Some stories you just love to share.

This one isn't hard news. It's not an entertainment scoop. It's just a slice of geek life as heavenly as Apple and pi.

So there's this big game convention called GenCon South California — GenCon SoCal — where gamers get together and . . . well, game. We're talking about roleplaying games, mainly, the tabletop kind. The Star Wars RPG using twenty-sided dice, not Knights of the Old Republic on an Xbox. Sure, GenCon SoCal is big, but it's niche.

Still, sometimes it gets celebrity guests, and this year it got Nathan Fillion, the star of Firefly.

You remember Firefly — we rant and rave about it regularly around here. And here. And here. And here. And some other places. Excellent and quickly-cancelled sci-fi TV show created by Joss Whedon, resurrected for a feature film coming next fall. Right, that one.

So Firefly fan Jae Walker stood in line at Fillion's table for a signature, and when she got up to him she said what any Firefly-loving game geek would say when meeting the show's star:

"We're playing a game based on Firefly in a little while. Want to come play a character?"

Now, at this point a successful actor with a legion of hardcore geeks for fans can say one of exactly three things:

(a) "That's nice. I'll see what I can do."

(b) "Are we talking net or gross? What's the food service like? Do I get my own trailer?"

Or:

(c) "Security? SECURITY!"

Fillion's a remarkably nice guy, so he chose option (a), and he even said it without the sarcasm most Hollywood types use on fans asking silly questions. Jae went on her happy way and played her Firefly game.

And right in the middle of the game, Fillion showed up to play.

If you're a gamer and a Firefly fan, you'll need a minute to recover. Take your time.

Naturally they were in mid-game and nobody thought he would actually show up, so they didn't have a character ready. As you might figure, someone else was playing Malcolm Reynolds, Fillion's character on the show and didn't want to give him up; we're not talking about any casual gamers here. But the gamemaster was running River Tam, troubled maybe-psychic, as a nonplayer character. He let Fillion play her.

Fillion didn't know the rules, but it sounds like he gave it a good try.

As Jae put it on RPG.net:

Actually, he dropped the cube of D6's and ended up spending a few minutes finding and retrieving them. I have a shot of him doing that, but will keep it for personal entertainment.

He listened, he *paid attention*, and he was all that was charming and gracious. I don't think he's played before, and I don't know that he'll play again, but he appeared to be very entertained to be taking part in our fun.

"I love my Captain."

Get the full scoop, along with much fan reaction, here. Thanks to Ian Noble, the lucky GM, for the heads-up, and Jae (gamerchick@gamerfellowship.org) for the photo and story.