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After the excitement of the first half of their first tour, the four newbies discovered that yes, they did have time off during the week. Often, there was science to do, but the head of KPS insisted that they needed time to let their brains relax. There were movie nights, and karaoke, and plenty of new things to learn. Jamie took Kahurangi up on the offer to learn the ukelele and was endlessly amused by the snarky comments of their other cabin mates as he slowly learned the instrument.
Still, on Friday afternoons and into the evenings, the group often found themselves together, just hanging out in their shared common room.
Jamie came up with the idea. “You know, we should do something together.”
“Like what?”
“Wellll,” said Jamie. “I used to have game nights with my roommates back home. We’d switch off running the games, and sometimes we’d stick with a specific game for a while. Every other Friday – it was really fun!”
Aparna grinned. “My flat mates and I used to do that at Uni.” Niamh and Kahurangi nodded in agreement. “What sort of games did you play?”
Jamie grinned. “We started with board games, like Monopoly, but then we got to know each other better, and started playing roleplaying games.”
Niamh perked up at that. “I was browsing through the shared library and found something very interesting. There’s a whole huge section of the library dedicated to roleplaying games!”
“What, like D&D?” asked Kahurangi.
“Way, way more than just D&D, my friend,” cackled Niamh. They tapped a few times on their tablet. “Sending you the link to the directory…now!”
The respective tablets and laptops dinged in unison. Jaime scrolled through the list of games – most of them at least somewhat familiar from his undergraduate years as a member of the Role-Playing Games club. He came across an entry that made him smile broadly, and he snickered as he expanded the list to see all of the options.
Kahurangi and Apurna were also smiling, while Niamh was openly rubbing their hands together in glee.
“So, how many of you have experience running games?” Niamh asked.
All four raised their hands, including Niamh, who was grinning evilly. “Right,” they said. “Jamie, you came up with the idea. Do you want to organize, or shall I?”
“I have no objections,” Jamie flapped his hand at them. “Still traumatized from running the game track at a local con three years ago. Never again.”
Kahurangi held up a hand and Jamie high fived with him. “Solidarity on that.”
Niamh quickly got things organized. Each would run a one-shot game in their preferred setting and/or game system. They would provide characters to choose from, and all information would be on tablets, to save on printing costs. They also dug some dice sets out of general storage for use. “So many people brought dice, and just left them here! Plenty to use, and I didn’t have to sneak time on a 3D printer!”
They also decided on the order and set up a schedule on the cottage Discord channel. Jamie was very impressed. He decided that the next time (if there was one) he was called on to run a gaming track at a convention, he would recruit Niamh. They would be excellent at keeping everyone on track and cutting through any and all bullshit from the various personalities involved.
1. Kahurangi
The Thursday before their first adventure, Kahurangi sent a list of five Dungeons and Dragons character briefs to the group through Discord, and asked them to pick their first, second, and third choices. Jamie picked the rogue first, then the ranger, then the cleric. He wasn’t surprised to receive a character sheet with the half-elven rogue in his inbox on Friday morning. His level six rogue was highly skilled in sneaking, checking for traps, and backstabbing. This clicked with Jamie’s preferred playing style, and he looked forward to that evening.
Kahurangi started the game with the characters introducing themselves, noting that they had all worked together in the past. The plot was a standard ‘hired to find the valuable McGuffin story,’ with added traps and tricks and some riddles to figure out. Aparna’s elven ranger proved adept at solving riddles, where Niamh’s barbarian character tended to charge in screaming a different battle cry at every opportunity. Some of these were hilarious references, such as “SPOON!!!” or “LEEROY JENKINS!!!” which made the group dissolve into laughter.
As they went along, solving clues, defeating the minions of the bad guy, and moving ever closer to the center of the maze where the Ruby Kataha of Honda lurked, Jamie was impressed by Kahurangi’s ability to create moments of both suspense and laughter in the game. He gave just enough information for the team to puzzle things out, and only made use of the NPCs when it was clear that the group was way off base.
Finally, they made it to the center of the maze, where the Big Bad was surrounded by the final group of minions. Jamie could see Kahurangi suppressing a smile as he read the description.
“The Evil Lord sits on a curved backless chair on a dais on the far end of the room. He wears Chuck Taylors, chinos, a Gap t-shirt, and a black sports jacket. He also wears very expensive sunglasses and a Rolex – the picture of wealthy casual dress. The minions surrounding him are standard guards, well trained, and each with a black patch covering the logo on their breastplates. The Ruby Kataha of Honda is on a stand to the left of the dais – a fish carved from a single ruby.”
Aparna gave him a suspicious look.
“Roll for initiative.”
