Gaming Update

[jeregenest]

Last night we had a great character session of Age of Paranoia with some very cool stuff coming to the forefront. Basically they gave me my first storyarch and the major NPC opponent (our very own Karla) in the course of two missions. Didn't do much action play, but that’s okay, I still have to develop some stuff based on the material that came up. Lots of little character hooks were provided that I need to play with. We'll play next week (so hopefully Susan can be there!) and go from there.

Also the Lexicon of Lord Entropy's Rule is going quite nicely. A whole bunch of new faces joined this time and its fun to watch. I'm quite glad that there are also folks who have done all three Lexicons. Leads to some nice permutations. And it’s still not too late to join!

Comments

[jimhenley.livejournal.com]

More authors for your AoP library:

Charles McCarry esp. the Paul Christopher novels: Miernik Dossier, Tears of Autumn, Secret Lovers and Last Supper. The Last Supper is especially innovative - as a "spy's whole life story," it beat LeCarre's Perfect Spy to press by several years.

Len Deighton but only, IMHO, the 60s and 70s novels, plus SS-GB (which may have been early-80s. The trilogy of Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain is especially important.

WT Tyler, particularly The Man Who Lost the War, The Ants of God and Rogue's March. These are the best "realistic" novels about the CIA specifically that have been written. (McCarry has a lot of realist gestures, but also more exploding cars than real CIA people saw before the Lebanese Civil War.)

What comes from Tyler and McCarry, the Americans, is just how much of the CIA's cold war focus was on Asia and Africa rather than Europe.

Gerald Seymour's Harry's Game is a terrific novel about an SIS officer infiltrating the IRA. His other books are supposed to be good too, but I haven't read them.

The Untouchable, by John Banville. Roman a clef about an analogue of "Fourth Man" Anthony Blount by a member in good standing of the British literary establishment.

Nonfiction: Portrait of a Cold Warrior, by "Joseph B. Smith," which was, I think, a pseudonym. Terrific autobiography of a CIA officer. Wilderness of Mirrors by David C. Martin (yes, the CBS correspondent), a dual chronicle of the CIA's James Jesus Angleton and William Harvey. The Philby Conspiracy by Philip Knightley et al. These three can probably be found as orange-spined mass market paperbacks from Ballantine's Espionage Library line in used bookstores.

I've heard good things about Ian McEwan's The Innocent, but haven't read it.

Authors that sometimes garner praise but who don't, IMHO, rise to the level your bibliography demands: Bill Granger, Ted Allbeury. (I shant even deign to mention certain fixtures of the bestseller lists, about whom the best one can say is "The movie wasn't bad."