Espionage
Basic Information
Espionage or Spying is the art and act of gathering information that is secret, private, or confidential.
But, of course, it's also much more than that. It's a genre of those who engage in these sorts of tasks, but also often including assassins and mad scientists and other "cloak & dagger" trappings that go beyond merely gathering information. Agents, spies, whistleblowers, and eavesdropping technology is employed by goverment agencies, private industry and individuals, all with their own motivations. Big Brother is watching, and so are a few of his siblings.
Espionage Equipment & Technology
- Cipher
- Gyrojet Weapons
- Laser Microphone
- Motion Detection
- Public Key Encryption
- SCIF
- Smart Dust
- Sound From Ultrasound
- Spy Catsuit
- Spy Satellite
- Video Analytics
- Video Motion Detection
Espionage Locations
Famous Spies
- Allen Pinkerton
- Beethoven Was An Alien Spy - trope
- Belle Boyd
- Christopher Marlowe
- Eddie Chapman
- Fritz Joubert Duquesne
- Howard Burnham
- John Andre
- John Dee
- Jules C. Silber
- Julia Child
- Mata Hari
- Nathan Hale
- Robin Stephens
- Sir Francis Walsingham
- William Wickham
Famous Intelligence Agencies
- CIA
- Deep State
- KGB
- List Of Secret Police Organizations
- NSA
- Pinkertons Agent
- Réseau AGIR
- Red Orchestra
Spy Types
This list is a mix of actual espionage terms and positions as well as character tropes from the espionage tropes list. They should get you started on generating the characters you'll need for your game.
- Access agent
- Agent of influence
- Agent provocateur
- Assassin
- Case Officer
- Confusion agent
- Deep Cover Agent - trope
- Double agent
- Double Agent
- Facilities agent
- Fake Defector - trope
- Honeypot
- Illegal agent
- Intelligence agent
- Manchurian Agent - trope
- Master of Disguise - trope
- MiB - trope
- Operational Targeting Officer
- Operations Officer
- Principle agent
- Re-doubled agent
- Sleeper agent
- Spy Couple - trope
- Teen SuperSpy - trope
- The Mole - trope
- Triple agent
- Unwitting double agent
Espionage in the News
- Blurred Out - 51 Things You Aren't Allowed To See On Google Maps
- China Enacting A High-Tech Plan To Track People
- CIA, FBI push 'Facebook for spies'
- FBI Deputizes Private Contractors With Extraordinary Powers, Including 'Shoot to Kill'
- Halliburton says radioactive material was stolen
- Laptops took thousands of images
- October Surprise
- Putin - The dark rise to power
- Sensitive Guantánamo Bay Manual Leaked Through Wiki Site
- Sibel Edmonds Deposition - Ignored by U.S. Media
- 'Smart dust' aims to monitor everything
- Soviet Union Wanted To Topple Honecker In 1987
- The Hack Of The Year
- Top Secret America
- Turkey's Secret Power Brokers
- U.S. Jet Shoots Down Iranian Drone Over Iraq
- Woman posed as FBI agent, 'hired' neighbors
See Also:
- Assassination
- Confidence Game
- Conspiracy Theory
- Crime
- Espionage Tropes
- False Flag Operation
- Secret Police
- Time Spying
Sources
Bibliography
1. Wikipedia
2. Non-Fiction Book: International Spy Museum Handbook of Practical Spying by Jack Barth
3. Non-Fiction Book: The CIA Catalog of Clandestine Weapons, Tools, and Gadgets by John Minnery
Game and Story Use
- Espionage, it's themes and character types can be incorporated into many role-playing games. From over-the-top James Bond to all-too-real Wiki Leaks, there's a great deal of territory that could fall under an espionage banner. Most of the links above lead to pages that have their own game use ideas.
- There's essentially a sliding scale in the espionage genre (leaving out silly things like child spies) ranging from larger than life stuff like cinema Bond and the Mission Impossible series, through more realistic (but still far too exciting) material like the Bourne series and the Bond novels to material closely based in reality like Le Carre's work. Make sure you know which end of the scale you're at before starting play as standard practice in one will be a war starting game over in another.
page revision: 6, last edited: 08 May 2012 14:23
