Steve and Jordan sat at a booth in a Denny’s. Jordan had the Moons Over My Hammy. Steve got a cheeseburger.
“So...Sam, huh?” said Jordan.
“Yep.” said Steve.
“How long have you felt this way?”
“Ah...when did we first meet again?” said Steve, grinning sheepishly.
Jordan chuckled. “That was several months ago, man. You haven’t made a move yet?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” said Steve. “We’ve got a great thing going on here, with your game. And I don’t want to ruin that, and I’m afraid, if I ask her out, I will.”
Jordan thought on this for a moment. “Well, that works both ways, right? Since you have been hanging with her for a couple of months now, you’re just asking her to hang out, one-on-one, right? You can structure it as not a date, but just two friends hanging out.”
Steve pondered this, then said, “Well I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I DO want to go out with her.”
“You would be,” said Jordan. “You just wouldn’t call it that until after it’s over, see? If, say, you take her out to dinner and a movie, and it goes great? It’s a date! If it goes poorly? It’s two friends, hanging out. Nothing lost.”
“Hmm,” said Steve. “That’s not bad. I can do that.”
“This ain’t my first rodeo, Steve,” said Jordan. Though truthfully, it sort of was. He’d played games before with married couples, boyfriends, and girlfriends, but never presided over a courtship blooming within his own game. Jordan wasn’t trying to lie for himself, though; he was merely trying to put Steve at ease.
“Yeah? You’ve played matchmaker to the geeks before?” said Steve.
Jordan took a big bite out of his sandwich. In the silence that followed, he changed topics. “So have you been enjoying yourself these past few months?”
“I wouldn’t be coming back if I didn’t!” Steve said. “Good times.”
“What do you like most about it?” said Jordan.
“Well, I like how I get to hang out with people, and there’s no pressure to ‘click.’ We all have this thing, this game, that we can share our attention and efforts on. So there’s no awkward conversations, no trying to make anything work. But at the same time, we get to socialize. It’s a low-pressure way to meet and make friends with people, I guess is what I’m saying.
Jordan took another bite. He wouldn’t admit this to himself, but Jordan was not completely happy with that response. He wanted to hear about how clever and amazing the game itself was, or how engaging as a GM he was. He did not want to hear about how easy it made networking for Steve. He felt like Steve was somehow missing the point of role-playing games.
Steve picked up on this. “Of course, it doesn’t hurt that you’re an awesome GM.”
Jordan smiled. “Thanks. But you don’t know that, you’ve never played in another game before!”
“I don’t need to to know your know your shit,” said Steve. “I’ve heard the others talk about other games. It seems like you really know your stuff compared to others out there.”
Jordan relented. “Yeah, there are a lot of GMs out there who are, sometimes, just trying to get something out of the game that isn’t actually there. Something that isn’t necessarily even supposed to be there. Like, the whole God Complex thing? Some GMs really get off on that, thinking they’re these omnipotent storytelling deities, lording it over their players. I never saw the point of that, personally. I think of myself as just directing the story you guys are making!”
This, of course, is bullshit. Jordan (who, again, would deny this if ever confronted with it) considers himself a master storyteller. The idea of directing the stories of his players, if followed through Jordan’s brain, would lead right back to Jordan planting the seeds for those stories himself. Jordan thinks of himself as a manipulator, getting the players to go where he wants them to go for the story, but all the while making them think it’s their idea.
“Well the whole thing was thrown together by you,” said Steve. “If you didn’t study the book and write the adventures, there wouldn’t be a game. So even if you just direct our stories, it’s you who set them up, right?”
Jordan, grinning, sighed wistfully. “Yeah, I suppose that’s right. Thanks, man.”
* * * * *
That Sunday, while Jordan set up, Samantha showed up early.
“Hey, Jordan,” said Samantha.
“Hey, Sam,” said Jordan. In light of his conversation the other afternoon with Steve, he wasn’t sure what the right play was here. Should he try and hook up his friend? Or should he keep out of it? He settled on talking around it.
“You ready to play some more Numenera today?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” she said.
A brief silence.
“You’re here a little early, this morning,” said Jordan.
“Yeah, I got up early…” Samantha went on to talk about the adjustments to her schedule as part of Daylight Savings Time. As she spoke, Jordan marveled at how much more talkative Samantha had become in the months since she’d joined the group. She was down-right meek when she first walked into the library, thought Jordan. Now she’s talking my ear off about Daylight Savings Time. She must really like what we’re doing here.
