This story is an example of the kinds of things that can happen in a fantasy role-playing game such as “Gods & Monsters”. The story would have been “played out” while sitting comfortably around a dining room table or on living room couches.
No single story can encompass all of the things that can happen in a role-playing game, however. I hope you enjoyed the story, and I also hope that it entices you into wanting to play at least one game session where you are in control of the story. Where you play a character such as Charlotte, Gralen, Will, or Sam and you choose the actions they make, the secrets they expose, the ruins they explore, and the things they say to each other.
The story is based on the introductory adventure “The Lost Castle of the Astronomers.” Playing in that game after you read this story will test your role-playing skills. Can you role-play a character who doesn’t have your knowledge of the story? Can you direct your character’s actions, without using the knowledge that you, as a player who has read the story and as a person from the twenty-first century, have? And what would you do differently than they did? “Will Stratford” took quite a risk volunteering to hold off the goblin skeletons, for example. Would you have had your character make that choice within the story? Was there a better way? A more appropriate way? If you identified with Sam, would you have been as impetuous when you found the secret treasure trove?
In a “Gods & Monsters” story, each of those four characters would be played by a different individual. You might choose to play Sam, the “scout.” Three of your friends would each choose one of the other characters. A fifth individual, the Guide, will have created the town of Hightown and described it to you and your friends; will have created the goblin tribes of the southern forest; will have created every room, treasure, and monster in the lost castle of the Astronomers.
Every last bit of that world, from the characters to the grass beneath their feet, is under your control. What happens in this story is up to you. You and your friends.
Their story doesn’t end here. This was not an epic adventure. Most adventures won’t be. An epic adventure can’t fit into a single night, or even into a few nights. But the adventure can, when combined with other adventures, become an epic adventure. If “The Lord of the Rings” were role-played, it would take quite a few gaming sessions to play out, with quite a few individual adventures within the full story. (Especially if you include “The Hobbit”, which itself includes a number of adventures that build to the confrontation of five armies.)
What might happen next? There are a number of possibilities that the characters could explore, or that could grow into dangers needing elimination. There are the strange creatures of the mist, Druid stones scattered about west Highland, a magical sword with unknown writings on it. Gralen’s new spells might need new materials that he has to seek in far off lands. There’s the reference to a previously unknown part of another castle in the north. And, of course, there’s now a castle in the south filled with books and possibly more treasure--now guarded by the awakened goblin skeletons.
The choice is yours.