Chapter 11

Saturday I woke up, and when I went to grab the newspaper it was in one of those plastic bags, and it was drizzling. Well, there went the idea of going to the drive-in tonight. So I brought the paper in and pulled out the Entertainment section to see what was playing in one of the cinemas.

Hmm, there was a report in there about GameCon, a local gaming convention. That sounded interesting, as I had never been to a gaming convention before and was wondering what they were like. I went to the den and got out the Thomas Guide (a thick atlas that was full of detailed maps of LA) and had to look up where it was. OK, so now I knew where La Cañada was. Not that far, maybe a 30 minute trip each way.

I made some calls, and everybody agreed it sounded good, I was just finishing loading up my backpack with gamebooks when I heard a knock on the door. I went downstairs and Holly was already there, bouncing on her feet in excitement. I give her a hug and then pointed out the article and let her read it as I filled my dad in on the change of plans because of the weather. He thought that was a great idea, then once again he pulled out his wallet and handed me $40.

“Pete, in case you didn’t look closely that is a $10 admission each. That is only for one day, $15 for two. Now I don’t know if you guys will go both days, but for you and Linda that is $20 to $30, plus food and gas. Consider part of that an advance on your allowance next week, and have a good time.”

We each gave him a hug and headed off to get Linda. She was excited, and when Rosie asked how much it was, I told her the prices. “Are you guys going for just today, or tomorrow also?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I’m thinking we can check it out first, then decide. It may be dull as hell and only the afternoon is enough. I guess we’re playing this one by ear.”

She nodded, and handed Linda $40. Heading to pick up Keith, Holly nervously said that she only brought $10. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ve got no problem paying your way, you can pay me back later. I know you’re good for it, you did pay me back for the pictures after all.”

Keith climbed in, and chatting about what’s to come I drove us to La Cañada. And the drive is actually pretty nice. The drive through the canyon to get there is kind of pretty, and for LA the traffic was really light. I pulled in at the address, and it actually what appeared to be a wedding hall. When we went in, I asked if we decided to go the next day if we could just pay the extra $5 and they said no problem. Turns out Holly did not need to worry, Keith paid for both of them, and I paid for Linda and me.

We spent the next hour just going from room to room. There were six of them of various sizes, from small ones the size of a classroom, to one the size of a basketball court. We saw games with hundreds of lead soldiers in historic battles, fantasy battles, one that was WWII with both tanks and infantry. Another room was board games. But board games I had never seen before. One was WWII and after watching several minutes of I knew I had to get it. We then found the retail room.

It was like paradise. Table after table set up by store owners, selling miniatures, books, comics, and anything else imaginable. We looked around and Linda got a set of opaque dice. No problem, you can never have enough dice after all. There was a guy selling packs of 50 generic character sheets and I bought two of those, one of which I was going into Linda’s notebook. I also got a module because it had a village map inside, more than for the module itself. I saw Linda looking at some Player’s Handbooks and quickly called Holly over. I whispered in Holly’s ear that I had already bought Linda one for her birthday, and to talk her out of getting one. Holly smiled at me and nodded, distracting Linda from them to go look at some figures with her. Keith bought the same Thieves World set I’d gotten and was going through it and laughing at some of the encounters.

Shortly after we had wandered into the large game room and went from table to table. We sat down and we were going through our haul when a guy came up and asked if we were starting a game. Well, that was not planned but why not? So I borrowed the books from Keith (he had all of them, including the DM and Monster Manual), pulled out my adventure from the other night, and started to get things organized.

I handed Kaos to Holly, and soon we had five other players join us. One of them was a rather buxom college girl, which distracted the other guys much more than it did me or Keith. And soon we were recreating the game. Thankfully my friends were able to pretend it was all new to them, and everybody had a laugh at the first punch line, as well as annoying the dwarves by singing “Hi-Ho” over and over again.

Now they were kinda accepting that Holly was a Val, it was hard to miss when she talked. But as I had suggested she was vamping it up to the max when she was acting as Kaos. We had attracted quite a crowd by this point, and when one bystander asked what kind of character she was playing, she said in a perfect deadpan “Like duh dude, don’t cha know? Like for real, I’m a Valley Elf!”

I swear half the room came over to see what all the laughter was about as everybody bust up laughing. Keith at that time broke into song, sounding like Frank Zappa as she sang over and over “Valley Elf, she’s a Valley Elf!”, and Holly broke into a verse about how badly orcs dressed. “Like fer sure fer sure! Like, that armor is like totally grody to the max, ya know?”

There were about thirty people still watching as we continued towards the end, and once again the first blast from the second wand produced the expected fireball, as this part after all was all scripted and Holly was just rolling the dice for show. Then when the second produced butterflies the room went into an uproar. This time Kaos fired again however, and a rhino appeared and charged the orcs.

Not a clean sweep like the first time, but the remaining orcs beat a hasty retreat and the party got loot from the corpses left behind and the carts the fleeing orcs had abandoned. Everybody was soon asking me where I came up with the idea, and I blamed it on too much Monty Python. And a few guys were shocked that this was the first dungeon I had made, and had only first played it two nights before. More than a few said they were going to steal my ideas, and I had no problem with that. I even showed them the books I had used for the random city encounters.

