My first “real” job, not yet quite
out of college, was that of web writer for starwars.com.
I would go on to live through many
adventures during my two-year tenure at Skywalker Ranch—starting with actually
getting there.
Back in 1996, a game company
called Decipher Inc. decided, for the first time, to run a world championship
event for their planetary hit, the Star
Wars Customizable Card Game. Stripped down to its underwear, Star
Wars CCG involved players assembling a collection out of random packs of
cards, then using said collection to construct a deck of their own invention,
before sitting down in front of an opponent armed with their own deck, and
finally pitting both contraptions against each other. Players would draw card
after card from their decks, deploying to the table a whole roster of
characters from the movies, launching them in starships and vehicles on a
myriad worlds, and have them attack left, right and center until one player ran
out of cards and was forced to bow out of the match. The game sported the very
best images culled from Star Wars
movies that I’ve ever seen grace any
product, with a wickedly addictive game growling underneath it all. No wonder
players from every corner of the world flocked to it. And in the summer of ’96,
Decipher decided to invite them all to a big fight.
Decipher’s plan called for
“regional qualifiers” to be held all over the world, with the intent of flying regional
winners over to the US where the final confrontation would take place. As an
already established organizer of local tournaments in Montreal, I got a call
from Decipher one morning, asking if I’d agree to run one of Canada’s two
regional qualifiers. Of course, that meant forfeiting my own opportunity to
participate, which gave me—and no doubt most of the other regional organizers—pause.
But Decipher knew how to soften the blow: when the world champion received his
ultimate prize (which had not yet been announced at that time), the organizer
who had run the regional qualifier whence the world champion came would receive
the exact same recompense. I hesitated a moment before caving in and agreeing
to organize my end of the bargain.
My regional qualifier was a big
success, with a sizeable turnout and few logistical problems—and inevitably one
guy emerged victorious after a gruelling series of hard-fought cardboard battles.
That man then went on to compete in the final tournament and, wouldn’t you know
it, ended up winning the first title of Star
Wars CCG World Champion. And so it was that the morning after the final
showdown, while I was barely out of bed, Decipher rang me up with the big news.
(This was 1996, remember: it was rather complicated—if at all possible—to look
up the results on the web.) We had a short, polite conversation, and I remember
being happy, most of all, that a Montrealer had walked away wearing the crown.
Then the Decipher guy on the phone reminded me that because I had “produced”
the eventual world champion through my regional qualifier, I was entitled to
the same grand prize as the winner himself: an all-expenses-paid trip to
Tunisia, to visit the actual shooting locations used in the making of A New Hope, the original Star Wars movie.
Words failed me.
For a Star Wars fan of my ilk, this was the Holy Grail.
(And speaking of the Holy Grail—well,
I guess that’s a story for another day.)
That very unorthodox tour was to
be led by archaeologist David West Reynolds—as close to a real-life Indiana
Jones as you’ll ever meet—who had himself rediscovered most of the 1976
locations during a recent expedition to North Africa. (It’s worth mentioning
that Lucasfilm itself had lost track of most of the now iconic shooting spots; back
then, almost nobody thought the movie would amount to anything worth
chronicling.) Nowadays, with the help of a few articles written on the
subject—including one of my own—fans can (and many, indeed, already have)
retrace George Lucas’ steps from one Tunisian sand dune to the next. But back
in 1996, that hallowed trail didn’t exist: we were about to blaze it.
And so it was that about six
months later, I found myself landing in Tunis, not far from the remains of
ancient Carthage. I’ll have to see if I can dig up that old piece of mine,
written back in the day for the now-defunct Scrye
Magazine. As I recall, it was a fun and effervescent account of the whole
trip, including many references to the card game that had made such folly
possible. (Scrye was a gaming publication,
after all.) But for now, suffice it to
say that the more time I spent with Reynolds, our intrepid, bullwhip-carrying guide
(I kid you not), the more I discovered that we had a whole universe of personal
traits in common, in addition to a shared obsession with Star Wars. We were getting along splendidly and I soon reached a
tipping point where I felt as if I had just unearthed a long-lost brother (on
what amounted to an archaeological dig, no less!). Reynolds expressed
similar feelings, and we found ourselves looking warily at our eroding
schedule, wondering where and when we’d find an opportunity to get together
again once the expedition was over. It was “friendship at first sight,” an
instant connection we couldn’t simply abandon.
And then, one evening towards the
end of our trip, Reynolds—who had been hired as web editor by Lucasfilm just a
few months prior—let out a handful of words that changed my life: “You know,
you’re exactly the kind of guy I’d need at the Ranch.”
It would be almost two years before
I got The Call.
But what a call.
