though they aren't supposed to be killing foreign heads of state. While he's cashing in favors on one hand to get that green-lit, on the other hand he sends both his field agents (they usually only seem to have 2, 3 at most) on a mission into Germany which could have been accomplished by just one of them. So if the proposal goes through, he'll have no agents to send to carry it out. Oh, in that case, it looks like D-Ops himself will have to go back into the field to carry out the assassination. No, it absolutely isn't a personal vendetta...

I could totally see Bond doing something like that. Sending the PCs away on an odd assignment while there's trouble brewing elsewhere. Clearly keeping them in the dark about something. What's M up to...?

12-18-2012, 12:12 AM	#14
martin_rook Join Date: Mar 2006	Re: 00 '79 : A campaign idea I would recommend, for inspiration, watching the early 80s BBC series Sandbaggers. It's about MI6's Special Branch, and the series was created and written by a fellow who held the same job as the main character, the director of ops. This isn't quite the M position I think, but somewhere between M and the field agents. It's much more realistic then Bond, but it could give some good ideas about managing the internal politics. Most episodes seemed like their real nemesis wasn't the KGB but MI5! What made me think of it in connection with this is that the D-Ops was once a Sandbagger -- that is, a field agent -- himself. There's an episode where a foreign dictator has arrested a British couple and intends to execute them as spies. When the D-Ops was a field agent, this guy had tortured and killed one of his friends. So, on the political side, he writes up a proposal that Her Majesty's Gov'ment assassinate the dictator, even though they aren't supposed to be killing foreign heads of state. While he's cashing in favors on one hand to get that green-lit, on the other hand he sends both his field agents (they usually only seem to have 2, 3 at most) on a mission into Germany which could have been accomplished by just one of them. So if the proposal goes through, he'll have no agents to send to carry it out. Oh, in that case, it looks like D-Ops himself will have to go back into the field to carry out the assassination. No, it absolutely isn't a personal vendetta... I could totally see Bond doing something like that. Sending the PCs away on an odd assignment while there's trouble brewing elsewhere. Clearly keeping them in the dark about something. What's M up to...?