At Any Turn

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?”