It's a busy week and I failed my saving throw versus sloth, so here's a reclaimed Geek Trivia for your minutial pleasure this week:
If one day you find yourself sitting down to pen that long-imagined bestselling science-fiction or fantasy novel and you’re looking for one particular trick that will give your speculative story a sense of reality (and lead to shameless marketing opportunities), just throw in a made-up card game or chess variant that everyone in your fake universe knows, enjoys, and plays with inhuman regularity. You don’t have to make up any actual rules for the game, as your devoted fan base (geeks) will retroactively conjure them based on the clues you drop in the prose — even if those clues don’t make any sense.
Don’t believe me? Then explain how it is that I can find “official” rules for fizzbin, a fictional card game that was fictional even in the Star Trek episode in which it originally appeared? ...
Not all fictional games are just for show, however. One hacker-favorite made-up card game actually served a real-life purpose — it was an anti-piracy measure for a classic video game.
WHAT HACKER-FAVORITE FICTIONAL CARD GAME WAS INVENTED AS AN ANTI-PIRACY MEASURE FOR A VIDEO GAME?
Get the
complete Q&A here.
Image by Márcio Cabral de Moura via Flickr
