This is a game about spies. Think the BBC MI-5 (nee Spooks) or Queen & Country. It's also a game about people doing the best they can and still screwing each other over. It's a troupe-style game, in that every player will have multiple characters, each in a different context. First context is the Agency: one player is the Agency GM, the rest are officers in charge of a section within the service, and Agents report to them. Everyone plays the Agents within the sections. Agents meet up with their Officer, are assigned missions and strive to complete them without being killed, blown, compromised or corrupted. To assist them in this probably impossible task, Agents cultivate Assets. Not everyone needs to have an agent character in every section. Finally, every Asset is also a PC. Assets are basically normal people, maybe criminals or housewives, executives, doctors (maybe vets), veterans, who might have any degree of understanding of who they're working for or their relationship to the agent or their agency. Officers Officers are responsible for some aspect of the Agency's remit. That might be a particular espionage related activity like counterintelligence or liaison with other agencies or services. Or it could be a theatre of operations a region of the world, a segment of industry or a single large-scale operation (e.g. nuclear monitoring). Officers have certain appropriate resources at their disposal. Embassy fronts, safe houses, military support, signals analysis, raw cash, and most importantly, a small group of agents. Generally speaking, Officers interact only with each other. A single Officer interacts with (their) Agents. Agents interact with each other and their Assets. No player should play both of: an Officer and one of their Agent, or an Agent and one of their Assets. If a player's Officer interacts with an Agent they play, the player should hand one of the two characters off to another player. Mechanics Absolutely, this is a game with this idea from Apocalypse World: mechanics are triggered by things characters do and vice versa. Play proceeds in cycles that begin at headquarters, develop into an operation, which concludes with a debrief. While there's mechanical components to each, they're all played out in a usual roleplaying kind of a way. At Headquarters Officers collectively perform a sort of GM-prep task. The Agency GM should look at existing consequences and present them to officers in a pointed kind of a way. In the course of play, they discuss and identify problems that arise that impinge on their various responsibilities, and in the course of determining how best to address them, they flesh out enough of a situation for Agents to get embroiled in. Operations When an officer determines that they don't know something that's important to their responsibilities, or that something must be done in the world, that creates the opportunity and the demand for an Operation: to find out or make the change, Agent(s) must go into the field and take action. The player of the officer in charge of an operation takes over GMing tasks for the operation. Give the Operation a whimsical name, like "Jade Helm" or "Whirling Raven" - they're all chosen by a computer anyway. An Officer may exhaust such a resource as appropriate to conclude an Operation with as an adequate result might still be possible. E.g. rather than send an Agent to determine the position of Iraqi missile trucks, you might immediately exhaust Sigint or Keyhole or even the Special Relationship to determine where most of them are. If things are going very badly for an agent, an Officer (made aware of the situation on the ground) can exhaust e.g. SAS strike teams or a reliable safe house to get them out. Debrief Every operation has consequences at every level, and in three kinds: natural, unexpected, and compensatory. Natural consequences are just "what comes next" - assets may be facing criminal prosecution, or promotion; injuries might effect stats; agents might be facing internal sanction. Friends and enemies might be made, or the enemies of your cover might become your enemies for real. Record those things. Unexpected consequences always happen. There's at least one result no one expected; sometimes after the fact these seem natural. Those are maybe the best unexpected consequences. But sometimes just events overtake us - a new treaty and upend everything. Compensatory consequences are the (one) of the reasons people keep doing all this. They're only sometimes in recognition for the work done, but lump sums in Swiss accounts are certainly traditional. New romances, extra training, good fortune of all kinds fall under this heading. Discuss and assign natural consequences as a group, with officer in charge as arbiter. Everyone adds an unexpected consequence on a slip of paper to cup, with the operation name on it. Then draw some, one at a time, until satisfied. Don't discard old ones too lightly! Finally, nominate and vote on compensation as a table. Ties break for assets over agents over officers. Commitments Any character can commit to something by writing the object of their commitment on an index card, and the specifics of the commitment on the other side. They may not reveal the specifics, or the commitment is void. The "object" serves as a cue for other players to remind you to reveal the commitment. (Condition cards might even have three fields: "If __ happens to __ then __" and you copy the second blank to the public side of the card.) Officers can have 3 commitments at a time; Agents can have 2; Assets can have 1. If events would reveal a commitment, you can reveal the specifics of the commitment by turning over the card. A commitment revealed gets preference - they aren't magic, but they're definitely "good planning." They can provide about as much effect as a Mamet twist, in terms of interrupting and preventing other actions and events. Weaknesses The weaknesses of Officers are profound: their positions depend on respectability. They often cannot be associated with the very operations they orchestrate. If an Asset knowingly meets an Officer, it spells the end. The weaknesses of Agents are manifold: their identities are secret. They are acting outside of any law. If they're discovered they likely to be killed in action. The weaknesses of Assets are simple: they have very little power in the game they're playing. They often don't *know* the game they're playing, and when they discover danger it's completely out of scale to their normal expectations. Assets are also, quite simply, expendable. Strengths Officers have the resources they command. Agents have their access to their Officers, and their own talent and training to rely on. They also have their covers. Finally: a good agent isn't expendable. Assets have their unique position and abilities. e.g. A smuggler has her network of contacts and transportation.