Immersive Experiences at the Spy Museum

My recent visit to the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, might not seem to have any relevance to the adventure gaming hobby. Yet its exhibits speak to a history occasionally covered in board games and its interactive experiences evoke the feelings of immersive roleplaying game episodes. Museums today constantly change, adapting to new display philosophies and technological advancements influencing the gallery experience. They work to present the broad context of history, explain the relevance of artifacts, and tell the stories of individuals who used those items and lived that history in an attempt to establish some connection with visitors. The International Spy Museum hits all those targets, showcasing some amazing objects, demonstrating firsthand many spycraft concepts, and presenting tales of spies throughout history...all in ways that actively engage visitors.

The museum walks visitors through various aspects of spycraft and espionage history with galleries about stealing secrets, analysis, covert action, spies throughout history, and current uncertainties in today’s world. The volume of amazing spycraft artifacts on display remains astounding. My favorites include a four-rotor Enigma machine the Germans gave the Japanese; V2 rocket blueprints; the OSS radio Virginia Hall used to coordinate cover activity with the Maquis in World War II; and the numerous gadgets which allowed spies to do their jobs. Each one has a story behind it the museum strives to tell in its concise manner before urging visitors on to the next galleries.

But the International Spy Museum isn’t some musty old building filled with artifacts. It strives to demonstrate concepts of spycraft along with telling the espionage story. Upon entering visitors receive a plastic card badge. In the first gallery they use it to log in at a touch screen and set up a secret cover identity: name, occupation, country of origin. Along the way, after learning about each gallery’s core concept, visitors can log in again using their badge and a codeword. Along the way they learn of their covert mission, design and requisition a helpful gadget, survey potential rendezvous points, and ultimately carry out their mission. It’s just one part of the interactive nature of the exhibits, but a core concept giving visitors a first-hand immersion in the world of espionage.

Other interactive exhibits throughout the gallery test visitors’ observation skills, help them explore how using someone’s social media can reveal information (and assess possible threats), and even demonstrate how to use codes, ciphers, and secret writing. Among the ones that engaged me the most was an exercise red-teaming an intelligence analysis of a compound in Pakistan: did the evidence point to it as a hideout for a criminal boss, wealthy businessman, or maybe terrorist Osama bin Laden? The exercise explained the intelligence and participants helped determine the likelihood this was the infamous terrorist’s hideout. How did my assessment compare with those watching the compound raid in the White House situation room?

These many hands-on, immersive experiences putting visitors in the role of spies and analysts, in ways that reminded me of tabletop roleplaying games. Aside from putting espionage operations in their historical and practical contexts, these engaging activities encouraged me to adopt the mindset of a spy or analyst and think more critically of how we collect and make sense of the often disparate pieces of an unfolding story...much like players and their characters do in roleplaying games. In my storied gaming career I’ve run a few games with espionage themes; Top Secret and James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty's Secret Service come to mind. But I’ve also incorporated aspects of espionage in other games, too, as characters work to uncover larger plots in Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, Space 1889, and Cyberpunk 2020. The Spy Museum serves a buffet of inspiration for gamers willing to look. It’s immersive experience offers some small sense of what it’s like to operate across many aspects of the intelligence field.

The International Spy Museum provides several hours of engaging exhibits and interactive experiences I’ve rarely seen elsewhere. In a city packed with the numerous free museums of the Smithsonian Institution, paying for admission to the Spy Museum is well worth the price for a unique experience. Go on the off season to avoid the crowds and give yourself time to linger in the exhibits that interest you most. The gift shop offers the usual array of merchandising, but the book section includes numerous titles across espionage history and topics for further exploration.

Women in Espionage

Unlike conventional warfare for much of history, women served in intelligence capacities, often under cover operationally, increasingly during the 20th century. The International Spy Museum has several exhibits highlighting their contributions. Of course one of the first exhibits one encounters covers Margarethe Zelle, a.k.a. Mata Hari, the infamous example of the femme fatale. The WW II gallery highlights Noor Inayat Khan’s service as an SOE courier in occupied France. The museum recently installed (and I was privileged to view) a new exhibit highlighting Virginia Hall featuring several amazing artifacts. Smaller exhibits mention other women in espionage, including Josephine Baker, Hedy Lamarr, and, of course, Julia McWilliams, whose OSS recipe for shark repellent never made it into any of the cookbooks she published after marrying fellow OSS employee Paul Child.

Although I appreciated the International Spy Museum’s highlighting famous women spies — and visited to attend a lecture that evening about Agent Zo, a daring Polish underground operative during WW II — I wish the museum or some other institution hosted a dedicated exhibit commemorating the numerous stories of women who served their countries in clandestine operations. The women of WW II stand out to me most: the often-doomed agents of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in occupied France; the dedicated WRENs and WAAFs and others working behind the scenes to aid codebreaking efforts, track u-boats and devise strategies against them, and crew homeland defenses; and the women in the Polish Home Army operating under brutal Nazi occupation and fighting during the Warsaw Uprising.

