Advice for an A-Team/espionage campaign

[Postmodernist]

Hi everyone,

I'm running a 4 man group through an Eberron espionage campaign, and this group likes themes. The theme for this game was "the A-Team," with characters filling the roles of Mr. T, Face, Hannibal, and Murdoch. This loosely works with the traditional four class party anyway, and fits with my overall Eberron spy theme.

The original plan was to have them work for the Dark Lanterns from Sharn, chasing down macguffins, etc. But whole thing with the A-Team is apparently that they were accused of a crime they didn't commit, and the wacky hi-jinks are all attempts to clear their name. My questions are:

1) What should the crime have been? Presumably, it would have been during the Last War. What's sufficiently atrocious, yet difficult to substantiate?

2) What general spy/espionage stuff should I use, and what recommendations do you guys have? Eberron has great set pieces (eg: a duel atop a lightning rail, airhip battles, fights across Sharn's bridges, etc.), but investigative/social stuff is a little tougher. I have a few in mind (find the contact at the grand ball, impersonate someone high level, and so on), but I'm open to crazy ideas you guys have tried as a DM or you've enjoyed as a player. Heck, feel free to let me know what didn't work, too.

Thanks in advance for your answers!

[Aylowan]

For the crime, my first thought would be to let the group create it for themselves. Maybe with some help/guidance from you, if they don't know a lot about Eberron / your Eberron. Work through it creatively as an entire group, along with everyone creating their shared backstories.

Or alternatively, perhaps the group doesn't know what they were accused of? They got tipped off by a friend that they were in trouble, and they went underground. Now they're trying to figure out lots of different things long-term (along with the weekly hijinks and missions to get paid and stay on the run):
- what they were accused of
- who has it out for them
- why that person/group has it out for them

An unknown crime might let you fill in something cool later on, as the campaign grows organically.

[Postmodernist]

The plan was for it to be collaborative, but they seem to want a "top-down" approach for this. I do like the idea of the crime being slowly revealed over time, though. Now to figure out how to do that effectively.