Niamh’s barbarian and the NPC cleric went in swinging against the minions. Aparna’s ranger and the NPC mage stood back and shot arrows and fireballs respectively into the fray.
Jamie sent a private message through the game Discord channel.
>>I’m hiding in shadows and sneaking around the edge of the room to the back of the dais.
Kahurangi looked at Jamie and rolled the dice, then nodded. Another round of attacks went on, and more minions fell to the combined efforts of the rest of the group. Jamie sent another message.
>> When I’m behind the Evil Lord, I backstab with both short sword and dagger.
Kahurangi smiled. “Jamie, roll d20.”
Jamie rolled a natural 20. “Roll damage” Jamie rolled his d6 and d4 and got a 5 and a 4.
Niamh spoke up. “Hey, what’s going on? We have minions to thin out!”
Kahurangi grinned. “With quadruple damage, and bonuses…the Evil Lord falls dead. Backstabbed by Hiro the rogue.” He rolled some dice. “The three remaining minions drop their swords and surrender, falling to their knees.”
Jamie raised his hand. “Just in case, I slit his throat too.”
“Can I cut his head off?” Niamh asked with an evil cackle. “I still have some anger to get out.”
Aparna’s character went over to the Ruby Kataha. “Describe the fish for me, please?”
“The Ruby Kataha is a long, thin fish carved from a single large ruby. It has a small dorsal fin…”
“You. Bastard.” Aparna sounded both annoyed and admiring. “We’ve been going after a red herring this whole time.”
Jamie groaned, and Niamh threw a wadded-up napkin at Kahurangi.
2. Aparna
Over the next two weeks, Aparna scheduled time with each of her fellow cottage-mates to create their werewolf characters, using the 2nd edition Werewolf: The Apocalypse in the World of Darkness system. The setting was in a small college town, with the characters being students new to the school and forming a pack. She and Jamie created a Child of Gaia Theurge for him, a young environmental sciences student with an interest in stopping climate change and a somewhat mystical bent.
The game went smoothly, with the players slotting their characters into the milieu easily. One of the professors was the leader of the college pack who shepherded them through their first test as a group. Niamh played a Fianna Ahroun warrior, where Kahurangi chose to be a Glasswalker Philodox majoring in computer science. Despite their differences, they tracked down the clues to the polluted dump site and arranged to have it both physically and spiritually cleansed.
When it was done, Aparna put her head in her hands. “I’m sorry, guys. That wasn’t how I thought it would go.”
“What do you mean?” asked Niamh.
“I mean, I wanted it to be funny and suspenseful and exciting! And I don’t think it was.”
Jamie patted her shoulder. “We had fun—that was the whole point! I feel like this would be an interesting game if I knew more about the world. I’d never played any World of Darkness before.”
“Me neither,” added Kahurangi.
“I’d only ever run for my brothers, and that’s always weird,” said Aparna. “I played a lot in Uni but didn’t run the game.”
Niamh grinned. “I think you did a great job! I had a great time, and it was a different sort of game than we played with Kahurangi. Some games are like that, and it’s nice not to have to hack and bash all the time.”
“But you’re so good at the hack and bash!” said Jamie. Niamh stuck their tongue out at him, and Aparna cheered up after that that.
3. Niamh
Niamh was running Call of Cthulhu and excelled at building suspense and paranoia in the group even during character creation. Jamie was playing a physics professor (with technical assistance from Niamh), Kahurangi an archeologist with a penchant for explosives, and Aparna’s character was a linguist with a side hustle as a bootlegger.
The group meshed almost instantly, dividing up the research of the mystery and hunting down clues that would lead them to the cult. Three hours of gameplay went by in a moment. When they finally piled into the car to get to the manor owned by the evil cultists in the middle of nowhere, they were as prepared as they hoped to be.
Niamh lowered the lights in the main room and used flickering fake candles to create the mood.
“As you drive down the long road towards the manor, you notice that the trees, which should be dense and forested, are instead sparse and scrubby, showing a clear view of the manor off in the distance. It looks like a dollhouse perched on a small rise in the middle of the open space.”
“Suddenly, a bright light appears from behind the house, sending a shadow coursing over the roadway. It glows bright gold, and you can see the halo flaring wildly. The light dims, and behind the manor, there is now a mountain. A mountain…that moves.”
“Oh shit,” whispered Jamie. “We are so, so, dead.”
Niamh continued. “The upper part of the mountain has several glowing apertures which rotate around and over the apex. They each have a pupil-like spot which changes shape and size. Below the glowing apertures are appendages that could be tentacles, but also have claws at the end, Part of it reminds you of the underside of a lobster – if that lobster stood on its tail and was over a hundred meters tall. There seems to be no telling which is the front or back of the mountain. The setting sun emerges from behind the clouds, and you can see that the creature is covered in rocks, trees, bushes, and moving things that you cannot quite identify, except they seem to have many more legs than usual.”
