Judy Recovery Play the Game

"Hey Carrots, you got any polyhedrals?" Nick asked one afternoon. It had been raining all morning, and the farmhouse had become notably cramped as all of Judy's younger siblings grew bored and restless with being stuck inside.

"They're in a coffee can on the back shelf of the hobby room," she answered absently, not looking up from the Sudoku puzzle she'd been grumbling at for the past ten minutes. From upstairs she could hear her mom calling out to Teddy and Phil to turn down the volume on the PreyStation in their room, while on the living room coffee table in front of her Molly and Sassy were working on the same puzzle they'd been fussing over for a week.

"Thanks!" Nick scooted out the door, coming back a moment later to ask sheepishly, "Where's the hobby room?"

"First basement level, next to Dad's old train diorama," she provided. Nick disappeared down the basement steps, returning triumphantly ten minutes later with the coffee can and a frayed note pad under one arm, and a bundle of pencils in his opposite paw.

"Found 'em!" he called out to someone in the hallway. A moment later she heard the thumping of several sets of foot pads coming down the hallway, heading in the direction of the back porch.

Ears perking up in curiosity, Judy set the Sudoku book down and followed the commotion. It led out onto the porch, sheltered from the rain, where a half-dozen of her teenaged sibs sat in folding chairs in a half-circle around Nick, who was sporting a conical wizard's atop his head, made from purple cardboard paper and peppered with silver and gold star stickers. He had pulled out an old folding card table from God knew where, rulebooks, papers and dice spread across it, and was helping a couple of the kids finishing making their characters.

"Okay, we've already got two fighters, and two mages, but we could use an extra healer for this scenario," he advised them. Once they had settled arranging their stats, Nick smiled at them, cracked his knuckles, and then declared the ritual, "You all meet in a tavern…"

Judy leaned unobtrusively against an awning pillar, watching as Nick led the group through a simple scenario. An evening's rest in the tavern of an inn at the top of a remote mountain pass was interrupted as undead Dracon warriors began to climb out from an abandoned well. After defeating the initial assault, the party managed to climb down the well and trace the source of the outbreak, an ancient hidden temple of Lord Darkness, the god of everything Evil.

Nick guided them through the adventure with cheer, pointing out to some of the younger players skills their characters had that they may have missed using, and occasionally fudging a dice roll behind his makeshift GM's screen to make sure a damaging blow against a player's character didn't turn out to be a fatal one. As the game wore on more of Judy's family drifted out to the porch to watch, the younger ones shanghaied to get snacks for the players and GM, a couple of the older ones borrowed by Nick to play the attacking monsters, which they did with gusto.

By the time the last of the monsters were slain, the grateful tavern owners handed out rewards, and Nick calculated experience points, the rain had stopped and blue sky was starting to poke through the clouds. He gave the players a bow and they all scampered off to either play out in the damp grass, or get to work on chores delayed by the rain.

"That was pretty impressive," Judy said, settling down onto one of the folding chairs as Nick started gather up his notes and folding the table. "I didn't know you played Gryphons & Gold."

He grinned her, eyes bright with cheer, wider than his usual cynical half-lidded look. "Not since high school. How about you?"

"Same here," she admitted. "I gave it up when I went to community college to get my criminal justice degree."

"Which edition?"

"Fourth," she said.

"Hah. There are two kinds of G&G players. Those who know 2nd Edition is best, and those who are wrong," Nick declared grandly. "Lemme guess, you liked to play paladins."

Judy's ears reddened slightly. "And foresters," she admitted. "How about you?"

Some of the cheer dropped out of his face, and his smile became lopsided. "I… usually ended up playing a rogue."

"Oh, sorry," she said, her ears drooping.

"Hey, I got good at it at least," he said, obviously trying to reassure her. "You should have seen me after they introduced bards as a playable class."

Judy giggled despite herself, shaking her head. "Oh, no…"

Nick's grin returned full force. "There was nothing better than getting our GM, Phil, to agree to let me have some really minor perk, and then have him chuck a die at me after I used it to short circuit the plot he'd set up." He made a shocked face, grabbing his ears and shouting, "Wait! Nick, you can't do… aw, shit!"

Judy slid halfway out of her chair, laughing her head off. "I should have known you would have been a Class A rules lawyer, after you scammed me with that pawpsicle."

"The only thing better than getting away with something, is getting away with it because you followed all the rules," he admitted. "And to Phil's credit, he always let me get away with it."

"Tell you what," she said. "Give me a few days re-read the manuals, and I'll run a scenario where you can play the most palandiny paladin you want."

"Now that'll be something to look forward to, Carrots."