Intelligence Agencies
One of the things Spies of Venice underlines is that there weren't intelligence agencies as such in its day, let alone before. Venice was very much the exception in giving so much institutional attention to information-gathering. Elsewhere, it wasn't institutions handling intelligence tasks so much as individual officials who took an interest in such things, with all that implies for inconsistency and potentially spotty attention to details.
Indeed, even Venice's intelligence apparatus barely qualifies as an intelligence agency in some ways. There was official oversight by the Ten and, later, the Inquititori, but that was governance. Professionals were kept at home formulating poison and making and breaking codes. Outside of the city, there were few or no full-time, professional intelligence personnel, but rather officials and recruits of various kinds engaged in intelligence work in addition to their main jobs.
What this suggests for a fantasy intelligence agency is that any agency is likely to be a very stripped-down operation. Perhaps there's an executive committee for security composed of a few of Their Majesty's most trusted advisors. The grand vizier or the keeper of the royal wardrobe will have "master of sneaky stuff" as part of his portfolio rather than there being a separate office for it.
What this implies is that in any historically flavored espionage campaign, intelligence work is just a part of what people at the top do. It can fit into a politically charged game where PCs are ruling aristocrats as just part of what they do, or it can focus on those aspects, with acknowledgement that the heads of the intelligence service are also running the chancery, the house bodyguard troop, the king's stables, or whatever else it is they do but not really getting into them.
Intelligence Agents
Again, not a thing. That is, there simply weren't general-purpose intelligence agents of the kind we see in movies. Venetians used spymasters to coordinate people on the ground who would naturally have access to the kinds of information desired and wouldn't send in professionals to play the part a local could do better.
And that's an excellent model for intelligence operations in general, not just for the Venetian Renaissance. Francis Walshingham suffered under the same constraints and operated in much the same way, after all. Through most of history, it was hard to find somebody who knew the lay of the land, spoke the language like a native, and could otherwise blend in to local society who was not a native. The spymaster/local agents model was very, very common for centuries (and still is) for very good reasons.
That said, maybe that's not so much fun for players who want to be spies, so how do we get around that without tossing historical precedent completely out the window? A plausible way of running an historically plausible spy campaign, as opposed to a single extended adventure, without everybody sitting behind desks at the ducal palace, might be to cast the PCs as particularly capable spymasters, sent in as a sort of tiger team where intelligence management is badly needed on the ground. Such a team would involve characters of exceptional social ability and cultural adaptability, able to snoop around anywhere and find the right people to turn and start using as agents. And you can throw in a few technical specialists (a cryptographer, a doctor who doubles as a poisoner, maybe a mechanic if you're running a clockpunk flavored campaign) and even a bodyguard or three to provide security. They don't have to have the specialized local knowledge and connections required of the real agents, but they've got the skills to build their own networks quickly, so they can travel widely, see the sights, and participate in different adventures in espionage.
Extraordinary Capabilities
And since we're talking about recycling this material in non-historical campaigns, we need to consider how the kinds of ahistorical capabilities available in alternate worlds. Magic and high tech, even fanciful technologies like elaborate clockwork, provide capabilities in a number of different areas. These include:
- Transportation: Fantasy-flavored worlds typically have better ways of getting around: flying carpets, teleportation gates, untiring demon horses, goose-drawn airships, and so on. These have less of a general impact that one might imagine, since they're rarely in common use. The overall tempo of communication and transportation remains largely the same, but there are exceptions for important movements, and that's a category which definitely includes high-priority secret messages. A dominant postal network like the one Venice ran might consist of a series of magic portals linking key locations (possibly subject to expensive maintenance and, if necessary, relocation), and the post may be run by a committee of enchanters. Front-row agents probably won't have access to wind-up artificial carrier pigeons or flying brooms, but sufficiently important spymasters will.
- Violence: This is another one of those areas where exceptional capabilities make little difference. Fantasy fireballs and clockpunk wind-up automatic firearms are both more powerful than the arms available during the Renaissance, but spies shouldn't be using weapons anyway. An intelligence agent who has recourse to exceptional damage-dealing capability has probably already lost anyway.
- Information: This one is where things get complicated. A clockwork difference engine capable of the same feats as the early devices of Bletchley Park is probably a sensible device to have in a clockpunk campaign, which makes encryption and passing secret messages that much more difficult. And fantasy stories are full of simple magical items like unicorn horn which make poisoning difficult. Even greater complications come from spells which reveal the history of objects, bring secrets to light, and so on. Conversely, spies would benefit greatly from spells and magical objects which make them harder to sense, translate documents automatically, carry objects without fear of detection, and so on. These are likely to be dealt with as historical spy agencies dealt with improving technology. Operational security has to be much tighter, audits and internal investigations may be used to ensure that opsec is maintained and procedures followed (and what could be more Venetian than lots of bureaucracy and shadowy, vaguely ominous universal oversight?), and there'll be an "arms race," or perhaps a charms race, of measures and countermeasures. For example, assassins might deploy potions which debilitate the target but don't read as toxins to poison-detecting magic, and when magic-sensing safeguards are introduced, multi-part poisons where individual components are benign may come into use. Beaded curtains might become standard decor in secure locations to make sure invisible people aren't wandering around. Blood and hair samples might be used to as mystical reference points to prevent illusion disguises from fooling people as well. And no-manna areas will all become part of standard security measures.
And there you have it, an extra page-and-a-bit of content for Spies of Venice, all about incorporating its ideas and precedents into a range of campaigns. Though, I must admit, had I been granted greater word count, it almost certainly would have been more history before I got around to stuff like this.
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