“Roll for sanity.” They rolled.
Aparna’s character fainted. Luckily her character was in the back seat. Jamie’s character, who was driving, pulled the car over, fiddled under his seat and pulled out a bottle of bootleg whisky. As he was drinking, Kahurangi’s character opened the car door and threw up on the side of the road.
“You brat,” said Aparna. “That’s Bella!”
“You are unconscious and therefore not speaking. Also, yes,” said Niamh, who was once again grinning evilly.
Jamie eyed them. “Well, obviously, we need to get up there to the manor and send Bella, I mean, this creature, back where it came from.”
“And then the laudanum?” asked Kahurangi.
“Yes, yes, once you send Bel—the creature—back, you can have all the mind-numbing drugs you can get your hands on.”
Jamie raised his hand. “I wave the whisky bottle under Aparna’s nose. Does she wake up?”
Niamh rolled. “Yes, spluttering.”
Aparna glared. “Gimme that whisky, and let’s go kick cultist butt!”
They kicked cultist butt, and with a bunch of well-rolled luck and sanity checks, managed to open the portal to the other world and send the creature that was and wasn’t Bella back to its home dimension. Then the team looted the manor, drove back to home base, and got seriously wasted.
Niamh smiled. “I love Call of Cthulhu. I love turning characters into alcoholics and laudanum addicts before sending them to the rest home for mental recovery. Way more fun than just killing them or sending them into a catatonic stupor.”
“Evil GM!” said Aparna, making a cross with her fingers.
“Anything you would do differently?” asked Kahurangi.
Niamh tilted her hand from side to side. “This is a game I ran at a convention, only it was one of the Cthulhu gods rather than Bella that came through. If it was a long-term game rather than a one-shot, I’d probably have stretched it out more, and had a network of cultists for you to hunt down in various places.”
“How did it go at the convention,” asked Jamie.
“They called me an evil GM, and bought me drinks after, so I call it a win.”
4. Jamie
Two weeks later, the group sat down at the table. Jamie cleared his throat. “Well, gang, I’m sorry. I don’t have anything really prepared for this week. I meant to get to re-reading the Cyberpunk rules, but...”
“Hey, man, we know. It’s been a shit week for you,” said Kahurangi, patting Jamie’s shoulder.
Jamie shrugged. “Val didn’t mean to sprain her ankle, but at least she was able to get the catering and maintenance crew to cover some things. Still, it’s been a rough couple of weeks.”
“Do you want to just hang out, then?” asked Aparna.
“Nope,” said Jamie. He pulled out a large square box from under the table. “I found another game for tonight.” He grinned at his friends, and they all grinned back at him. “Everyone know how to play Scabble?”
Everyone did.
Jamie opened the box and started to set up the game. “Brooklyn house rules. You can replace the blank if you state you are doing so at the start of your turn. You may only check the Scrabble dictionary,” he patted the somewhat worn book on the side of the table, “to make sure that the word is actually a word and not something you made up in your head that sounds like a word. And finally, if you use all seven of your letters in a word, you must shout ‘BINGO’ when you put down the word, in addition to getting the fifty extra points added to your score. Anyone have any problems with those house rules?”
Kahurangi was impressed. “How did you come up with those?”
“One of my roommates used to play with family during holidays when they were young – we just adopted those house rules. I think it makes it much more fun.”
Niamh narrowed her eyes. “Wait a minute. You were a literature major. You definitely have an advantage here.”
Jamie smiled, a little smugly. “But all of you have doctorates. I’m sure that counts for something.”
~*~*~*~
They were down to what would probably be the second to last round of the game. Everyone was evenly matched, with Aparna in the lead, closely followed by Jamie, then Niamh and Kahurangi were tied for third.
It was Jamie’s turn, and there was a triple word score spot just aching for him to put something spectacular down on it. He shuffled his letters around, and then he spotted it. A word someone else had used, back in his days in Chicago. It would work, and he would do it. And…it would be a Bingo.
He put an S down at the end of SPARK, and preceded it with an A, G, G, A, U, and finally the Q he had been holding onto since his second letter draw. The Q landed on the triple word score. “BINGO!”
Niamh glared. “That’s not a word!”
“It is,” replied Aparna. “The quagga is an extinct relative of the zebra.”
“You have hidden depths of weird knowledge, my friend,” said Kahurangi admiringly.
Jamie bowed and counted his points.
~*~*~*~
They kept playing role playing games on alternate Friday nights, but every so often they would pull out Scrabble for a change. Jamie was going to miss Game Night at the end of their tour.
Maybe he’d restart it with Brent and Laertes.