Lots of geekery as of late. Last weekend it was the renn faire. There, I saw a landing party that was either really far off course or had slingshot around the sun and travelled back in time. Either way, interesting to see some trekkies wandering the streets of Scarborough. One of these days, I’ll break down and go in costume.
Why would I do such a thing you might ask?
Well, mostly because of this guy:
Lord of Westeros
Lord of the Barbecue
I can’t go to a writing event or renn faire or anywhere things geeky go down and not have at least one person remark on the resemblance. Personally, I don’t think it is that close, but, I’m not sure I can be the judge of that.
It started with a DnD gaming group a few years ago. Not having seen the TV series, I was a bit confused (are the character descriptions THAT good in the novel?) Next, I started my own Dresden Files FATE campaign and one of the new players at the table was so convinced I was Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, that he brought his girlfriend along to the next game to help verify.
When I was checking in at the DFW Writer’s Convention I got another shout out and finally, at the Scarborough Renaissance Faire, one of the vendors called me Sir Lannister or some such. I’m starting to wonder if it wouldn’t maybe boost my book sales a bit if I had a name change…
Apart from actually contemplating some cosplay, I’ve finally gotten back into a regular roleplaying game. Tribe 8 is a discontinued game setting of major dystopian proportions. The backstory is all manner of messed up, religious imagery and alien invasion goodness and it all takes place in the backdrop of the shattered remains of…you guessed it…Canada.
Yeah, that was my first reaction as well.
Turns out to be a highly detailed setting with tons of hooks to sink your storytelling teeth into. It uses the Silhouette Core system, which is new to me. Simple to pick up – essentially opposed rolls with d6s. Stats add points to the roll, skills tell you how many dice. Most of the time it seems more flexible than say, d20, but I have a feeling the scalability might be whacked. There is a tremendous difference between someone with a 2 skill and someone with 3. I’m only guessing past five or six, you start breaking stuff. Advancement is pretty slow, so that might never be a problem.
I’ve talked about it before, but playing RPGs is where I really developed my plotting skills. It’s good to exercise that muscle a bit outside of my current Work In Progress. In the game, I’m playing a Templar who essentially got the hell beat out of him by the equivalent of his god. This not only broke him physically but ripped away his connection to the magical world. Well, actually, just rearranged it a bit…
He was so bad off, I wasn’t sure how to keep him from simply committing ritual suicide, so I let the other players help figure that angle out when we started playing. Such are the wonders of collaborative storytelling. Works in crafting fiction, too.
So, what about you? Any celebrity dopplegangers out there?
RUSS LINTON 
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