GM Exercise - Spy Business
Here's another quick archetypal situation for your consideration. Remember, the point isn't to exhaustively answer every question in detail, but to get used to coming up with possible solutions to them. If you can think about it with a specific game in mind, that's all the better.
Spy Business
The situation is as follows:
A cunning spymaster sets up a business along a trade route where travellers and traders can drink, eat and relax - a cover for gathering information about what is happening near and far.
As always, start by thinking broadly about if and how you'd run this situation in your game.
- Would the stakes of this situation be at all meaningful for the game?
- Would it be worth it to include such a situation in the game?
- What would it take to introduce a situation of this kind to the game?
- What more would I need to know about the situation to adjudicate it?
- What mechanics, if any, would I employ to resolve the situation?
- What information would a player need in order to make good tactical decisions in this situation, and how can they get it?
- What aspects of this situation do I feel capable of improvising?
- How much time would I want to spend resolving this situation in this game?
- Which roles would it be fun for the player characters to assume in the situation?
- Would this situation be engaging to all players at the table, or would it leave some bored on the sidelines?
Some questions more specific to this particular set up:
- How many resources does the spymaster need to spend in order to set up this enterprise? How long does it take to do so? Would spending more resources make the business more effective at collecting information?
- Does it suffice to gather the information that visitors freely share or let slip? Or would a spymaster need to include ways of eavesdropping on private conversations to really get anything of value?
- After the business has been set up, does it matter whether it is profitable or not? If it is, how do you determine how much money it is making or losing, and how often?
- How do you generate the information and rumors that the business is picking up? Are any of them false? Are any of them deliberate misinformation? Is it possible to tell them apart, or verify them in some way?
- Could a visitor discover that the business is merely a front for collecting information? Would they have any way of learning who their secrets are being sold to? Can they buy secrets from the spymaster, if they learn of their true purpose? What does it cost?