Praise for Dave Barrett
“It’s All Fun and Games is as much a nostalgia trip for grown-up gamers as it is a gateway drug for the next generation. A rollicking good portal fantasy starting with boffer swords instead of d20s.”
—Dave Gross, author of Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes
“It's All Fun and Games is one of those rare books that makes you wonder if around every corner magic and adventure await. Kids and adults alike will find themselves swept away into the world Mr. Barrett has created.”
—Shannon Mayer, USA Today bestselling author of the Rylee Adamson series
“It’s fun and exciting to get lost in a fantasy world while roleplaying. It’s All Fun and Games shows that getting lost in one for real might not be as fun, but it’s no less exciting!”
—Jon Verrall, cocreator of the hit Geek & Sundry web series LARPs
It’s All
Fun
and
Games
It’s All
Fun
and
Games
DAVE BARRETT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2016 Dave Barrett
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Inkshares, Inc., San Francisco, California, as part of the Nerdist Collection
www.inkshares.com
Edited and designed by Girl Friday Productions
www.girlfridayproductions.com
Cover design by Elsie Lyons
Cover images via Shutterstock: © Vaclav Hroch; © Sergey Kamshylin; © Iakov Filimonov; © Igorsky; © Sensay; © Alex Bond; © faestock; © Dmitriy Karelin.
ISBN: 9781941758816
e-ISBN: 9781941758823
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955890
First edition
Printed in the United States of America.
To Lloyd Alexander, whose Chronicles of Prydain taught me that worlds of magic and adventure exist; and to Gary Gygax, who taught me how to play in them.
And to my brother, Jim, my first Dungeon Master.
PROLOGUE
“Run! Now!” TJ shouted, yanking Allison’s sleeve. Her eyes were focused on the ground, where their friend lay twitching slightly. An arrow shaft stuck out of his chest. Her first thought was that it was all part of the game—just some elaborate prank for the newbies on their first outing. If so, it wasn’t very funny.
But there was no way that arrow was fake. The noise it had made when it struck. The blood that was rapidly spreading across his clothes. The raspy way he was breathing and the saliva slowly trickling from between his lips. Allison felt another yank on her shoulder as TJ shouted, “Leave him for now!” She shrugged off his grasp, reaching down to try to drag her injured friend by the collar. After a few moments she gave up the effort.
A sudden force struck her in the shoulder and spun her around. Dazed, she looked for whoever had hit her and saw no one standing nearby. Instead, she found a second arrow stuck in the wall, still quivering with spent energy. She reached up to her shoulder and felt a dent in the metal of her breastplate. A quick look back revealed that the archer in the woods had drawn a third arrow and was fitting it to his bow, a determined look on his face. With a cry of anguish and one last glance at her fallen friend, she turned and fled after TJ and the others.
CHAPTER 1
The bell rang, cutting their teacher off midsentence, and the students began stuffing books and papers into their backpacks. There was a sense of urgency in their movements, as if somehow the clock might change its mind if they dallied.
“We’ll pick up from where we left off on Tuesday,” Mr. Simmons called out over the noise. “Everyone please read pages two hundred forty to two hundred fifty-six in the text, and have a nice long weekend. Don’t work too hard!” The last he said with a smile, knowing that the likelihood of anyone actually reading pages two hundred forty to two hundred fifty-six were just this side of zero. Besides, not working too hard was advice he planned on taking—he was headed into the backwoods to go fishing.
“So are you going to come, or no?” TJ Keller flashed his lopsided grin at his best friend, Allison Duggan. “You know you want to.” He added in a singsong voice, “You know it will be fuuunnn!”
Allison, a scrawny strawberry-blonde girl, tried to not smile back, but failed. “No, I really don’t want to. In fact, I don’t think I can possibly explain to you just how little I want to. I don’t care what you say. Getting all dressed up like wizards and sleeping out in the woods doesn’t seem even remotely like a fun thing to do.” Despite the smirk, TJ could tell she was serious.
“Aww, come on,” he pouted. “First of all, not everyone gets dressed up like a wizard. That’s only me. A party of wizards would never survive very long. You need some tanks to melee, and a healer, and if possible a rogue to pick locks and disarm traps and stuff. Otherwise, we end up having the barbarian just triggering all the traps we find and he soaks up all the damage. That’s hardly an elegant solution.” He looked ready to continue, but Allison raised her eyebrows. “Yeah well, anyway, other people have different costumes.” He paused, then added with a sly look, “And Simon is coming!”
“Whoa. Simon? As in Simon Williams? Really? What would he be doing at one of your geek fests? Doesn’t he have a football game this weekend?” Simon was the starting halfback for the school’s team. As a sophomore, he should have been sitting on the bench, but an injury to the star senior promoted him to starter a year early. He was tall and handsome, and all of the underclass girls—and most of the upper class as well—harbored secret crushes on him. Allison was no exception, and TJ knew it.
TJ shouldered his backpack and swiped a few stray eraser shavings off the top of his desk. He flourished an “after you” motion with his arm and followed behind as Allison headed toward the door. “Team is off this week because of the long weekend. Plus, they want to give students the ability to rest and recharge a bit before No Child Left Behind tests start up next week.” No one—including the teachers and administrators— looked forward to the week of standardized tests that occurred three times a year. Freeport Central High School wasn’t a failing school by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t one of western Massachusetts’s star performers either. “I guess they figured we could use all the help we can get. Maybe they think it will prevent a few concussions and that will help keep scores up.”
Allison snickered as they walked to the hallway with their lockers. “But I mean, what’s he doing hanging out in the woods doing all that magic stuff? No offense, but that hardly seems very football playery.”