“It’s all good,” Jo said. She came around one side of the desk while Felix went around the other, scooping up the keys on his way to lock up. Jo sat in the chair closest to the door and slipped her phone from the pocket of her scrub top.
Jo
Sorry, I know you’re in a meeting but I’m alone in the library with this guy and he has to lock the door or his boss will be pissed. I don’t feel unsafe, but also maybe if I don’t text or call by 7:15 my time, call the Ashville sheriff?
No wait, call me first. If I don’t pick up after three tries, then call the sheriff.
Aida
WTF???
Fine, I trust you.
7:15 EXACTLY, though.
Make good choices.
Felix cleared his throat behind her, and Jo hurriedly turned off her screen. He was holding a small ring of keys out to her.
“The front door is this one, with the tiny G stamped on it. I don’t know why it’s a G.”
How had he known she was just wondering that? Their fingers brushed as she took the keys from him, and he quickly withdrew his hand. Jo bit her cheek to keep from smiling and set the keys on the desk next to her.
“Did you text someone that we’re here?” he asked as he went the long way around the desk to the other chair.
“Yeah, my best friend Aida.” Jo left out the part about Aida being fifteen hundred miles away.
Felix nodded. “Good, I’m glad. Shall we get started?”
She cracked her knuckles, wiggled her fingers, and rolled out her neck. The familiar excitement of teaching someone to play MnM filled her to the brim, dissolving the last of her worries. “Let’s do it.”
Still feeling like an idiot, Felix dragged the two rulebooks over, and Jo opened Core Rules. He sat up straighter, a librarian working with a volunteer. Professional. Helpful. Polite, but not overly familiar.
“Did you have a chance to read any of this?” she asked.
“Yes, the first two chapters. I skimmed chapter three, but I ran out of time to read it closely. I’m sorry I’m not fully prepared; I didn’t realize that chapter was seventy-eight pages long.”
Jo looked at him through round, tortoiseshell glasses, which she hadn’t been wearing the other night. They brought out darker flecks in her pale brown eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. Her short hair was uncurled and pulled back into a ponytail, and Felix realized for the first time how round her cheeks were. Like apples. Or, with her pinkish complexion, maybe peaches were a more apt comparison.
“You counted the exact number of pages?” she asked with a smile.
“It was simple subtraction,” Felix replied.
“Basic math. A good skill for a GM.”
Felix had the distinct feeling that a joke had gone over his head, but she didn’t give him time to dwell on it. She gestured to the book in front of her and got to the matter at hand.
“I thought tonight I would walk you through building a character, since that’s how any new player who comes in would start,” she said. “Making your own character is one of the best ways to learn the setup and fundamentals of the game.”
“All right,” Felix said, trying not to look pained as he ran a hand through his hair. Playing make-believe wasn’t his ideal way to spend an evening, but he’d survived worse work assignments.
“Before we jump in, did you have any questions about what you read? You seemed confused by the world building before.” Jo rummaged in her purse and pulled out the same things she’d had on Tuesday: a mechanical pencil, a drawstring bag that rattled with dice, and a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it to reveal a blank version of the paper she’d tried to hand him the other night, a template with nothing handwritten on it yet. She smoothed it on the desk, and Felix was briefly transfixed by her hands, her thin fingers tipped with short, neat fingernails.
“I understood it better on a second pass,” he said. “I prefer things that are grounded in reality, so I tried relating the fantasy concepts to the real world. The pantheon of gods, for example, isn’t too far off from Greek and Roman ones.”
“It’s almost like ‘mythology’ is in the title of the game, huh?” Jo said with a teasing grin, which Felix couldn’t help but return. Make-believe or not, at least he could count on Jo to keep the evening interesting.
She handed him her pencil. He took it, careful not to brush her hand again. She turned to chapter three in Core Rules, titled “Archetypes.”
This is for my job, he reminded himself. For me and for Tito.
“It’s good to have a party—a group of characters adventuring together—with a diverse set of skills and abilities,” she began. “For example, my warlock has a high score in charisma. She’s good at talking to people, bewitching enemies into thinking they are friends, that kind of thing. But warlocks don’t wear armor, so in combat they’re easy to hit and easy to kill. Squishy.”
As she spoke, she flipped back and forth through the pages with an expert hand, pausing to point out different pictures and rules. She showed him an illustration of a robed warlock and the words “Armor: None” from a long list of “Archetype Features.” This was already so much easier than attempting to figure everything out on his own.
“I’m following you so far,” he said.
“So if you were going to make a character to complement my warlock, they should be able to take a lot of hits and do a lot of damage.” She turned to the beginning of chapter three, where there was a list of the archetypes and a one-sentence description of each. “Your best options for that are going to be a fighter, a paladin, or a barbarian.”
She angled the book toward him to let him read over the descriptions. He nodded as he recalled some of what he’d skimmed over his lunch break today.
“A fighter sounds the simplest,” he said, thinking about the boxing gym in his basement.
“Sure, that’s a really good starter archetype.” She reached across the book and tapped a blank line at the top of his paper labeled “Archetype.”
As he wrote down “Fighter,” he asked, “Is there an option to be a boxer?”
