Got any advice for running a spy campaign?

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This anime is shit and you should feel bad for posting it.
Literally Squandered Opportunities: The Series

i prefer something like pic related.
Just you/PCs and your mission, no glamorous james bond-esque lore bullcrap and you'll always be put into intense situations, and almost all choices that you have are always risky.

Princess Principal is actually surprinsingly bretty gud, one the best five series of the year quite possibly. I'm inclined to say them being lolis (and not that much, look at Dorothy) is really coincidential and you can diss it off easily, if using it as inspiration.
What might be counter-productive is how much sentimental it is, actually.

>tfw they didn't spoof James Bond with Princess in a deep-sea diver suit and an absurdly frilly gothloli dress underneath

is it yurishit with no action scenes?
and if it does have action scenes, is it black lagoon levels of action? or just cheapshit?
and how is the spy thing handled? shows like Najica Blitz Tactics, Read or Die(OVA) and Agent Aika are pretty straight forward when it comes to defining the spy genre.

Please don't tell me that show is infected with teenshit drama.

I hope to god you have the right kind of players who are proactive and can use their heads. Otherwise you'll just have a typical game set against a spy backdrop and frustration because there's not enough combat. Take it from first hand experience.

As a wasted opportunity as it was I think it's the closest thing to what spies operate like. You also see normal people buckling under pressure because they're not really prepared for it.

Do you prefer Stale Beer or Martini?

Anyway, I think Blades in the Dark as a system is a really good starting point if you want it to be high action.

Not yuri (actually thinking about it they dodged a bullet, nothing against yuri but friendship against circumstances is more difficult to portray) and absolutey high-action. The drama is... well, not teenshit at all, but it MIGHT be a little different to how we tend to portray spies. Let's say there is a focus on personal instances, especially from the other characters.

I'd say the action is on the level of BL if you're talking about how "cinematografic" it is, tough it's less violent and half-comical (I like BL but it does feel a little like GTA; the animu at times)

I'm not oldschool enough to say I watched them. I can positevely compare it to Noir in the sense that the script is tighter.

>is it yurishit with no action scenes?

Very much not. The Yurishit is basically non-existent save between two characters (And not even then much).

>and if it does have action scenes, is it black lagoon levels of action? or just cheapshit?

Quick, fast and (Unless it's a chase scene) not very dramatic. The person with the jump on the other guy wins 9/10 and it's often over with 1/2 bullets.

>and how is the spy thing handled?

It's got a few fantastical elements but it's very much more 'Real spy' than 'Superspy'. Shit sucks, you spend long hours doing boring shit to try and get your hands on the data you want and being good at fighting is only vaguely useful as a spy.

The best fighter on the team spends a lot of time sitting in the car bitching that she's got nothing to do because she's a fightautist who didn't spend any points in Real Spy Stuff.

>Please don't tell me that show is infected with teenshit drama.

Not really, no. There is maybe...2 episodes that involve it? In one case, they are undercover and it's part of the bullshit the job entails and in the other one it's mot really teenshit drama so much as immigrant drama.

How many shootouts does it have? and how long? All i see is a fucking japanese swordfight oh my god.

Most shootouts are over in a few seconds. Maybe a minute at most?

There isn't a shootout every episode, maybe 1 episode in 3? If you count fights in general it jumps to maybe every second episode. Most of the focus is on spy work (Information gathering) rather than shooting.

The japanese girl is the fightautist that was mentioned before. If she's the focus of an episode, it will likely have a fight.

Also I REALLY enjoyed the scenery. This is how you do steampunk without a terribly big budget, and juxtapose high class and low class.

I dunno, perhaps every two episodes. They're not THAT long, but I think it's better that way.

Chise is half tongue-in-cheek, they don't really buy the muh superior japanese discipline bullshit (aside from a certain episode, I guess). But yeah, she does dodge bullets with a sword. As in many anime the hyper action isn't in conflict with a more serious story.

>Chise is half tongue-in-cheek, they don't really buy the muh superior japanese discipline bullshit (aside from a certain episode, I guess).

About half her stuff is 'Oh god, what is the Japanese weirdo doing this time?'

Don't go weebshit
Go full bond isntead, the most superspy 007 trope possible, with mad scientists and superscience

>tfw the whole thread is about how autists hate animu they haven't watched and not a single bit about spy rpgs
My question is, what's the main difference between making a spy game and a common mystery game? Are there any systems doing it right?

Night's Black Agents or Delta Green do spycraft and information gathering very well. You could ignore the supernatural elements and they would still be solid games for a more realistic spy game.

>I think it's the closest thing to what spies operate like
Then you think wrong. Very fucking wrong. That's one of the biggest problems with the series - its creators had no fucking clue about espionage, but decided they are still going to make it with an assumption that not making it Bond-esque is enough to make it "real".

Something they do that shows a lot of Chise (And the commentary on Japan in that period) interestingly is that she's generally very good at explaining WHAT something is/what they are doing but she's utterly crap at explaining the why/often doesn't understand it herself. She's focused and hidebound towards doing things the traditional way that she's lost track of why that tradition was started.

Dorothy is a strong counterpoint there. She knows what she's doing but even moreso, she's excellent at explaining why it's what was done/how it affects the bigger picture.

Watch Reilly, Ace of Spies for inspiration.

Why would you go weeb in the first place, though? Ninjas are not the first thing I imagine when I think about spies. They're not even close, actually.

I don't think there are good spy-focused RPGs. I mean, they're not that focused.

But on the other hand I don't know if you need that. Perhaps a tighter mission "schedule"?

>of course, it's pretty difficult to find a "mistery" rpg that actually does mistery in the system, so to speak

Yeah, she is slightly satyrical as a character in that sense. Not exactly a stealth parody but has something of that.

The series kinda needs a serious character to be put low like that, but I actually like when japs do decently the "prewar japanese with muh honor and muh traditions" in the bigger world. Oh well.

>I don't think there are good spy-focused RPGs. I mean, they're not that focused.

There are absolutely are, but you still gotta pick your flavor from the likes of Conspiracy X, Espionage, Spycraft, etc. Delta Green can also be played from the espionage angle except the stakes are much higher. Problem is something one user already said - you need players with a particular mindset to enjoy spy games.

>Got any advice for running a spy campaign?
Use a system designed for spy campaigns, don't play D&D. But, imo, the most important thing for it to work is the quality of your group

Best anime of the Season

What's interesting in your example is that the setting is some kind of fantasy cold war.
Maybe you could find some inspiration in real spy operation during cold war (directly in enemy territory but also destabilization in periphery, etc.)

>fatal

kill it with fire