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Games

All five pairs of eyes were locked on the twenty sided die rattling around in Aaron’s hand as he let it go. The die fell into the dice tray with a clatter and rolled, colliding with the sides of the tray before slowing to a rest in the center. Five.

“Your sword swishes through the air as it completely misses the manticore.” Dan said as he rolled his own die. A sixteen. “The manticore’s massive claws rake Kelthaen’s chest...” Dan rolled again. Six sided this time. He looked at the result and did some quick calculations. “Looks like…” Dan paused for only a moment. “Fifteen damage.” Kelthaen has died. Dan looked up at the four players sitting in assorted chairs placed around the table in his basement gaming room and leaned back in his chair. “Sorry, guys, looks like another total party wipe.”

“Damn it, Aaron, that was the fifth time we tried that quest,” Jay accused, exasperated.

Aaron was quick to defend himself. “I missed the part where this is all my fault. I took out more than half of those monsters. The rest of you just need to keep up.”

“Keep up? How could I, when you keep rushing into things. A rogue relies on stealth: how can I be stealthy when all the monsters know where we are?”

Jay was hardly the only player with a complaint against Aaron; Trisha was next to speak. “And what about me? My cleric can’t heal anyone when she’s dead, because of the monsters that you were supposed to keep off my ass.”

“What about my character,” Aaron countered, “I don’t know if you noticed, I had my own problems. If I ran to save you every time a monster attacked you I would have gotten myself backstabbed.”

The fifth member, Mitch, sighed loudly. “Everyone just shut up. It’s no use arguing about this now: we came, we saw, we were conquered. It’s almost time for us to pack up anyway.”

“Right,” Dan said, relieved that the disturbance was coming to a somewhat amicable close. “You can take another crack at the dungeon next week. I’ll even let you use the same characters; no need to roll up new ones.”

The gamers all packed up their character sheets and dice and filtered out of Dan’s basement gaming room. Aaron was the last to leave taking time to gently slide his dice tray into its bag. Just before Aaron left Dan caught him by the arm. “You got a minute?”

“Yeah. Whats up?”

“Jay and Trish are right: you can’t just take care of yourself. This game is cooperative for a reason. The party can do this: you’re at the right levels, and you have the right characters, but you need to work together”

Aaron paused for a moment, considering Dan’s words. “Do we really? I think Kelthaen can take it... Give me a couple levels, and a few days to prepare, and I think I can take this dungeon on my own. The rest of the party just gets in the way.”

Dan raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure?” Aaron nodded confidently. “Will next Wednesday be enough time to prepare?”

Aaron was taken aback. He had not expected Dan to actually take him up on this. “Y-yeah that’ll be enough.” Aaron stopped for a moment looking for ways to even up the odds. “And I'll need a few levels too...is leveling to eighteen fine?”

“Sure,” Dan replied brightly. “I’ll see you Wednesday then. Five PM a good time?”

“Yeah that should be fine.”

After returning to his apartment, Aaron finished modifying Kelthaen’s character sheet. He looked over his newly leveled character sheet one more time and smirked. “Yeah. With 165 hit points nothing’s gonna touch him.”

His pocket lit up and vibrated. After pulling out his phone and seeing the name of the caller Aaron groaned.

“Hey Deb what’s up?” Aaron spoke in a falsely bright tone.

“I thought I told you not to call me Deb anymore.” The venom in her voice was audible.

“Sorry, force of habit. Any particular reason for calling me Deb-bor-ah?”

“As much as I hate to admit it I left some stuff at your apartment a few months back. When’s an inconvenient time for me to come fetch it.”

“hmmm a few months back...that would be before you walked out on me.”

Deborah’s voice became icy. “Maybe if you actually gave a shit about something other than yourself I’d have stuck around.”

Aaron ignored the comment to sought to end the discussion as quickly as possible. “Well I don’t know about an inconvenient time, but a convenient time would be Wednesday ‘round seven in the evening. I got a... thing at five, but it should be over by then.”

“Great. I can’t wait.” her voice alone was enough to kill a small mammal to say nothing of the glare she gave her phone when she hung up.

Finally Wednesday arrived. Aaron slid his character sheet, dice tray, and pencils into his bag, and fished his special twenty sided die from the massive sack that held his dice collection. It was a die he won in a board game tournament which he only used for special occasions, such as this. Aaron was comforted by its weight. It was hollow, but made of stainless steel, making it noticeably heavier than most common plastic dice. Aaron slipped it into his pocket, and headed for Dan’s house.

“Ah, so you did show up after all. I have to admit I’m kinda surprised,” Dan teased “even with a level eighteen barbarian solo-ing a level fourteen dungeon isn’t easy.”

“I think you underestimate me. Perhaps you’ve forgotten.” Aaron gently placed his steel die on the table, twenty facing up, in clear view of Dan.

