Comments on: Spy Games are All About Paranoia

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 06:42:55 +0000

Surprised I don’t see it on their storefront, maybe he’s considering a different format? (It has a funky mirrored cover, which might be expensive for a larger print run). Try contacting him and see if they can get you a PDF.

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:49:22 +0000

Wilderness of Mirrors sounds awesome, Chris, but I don't see it on Wicked Dead's games page. Do you have a link?

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 01:08:04 +0000

Hi Martin,

You should really check out John Wick’s Wilderness of Mirrors, it is the final word on doing espionage games, period. It rewards players for increasing paranoia amongst the group, and also makes the whole “planning the operation” aspect fun, and not tedious.

By: VV_GM

VV_GM — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 22:42:27 +0000

Thanks TAGP, John and Ian for the kind words. I’m glad I could give something back to the TT community because for the short time that I have been a member I’ve discovered a lot of great info here at this site. I hope in the future that I can contribute more!

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 21:27:57 +0000

I’d just like to thank Patrick for this post, paranoia is probably my favorite emotion and one can never have too many tips for inspiring it!

By: John Arcadian

John Arcadian — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 19:07:20 +0000

The last game I ran that was an espionage, making heavy use of intrigue and plotting was a Vampire game set in the late 1930′s in Akron, Ohio. The PC’s were set on opposite sides of the field, and I actually had to run multiple mini one shots with each of them, and then intertwine the stories together when multiple peoples stories where coming together. It worked beautifully, but was incredibly stressful. They had great fun plotting against each other though.

The post has a lot of good ideas which I could have used more back then. When I run another intrigue based adventure within my latest campaign, I’ll be sure to use these ideas.

By: Thats a great post.

Thats a great post. — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:56:06 +0000

so I havent run a traditional espionage campaign but i recently ran for a whiel a kind of paranoid espionage inspired near future D20 modern campaign. some of these ideas occured to me holding information back but If that campsign were to pick up youve given me some great ideas.
one thing I did that also added to that level of paranoia was to give different information to the players. Even as far as seperate stories of who they worked for, they took ages to even discuss it, and when they did it took them a long time and some great roleplaying to even agree amongst themselves what was going on around them.