Originally posted by Terry Leatherwood:
Why not pull one of the country names from "Princess Bride" and use it? Gilder or Gilderland?
Or use a real country's name from its native language, like Espania (spelled wrong, I know!) instead of Spain?
Not really relevant, but in the early nineties I was at a science fiction convention where some friends ran a weird committe-based management game with about fifty players in several sessions, each an hour or two. The idea was that we were the new government of Florin (also from The Princess Bride), which had been an Eastern bloc state from WW2 to the fall of the USSR, but was now trying to get started as a Western-style democracy. Sessions ran as meetings of Florin's parliament, committee meetings, etc.
Our problems ranged from all the usual post-communism stuff to an epidemic of Rats of Unusual Size attacking our natural gas facilities in the Fireswamp, trying to modernize a health service run largely by Miracle Men, Iocane pollution, etc. etc. We were also being harassed by Gilder, who claimed that Buttercup's kidnapping and forcible marriage into the Florinese royal family meant that Florin was now ruled by Gilder.
At one point we were pretty much at war with Gilder, and someone came up with the bright idea of hiring the Dread Pirate Roberts to harass Gilder's shipping. Nothing happened for a while - then during the following session we learned that Roberts had somehow managed to get aboard the Russian space station Mir, and was claiming it in the name of Florin. We had to do some VERY fast talking to get out of that one without being invaded by the Russians... It was immense fun.
All of which is totally irrelevant to the actual question, of course, but it's one reason why I will always have a VERY soft spot for The Princess Bride
. Was there a couple weeks ago actually.
