I have a problem with Alexis's and Jesse's game.  Both have supposedly competent, indeed very competent, support.  A has the Parsifal House tech team which is supposed to be world class spy techies.  J has the Shepherd which is supposed to be a superhuman intellect.

Both want good advice.  Me, I have the problem of not making them klutzy,or too smart.  But also its just hard for me to come up with good advice...I tend to try to let the player's lead.

So...any advice from the Worldwalkers?


PT

I was a little surprised to see where Alexis was sent in with such a limited supply of air.  For a top level agency to have so few emergency supplies on hand struck me as a bit odd.  My suggestion is that the handlers issue realistic quantities of supplies to begin a mission.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:14, Sat 10 Dec 2005.

Thats an odd problem. I can see Misty's point about gear, but I would think that the top Intelligence Agency in that world would be on top of allied operations. As far as Shepherd goes, I'm just trying to exploit a resource. I dont really have any idea about how to make it better without also trying to influence the game in my favor.

Its not so much that they didn't have more supplies, its that they thought that three hours would be plenty of time.  And they wanted to limit the amount the spy had to carry because of weight concerns--choosing to go in for a fast and light insertion rather than a slow and more heavy insertion.

After all, if things had gone smoothly, you should be able to get to the reactor in about fifteen to twenty minutes.

Although, I do think it was a mistake, a mistake I'm enjoying right now, as it makes for a cool ticking clock.

However, next time, I send her into a nasty insertion, we'll load her down with more supplies.

Trying to create the spy List of Needed Gear is a pill, but I suspect that that is what this world could use ----a nice several page list of various tools, and then let the player pick from them.

Jesse: Feel free to try to influence.  And I'm not sure what you mean by 'on top of allied ops'.



And I will see you guys later tonight, or perhaps tommorrow for a bit.  I'm trying to be self-disciplined, and remind myself I need my vacation, and restrain myself to M-F.

Hopefully, get to see Narnia tonight, if its out yet, and we get into town.

PT

Would you like some help in assembling a list of sites with mission gear?

Jesse's case is harder for me to interject, since I don't know the person/world very well. But I would use Shepard personally to train me in various abilities ;)

Ok I'm running through Why Spy on GO. I haven't gotten too many tech gadgets either. I've gotte two pairs of goggles. As for help, I don't know what kind of opposition she's going to face, but as for the incompetancy of Alexis's info, here is what I suggust.

I like to think of this world like the world of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, you have great technology gadgets, satellights, and whatnot, but it's still a world of mundane things. You have a mission, you are given the tools to suceede. The mission maybe hard, but here is what I would suggust.

Have another verser play the part of the intelligence, since they know what they need to survive.

As for Jesse, he's a military guy, he knows how to turn people into fighters, what he would need training on things he doesn't know. I'm not going to persume I know Jesse's strengths and weaknesses, but I would have the Shepard goes, offer Jesse options of what he can teach and let Jesse choose what he wants to learn.

Allister Kent MI-6

Here are some of my favorite spy tech and mission gear sites.

http://www.uscav.com/

http://www.espionage-store.com/

http://www.actiongear.com/cgi-.../agcatalog/index.tam

http://www.specialforces.com/store/customer/home.php

http://www.surplusandadventure.com/

I'm not including weapons in this list.  If you would like, I can send you another listing of those.

A lot of my background comes from shadowrun which means that a) your support team is usually also PCs b)well, nothing ever goes as planned in Shadowrun :)

I think that's my take on a support team, no matter how good they are, you're the person on the ground.  You're the one with the action/reaction right there.

Additionally I'm a strong believer in the axiom: "The first casualty of war is the battle plan."

Additionally if you're throwing together a support team to work on something that's not their standard fair, there's going to be a scramble and things are bound to be overlooked.

Misty, yes, that is much of what I'm hoping for. We'll use those sites next time Alexis gets sent on a mission.

I stumbled out something for Jesse. Probably didn't sound super-intelligent, but I can hope that Shepherd doesn't sound stupidly obvious.

Next time I run an insertion, I'll see if I can get volunteer(s) to run the Intel team.  That would be an interesting experiment.

I like your logic Kate. The question for that is...okay, thats the real world.  But Spy Novels are basically a type of fantasy, at least in some respects.  The notion that it is possible to be omni-competent and to perfectly follow a plan like clockwork is possibly not much more of a fantasy than some romance novels.

PT