At Any Turn (Gaming The System) (17 page)

As I thought about it and heard Jenna and Alex make a few subtle comments about Emilia’s absence, though, I began to suspect it wasn’t just me Emilia was avoiding. I could have questioned the two of them about what they thought was going on but the glimmer of another idea flickered into my brain instead. I’d try to be subtle and I’d get what I wanted by using my specialty—playing games. If I rolled my dice right, we’d all soon be banding together for the common cause of keeping her here.

Alex threw a stack of D & D manuals at us. “Aren’t we rolling dice to make our characters?” I asked.

She frowned at me. “How long has it been since you’ve played? That’s old-school. You buy your stats with points now. Are you
sure
you’re up to being the DM?” The Dungeon Master was the storyteller who described the situations and the world in which the characters interacted.

I frowned. “I worked a long time on my storyline. It won’t take me long to learn the new mechanics.” Of course, now with my new idea, I had to scrap the whole storyline I’d developed. So I’d be winging it. I could do that too.

While they made their characters with pencil and paper on clean forms, I browsed through the new rules. They had changed a
lot
since the days when I had been a hardcore player, back when I was fifteen and sixteen. The company that owned D&D changed the rules every four to five years—otherwise known as “as soon as we’d gotten used to the old manual” or “whenever they wanted to sell some more books,” according to some cynical players. I supposed I shouldn’t have been too irritated by the marketing practice. We in the computer game market did the same thing by releasing expansions of the old material that players had to purchase in order to keep generating capital.

Fortunately I remembered everything I read. So in about forty-five minutes I had most of the basics of the new system in place. I spent about five minutes whipping up the setup for my new idea. It wouldn’t be nearly as well thought out as my original idea, but maybe it would help me get my point across, even off the cuff.

A little while later, the players sat hunched over their character sheets, twenty-sided dice in hand, ready to begin a new adventure. Heath had arrived late, looking mildly irritated and darting me a couple dark looks. I judged this to mean that Emilia had recounted my colossal fuckup to him. Great.

Jenna had made him a character to use, so he didn’t have to take the time to make one.

I picked up the printed sheet of storyline that I’d written out by hand on some old parchment paper. I’d even burned the edges with a match to give it an ancient look, threatening to set off a smoke alarm in my office. I did like my Dungeons and Dragons old-school. However I wasn’t going to read what I’d originally written on the paper, but my improvised version instead.

I cleared my throat, glanced around the table and then, in my most serious, oratorical voice, I began to “read.”

Greetings, travelers. You have come from far and wide, under many different circumstances. Some of you left families because you need to find work to provide for them. Some of you are running away from dark pasts. Still others of you are seeking the adventure that calls to your heart. You find yourself inside a murky tavern, the Pig’s Blood, at the edge of the distant country of Tarenia. It is only moderately clean and you sit, sipping your watered-down ale, reflecting on your uncertain future when a middle-aged woman shuffles into the tavern, a dark shawl tucked around her head
.

Alex and Jenna exchanged glances and looked at Heath and Liam.

I bent down over the cardboard partition that separated my part of the table from theirs, so they couldn’t read my notes or see the dice rolls behind the screen. “What do you do?”

Jenna raised her hand. “I’m a connoisseur of fine spirits, the daughter of a successful wine merchant. I would never drink watered-down ale. What else is there to drink here?”

“It’s the only tavern in a tiny borderland village that doesn’t even have a name. That or polluted water are your only choices for drink,” I answered.

“Well, I wouldn’t be drinking that slop,” she sniffed. “I’ll have bread and cheese, instead.”

“The bar wench brings you a hunk of hard bread and some moldy cheese,” I replied. “You notice the woman who just entered has been crying. She approaches the bar and appears to be looking for someone.”

Alex raised her hand. “Is there anyone who looks like they have a lot of money in the room? Someone I can pickpocket?”

Alex, apparently, had made her character a thief. “Almost everyone here is in homespun. They look like what they are—people on the frontier struggling for survival in a harsh borderland.”

She blew out a breath and rolled her eyes. “Bo—ring.”

I shrugged. “Liam? What are you doing?”

He frowned. “How long is the bar?”

