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PBM

Bizarre work-related email of the day

Every now and then I get emails relating to Ixion’s Wheel, a PBM RPG that we used to run some years ago.

They’re usually to do with genealogy — some naive Web user has stumbled across one of the game pages and believes that they might be a decendant of one of the characters mentioned therein.

Today’s is a slight twist on that: AFAICS, he realizes they are not real people, but still wants to know about the conceptual / intellectual link between the game’s imaginary world and his own studies.

Dear Authors,
 
I found your site whilst researching my ancestors named 'Harcourt'  
from Stanton Harcourt.  I am a descendant of  the Harcourt family 
through the matriarch line and recognise Ixion's Wheel as a feasible 
account of an ideal, but presented in a generalised setting. 
 
I've been writing a book outlining current societies painful 
struggles against the abstract religions,  my book supports a 
practical setting and ventures innately into the how's, why's, 
what and wherefores.
 
I would love to know more about the origins of 'Ixions Wheel' 
and more about the people who support the struggle. 
 
I look forward to hearing from you.
 
Current name      XXXX XXXXX
Ancestral Name   XXXXXXX Harcourt XXXX

Not really sure how to answer… any ideas?

This does at least make something of a change from the usual “can I have some more characters for X murder mystery game”, though.

6 replies on “Bizarre work-related email of the day”

There is indeed a character named Stanton Harcourt. See here for the start of his exciting adventures!

He was just named after the village, though: the player wasn’t thinking of the historical family. (There were a few characters named after villages in South Oxfordshire.)

Were you in Oxford when the game was being developed? You could simply tell him what you just said but disabuse him of any more profound intentions (in this po-mo world, of course, we are all free to read any meaning we like into the text regardless of the author’s state of mind when it was written 😀 )

In this world of cheap travel and global info (I managed to get from your LJ to a photo of you and your surname and the fact you’ve moved to Ipswich in two minutes – a little superfluous of course given that your company address is public, though!) how far is “too far to stalk”?

Hmm, maybe I should be worrying more, if you [typify | have the same clicking skills as] the kind of weirdo who might be coming after me… still, “it’s good to stalk”, as Bob Hoskins used to say.

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