“Wait, so we’re all dead and it’s over? Is this really how Creatures and Caverns is played?” Anne asked, glaring at Gary. Underneath her exaggerated outrage was a streak of genuine irritation.

“There’s a death’s door rule, that you can save people who have been knocked unconscious, but that doesn’t help us if we’re all down – right?” asked Frank, looking at Gary for confirmation. Everyone at the table tensed at the awkward situation.

“That’s a rule in Advanced C&C, not Basic. I told you we were playing old school rules, when a character is at zero hit points they’re dead. TECHNICALLY that would be the end, but don’t worry – we’re doing something a little differently. When they first published this back in the 70’s it was a pretty brutal system. When your character died you were just expected to roll up another one, which is pretty fast to do. It isn’t like now when you spend a few hours creating a character and there are a bunch of rules to make sure that no one ever dies.

“But what did we do wrong?” asked Anne, continuing her theatrical glower. “We rolled badly then we all die. That isn’t any fun!”

Gary held up her hand trying to calm her down “Like I said, it isn’t over. Old school role-playing came out of wargaming – where you reenact battles with little metal figures. Early on it was really brutal.”

“Also we were pretty unlucky,” Margaret suggested. “We got a lot of bad rolls. We managed to kill one of them, so maybe if we’d had a few better rolls we might have won.”

Gary smiled and admitted “It was pretty unlikely that you were going to win that fight. If we’d been starting the game at an earlier point you might have chosen to be more careful about wandering around in the forest, but with me starting you right as the battle broke out and Lady Grace getting bit immediately, there wasn’t a whole lot you could do.”

“Because you’re a mean Dragon Master or Cavern Lord or whatever you’re called. It’s your fault we’re dead!”

“Yes, I’m terrible,” admitted Gary insincerely. Trying to resume the game he began narrating again, “In a timeless, featureless void each of you suddenly springs into existence. You have an awareness that there are five of you, but have no understanding of who or what any of you are. You feel intuitively that you’ve just been created and that each of you is a blue ball of energy.”

“In the span of an instance – you KNOW that no time has passed – you’re suddenly filled with months’ worth of interactions with one another. It feels as though you’ve been floating in this void, getting to know one another intimately, talking about everything you can think of. However, you simultaneously realize that this is just knowledge that has appeared in your minds – you haven’t actually spent more than a few moments with one another. Each of you develops your own personality and gains an excellent understanding of the others. You know the group as well as family members would.”

“After another moment, you’re flooded with another set of experiences and, again, know immediately that they didn’t actually occur, memories were just created in your minds. The new knowledge informs you that you’re time sprites, divine creatures created by Chronos the god of time.”

“Time sprites?” asks Kate. “Like pixies?”

“More like angels” Gary clarified, continuing “but the lowest rung of divine beings. The least powerful messenger that a god might send into the world. Your awareness is flooded with a meeting with Chronos, which you know never happened, where he explains in detail that he’s sending you into the world to avert its destruction in 5 years time. The wizard Venma tries to ascend to godhood, but rather than just taking her place among the gods, she attempts to usurp control of the entirety of the heavens and put herself above all others. Her spell doesn’t work properly and instead reality is obliterated. Chronos is sending you to a point in time 5 years before this and putting you into the world to avert this from happening.”

Looking at Anne, Gary switched to a more conversational tone. “You said you didn’t like that reality was destroyed at the end of time in this game world. Now you have a chance to change it!”

“So that’s our mission, to stop Venma from destroying reality?” Margaret asked.

“Well,” Gary began to clarify, “that’s your mandate as divine servants from the god who created you. You each have your own personality, so you can go about it in whatever manner you think best. It wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense if one of you just decided, you know, to join Venma and help him.”

“I thought Venma was a woman,” Frank asked.

“Yeah, when we talked about the world last time Venma was a woman,” Kate agreed.

“Uh, yeah. Venma is a woman – sorry. I keep forgetting that this world is a matriarchy,” Gary acknowledged. Quickly recovering his confidence he added, “Of course, there might be some confusion in the historical records about Venma’s gender. Either way – Chronos is telling you she’s a woman, a magic user and will destroy the world in 5 years to the day and that you’re supposed to stop it.”

“I want each of you to think about the characters you created,” he continued.

“Which you just killed off!” Anne chimed in.

“Yes, which I just killed off,” Gary agreed, “I want you to think about why your character would be willing to follow the will of the gods. It could be that they’re very pious or that they’re very pragmatic – there’s no reason to try to fight gods, or whatever but each of them have a reason why they wouldn’t oppose the will of the gods, why they’d go along with them. Frank, shall we start with you?”

“Well, since Gevot is a thief, I guess he would just be very pragmatic. He’s decided that it’s in his best interest to go along with the gods’ will.”

“Well, Hernan was always interested in Human gods. Elves don’t have their own gods, right?” Dave answered.

“Right, Elves were created by the wizard Elf centuries ago. As magical creations they’re viewed as not having a soul and don’t have gods. After they die they don’t go to the afterlife. Some worship Elf as a creator of sorts, but it’s unknown whether or not he actually ascended to godhood. Dwarf created the Dwarves and Hobbit created the Halflings,” Gary thought back to the previous session’s world building. “I think that’s what we all agreed, right?”

“Yeah, I think so,” agreed Dave. “So, Hernan has come to the human areas to learn more about the human gods.”

“You aren’t from the new world like the humans in the group are. You would have been hired in the city of Hope or at the Frontier Fort as a non-human mercenary by Lady Grace to join the squad. All the human characters are from the new world.”

“Ok,” said Dave.

After each of the players had detailed their character’s motivation for following the gods’ will, Gary prepared to launch into the game narration again.

“So, all of a sudden you’re back in time a couple of minutes, right before the spider first attacked Lady Grace.”

“What do you call people like Lady Grace again?” asked Margaret.

“NPCs, which stands for non-player characters,” answered Gary tersely, annoyed at the interruption.

“That’s why the alt-right websites call liberals NPCs, because we don’t matter,” Margaret added smirking at the foolishness of it.

“Ok, so you’re back before the fight started,” Gary continued, trying to get the game back on track. “All of a sudden you feel a rush into your consciousness of the time sprites joining your characters’ minds. It’s not like a possession, it’s more that suddenly you have both minds in your head at once, but they’re in perfect harmony and each instantly knows everything that the other mind knows.”

“So we know that spiders are about to kill us?” asked Anne.

“Yes, and how the fight played out before. Because you can anticipate the spiders’ attacks and strategies I’ll give you a +2 to attack and damage against them, and improve your AC by 2 when they attack you.”

“Oh, so we get to fight them again?” she clarified, to which Gary answered, “yeah”.