“About eight feet long or so.”

He took his pencil and scratched out something on a pad of paper. “How many chairs—wait, chairs or stools?”

I shrugged, “I dunno…five?”

He squinted, continued drawing. “You didn’t answer…chairs or stools? And the room? How large is it? And how many entrances and exits?”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I’d forgotten how obsessively visual he was due to his autism. It’s what contributed to his amazing artistic abilities, but sometimes, in cases like these, it was an annoying trait. “Why don’t you draw the room out on the battle map? I’ll give you the dimensions.”

Liam stood, grabbed an erasable marker and began drawing on the washable surface of the blank grid that served as a battle map. I gave him some details that I made up off the cuff and he drew them on the map like a floor plan. The players then arranged the pewter figurines that represented their characters in different places in the room. Heath shoved his wizard in the corner.

“Heath? What is your character doing?”

He sat with his chin in his hand, still moping. “Drinking watered-down ale,” he droned and then tossed a die.

I suppressed a sigh of frustration, suddenly remembering why I wasn’t ever excited to act as Dungeon Master for these sorts of role-playing games. The players
never
did what you wanted them to do.

“So isn’t anyone curious about the loudly crying woman in the middle of the room?”

Alex perked up. “Does she look like she has money? Maybe a pouch of gold dangling from her belt?”

“She’s wearing black mourning attire. Are you going to try to rob her?” I replied, exasperated.

Alex rolled her eyes again and hunched over her group of dice, attempting to build a tower by stacking one on top of the other.

I hunched over, mimed like I was wiping my eyes and talked in a ridiculously high pitch. “Won’t anyone hear my tale of woe?”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Jenna said. “I’ll walk up to the old woman and offer her my seat.”

“Thank you. Thank you, dear child,” I said again in my falsetto voice.

“What seems to be the problem, old woman?”

“She’s not old. She’s middle-aged,” I corrected.

“In medieval times, if you lived to middle age, you were considered old,” Jenna replied.

“Fair enough.” I resisted debating the useless point. “The woman turns to you, wiping her eyes. ‘I’m so afraid,’ she says. ‘So afraid that I’ll never see her again.’”

“Who?”

“My precious daughter, Emma.”

“Where did she go?”

“She’s been ensorcelled by the famed alchemist Baridus. He’s going to spirit her away to a far-off land to study with him. I doubt she’ll ever come back.”

Liam looked over at Jenna. “You know,” he said, jerking his eyes downward when she looked at him. “You should use your skill to detect motive and see if she is lying.”

Jenna drew back. “Um. Okay. And my eyes are up
here
by the way,” she said curtly.

Liam blinked at her. “Of course they are,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed on her chest. Oh shit, Jenna was getting pissed thinking Liam was checking out her tits.

“Anyway—” I interrupted before sparks started to fly. Jenna was glaring at Liam, who still hadn’t looked away from Jenna’s chest. “Liam,” I said and finally he turned his head. Thank God.

“What?”

“Is your character doing anything while Althea and the woman are talking?” I said referring to Jenna by her character’s name.

“I’ll wait and watch,” said Liam, throwing a glance at Jenna out of the corner of his eye. I held my breath, hoping he wouldn’t start staring at her chest again.

Jenna glared at him and then turned back to me. “Maybe, uh, yeah maybe I’ll try to sense her motive.”

“Roll a d20 based on your skill level.”

Jenna checked her character sheet with all of her character’s statistics, then picked up a twenty-sided die and rolled it. “I made my roll. Do I detect anything?”

“You sense that she is honest in her motives. She seems to be telling the truth.”

“Okay. I’ll put my hand on her shoulder, to console her. ‘There, there, good wife. Might we be able to help you? What happened to…uh…what was her name again?”

“Emma?” I said, answering as the character. “My dear girl had been acting strangely for a while now. She had declared the wish to push away her friends and her beau and even me, her dear mother. She’s following the wish of this Baridus, wanting to become a famed alchemist like him. I think he means to steal her away forever. I’m looking for some brave adventurers to go out into the land, gather her closest, beloved friends and break the spell to convince her to stay here.”

