Spy game mechanic: "Don't blow your cover"

I am planning to run a game with a bunch of espionage and I am considering adding a few rules to it for a system relating to 'not blowing their cover'. I'd like everyone's opinions on if its sound, or just fucking stupid.

Essentially, when the party does something that would throw suspicion on them and the mission. I put a poker chip on the table (i like to use these as tokens in games). each suspicious act adds to this stack.

When it gets high enough, let's say for argument that 'high' is 10 tokens. then the current part of the conspiracy the players are up against, call the next guys up above to tell them that someone might be on to them. They will then send in a team or hit squad to investigate.

But players can lower suspicion by acting by roleplaying a scene involving them doing the job that is part of their cover. (For example, if one characters cover story is that he's a journalist, he needs to roleplay a scene explaining to his boss why he hasn't been coming to work lately)

As a secondary feature of this, I was thinking that players can use their cover identity to gain a temporary bonus or clue to advance further (such as that journalist bugging his boss to let him into the archives). However, this action creates a point of suspicion.

thoughts? Is it total autism, or is it sound?

It's as good a houserule mechanic as any. It allows players to visibly see how their actions are drawing attention to them and how well they're covering their tracks.

It seems a bit too videogamishly quantitative to me. Part of what makes the sort of thing you're trying to simulate so exciting is that you can never really be sure if they're on to you or not unless and until the shit really starts to hit the fan, and even then you're not necessarily certain how much they know. Having suspicion tokens that you can work off by giving lip service to your cover story every now and then in between whatever you're doing to make people suspicious is exactly the sort of thing I think a lot of people play tabletop role playing games instead of video games to avoid. Yeah, keeping track of what everyone is thinking all the time is a headache, but that's what it's supposed to be. It just doesn't make any sense that, say Guard #6 will think "Well, that guy was acting REALLY suspicious with how he kept on trying to break into the room where the secret stuff is kept, but I heard somehow that he was mopping the floors really carefully somewhere else so I guess he really is just the new janitor."

As is, this just feels like a gameplay tax. You ignore it until your count hits 8 then do your 4-7 scenes of "paying it down".

With players who mostly ignore such narrative elements, it's going to end up feeling like a chore. For players who already enjoy this behavior, it's not worth codifying the rules and tracking the points. Mostly, it seems like a solution looking for a problem.

I feel like emphasizing the secondary feature of your design (letting a player risk their cover for a better chance at victory) is the way to go. The best example of this I can think of is the old white wolf RPG Hunter: The Reckoning, which let you risk Conviction points on a challenge.

When starting a mission, your cover has a rating. You have a pool of points (equal to that rating) which you can risk any amount to increase your dice pool/roll result. If you win the challenge you gain a point (strengthening your confidence in your cover), if you lose the challenge your cover also looses a however many points you risked. A cover of 0 has been blown. This way rather than no-stakes bookkeeping scenes, invoking your cover is always an exciting decision.

It sounds a bit /v/. It's arbitrary and has to be forced to fit. For instance how would roleplaying a scene lower suspicion? It could at best divert it.

And to have reporting up the chain the only reaction seems overly simplified. I'm playing a game right now where the agents have to infiltrate a company, get to know the conspirators working there, and find one to turn, then turn them. Each NPC has their own way of dealing with suspicion, and most of them have their own secrets to keep before worrying about the conspiracy as a whole.

Also having the stack in the middle of the table is narratively wrong. It is not information the characters are privy to. In fact inferring the enemy's suspicion based on small glimpses into their communication perilously liberated in surveillance, intercept, or wire tap missions is the basis of most of the tension in the game. You're cutting that out wholesale.

I'd solve the issue narratively altogether. Why have a stack of chips? Instead describe NPCs looking shifty all of a sudden, making an uncharacteristic amount of calls, or changing patterns to raise the stakes for the players.

Oversimplification kills atmosphere. A skill like Spycraft is a kitchen sink and might as well be labeled 007ness. It describes the result of an action without generating any story. You need to break it up into specializations at least because Spycraft(surveillance) and Spycraft(data forensics) are entirely different specializations that tell a different story. And when you arrive at Spycraft(combat) you immediately realize that you've made a mistake and need to use a different skill.

What this person said.

You want to retain an element of uncertainty. So keep the poker idea, but replace it with facedown cards.

Every time they do something suspicious deal a card from a deck face down. Once five cards are dealt turn them over and if they form ANY sort of poker hand, they have to deal with a problem as dangerous as the quality of the poker hand.

So if you turn it over and it's literally nothing, false alarm and no one's onto them. But if you turn it over and it's a pair of twos they've got a local busybody curious about their suspicious activity who could cause problems, but is more likely just an annoyance. Turn it over and it's a flush, and there's a hitsquad on their tail.

Go read Demon the Descent.

I like this idea a lot!

I came in to say this. Check out how Demon runs its concept of cover and how things can threaten that. Granted, your spies won't be going up against a nigh-omnipotent machine god, but the intent is there.

I think the idea is to shift getting your cover blown from pure GM fiat to concrete, trackable game mechanic. It's like hp for your cover, basically.

I am OP, and I like this idea.

I can also use my original 'option 2' and what was mentioned here.they can take risks for bonuses to rolls or important clues, but it will generate more suspicion cards in the 'hand'.

but I think that each mission should only allow for one hand to generate.

five cards are the max that can be generated and they stay face down until the mission ends (or is about to end) then get flipped.

now I just need to come up with ideas on the levels of bad things based on card hand types.

Eeh, having max number of cards being dealt means the players don't have to care about stealth after that. If you're going to make a game mechanic out of abstract thing, make sure the mechanic actually results in reasonable PC actions.

good point.
then it should a continuous thing. after the five cards pop, then a new set of face down cards will begin to generate. but probably after whatever happens from the hand being revealed.

for example, the first hand flips and a nosey intern shows up. the intern has to be dealt with or resolved somehow before a new hand begins to generate. In theory this should be just a small scene or something.

