I am a big geek and am well on my way to converting my children to Nerd-dom, too. My 8 year-old son is a comics fan (I bought a Marvel Digital subscription and we are working our way through EVERY issue of Spiderman, Amazing or otherwise), my 6 year-old daughter plays boardgames of all varieties and we have cracked out Castle Ravenloft more than once. I am waiting for my copy of Super Dungeon Explore! to turn up, too. Even my 2 year-old is keen on pulling my game books off the shelf (which is okay, so long as she doesn’t have a pen in her hand!). So that only leaves one person before complete geek assimilation in the Russell household – my wife!
My wife has always been the “sporty” one in our household. When we first started going out she would play tennis and I would sit, watch and get sunburnt. She watches cricket and football, and enjoys them. But over the last few years my Darling Dearest has begun the slow descent into this torrid and murky world we call being a geek. To be honest, I hadn’t really noticed until the day she (quite out of the blue) turned to me and said “I wouldn’t mind going to ComicCon.” As you might imagine, I almost fell out of my chair (of course I was sitting, I am quite sedentary). It was then things began to fall in place, in much the same way you might see a character in a film think back with the aid of a variety of flashbacks and “clips”. Her freaky fascination with Harry Potter; her feverish infatuation with Nathan Fillion; her desire to watch Dr Who. She even blogs regularly, these days. Hell, she has always understood my need (my desperate, desperate need) for the weekly game night. I have even run her through a short roleplay adventure (no, not that type of roleplay), and she enjoys Pandemic and other cooperative games. It turns out, my wife is well on the way to being a geek, and we joke about it now. But I have one more, final (ultimate!) step before I will be satisfied that she has accepted her fate.
*Cue lightening, thunder and evil cackle!*
I want my wife to play in a short RPG campaign. Probably just the pair of us. And do you know what? I think I have just the game. The Doctor Who Roleplaying Game seems like the perfect fit. It is designed for beginners, can be played with a small number of characters, and is a universe that she is familiar with. I have been considering it for a while, but now is the time to strike. The ABC has been showing every episode of the re-booted Dr Who and I don’t think we have missed one yet. At 7.30 every night we hurridly toss the kids in bed (“It’s quiet time! Go to sleep!”), forget the chores, and plonk ourselves down in front of the telly. It’s our geek together time. And maybe, it is just the start of something truly beautiful!
