The Game Masters of Garden Place Read online

  Ralph had learned from his online GM friends that this was some sort of test of the GM’s ability. There was a theory that Wycroft had deliberately made this quest as endless as he could, so that the few teams that managed to stay with the adventure this far would be unlikely to want to continue. The forum was rife with stories of groups voting to move on to another adventure because this one had become ridiculous. It was as if Wycroft had wanted only the most determined players to finish his campaign.

  The adventurers were given the task to perform a series of challenges in order to free Bram and attain the jade serpent. These were tedious chores, like collecting all twelve overdue books from various citizens for the town library (Wycroft clearly had a sense of humor), and demanding ones, like figuring out how to untie the untieable knot that had kept the great sailing ship of the town in port.

  Somehow, Ralph had kept them going until the final task, when Persephone realized that the Lord Mayor was actually an imposter, a goblin who had created this town in order to trap them here and get from them the other parts of the great scepter for himself.

  In unmasking him, she had broken the spell, and the town disappeared, along with the false Lord Mayor, leaving only the jade serpent behind. Since one last island remained, it was clear where they needed to go.

  But the damage had been done. What enthusiasm was left felt like it was waning with each passing week.

  Even when Ralph brought them the incredible news he’d learned from the website.

  RoDCon was coming to Brooklyn. The yearly gathering of Reign of Dragons lovers. People dressed as their favorite players, and there were round-the-clock games as well as celebrity appearances (it seemed that some of the biggest actors and directors had played the game when they were young and still had fond memories of it). There was a picture of a man with a lean face and a ponytail, and under it was the announcement that Andy Wycroft, the son of the game’s creator, would be there.

  None of which impressed his friends. Apparently they all had something better to do that Sunday. Ralph decided he didn’t care. He would go alone if he had to. Sure, the tickets were expensive, but it was going to be a birthday present.

  And it had finally arrived, the weekend after they had found themselves on Valtti Island, deep beneath the mountain Morgorath among the ancient stones of the Temple of Kamach’Ldar. With the Kreel army having been decimated, only the deadly Komach’Kreel was left to defeat before finally collecting the last serpent.

  What the others didn’t know was that this was the most powerful monster in all of the campaigns—practically impossible to defeat, even for characters at levels as high as their own.

  Every hit from the Komach’Kreel dealt an incredible 200 damage, and even the most powerful healing spell from a cleric couldn’t counter that. It was as if Wycroft was daring his players to come up with a solution to an unsolvable riddle.

  Ralph had scoured the forums and message boards for clues to how to defeat the Komach’Kreel, but other than by cheating, it seemed that no one had ever gotten past this point in the game.

  Which was why the location of the seventh scepter was never mentioned. Wycroft had simply written, “Those who have beaten the Komach’Kreel will find the answer within themselves, and the game will end with the heroes bathed in glory and remembered for generations to come.”

  After the last Saturday, when Jojo seemed ready to quit, it should have come as no surprise to Ralph that when he passed her locker between classes, she stopped him. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  Before she could answer, Jojo’s scowl was replaced with a huge smile. Ralph didn’t need to look behind him to know what had happened. Oona and Luna, two of Jojo’s teammates from gymnastics, had arrived. They pushed past him like he didn’t exist (which he probably didn’t, in their minds) and surrounded Jojo. There were squeals and hugs as if the girls hadn’t seen each other for months instead of since the day before.

  Oona and Luna wore identical warm-up jackets, and Ralph noticed all three had matching friendship bracelets. They also all wore the same shade of eye shadow. It wasn’t Ralph who noticed this; Cammi had pointed it out to him during one of the few lunches they had had together. Cammi was amazing about seeing things like that with girls. But then again, he spent so much time with them. He was more clued in to that kind of thing.

  “Jeez, could Coach Stephens have been more irritating yesterday?” said Oona or Luna. They talked so fast and finished one another’s sentences, so it was often hard to tell who was saying what.

  “I know, right?” Jojo said, sounding very un-Jojo-like. “What was with that running like a thousand laps? I needed to work on my vault.”

  “Your vault is awesome,” said Oona/Luna. “You rock so hard!”

  Jojo tossed her hair and looked up at the ceiling. “Gah. I wish. I just sometimes feel like, you know, you guys are so supportive I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  The girls hugged again. As they continued to ignore him, Ralph amused himself by deciding that he had cast a spell of invisibility. This lasted until Noel passed by.

  “Hey, RPG, you going to history?”

  “I’ll be right there,” Ralph answered. “I think Jojo wants to talk to me about something.”

  Oona and Luna seemed to notice him for the first time. “Oh. Were you guys talking or something?”

  Jojo looked horrified. “Um, I was just asking…Ralph…about a problem on the math test.”

  Oona and Luna exchanged glances. “Well, he should know about that.”

  All three burst into giggles. Ralph tried to figure out what was so funny. He assumed it meant he was clueless about everything else.

  “You sure it wasn’t about some magic spell or something?” Oona or Luna asked.

