I'm considering running a game that is focused around espionage and the spy game. The PCs will be agents working for the government as part of a cell that doesn't exist officially. They will not be runners, they'll be officially employed by the government, but since the government doesn't want any of their funds being traced... the agents must rely on their own funds to support themselves. On the opposite end of that though all the drug money, terrorist accounts they hack and everything else they are permitted to keep (to the victor go the spoils).

The PC will be given free reign to handle their missions in any way they see fit, there is no good or evil, just success or failure. Because neither the PC nor his agency exists nothing they do can be traced back to who the PCs work for.

Here are some of the highlights I was thinking:

1. The PCs get to travel a lot more. Go to places and run exotic adventures in all parts of the world because their agency sees to it they make it through customs and have the proper credentials to safely travel (most of the time).

2. They're still Shadowrunning in a sense - everyone is their enemy or their ally depending on how they handle themselves.

3. It calls for more versatile PCs who aren't focused in one aspect and maxed out, instead they are balanced in several ares to handle more situations.

4. PCs get to live a bit of a more 'richer' lifestyle as the James Bond type. With fatter bank accounts they get to 'play' more and because they have to use their own funds for missions it helps keep the accounts in check a bit too.

I was curious about some feedback from all of you. What do you think of the idea, do have anything to add to it or take away?

Also, does anyone know where I can find a resource that details some of the terminology used by the various agencies across the world (CIA, MI6, FBI, etc...)

All I'd say is some funds from the goverment would be need to get this working. However make it small and irregular not only will this give the PCs a tie and a feeling of loyalty but it will help. Asking for more will likely get a you know how much we are spending infertructer wise for this op ect. Goverment payment should also come in things other than yen. Organzing the flights to teack down X when they report in they need to relocate. The possable hassles ect. However don't let the PCs get dependent on it. Make it just more than needed to make the PCs loyal and to keep the goverment a player in it.

I see Swordfish 2070......

OK, to actually contribute.....

I think that just about no government would allow them to be so free. It is just begging for serious problems in the (very) near future.

I say, make it sort of like Alias where they don't know eaxctly who they are working for at first, though they believe they know. If you want my take on this (without letting your players know) you can PM me and I will give you my idea on what is going on with this group. It is something that I have used and will use in the future.

Could be a lot of fun - Shadowrun: Impossible Mission. Might get out of hand, though I've learned the hard way: no deep-cover secret agents as part of a group of otherwise normal shadowrunners - having them all be agents could solve those problems.

A few thoughts:
- Politics and media could become a major drivers to the story and the missions. Runs would be often executed for solely their political/media impact. Blackmail/counter-blackmail, frame-ups, extractions, media stunts galore.
- Blowback would be a serious concern to anyone running such a mission. Runs that go bad (getting in the news, killing lots of civilians) could cause serious repercussions, and get the team burned.
- Paranoia is the GMs friend and plot device. Being way out on a limb, operationally, means that lots of things could go seriously wrong. What if their single point-of-contact back to the Agency (whatever it is) is killed/turned/goes rogue? Just a few doubts seeded by the GM could go a long way to making the players paranoid as hell. Ditto hints that one of the team may themselves not be trustworthy.

One thing to watch out for though is that creative players will start making arguments for the need for the Agency to support them with access to high-availability goodies and things like deltaware. Either plan to allow this, or come up with an iron-clad in-game reason why they can't.

First suggestion is don't make this too realistic, real Intelligence work is dull most of the time, if you stick with something between a Tom Clancy novel and a James Bond Movie it will probably be a hoot.

There are probably three areas they need to be proficient in, Social Skills, Infiltration, and Hacking. Light combat skills will probably suffice unless you're going to really go heavily Bond.

This would be a great Jack of All Trades type campaign, a lot of Random skills at 2-3 might be a good idea, you never know what could be useful. Just need to be sure that all of the players build to this standard (or that none do) or you'll have huge imbalances in the play group that could be potentially game breaking.

I'm starting a PbP game of a corp black ops vain. It is in a similar area. Runner Smurf has it more so with blowback and paranoia for my game though a lesser part on the paranoia aspect. But yes the no payment and do what ever parts need changing these people are doing a dangerous job for free? Expected to survive by doing other work on top of it? Payment is needed. Plus some from of limits on what they can do.

Having them hit that drug gang for you not openly and keep it all sure but no payment is a huge issue. What is to stop this group you've trained, hired, together togther going rouge as they have no incentive not to. Patriotism should never be seen as the be all and end all of it. AAAs don't work like that they set them selves up in such a way that the corp is your life. Going rouge there mean bye to your house, your spouse, you job and well pertty much everything. But even then I don't see any corp dropping a deep-cover team in for that.

It can easly be fixed by a large payment on completion/mission end some thing for failure as well as long as that isn't due to a massive one that gets them burnt or killed.

I played in exactly such a game and used False Front and lots of nano. 'Twas fun and I hope yours goes just as well!

Try SOTA 2064, it´s the best SR ressource on this kind of stuff that comes to my mind. Rules and tech are a bit outdated (though IIRC you find some of the tech for SR4 covered in RC), but the info is still very useful. Also SoNA has some info on spy games, but not too much and all confined to north america.

Use it as an an in-game thing... the runners are newer members of the organization charged with revolutionizing it.

I ran a similar campaign, just that the runners were part of a AAA-corp, not a government, but same basic concept. I created a set of active and knowledge skills (representing their spy training) as a bonus, also so I could be assured they had at least a minimum amount of skills to be good at espionage. I recommended that they not spend much chargen BP on personal gear, as the "company" would provide the team a budget for each mission and they could appropriate that towards the gear they would need.

I also gave them free high lifestyle while employed.

So, this ended up being a little higher power game. Interestingly, without the need to run for nuyen, or really care much about nuyen or gear, they really got to just focus on planning and execution. It was fun for the first few runs, but then I think the players got a little bit bored. They didn't like all the planning needed and just wanted more hack/slash action, so be prepared to mix it up.

From a GM perspective, I had a lot of fun, as I could throw together a couple objectives and a budget of nuyen and let them figure out how they wanted to deal with it. There were a lot of small runs they made to gather information before each objective and it was always easy to avoid the players thinking "what next". If things got slow, I could just introduce a new objective for them to work on.

Well, I'm more or less going with a 'cheese' theme. The PCs will be kept occupied and their 'intelligence work' will be nothing close to real intelligence work. We'll be mostly involved in the spy game the mirrors things like James Bond, xXx, From Paris with Love, etc... Action movie stuff where the PCs will probably be involved in stunts that most of us around here face-palm when we hear about them happening at a gaming table.

I just think it's a fun way to cut loose and let the player be ignorant (in a good way) for a bit, I'm pretty hard on them in the 'realisim' of games so I'm basically giving them an 'Action Hero Card' and telling them to have a blast with it.

The agency is funded by the government, but when an Agent is out in the field they have to rely on their own funds to make deals, get equipment, grease palms, etc... the reason is so there is no data trails of spending to unknown or possibly incriminating accounts in the Agency's books, in case they're discovered. While the Agency is official, the agents are not (plausible deny-ability), which is why they allow them to keep acquired funds and gear (since the never officially picked it up to begin with).

I'll probably give the PCs Handlers to assist them on missions, that way they don't act-a-fool and shoot the Russian Prime Minister or something. Of course, if they want to shoot, hey that's their right, but they'll end us as a Rogue Agent and the Agency will disown them (and probably send someone to clean up their mess).

Sounds like fun if you like railroad games.