According to the designer notes in the 20th Anniversary edition, the originally intended time period for the game is, and I quote, the Eighties.  But not a specific year.  So...the 300 baud modem is SOTA. There is no Internet as we've come to know it.  Vinyl records are still mainstream.  MTV still plays music videos. The Rock is still in grade school somewhere.  Somewhere nerds are still arguing over whether there will ever be cooler special effects than those in TRON.<br/><br/>:-)<br/><br/>Burn Notice is<span class="bbc_u">not</span>a mandatory set up.  It's just the one I've had in my head.  Even so, since only a couple of the main characters in that show are actually spies, there's room for others.  I would even add that someone with an espionage oriented Side Trait might qualify as an official spy...depending on which agency recruited them, and when, and why.<br/><br/>Does that help?