No shit, Sherlock.

But that limits it severely, and it undercuts suspense.

Instead the suggestion is to solve it narratively. If you need tokens to make that work, go ahead. But don't show them to the players. Instead manage their expectation with foreshadowing.

GM fiat is basically anything in roleplaying. But specifically it refers to making shit up on the spot because you were unprepared. The suggestion is not to be unprepared, but to prepare levels of escalation and to express this in narration, not in stacking poker chips within sight of the players.

The cards idea is more viable. It's pretty random, but in a fast and loose beer&pretzels game that's good.

I disagree, having a concrete stack of tokens, or cards, makes the play more suspenseful. If you know that failing this roll will add the fifth card on the stack and resolve it, it feels more tense compared to the more nebulous 'GM keeping track'.

That's only if the GM makes keeping track nebulous, which is not the suggestion.

But instead of tokens making a pile where players can say: "We're not in danger, look how low the stack is", the GM can use tension as a narrative device by telling the players what the opposition does. But the players have to decide how reliable that information is, whether they're found out and getting played, and how crucial deniability is at this point in the mission.

Suspense over the outcome of a roll lasts 3 seconds, it is dramaturgically irrelevant. Suspense over having read the situation correctly and having made decisions going forward accordingly - that lasts all game.

Dark Heresy second edition has a similar mechanic with Influence and Subtlety. Check it out, it's on the wh40krpg thread.

My first thought when I heard that you'd be stacking poker chips was that the chips could be stacked as high as they're able, but when they fall, THAT is the PC's getting discovered. The higher the stack, the greater the damage that discovery does. Then I thought of a house of cards or a card structure. The higher/more complex the structure is, the greater the bonus the players get for their espionage-ic actions. Eventually the House/tower falls down, but maybe some parts stay standing, especially if they were built as separate structures.

Each card could be written on and labelled as an action they take or lie they tell. When part of the structure collapses, the lies in that tower are exposed. Perhaps they topple one of the other structures and the GM works that into the story. Perhaps the other structures stay standing and the PC's can stay hidden "within" one of those structures.

The GM has to rule when each lie/action has to be build upon another one in the same structure and when they can be a separate one.

I'm gonna bump this actual roleplaying topic on general principle.

I agree with this guy. Don't make it visible. The GM can still have a pile (or number) behind their screen, but having a pile in front of the players encourages metagaming and removes the players from the world. It's metagamey and only appropriate for a board game.


well said.

And really, if you're going to be that anal about numbers (for "blown cover"), you should have numbers for "bullet count", "clue point" stacks and "sneaky points" as well.

>So if you turn it over and it's literally nothing, false alarm and no one's onto them. But if you turn it over and it's a pair of twos they've got a local busybody curious about their suspicious activity who could cause problems, but is more likely just an annoyance. Turn it over and it's a flush, and there's a hitsquad on their tail.

Players and PCs shouldn't know any of this. If there's a hit squad on their tail, the first they should know of it is via their sources (if they cultivated them - roleplaying) or when the first bullet hits them. There is absolutely no need for players to see this ifnormation in physical form any more than they should see a monster's HP and Attack Bonus via cards on a table.

I agree with this user:
Players shouldn't know whether NPCs are onto them, and especially shouldn't be tipped off by something metagame like a pile of chips. When NPCs are on to you, they'll let you operate under surveillance in the hopes that you'll out your team mates, give some clues about your specific intent (just being shady doesn't tell them much) and so on.

If you want people playing their cover, just integrate the cover and the spy work. The whole point of taking on a cover is to use it to get close to the target, so the idea of alternating between being undercover and doing actual spy stuff doesn't actually make much sense.

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It might be fun to build something from the ground up with a blackjack style resolution mechanic. Like you roll over the difficulty of the task or else fail one way, but you also have to roll under your skill or fail the other way. Then you and the GM have a hand of cards to play. Each "roll" you and the GM put down a card and add them up. You might play low if you prefer that failure state (or if the GM likely wants the opposite and you want to succeed). Or you might play to the middle if you really need to succeed. There's also a set of incentives that revolve around keeping this or that card because this roll isn't as important and you need an ace up your sleeve. More importantly, you can deny responsibility for these decisions, blaming them on the contents of your hand. To avoid having a big pile of tens, maybe face cards mirror the opposite card's value and crit on two faces or something.

Then you give PCs secret conflicting goals and let them wonder who's failing strategically, and to what ends.

Well, if you're going to go that route you might as well go with Dread.

It may not be what you are looking for, but Shadowrun has matrix overwatch which is pretty similar. Whenever people do anything illegal on the matrix, any hits rolled by their opponents, are totaled in a secret pool. when that pool hits 40 they take massive damage, get booted out of the matrix and are physically located by the cops. In my experience it works pretty well. I don't know how this would be applied to a D20 or similar system, but it is a nice variable and secret mechanic that creates push-your-luck situations.

I think they should be dealt Hold 'Em style, with the first two cards face down and the next three face up.

When a hand gets resolved you're never really sure how much trouble there is, but you've at least got an idea of whether things went quietly or completely pear shaped.

You may want to take a glance at the Dark Heresy 2ed subtlety mechanic, it's a hidden number that the party can guess at and makes some things harder and some things easier.

I don't like it for reasons listed here: But on a deeper level: what kind of game are you aiming for? Cinematic spying is totally different from real espionage. Is this an X-files style game where the players are operating on their own, or are they part of a major intelligence agency?

There's room for a realistic espionage game, but your players are going to be summoned by the rezident and returned to Russia after one or two mis-steps.