Secret Agendas for PCs?

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Hey guys,

I'm getting a group together for the T2k game, and a player who is a long-time friend of mine has expressed some interest but he wants something beyond merely hardscrabble survival. I suggested running a DIA (or CIA) character in the guise of a Special Forces (or even regular) character with an agenda that may (or may not) run cross-purpose to getting out of the Kalisz pocket alive.

Since I don't want him to be the "GMs pet", I was wondering, short of making everyone CIA/DIA/MI5 etc. has anyone got any "background hooks" that might make for more interesting gaming if I could lay them on all characters?

[Abbott Shaull]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Hey guys,

I'm getting a group together for the T2k game, and a player who is a long-time friend of mine has expressed some interest but he wants something beyond merely hardscrabble survival. I suggested running a DIA (or CIA) character in the guise of a Special Forces (or even regular) character with an agenda that may (or may not) run cross-purpose to getting out of the Kalisz pocket alive.

Since I don't want him to be the "GMs pet", I was wondering, short of making everyone CIA/DIA/MI5 etc. has anyone got any "background hooks" that might make for more interesting gaming if I could lay them on all characters?

Their was interesting enough a Special Forces ODA that was traveling in the wake of the 5th Mechanized Division as well as the one troop from 116th. If you have Free City of Kalisz it explains the mission of the Special Forces unit and Black Modonna explains what the Troop of the 116th did afterwards.

Check them out if you have them for some alternatives. Or you they could be ODA that tagged along who going to Warsaw or out to find 10th Guard Tank Division to guide it toward NATO instead of down to Yugoslavia....

Just some thoughts.

[irishboy]

I would just steal major themes from video games and movies.

One character can be tracking down a sibling/significant other who has taken as a hostage. Another can on the hunt for intel about a certain break-away faction. Maybe one already has intel about an impending attack on a key city, and is trying to stop it.

It would also be pretty interesting if you decide to have your CIA (for this example) agent with his own agenda, and an undercover KGB agent (with their own agenda) end up in the same group.

Another idea would be an 'unofficial undercover'. A civilian from the Kalisz area who is passing themselves off as something else (a German tanker, a Czech MP, etc.). They could be acting for some kind of resistance or defense group, trying to get the PCs to free the region into of flee it.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Something that happened in a Merc: 2000 game I was in, one of the PCs was actually a combat helicopter pilot but he never told the other PCs. The mission was somewhere in Africa from memory and the pilot was actually along to check on the status of some hidden prepositioned fuel & ammo supplies. The supplies had been cached months earlier for a potential UN helicopter operation that didn't happen.

So while the other PCs were in the area to assist the rescue of refugees from the area, the pilot PC was trying to check the caches without letting anyone know what he was doing. He had to try and direct the PCs into places where the caches were and then survey the caches without anyone seeing him. Not even the other players knew this was going on until way after the game.
It was quite a challenge for the player and caused some tense moments when his PC slipped away to check a cache and then the other PCs couldn't find him and thought he'd been taken prisoner. He had to think and talk fast to keep the others from getting suspicious.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

This is what I have so far:

The guy who wants to play a DIA agent may have some information on Operation Reset to guide the players in to Free City of Krakow. I think this is going to be a very good hook for the player in question.

For another player, a close friend or relative is (or rather, was) a pilot for the USAF. He has, since things started grinding down, begged, borrowed and when necessary outright stolen enough avgas to get a Cessna-172 aloft and to Belgium or France. Out of familial loyalty he's managed to get a letter through to the player's character that says if he can make it by [certain date], he'll fly him, the mechanic who helped him maintain the bird and one other person out.

I may crib one of the guys' postings here about recovery teams and give "secret orders" to a third player outlining how they're to mark favorable targets (armor, soft-downed a/c, intact generators etc.) for recovery.

[Adm.Lee]

Those sound like winners.