You Are Now in a Dark Chamber
2024; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/thr.2024.a924117
ISSN1939-9774
Autores ResumoYou Are Now in a Dark Chamber Shannon Robinson (bio) The campaign had been a difficult one. Beset by vicious creatures and bad luck, the venturing party had sustained many a gruesome wound, and their resources were sorely depleted, their steeds long gone—eaten by owlbears. Something good needed to happen, like, soon. George and his friends had been playing the same game for months; Dungeons & Dragons was like that. Nathan, who had lived next door to George since they were five, had designed the adventure, basing it on one of the many available booklets. As for George and the other boys, Bunty and Davis, much as they liked the idea of calling the shots, none of them actually wanted to be responsible for writing the multilevel backstories, mapping out the terrain, plotting potential scenarios, setting up all the details of the monsters and magical objects, and then guiding the party through the adventure. So Nathan was the Dungeon Master, the DM. "Deigned" was the high-rent verb that came to George's mind with regard to Nathan's role: he wore his authority like a cross between a hair shirt and a toreador's cape and kept his dice organized in a plastic tray. In the background, the furnace ticked while they all sat around the scuffed table, a dining room castoff exiled to the basement. "The rumpus room," Nathan's mother called it with what sounded, to George, like hopefulness. It made Nathan cringe every time. She would not buy him an Atari, but she was happy for him to host any number of "nice friends." At last, after defeating the remnants of the orc army, forging a molten river of poison, scaling the crumbling fortress walls while fighting off harpies, the boys had managed to navigate past the ancient, curse-laden booby traps to the center of the throne room and crack open the chest containing—they could only assume—the Lost Treasure of Shenrobbah. George's playing character, a half-elf wizard fighter named Gargan the Grievous, claimed rights to the first rifle through the goods since it was his spell that had finally shattered the enchanted lock when strength had failed to do the job. Amid the protests of his fellow adventurers, he pulled out a glittering gold belt and strapped it on. "… only to discover," Nathan said, rolling the dice, "that it is, in fact, a Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity, which instantly transposes the sex of the wearer. In this case, male becomes female. Henceforth, Gargan will be known as Gargana." Nathan sat smugly, his maps and notes screened by a propped-up folder. [End Page 156] "Fuck you! You can't do that!" George wasn't usually one to break protocol: for the most part, he managed a kind of courtly diction, echoing Nathan's. But this, George felt, sucked mightily. Bunty was laughing so hard he could barely speak. Putting it on a little, George thought—as usual. "Your paladin did advise caution," Nathan said. "I did." Davis's character, Theo the Defender, was always advising caution. Actually, what he'd mumbled was "Way to be greedy." "I thought it was a Girdle of Giant Strength!" George said. That particular item had been rumored to be among Shenrobbah's riches. "Nice girdle!" Bunty's character was a half-orc assassin named Hess (which stood for HS, which stood for Hulk Smash.) "Now wait a minute—" Bunty composed himself, cleared his throat. "So, is he a hot woman?" The women on the covers of the D&D booklets typically featured Playboy-type women in metal breastplates and little else—Women without Pants, they called them, or WWPs. The wistful look in Bunty's eye gave George the creeps. "Before you squander any spells," Nathan said, "I should inform you that only a wish spell will reverse the power of the Girdle. This is common lore." "So I could resurrect from the dead easier." "It's in the Guide," Nathan said. The Dungeon Master's Guide was, to Nathan, the word of God. That is, the word of one Gary Gygax, the game's creator. "Show-us … your-tits!" Bunty was now drumming on...
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