“Ah yes, how could I forget my humiliating loss at the hands of a far superior opponent.” Dan’s sarcasm visibly annoyed Aaron, but Dan continued, ignoring his friend’s discomfort. “Quite frankly I’m touched that you take this little challenge so seriously.”

“A challenge is a challenge. Even between friends.”

“Well let’s get started then shall we.”

Kelthaen performed just as Aaron had anticipated. He ripped through the hoard of goblins in the first chamber, dodged myriad traps littering in the second, and circumvented the riddle in the third by smashing down a wall. Dan double checked his final encounter notes. Damn, He thought to himself I didn’t expect he’d get this far. He’s more clever than I thought. I hope this will be enough. Dan persevered, vowing to trip Aaron up on something and puncture his dragon sized ego. A little over an hour into the game a brilliant idea presented itself.

“Roll a reflex save.” Dan ordered.

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m the game master, I said so, and Kelthaen will automatically fail and possibly die if you don’t.”

“...fine.” Aaron scooped up his prized dice, shook it, and let it loose into the dice tray. It rolled for less than a second before slowing to a halt. The die showed an ornately carved one.

“Ooh, Bad luck man that’s a critical fumble. Kelthaen not only triggers the hidden dart trap, but also is tripped by it’s tripwire. He falls face first on the dungeon floor, dart sticking comically out of his ass. He takes five damage and is poisoned.”

“No, that’s not right. A dart trap can only do three damage. Max. Furthermore there was never a trap there. I thought this was supposed to be the same dungeon we were taking on in the main game.”

“You took five damage. Two from the dart and three additional damage from the fall.” Dan rolled another die. “Ouch, and you’re concussed that’s a minus two penalty to all skill checks, and saves. As for the trap’s location, a thought occurred to me while you were carefully avoiding all my traps. How is a dungeon fun or challenging if you know where all the monsters and traps are? So I decided to redecorate. I hope you like it.”

Aaron opened his mouth to speak.

“Don’t worry, I won’t make it any more difficult. A level fourteen party working together would still be able to clear this no problem.”

Aaron gritted his teeth. “You sound like you’re having way too much fun with this.”

“Well, I gotta make my own fun when you’re so good at sucking it out of everything.”

The game continued for another forty five minutes. Kelthaen took damage from more hidden traps in addition to the periodic poison damage from the dart trap, but flew through the combat encounters. Kelthaen was down to eighty-five hitpoints by the time he reached the final chamber.

“Before Kelthaen walks through the door I’m gonna need a spot check”

Far past the point of questioning Dan’s unexpected roll requests, Aaron rolled his steel die and added his spot modifier. The total was twelve; not enough.

“Sorry Aaron, guess this just isn’t your night for spotting traps,” Dan teased. “As he passes through the door, Kelthaen feels a section of the dungeon floor depress slightly. A moment later he hears a loud rumbling. The floor in the center of the room opens up revealing a seemingly bottomless pit. Out from the pit rises a simple, round, stone dias, and on the dias sits...a cake. Beyond the pit is a door visibly locked with a padlock.”

“Can Kelthaen use the dias to cross the pit?”

“Yes, the dias is large enough that it bridges the pit.”

“Kelthaen crosses to the other side of the room, ignoring the cake, and smashes the padlock.” eager to get the game over with Aaron hastily rolled his die. Dan ignored the die and said, “Kelthraen finds, much to his dismay I imagine, that no sword can break this lock. A visible blue aura surrounds it.”

“Alright, Kelthaen goes back to the dias to get a good look at the cake.”

“Upon reaching the dias once again, Kelthaen notices a fork is there too.”

“Kelthaen looks for anything unusual about the cake or the fork” Aaron rolled both a search and spot check.

“The cake seems perfectly ordinary, however, without a magic user on hand it’s impossible to tell whether or not it is enchanted in any way. The fork also appears very ordinary, except for strange markings. Shame there isn’t a bard around to decipher them”

Aaron shot Dan a glare eliciting a look of innocence. There was a long tense silence as Aaron struggled with what to do next.

“Kelthaen reaches into the cake looking for a key or something else that’s hard”

“As Kelthaen reaches toward the cake his hand stops. The cake is surrounded by the same blue aura that surrounded the lock.”

Aaron leaned back from the table deep in thought. There has to be a way out of this. Right? Upstairs the doorbell rang.

“You just sit there and have a good think about that cake. I’ll be right back.” Dan disappeared up the stairs.

Aaron knew the cake and the fork had to be important. Everything Dan put in his dungeons was important, no matter how weird or silly. The fork must be the key to all this. Aaron realized. The writing on it meant that it could be enchanted. Perhaps it could pass through the magical barrier. Unfortunately, that didn’t get him anywhere with the lock. This setup seemed, to Aaron, to be too perfect. He mentally ran through all of Kelthaen’s abilities, it seemed there was nothing he could do.

