Twenty-five years of running espionage games has allowed me to develop a quick template, if you will, for plotting an adventure.  Strangely, this isn’t always the obvious (and successful) technique of having a bad guy/group and their desire (say…the destruction of the US economy.  Oh, wait…)

Normally, something on the news will catch my eye and get the brain working.  Somalian pirates have been nabbing ships…what if they get lucky and snag that weapon that was being transferred from North Korea to Iran?  Now you have to recover the weapon, but wait!  the Koreans are going after it to.  Quick thumbnail for an adventure.

Time to fill it in.  In this case, the story itself drives the location of the action, and possibly even the type of sequences.  Pirates:  we need a boat boarding sequence.  Good enough for a quick one-off, right there.  Need to fill another night or two?  The device was already moved!  The team must find the pirate vessel — damn!  It’s already in harbor in Mogadishu.  They need to slip ashore, not get killed by the Somalis in the area, and find the captain/crew.  Interrogate them.  Locate the weapon.  Throw in Korean commandos to make things interesting.

Maybe you just aren’t finding something to inspire you that day and the game is in 3 hours.  (This never happens, right!)   Sometimes starting in reverse works.  (Often, for me…)  Set it up like a Bond movie:  pick three exotic locales.  What do they have in common?  String a mission into it.

Example:  I know I want to do a big adventure where the team finally gets the chance to take down the bad guys they’ve been fighting.  We start with a teaser in the desert Southwest (just because.) Then the story gets rolling in New York (or London), next location is Shanghai in China (’cause it’s a big city, busy, and there’s a lot of cool architecture.)

Research the areas for action sequence locations.  The southwest gives you places for rock climbing, river rafting, or maybe they’re at a combat ranch out there, hoing skills when the bad guys hit them.  Lots of open space for an off-road car or motorcycle chase.  In New York, you’ve got Wall Street, the Empire State Building, the ruins of the WTC.  Just those quick choices tell me I’m thinking an economic plot.  Collapse of the world economy so the bad guy organization can make a mint shorting against the market (or whatever…)  The plot has been discovered in some manner, they start to investigate, leading to the next action sequence — car chase in the busy streets of Lower Manhattan?  A break in on a suspected connection’s apartment or hotel room?  I like the latter and want to keep it, but this is going to be a high-octane sequence, I’ve decided.  Their surveillance of the suspect is interrupted by his assassination by the lead henchman for the sequence.  I want a foot chase in Wall Street/downtown area.  Google Earth the location.  Find stuff to make it interesting.  But eventually, it’s going down into the subway for a chase on the multiple levels of the station.  Now I’ve got my henchman — a freerunner that can use the area to his advantage.

They’ll be able to find a clue to the plot through the dead man’s computer/emails/whatever — he’s investing in the futures market but his investments make no sense unless the whole system is in turmoil.  His money is coming from a Chinese concern in Shanghai.

Shanghai.  Way cool buildings.  There’s the Jin Mao Tower — very cool building with a fantastic atrium for an action sequence, and an outside scaffolding made for a climbing sequence.  Break into the offices of the organization.  Discovery and chase through the building, culminating with a jump down the inside of the massive tower, maybe?  Or a parachute dive off the outside and across Shanghai?  That gives the Chinese police a chance to get involved for a foot chase through the historic Bund section of town.  There’s a crazy cool tunnel under the river there.

Important in these types of games is to keep the action flowing fast enough to keep the players interested, but not so fast they can’t track the plot (unless you don’t have one…then it’s a good cover for that until you do.  This technique works better in games than movies.  See Quantum of Solace, which would have benefited from slowing down a bit.)