WHAT YOU DO IN THIS GAME
In this game you play Soviet spies in deep cover in America, what are known as illegals. You carry about espionage missions for your mother country while maintaining your cover as the perfect all-American family. This game is heavily influenced by the excellent FX TV show The Americans. The series takes place in the 1980s, but you can play in any timeframe you’re comfortable with, adjusting countries as necessary.

WHAT THIS GAME IS ABOUT
This game is about the tension between opposing forces. The largest and most obvious tension is the tension between the Soviet Union and America, but this might be the least important tension during play. The game focuses on the tension between your life as a spy and your life as a person. Time and effort are countable resources and everything you do as a spy takes away from what you can do as a person and vice versa. Every parent misses Little League games, but not every parent misses them because they’re changing the tape on the Secretary of the Interior’s bug.

This tension spins out into a tension between loyalty to state, loyalty to family and loyalty to self. You need to have some decadent American luxuries in order to further your cover, but you don’t need to enjoy them; at least not as much as you might be tempted to. You’re loyal to the Soviet Union, but sometimes doesn’t it feel nicer - no, that’s not the word - just more… comfortable… to be in the United States?

PLAYERS
The ideal number of players for this game is four: two players to play illegals, one player to play (GM) the spy world and one to play (GM) the personal world. GMs press against the areas where the PCs ideals run against the world and force them to make tough choices. Illegals attempt to balance their work and their life and stay true to their ideals.

SET-UP
The illegals’ cover is as the perfect American family. Therefore one of the spies will be a man and one will be a woman. They must have at least one child under 18. All of the family members will be involved in community activities, such as PTA, Little League, Boy Scouts, or the Neighborhood Watch.

Illegals choose three ideals. Ideals are phrased as simple statements. “I will never…” or “I will always…”

“I will always… 
stand up for the underdog
defend my country
finish what I start.”

“I will never…
	fail my partner
	allow my family to come to harm
	enjoy my cover life.”
	
When acting to uphold their ideal, the illegal gets a free token added to their action. If they break their ideal it is permanently removed from the game. If the illegal breaks their last ideal they will be removed from play.

The illegals should answer this question: “Have you considered defecting to the US? Why or why not?”

Children are NPCs under the direction of the personal GM. They are naturally curious, if not outright suspicious, of their parents and their behavior. Illegals must maintain their cover with everyone but their partner, the Agency and the Agency’s designees. 

(Strengths and weaknesses for espionage?)

(Build up a list of cover identities - mechanic, drug dealer, etc. with their own descriptors)

MECHANICS
This game uses two base stats with a common pool of tokens that can be used for both spy and personal actions. 

(How do you add to or refresh your pool?)

(Could Undying be useful? https://enigmamachinations.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/undying.pdf )

(Work in some randomness - no matter how good a spy/parent you are, you can always fuck up)

The stats are Cover - how well you blend in and perform in civilian life - and Approval - how pleased your work keeps the Agency.

Actions are about success and failure, but they are ultimately about decisions and consequences. You can spend more tokens to do a better job on your reconnaissance mission. That will earn you greater Approval from the Agency, but won’t leave you many tokens for your family interactions. If you don’t show up to book club several months in a row you may end up hurting your Cover. Or you can refuse a job from the Agency and watch your Approval fall.

When your Approval is high, the Agency provides you with more support and your are more likely to successfully carry out your missions.

When your Cover is high, the neighbors are less suspicious of you and you are more likely to be successful in your personal actions.

(Should there be an AW-style resolution with gradients of success? And maybe you can spend tokens to increase your odds pre roll?)

RUNNING THE GAME
The illegals’ list of ideals show the GMs where they should be pushing to create difficult and interesting choices. With each decision the illegals make, they cut themselves off from a host of other possibilities and further paint themselves into a corner. Look for ways to echo spy difficulties in the illegals’ personal lives. They illegals are highly capable, but not in control of their own lives; highlight the areas where they lack control. Show them being fundamentally good people being forced to behave badly; show them being bad people pretending to be good. Revel in the duality. 

Inspirational Quotes:
in a terrible prison of their own making.
The relentlessly brutal portrayal of what espionage does to people
What “The Americans” reinforces, time and again, is that most of these people are merely pawns in a much bigger game, and unlike the bigger players, they can’t afford to look away. 

hard to imagine with a happy ending
“The Americans” is about loss of control. That’s what intimacy is: when you’re known, you’re in danger. 

is a show about human personality as a cruel performance
It’s often said, admiringly, that “The Americans” is a show about marriage that is dressed up as a spy drama. 
[The illegals] are less anti-heroes than studies in what leads apparently earnest people to behave cruelly.