  Jojo’s face took on a look of disgust. “He wishes.”

  More helpless giggles. “We’ll let you guys talk—we have to get to chorus.” And they rushed off, leaving a trail of some flowery-smelling perfume in their wake.

  Ralph was trying his best not to show his annoyance. He didn’t want to get Jojo mad. He’d seen her mad plenty of times during the game, and it wasn’t pretty. “Third period is going to start in like two minutes. What did you want to ask me?”

  Jojo looked into her locker, slowly picking out the books she needed for the next few classes. It seemed she was deliberately not looking at him as she spoke. “Listen, I’m not sure I want to, you know…do the thing anymore.”

  Ralph knew where this was going, but he decided to make Jojo spell it out. “Um, sorry, Jojo, could you be more vague? ’Cause I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You know. The Saturday thing.”

  Now it was Ralph’s turn to get mad. “You mean our campaign? You won’t even say the words Reign of Dragons at school now? It’s that embarrassing to you?”

  “You really want me to say it?” Jojo asked. Ralph should have known better than to provoke Jandia Ravenhelm. Unlike Cammi, she wasn’t afraid of confrontation. “Okay. It’s not that it’s embarrassing, Ralph. It’s just…you know, it was fun for a while, but I have a lot of other priorities now. Gymnastics takes up a lot of time, and there’s homework and—”

  “And texting or Instagramming with Oona and Luna and Gaga and Goo-Goo, or whatever their names are.” Ralph snapped. He wasn’t sure if he was madder at her no longer calling him RPG or her suggesting that she was suddenly too cool for a game she’d loved for so long.

  “So what? Since when is what I choose to do with my time your business? Have a great time with the others. You can kill off my character or something.”

  “First off,” Ralph said evenly, “I don’t know how much longer Persephone and Cammi are going to want to play either, and second, I think it’s really sad that you can’t even call Jandia by her name. You’d just kill her
like that?”

  Jojo turned to him. “She’s not a real person! Gah! I am so over all of this!”

  Ralph realized he was going about this wrong. He had to strategize. This was a battle, and he was facing a much more powerful opponent. He needed a weapon stronger than hers.

  Jojo turned to go.

  Ralph stopped her. “Please. Jojo. I promise you next week we’re going to find the seventh serpent. It’s the end of the campaign we started two years ago. Don’t you think you owe it to the others to at least see this through to the end? If you still want to leave after that, I promise I will never bother you about it again. And I didn’t want to say anything, but it is my birthday.”

  Jojo dropped her head. “Okay. I’ll be there.” Her mouth was set in a hard line. “I was going to hang out with Oona, Luna, Joie, and Twyla—you know those are really their names, by the way—but I guess I could do that Sunday. But this is the last time, Ralph.”

  As he watched her stomp off, Ralph smiled to himself, feeling proud of how he’d handled the encounter. But something nagged at him. He had to admit the only way he’d gotten Jojo to come was by using guilt, and that was nothing to be proud of. Well, once the game started, he knew she’d come around. He just had to create the coolest story ever.

  It was Friday afternoon, and Ralph was feeling both anxious and sad. In the good old pre-braces days, this had been his favorite time of the week. But instead of planning a great adventure, all the way home, Ralph worried about how to keep his friends from deserting the game.

  One issue was that the three hours usually seemed to speed by, with almost no time to really get anything going.

  So his first job, he decided, was to get them to spend more time there Saturday. He knew if he had just a few more hours, he could get the magic back.

  He had to start at dinner, getting his parents on board.

  His mom was more interested in telling him that something had arrived in the mail for him. Had he ordered something and not told them?

  It was from the RoDCon. Just check-in information, probably. Right now he was less excited about going to the convention all alone. Maybe if things went well, he could get a couple of his friends to change their minds and come with him.

  “How are you getting there Sunday?” his mother asked.

  “I was just going to walk,” said Ralph. “It’s like right there at the Beveren.”

  The Beveren was a fancy hotel that had opened up in downtown Brooklyn.

  His mother looked worried, but his father looked over at her. “He’s turning twelve. Maybe we should let him go.”

  “No fair,” said his sister GG, spearing an asparagus. “When I was twelve, you never let me do anything.”

  “Which we had to hear about every night,” her father. “So maybe, just maybe, letting Ralph go will spare us that experience again.”

  “Speaking of getting older…,” Ralph began. This was the perfect segue into his plan. “This might just be the last session ever of RoD—”

  “Well, we’ll have to find something else for you to get involved with,” said his dad.

  They seemed almost relieved! It was totally frustrating. It was as if they thought the other kids had it right, moving on to other interests, and Ralph was the one who was clinging to some immature waste of time. Okay, maybe they didn’t say that, but it sure felt that way. “I want to keep playing Reign of Dragons.”

  “Remember how into Legos you were? It was Lego all the time,” his mother reminded him. “Where are all your Lego kits now? Under your bed.”

