St.Tropez spy-noir

* I wrote this as a set-up for a solo-game i am running in Modern AGE by Green Ronin. So far i've run about a single "session" (a somewhat arbitary term in solo games). I think the spy-genre is a great for solo (or duet) games as the focus usually is on a single character anyway. Pushing that character to it's limits and reflecting on moral choices also feels safer in a solo enviroment. I'm sure it looses some elements that a group could provide, but provides opportunity for some self-reflexion which is not always available in role-playing games. 

St. Tropez in the 1970s. Haunted by celebrity and decadence. The nightlife is exciting, beaches are full with the bold and the beautiful. 

Money flows fast. Drugs are everywhere. Everyone gets laid.

In this world crime is also rife. The corsicans run the underside of the glitz. Gangsters are popular figures in the imagination of the young bon vivants. But underneath their glamorous exterior the underworld is ruled by money and guns.

The world around is changing. Superpowers are jockeying for power. Spies and turncoats are everywhere. The riviera is a prime location for exchanges and honeytraps.

JaneArt / CC BY-SA

Background

In the autumn of 1976 the french banker Christophe Lallemand is gunned down by persons unknown on his way to La Croix Valmer. The police investigation finds evidence that someone was in the car with M. Lallemand, but the investigation is halted after a few weeks.

In London MI6 commander Sebastian Bristol suspects that Russian intelligence might be involved in the case. M. Lallemand was an MI6 asset and his last report mentions that he has met a young woman named Lily Bonin. Bristol thinks Bonin might have been in the car with him. He goes to St. Tropez in an attempt to find the girl, but he also goes missing after filing a single report.

Commander Bristol’s wife Marcia Bristol is in the US working for the UN, but has secretly been recruited by the CIA. When her husband goes missing she contacts a friend in the Agency and begs them to look into her husband’s disappearance.

The CIA agent Howard Feldman is sent to England to liaison with the MI6. The CIA has knowledge that a prominent St. Tropez gangster, Yanis Mignot, might be working for the Russians. Commander Bristol report mentions that Ms. Bonin and M. Mignot knows each other, and his report contains a picture of them together.

Together with french MI6 agent Ava Baudet, Feldman recruits a french-american girl studying in England. M. Mignot is a prominent part of St.Tropez nightlife and is known to surround himself with beautiful women. A honeytrap is set for the french gangster.