Sunday Fun Day: Three passports, a couple of visas...

How about a post that connects music, the writing of the new novel, and a really top-quality Danger International campaign, all referencing roughly the same era?

In the new novel, set in spring and then late summer of 1984, there are several lengthy parts about all the layers of identities that the key operatives for the mission have built. They each have a base identity; their normal life. They may have a purely temporary travel cover, used while moving as if they were in the military for one example. They each have an elaborate intermediate cover, built to withstand a ton of scrutiny if discovered and to misdirect any discoverer into thinking that identity worked for someone other than American official interests. On top of that, they each have an operational identity as someone with a reason to be going to the place the mission will happen and, in this operational plan, a reason to be doing specific things together there.

Coincidentally, in this author's real life it was only a year or two later that he ran (game mastered, story-told) one of the better role-playing game campaigns he had the pleasure to be a part of. Good players, very enthusiastic about the game, and very into the movie-style spy stories of a Danger International (HERO Games, 1985) campaign. As part of the mood building for the campaign's play sessions, I would bring some music that had some connotation of the genre. The players brought more music, too.

But not the "Bond Movie" soundtrack stuff that everyone already knew. Don't get me wrong, some of that was awesome. But songs like Talking Heads "Life during wartime" were the kind of music that was still popular around college campuses, and had lyrics that -spoke- to the listener about some of the things that went along with clandestine operations.

Here's a link to an appropriately 1984 concert movie version of "Life during wartime".

Enjoy! Oh, and as I know a couple of the players from that campaign are still around out there, feel free to comment about the old campaign as well as about the new writing.