Oh God, this was so transparent. They were sure to figure out what I was up to. I usually had my shit together better with storytelling—that’s what DE was all about, after all. But since I was winging it and also desperate, my performance was less than stellar.

Heath was glaring at me, but I ignored him.

Alex cocked her head at me. “So are you wanting us to go and find a reason to keep Emma here?” she asked.

Jenna looked at her. “When did
you
join the conversation? I thought I was the one talking to her.”

Alex scrunched her brow. “I can talk to her, too. We’re going to end up forming a search party to gather all the friends, anyway, so might as well get it out of the way.”

“I gotta go,” Heath said grabbing his dice bag and standing up.

“You just got here,” said Jenna.

“I suddenly remembered I have to do something.”

“Bullshit,” said Alex. “You’ve been grumpy since you got here.”

Heath shot another look at me. “Yeah, well, if I don’t take off, I’m going to get grumpier.”

“What the—why?” Alex asked.

“Let’s see…the woman is looking for her daughter
Emma
,
who wants to leave her friends and her ‘beau’ and go away to a far distant land to study. What’s the old woman’s name, by the way?” Heath turned back to me.

We held each other’s stare for a long, tense moment. I shrugged. “Are you asking her that?”

“I’m going to guess it’s Kimma or Kendra or something like that. And her beau’s name is Adrian or Adolfo or
something
like that.”

Alex snorted. “And her best friend is Howard or Heathen or
something like that
.”

I looked down, put my hands on my hips. Okay, so it had been even lamer and more transparent than I had originally thought. And Heath must have thought I was a major dick for pulling this stunt. But maybe we would get somewhere, now, draw together and approach Emilia as a group of friends.

I met Heath’s blazing green gaze again and shook my head. “Yeah,
Howard
is going to be the key player, here. He’ll probably be the last one to join the quest with all
Emma’s
other friends.”

Heath shook his head, his jaw tensing.

Liam turned to me. “So what’s happening? What’s the old woman saying? Why aren’t we playing the game?”

Alex spun on Heath. “Why are you so hip on her leaving everything behind to go so far away, anyway?” I didn’t smile, though I felt like it. Alex was acting just as I’d hoped.

Heath jerked his head in her direction. “Because I care about what she wants.”

Jenna’s brows shot up. “But we’re her support system. Who does she have in Maryland?
No one.
She’d be all alone there.”

Heath clenched his teeth and shot me a look of pure venom, then raised his chin. “She doesn’t
have
to be all alone there.” Then he shook his head. “I’m not doing this. Not today.”

“We should stage an intervention,” Alex said

Heath looked at her like she was an alien. “You should stay the hell out of it.”

Jenna was looking down, arranging all her dice into neat rows on the table in front of her. “You’re not the only one here who loves her, Heath. We feel this way because we
care
.”

Liam looked up, puzzled. “Are we still talking about Emma?”

Heath clenched his jaw. “We were
never
talking about Emma, William.” He turned back to me. “I’m out of here.”

I followed him to the door and into the hallway outside the apartment. He turned before leaving, looking almost like he would take a swing at me.

“Dickish thing to do, man. I don’t appreciate it.”

I angled my head at him, taking in his tense body language, his closed fists. “Do you blame me?”

“You’re the one who promised to back off and trust her. Now you pull this shit? Uh-uh. You’re so clueless.”

I shifted my stance. “I’m just trying to make a point. It’s not just about her. Or even just about me.”

“It’s not the message you convey, but the way you do it. This whole night was a pretense. It’s you playing your games again. And keeping your coy secrets. You’re all about your hidden plots and secrets, aren’t you? I seriously think you get off on that shit.”

I clenched my jaw and bit back the harsh reply on my lips. I wasn’t stupid enough to want to escalate this. That wouldn’t accomplish anything. And Heath could still be useful to me as an insight to the other side. So I said nothing and let him continue ranting.

His face flushed as he held up his thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart. “You’re treading a fine line, man. You are
this close
to losing her for good. So if that’s what you are trying to accomplish, then keep doing
exactly
what you are doing.” He turned redder and redder as he spoke. “I’m fucking exhausted as it is. I’ve been up since the asscrack of dawn to drive her—” He abruptly cut himself off.