  “This is different,” groused Ralph. “I just want to keep playing Reign of Dragons. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, sweetheart,” his mother said. “It’s only that it seems your friends aren’t as into it as you are.”

  “Maybe it’s temporary,” suggested GG. “You know, stop it for a while and then see if you’re still into it in like six months. You might find it’s just not the same thing. Like when I was obsessed with Barbies.”

  “You were nine!” Ralph said, trying not to yell at the dinner table.

  “Don’t yell at the dinner table,” admonished his mother. So much for that.

  His sister glared at him. This wasn’t good. He needed an ally.

  Ralph turned to his dad. “You should understand, Dad. Weren’t you into anything fun when you were my age?”

  His father thought for a minute. “I made models. That was kind of cool. I remember spending an entire summer making a Millennium Falcon when I was twelve.”

  Ralph turned to his mom. “See? He was twelve. How long did you make models?”

  His dad grinned. “Well, right after that I discovered girls. And music. So making models became less important.”

  Ralph threw his head back and looked at the ceiling. He had taken some serious damage to his mental health points with that one.

  “Nobody is saying you have to stop,” GG said, “but how are you going to keep it going if all your friends are leaving?”

  It was time to move in and strike the first blow. “Here’s what I’m hoping. I’ve asked for an extra-long session. Like until dinner. I’m hoping if I make the story good enough, they’ll stay.”

  His mother raised her eyebrows. “You know tomorrow’s shoot is a long one. We’re going to be gone all day. So it’s up to your sister. If she wants to hang out here for six hours…”

  “No way,” his sister said. “That’s not going to happen in this lifetime. I mean, I know this is a fantasy game, but that is a total fantasy.”

  This dealt even more damage. Ralph had to counter this with a critical hit.

  “How about this,” he suggested. “You want to study for the SATs right? And Melora lives three houses away.”

  Melora was GG’s best friend. And Ralph knew they loved to hang out together. So what if they spent half the time watching cooking videos. If his parents thought they were studying for the SATs, that wasn’t his problem. It was his weapon.

  GG brightened. “Yeah, right. The SATs. We really need to practice this weekend.”

  Ralph turned to his parents. “So can she go to Melora’s? She’ll only be three houses away. I have my phone. There’s not going to be any kind of emergency or anything anyway. We’re just going to be playing the game the whole time.”

  Ralph’s mom turned to GG. “So you’d be there the whole time? No going into the city or anything like that?”

  “Mom, I said I’d be there. I mean, at most, maybe we’d go out for a slice of pizza for lunch or something.”

  “Perfect,” said Ralph’s dad, who was more of the producer of the two of them. He tended to focus on the logistics, so he was on board already. “And there’s food in the fridge, so your friends won’t starve. Sounds like a plan.”

  Ralph could feel his mental health points filling back up. Now for step two: getting the others to agree to stay.

  “So you’ll text the other parents?” he asked his mom.

  “Yes, I’ll let them know it’s okay.”

  As Ralph helped GG clear the table and load the dishwasher, his mom would periodically call out that one or another of his friends had agreed to stay on for the extra time. The final text was from Jojo’s mom, who said she’d be there and that Jojo was looking forward to it.

  Ralph knew this was garbage. Jojo’s mom was just being nice, but he didn’t care. Victory was his.

  He headed to his room, grabbing the padded envelope from RoDCon. As he plopped down on his bed, he heard the package rattle like a box of dice. Ralph had dozens of sets of dice and one more wouldn’t make a difference, but still, it was a nice bit of swag. He emptied the contents onto his bed. There was a note and an oblong box. Usually dice boxes were translucent plastic so you could see the color of the dice you were buying. They came in all sorts of colors, and each player had
their favorites. Jojo liked ebony, Noel always brought his marbleized fancy dice (which he kept in a velvet pouch), Cammi favored purple, and Persephone insisted on rolling her lucky hot pinks. Ralph was the only one who wasn’t particular. He was also the only one with multiple sets. This set, however, was covered in black paper. He turned to the note.

  Congratulations! As one of the members of the Search for the Seven Serpent Scepter Forum who has completed the first six quests, you are eligible for the RoDCon RoD contest. Ralph rolled his eyes at the cheesy name but continued. Seven of the boxes of dice we have sent out contain 1 (one) golden die. If you receive a golden die, you are entitled to participate in the special game of Reign of Dragons held at the convention at high noon, GM’d by none other than Andy Wycroft, the famed “first player” himself!

  That was something. More than just a new set of dice, at least! If he won. When Warwick had first designed the game, he had tested it with his own children, with Andy creating the first character ever in the game, a dwarf called MiniChin. Playing with him would almost be like playing with Wycroft himself.

  Ralph tore off the black paper and saw that each die was also covered in paper. It was a little much, if you asked him. “They’re really amping up the suspense,” he said to himself, shaking his head.

  He laboriously unwrapped one die after another, revealing d4s and d8s and a d12, all in different bright shades. Then he got to the d20. It felt heavier than the others.