“Sorry Aaron, I told her this was a bad time, but that just made her want to come in more,” Dan called out from upstairs. Aaron was seized with sudden anxiety. Damn it. I forgot about Deb.

Deborah walked down the last few steps into Dan’s basement. “I figured I’d find you here. This is where you always seemed to end up whenever I was stood up.”

“One time. that was one time.”

“One time that I caught you at it.”

“So? I thought you liked tabletop games.” Deb refused to dignify that with a verbal response and merely rolled her eyes.

Dan entered the basement and sat back down at his chair in a defeated gesture. Deborah followed his lead and sat at the table. “Dan tells me you are having a bit of trouble with your little game. I think I’ll stick around and watch while you two finish up. If that's alright with you.” she said looking to Dan.

“I don’t mind.” Dan responded defensively

“Great.” The room felt wired to explode as the three of them sat and stared at each other. Diffusing only a minute amount when Dan spoke up. “So...uh...have you decided what Kelthane will do?” both Dan and Deborah stared at Aaron expectantly.

Another silence; this time broken suddenly by Aaron. “Nothing. This game is bunk. You changed the final encounter just to get back at me for being the best player. The only one of the entire group to take this shit seriously.”

“Wait, what?” Dan exclaimed, shocked at this outburst.

“You know what the worst part is?” Aaron continued running on sudden white hot rage. “The worst part is how fucking transparent it all is. This cake puzzle is the only thing in the entire dungeon that requires skills that Kelthaen specifically doesn’t have.”

“Geeze, calm down Aaron. It’s just a game.”

Aaron stood up. “No, it isn’t just a fucking game, it’s my pride. I said I could beat this dungeon, and you wanted to prove your little point, so you sabotaged me. Hell I bet you told queen bitch here,” he gestured toward Deborah, “to come watch.”

“Aaron, listen to me, I swear I changed nothing about that final room, and for your sake I tried to get Deb to leave.” Dan speech was slow and deliberate, but unsuccessful in calming Aaron’s rage.

“Oh great, she lets you call her Deb too. You know what? Fuck you guys. I’m out. Don’t expect me next session.” Aaron grabbed his stuff and stormed upstairs.

Weeks passed. Neither Dan nor Deborah had heard from Aaron after his outburst and prompt exit from both the game and their lives. Dan had some trouble finding a new player to replace Kelthaen, and the game began to fall apart. Deborah felt somewhat responsible for Aaron’s emotional explosion and agreed to fill the void left by Kelthaen with her own character. A half-orc fighter named Gren.

During the fourth session since Aaron left, the unexpected happened: the doorbell rang interrupting the game. Dan got up from the table.

“Hang on guys I’ll be back in two seconds.” He disappeared up the stairs once again.

This time however he was gone a lot longer, and the players began speculating wildly about what could be going on. Eventually Dan returned followed by Aaron.

“Sorry for the delay you guys. Aaron is back and he’s got a few things to say.”

Aaron stood there stiff and awkward. Dan and the rest of the players stared straight at him as Aaron’s gaze shifted around the room nervously.

“Uhhh. Guess I’m not too good at this sort of thing...the thing is I fucked up. I fucked up bad, and I very nearly destroyed the game as well as my friendships. I let my pride get in the way and it damn near fucked my whole life up.”

During this heartfelt speech the players only stared unblinking at Aaron trying to process this new side of him.

“...Over the past few weeks I realized that I missed gaming with you guys, and if you’ll let me I’d like to rejoin.”

The players only continued to stare before Deborah broke the silence with a slow clap. “Great speech. Did you spend the past four weeks writing it?”

“Deb. I think he’s serious.” Dan jumped to Aaron’s defense. “you know as well as I his pride wouldn’t let him admit he was wrong unless he really meant it.” He turned to address the entire group of players. “It’s ok with me if he rejoins. He’s already got a new character rolled up and ready to go, but it only makes sense to put it to a vote. Those in favor of letting Aaron back in?”

Mitch was the first to raise his hand, followed by Trish and Jay. Deborah remained resolute and refused to vote in Aaron’s favor.

“Deb. If Aaron joins will it become a problem?”

“If we have another barbarian or fighter in the party it will make one of us redundant. That’s the problem,” she replied; her voice fridged and flat.

“I’m not playing a barbarian or fighter this time.” Aaron interjected. “I’m playing a half-elf bard: Finn”

“Huh. Well then. In that case there shouldn’t be a problem.” Deborah told Dan in the same icy flat tone.

Dan sighed in relief. The party was back together and everyone was happy. It all worked out. Dan took his usual chair at the head of the table while Deborah made room for Aaron.

“Thanks Deborah” he said as he sat down.

"You can call me Deb.”