KENNETH OPPEL - Rackspace Technology



Oppel, Kenneth. “Anything Can Happen.”

From Guys White for Guys Read ed. Jon Scieszka,

Copyright © 2005, Reprinted by permission of Penguin Group.

I'd never have agreed to it, if I’d had anything better to do. It was Friday night, and l made sure to arrive good and late, so everyone would think it had been a real struggle for me to get here. Brady answered the door.

“All right! Come on in, everyone’s here.” l followed him downstairs to the rec room. Most of the lights were off. In the gloom, a bunch of guys were sitting around a big table, looking pretty revved up. They all had pads of graph paper and little Ziploc bags of dice and open manuals filled with charts and tables, and they were all making notes and talking about potions and hit points and magical weapons. It was a real geek-fest. l recognized them from school, but I’d never really talked to them. The only reason l hung around with Brady was because we’d been friends since we were five. Actually, he was pretty much the only kid I hung around with since, for reasons unknown to me, the cool kids hadn’t yet realized how very cool I was.

“Grab a seat beside Zolganeth,” Brady said to me.

“Zolganeth?”

“We don’t use real names here.”

“You're Kidding.”

“It makes the game more fun. I’m Racknor.” He pointed.

“That's Wolf Larson, and Van Doom.”

“What about him?” l said, nodding to the guy at the end of the table, half hidden behind a wall of propped-up books.

“He doesn`t have a name.”

“Why not?”

“He’s the Dungeon Master. He controls the game.”

“What’s with the wall?”

“So we can’t see the maps or anything. You should pick a name for yourself.”

“Biff.”

“Well, um, maybe another name?”

“What’s wrong with Biff?” l knew l was being a jerk. “How about Maximus?”

“Excellent name,” said Van Doom.

“We set up a character for you,” Brady said, “just to save some time. He’s really cool. A third level elf Mindslayer.”

“Do l get a sword?”

“A big one. And you've got psionic powers, too.”

“What’s that?”

“You can zap things just by using your brain.”

I’d never played a game like this before. There was no board, and no pieces to move around. We were adventurers, plundering an ancient tomb. The Dungeon Master described everything to us, and we had to make our own map and tell him what we wanted to do. There was a lot of dice rolling. I liked the dice. I’d never seen dice that were eight-sided and four-sided and twenty-sided. As we played, l kept picking them up, rattling them around in my hand, feeling all the sides with my thumb.

We skulked around the tomb, looking for treasure and secret passageways. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing, and they kept trying to explain things to me, but I pretended to only half-listen, because I didn’t want them to think I was too interested. The monsters were the best part. We got to fight with orcs and carrion crawlers and sometimes they’d be carrying bags of gold or magical armor or potions. After we defeated a swarm of mutant cockroaches, we found, strapped to one of their shells, a map of the tombs marked with a big “X" and a scribbled note about an unimaginable hoard of treasure: gold, silver, and glistening gems.

I was actually starting to get into it, and then Van Doom fell into a big pit. Everyone started arguing about the best way to res-cue him. I just wanted to haul him out of there and find that amazing treasure room. But everyone started arguing about whether we should use up one of our levitate spells to bring Van Doom up, or if someone should just go down on a rope, and who that would be, and if there were booby traps, and who was wearing the lightest armor. And suddenly the game was no fun anymore, because it wasn`t a game, but a bunch of geeks in a basement rec room. The treasure didn't seem that interesting anymore—because somewhere out there in the real world on Friday night, there were all these amazing things going on.

“I can’t believe it,” I said. "Everyone‘s hanging out at the food court and movie theaters and having a good time, and talking and laughing and looking at girls and drinking milk shakes and I’m sitting around in a basement with Van Doom and Racknor.”

Everyone was staring at me like I’d escaped from a lunatic asylum.

“We’re geeks! Don’t you see that?”

“Come on, Jack,” Brady said. “I’ll loan you my magic broadsword.”

“I don’t want a magic broadsword! I don’t want extra hit points! I want a life! I want something real to happen to me!”

“Something drops on your head,” said the Dungeon Master.

“You`ve been making so much noise that you didn’t notice the giant spider slowly dropping toward you.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Before you can strike, it sinks its fangs into you.” I heard dice rolling behind the screen. "Lose eighteen hit points.”

“From one lousy spider bite?”

“It’s a giant spider, Maximus,” said Wolf Larson reasonably.

“l slice it in half with my sword,” I said angrily. No way was I going to be eaten by a big bug on a Friday night.

“It’s nimble,” said the Dungeon Master. “It jumps higher along its thread, and then drops back down at you.”

“I attack again.” I looked at the other players. “Aren’t you guys gonna help me out here?”

“I’m in a pit,” Van Doom said.

“You manage to chop off a couple of its legs,” said the Dungeon Master, rolling, “but it strikes again. You lose another twelve hit points.” More dice clattered against the tabletop.

“And unfortunately its venom has entered your bloodstream.

Roll a twenty-sided.”

I rolled a two. All the other players were silent.

“You’re dead,” said the Dungeon Master.

“I can’t be dead! I’ve got psionic powers and stuff.”

“You never said you were using them.”

“Well, obviously, I’d use them if I were fighting for my life.”

The Dungeon Master just shrugged.

“Where’s it say I’m dead?” I demanded. I stood up and came around the table to where the Dungeon Master sat.

“Nowhere,” he said. “Anything can happen. That’s what makes it so great.”

Behind the screen were all his maps and notes and his dice.

I’d never seen so many dice before in my life. It was like a treasure trove.

They were all different colors, translucent.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“The game goes on.”

“Without me.”

“We might find a potion or a healer who can bring you back from the dead,” Racknor said.

“Expensive,” said Van Doom from his pit.

“Yeah, resurrection potions always are,” said Racknor solemnly. “But stick around if you want. We might find some-thing before long.“

“No, I should get going?”

Brady walked me to the door. “We play every Friday,” he said.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. I doubted I'd be back, but on my way home, I kept thinking about the Dungeon Master's dice—how they'd glittered in the dim light like gemstones.

Biography:

Grew up: Port Alberni and Victoria on Vancouver Island,

British Columbia, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Now lives: Toronto, Canada

Random fact: Went through a video game addiction at four-teen but luckily got his first book out of it

Selected Bibliography:

Firewing

Summing

Airborn

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