One guy who was around 40 came up wearing slacks and a polo shirt, and I could see it was a genuine Lacoste and not one of the Le Tigre’ ripoffs. He shook my hand, then offered me his business card. He said that he caught most of the game, and said if I could flesh it out a bit more he might be interested in buying it to publish as a module. I showed him the books I had recently gotten, and he said “Good books, but it’s just a copy really. If you go to the sales room look for ‘Cities’ by Midkemia Press. That’s the original one, this is just a licensed copy.”

We talked for a bit, and he told me he ran a game publishing company. “Now this was a good start, but too short to actually release as it is. We would need it to play for at least three times as long. I know many dungeons run for two to three hours, but we try for at least six to nine with ours. Make this three times longer so it could be played on three sessions, and we could probably make a deal.” I was rather stoked, and said I would be finishing the second part next month. After it was playtested I would mail him a copy and see what he thought. We shook hands and he said that would be fine, and I told the others.

We watched a few other games being played, but none of which seemed as fun as the one we just did. We did join in on one most of the way through, but soon it was obvious this was “Monty Hall” style. Kill the orc and you get, a +5 Flaming Sword and a Ring of Wishes! So we soon bailed. We headed back to the sales room and indeed I did find a copy of Cities and got it. As well as a booklet about forty pages long about different character classes and other things not included in the original game. Like Barbarian, Knight, and Hedge Mage along with others. And the last thing I selected was a board game called “Dungeon!”. It was used so I got it for a good price, and it looked like it might be fun to play with Mandy. But not liking the generic game pieces I looked through a box of discount stuff another vendor had and selected about a dozen lead miniatures to play with instead.

By this time it was after 6, and we all decided we had enough for the day. We decided that this was fun for one day, but we could not imagine coming back tomorrow. But there was a flier for another one in February. That one was over a three day weekend, and was in Anaheim. We wondered if the parents would go for us spending the weekend there.

“Well, my mom might,” Holly said. “If we got one room for Linda and me, and another one for you two. But dad would then ask how they could be sure that we actually stayed in those rooms.” We all nodded at that, as we looked at each other’s partner. Yeah, that would probably be exactly what happened. Linda would most assuredly join me, as Keith would join Holly. And that then brought a small stiffening of the old flag pole as I realized what the “joining” might likely actually mean by then.

We headed back to the car, and decided Keith’s idea of splurging at Farrell’s Ice Cream sounded good to everybody. Thankfully it had stopped raining, and it had warmed up a bit. There was still a breeze, but it was warm and drying everything off. Some burgers and a Trough later (a big bowl with six scoops of ice cream, two bananas, and every topping imaginable) we got back in the car, and were on our way back to the runway.

Now my car was not as comfortable as my dad’s was the week before, but we made do just fine. After kissing for a few minutes Linda whispered into my ear “I’m thirsty”, and reached down to open my fly. I slid the seat back, and opened her blouse before sighing as she took me into her mouth. Gently I had her slip one arm after the other out of her blouse, and soon I had her topless and was caressing her all over as she was languidly sucking my cock.

I peeked back and saw Keith was watching, it was impossible to hide what she was doing this time as my car had bucket seats, and much of Linda (including her breasts hanging down) were clearly visible from the back. But Holly had her own hand in his pants and was licking his chest and nipples, so I doubt he was paying too much attention.

I then leaned my seat back a bit more, and was running one hand through her hair as the other was alternating between caressing her face, and her back. I noticed that she’d been growing her hair longer, and wondered why that was. But I wasn’t able to keep that thought for very long as she was pushing down further, taking me back so I was barely entering her throat. She finally was able to take over half of my length in, then pulled back and resumed sucking and stroking.

I heard a rustling again, and peeked back to see Keith’s pants and shorts around his knees, and Holly’s bare back as she was slipping between him and me and obviously stroking him without clothing in the way. As she bent down I returned my attention to Linda again.

I groaned as she was now regularly taking me halfway in, and stroking faster. I whispered that I could not last much longer if she kept that up, and she moved her hand even faster. I got the idea, as that couldn’t have been a comfortable position for her. I stretched my legs out as straight as I could, and lifted my bottom from the seat, letting my feet and back-shoulders hold me up.

My hand was sliding through her hair as I whispered “Baby, now!” right before I exploded in her mouth. The slurps from the front were now even louder than from the back as she took everything I gave her, and looking at me as she pulled her head back. After she visibly swallowed I pulled her lips to mine and kissed her as deeply as I could.

She tasted sweet, like mint and slightly salty with what I had just given her. We kissed deeply as she cuddled in my lap, then leaned her head against my chest and we cuddled for a bit. I peeked back and saw Keith watching us for a moment before his eyes closed and his back arched up, obviously caught in his own pleasure.

About 10 minutes later we were all taking a break from kissing and were just cuddling up with our sweeties, and talking quietly about the day. Keith said that the agent he had met on Halloween was coming by next week to hear his band, and I wondered if there was any money to be made by a neophyte game designer. Shortly afterwards we got ourselves presentable and went for a walk in the cool air, arms wrapped around our partners. It was rather warm, but we still only took one lap before Keith and Holly were back inside the car, and I pulled Linda to the front and had her back pressed against the front bumper, glad I had washed Scout the day before the rain started so she was not very dirty. I was soon pressing into her as her butt was pressed against Scout.