“Yeah, that happens to me around this time every year, too,” said Jordan, only dimly aware of what Samantha had said. Suddenly, he snapped into focus. “Hey, now that it’s just us here, we’ve got a good chance to talk about your character.”
“Okay,” she said. “Why? Is something wrong?”
“No!” said Jordan, laughing. “Of course not! I wanted to talk about your character’s past. I think we can weave something into this adventure or the next one from it.”
“Oh!” said Samantha. She smiled. “Sure.”
“So, your nano…” Jordan rifled through his papers. He pulled a pencil out of his backpack. “She’s this real tough type, like an extreme explorer, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I picture her like, almost like a spelunker, you know? Diving into caves and stuff.”
“So exploring the svenskar tunnels has probably been right up your character’s alley, huh?”
“Yes, it has!”
“Okay...so what if we enter this chamber, and it turns out you’ve been there before?”
“Oh, cool!” said Samantha. “That would be great!”
“Okay,” said Jordan. “I’m just going to leave it at that. I want you to come up with when you’ve been there before, why you were there, and what you found there. You can come up with that stuff whenever you want. Whenever you and the others show up in a chamber, all you have to do is speak up, and I’ll just follow your lead.”
“Really?” said Samantha. “I can make up anything?”
“Really,” said Jordan. “I mean, work with me here; don’t give me something I can’t use, but I trust you will come up with something plenty interesting.”
“How do I know what you can use?” she said.
“Well, if you’re in doubt, just send me a message or we can take a break and talk about it outside before it happens. Basically you want to give me something with some hooks in it, you know? Some blank spaces that I can fill in. You want to avoid saying something like ‘I was in this tunnel a few years ago, there were some cyphers here, I took them all and moved on.’ Have something interesting going on in that chamber, right? Something unresolved, if possible. Think you can do that?”
“Hmm,” Samantha, finger on her chin, green eyes turned up to the fluorescent lights, looked comically like she was posing for a college poster. “I’ll see what I can come up with.”
“Great,” said Jordan. Jordan really was confident that Samantha would come up with something. That wasn’t Jordan’s hubris...he would never imagine asking the analytical and over-thinking Kinsey to do something like this...but he knew Samantha was up to the challenge. She was clever and imaginative. No wonder Steve liked her, Jordan thought. I might just like her, too.
Holy shit, Jordan thought. I might just like her too!
* * * * *
The session ran a little awkwardly for Jordan. Thoughts about Sam kept circling his head, intruding on his creative process, and he had to mentally bat them away. It led to him feeling quite distracted that afternoon. All the other players seemed to like the session enough, but Jordan knew it wasn’t his best.
As the session came to an end and everyone began packing their things, Kinsey began with yet another assessment of the Numenera game system, chatting to everyone who would listen, but with most of his thoughts addressed to Jordan. Jordan nodded, but his attention was actually across the table, focused on Steve and Samantha. Jordan couldn’t make out their conversation because Kinsey wouldn’t keep his god damn mouth shut, but Jordan saw that Steve was trying to be cool. He was making jokes. Somehow, though, it was working. Sam was laughing. She was not an easy laugh, but when she did, it was great. It was deep and hearty, and she seemed embarrassed by it, covering her mouth or face and trying to stop her whole body from trembling with laughter….
“So, what do you think?” said Kinsey.
“Um,” Jordan rapidly played back Kinsey’s scattered, neurotic ranting in his head. What the hell was he talking about? “You think this would all work better with The Strange?”
“Yeah,” said Kinsey. “I mean, don’t get me wrong...you’re doing great, I love this...but I just see the nuances of the system a little better utilized in The Strange.”
The Strange was another role-playing game, made by the same publisher as Numenera, co-written by the same author, and using the same mechanics. The fundamental difference was in setting...while Numenera was a bizarre hybrid of science-fantasy, The Strange had a slightly more contemporary science fiction feel to it. Jordan was very interested in the game, but committed to Numenera. Kinsey, who could never commit to just one game, was always talking about it.
Though Jordan ordinarily found himself annoyed with Kinsey’s inability to be completely content with anything, he actually found this discussion a nice distraction from where his mind was naturally heading, towards Samantha and Steve, as they waved goodbye to Jordan and walked out of the room together. He ended up staying in the conference room much longer than he intended with Kinsey. He finally managed to get the last word when Jordan suggested Kinsey run a single-adventure session of The Strange during one of their breaks in the coming fall. Jordan knows a quick way to always get Kinsey to shut up was always to suggest he actually do something instead of just talking.
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