Most spy stories seem remarkable, as do tales of personal heroics on the battlefield. But in an age when women didn’t serve on the front lines, female spies operated in the shadows like their male counterparts, facing the same risks against opponents uncertain how to deal with such unorthodox gender roles...and often defaulting to the dehumanizing brutality for which they were known. While they might have operated against enemies who underestimated them, or even didn’t suspect them as spies, when discovered they often paid a high price. The stories of their bravery remain testaments to the dedication of the human spirit in dark times.

Recommended Reading & Gaming

No exhibit, however immersive, can provide a complete picture of an issue, event, or person. Most museums give visitors a taste and tempt them to explore more on their own. Visual media and games necessarily abstract concepts for viewing/playing, and, as I’ve mentioned before, they, too, can act as doorways to further learning. Books, however, often provide the closest examination of issues piquing our interest in museums. Here authors can take the time to present a comprehensive story, backed by copious research.

My personal library contains a section on espionage, focusing primarily on WW II. I won’t list all the books I’ve read on the subject, but I’d recommend a few more recent titles as well as those I feel one shouldn’t miss:

WorldWar II Secret Operations Handbook by Stephen Hart and Chris Mann. This excellent historical reference covers the specifics of various operations and equipment: insertion and extraction, operating under cover, gathering intelligence, sabotage, and combat. A practical guide collecting what were at the time disparate and undocumented practices developed ad hoc as the need arose.

A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell. The most recent telling of Virginia Hall’s clandestine operations against Germans in occupied France with both SOE and OSS is bolstered by new research and revelations. Accounts like these put readers in the operative’s shoes amid the overall context of their theater of operation and the overall progress of the war.

The Spy Who Loved by Clare Mulley. Far too often western (and specifically American) audiences pass over the history of Poland in WWII. This book explores the life of Krystyna Skarbek, a.k.a. Christine Granville, who left her country to work behind the scenes however she could, often under cover, against the Germans. Mulley’s latest book, Agent Zo, also follows the daring and dangerous covert operations of another Polish woman who served as a courier and resistance fighter. Both accounts offer insights about the personal risks, frustrations, and costs of intelligence work in time of war.

Espionage operations are often difficult to simulate in games, especially considering all the hidden information operatives must manage: unknown enemies, betrayals, good and bad fortunes, never quite knowing the reality of the situation. But a good game — board or roleplaying — provides enough historical context as well as meaningful in-game player choices to provide an experience offering some abstracted glimpse of the shadowy and risky world of espionage. Several titles come to mind when I consider espionage games:

CIA: Collect It All, by Randy Lubin and Michael Masnick. Based on an actual (now-declassified) card game designed by the CIA to train new personnel, this game fills in all the redacted blanks and offers an abstracted, broad view of intelligence collection and assessment in the modern age. While it doesn’t put players in an agent’s shoes, it does provide an overview of the types of modern intelligence gathering techniques and the current threats challenging agencies.

Maquis by Jake Staines. A solitaire player manages worker placement and resource management for the resistance in an occupied French town in WW II. The game mechanics maintain an underlying tension as the player plans agent actions while enemies pop up unexpectedly to threaten the mission. One of my favorite WWII-themed games and a favorite solitaire experience.

War Story: Occupied France by David Thompson and Dave Neale. I’m hoping to acquire this game soon because I’ve heard very positive buzz about it online. This solitaire or cooperative experience merges the narrative of a Choose Your Own Adventure-style book with game elements to help visualize the action. I’m hoping to acquire this game soon because I’ve heard very positive buzz about it online (and it engages my interest in WWII and solitaire games). I would like to think the designers, with a bit of research, could adapt it to clandestine resistance activities in other theaters, notably occupied Poland (see Agent Zo above...).

Setting Europe Ablaze: The SOESourcebook, by Russell Phillips. Yet another game I’ve not personally seen or played, but one I feel could well serve those seeking to run roleplaying game adventures for WWII operatives. I’m not aware of any recent sourcebook on the subject; as a system-neutral title this one seems easily adaptable to any game system. (I don’t know if GURPS WWII ever released a book on clandestine operations.) I have read Phillips’ non-fiction work on WWII, concise but enlightening monographs on the Allied invasion of Madagascar and the German atrocities at Lidice; I’d expect a similarly impressive display in any roleplaying game sourcebook.

My recommendations naturally skew toward WWII. I have considerably less interest in post-war history, especially those episodes through which I’ve lived (notably the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the War on Terror...and goodness knows what else lies ahead). This interest influenced my time in the International Spy Museum. I lingered most at displays about WWII, indulged in earlier espionage episodes, and gravitated only to the displays about later history as they engaged me (or recalled memories of these events from my earlier days). Tragic and brutal as WWII espionage proved, I feel it’s far enough removed from our present times that, even reading about personal danger and sacrifice, we look back on it with a sense of idealized heroism. It’s not easy imagining ourselves in the situations covert operatives endured...and I hope we never find ourselves facing similar dire realities in our own futures.