Kids and Teen Blog
Guest Post: Cecil Castellucci, Author of Tin Star
by Dan
Fiction + Science Fiction and Fantasy + YA Fiction / March 31, 2014
In a special guest post for Raincoast, Cecil Castellucci, the author of Tin Star, explains why she created a role playing game based on her novel.
When I wrote my new novel, Tin Star, I knew that the story of Tula Bane was only going to be two books. It's a duet! But the universe that she lives in and all of the aliens and moving parts of the book were still interesting to me. So much stuff goes into world building. What's a nerdy girl to do? Write a game!
I am a gamer. I like to play all kinds of table top games and video games. And my favorite kind of game to play is a Role Playing Game (RPG). I don't play them often enough. In Los Angeles, I have a regular D&D game that I play with a group of friends once a month. We tweet about it, so if you follow me @misscecil, you've likely seen the mini figure—I'm a rogue—light up my twitter feed on the occasional Friday or Saturday night.
I've played a lot of games and I've read a lot of books. This past fall I took a Coursera class on the transmedia of narratives where we read The Lord of the Rings, watched the movies and then also played the MMRPG (Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Game). What I love about transmedia is that it lets you engage with a story in many different ways.
Lucky for me, I have a friend Chris who is the publisher of Green Ronin and they created the True20 open license system which I used to create the game TIN STAR: A SIMPLE FAVOR.
I recruited my brother and we wrote an adventure where you play some aliens who come aboard the Yertina Feray and go on an adventure where you have to interact with Tula, Tournour, Heckleck and Thado.
Now perhaps some of you have never played a RPG before. Or you feel intimidated by the word "multi sided dice." Never fear! We wrote the adventure so that it's really easy to play. What you need is a group of friends who are fun and want to go on an adventure. A Game Master who will lead the group through the adventure and run the game. It helps if this person is a great story teller! A 20 sided die. You can get these at any gaming store. Or ask your gaming friends or relatives if you can borrow one. Maybe order a pizza!
The Game Master will tell the players the story and lead them through the action of the game. You never know what is going to happen because dice are rolled and actions either succeed or fail and random events may occur. Basically you're making up a story that stars you and has some guidelines as to make the story fun.
The TIN STAR True20 Quick Start rules (PDF) give a detailed overview of the True20 rules and they describe the feats that the characters have. The TIN STAR: A SIMPLE FAVOR adventure has all the stuff that the Game Master needs to run the adventure plus a player hand out and the pre-generated characters that your players will play. If you're an experienced gamer this will all make sense. True20 is pretty simple system. If you are not a regular gamer and are intimidated by all the percentiles, then just think of it like this. Roll the dice, if something is hard to do, then the players have to roll high. If it's easy, they can do it with a lower roll. You decide what's hard and easy. Trust me. You'll get the swing of it!
For me, writing the game in the universe of Tin Star was a way that I got to hang out with Tula some more. So I hope you'll enjoy playing the game and hanging out with Tula Bane and the gane. Reading the book will make parts of the game more fun, because you'll get some of the references and you'll know who is who. But if you or your friends haven't read it yet, that's cool too! I think playing the game will make your eventual hanging out with Tula in the book fun too because you'll have already met her. Please let me know how your game goes!