Clarion West

­Michael is still at Readercon (or possibly on his way home by now), but he left this story for Sunday. Sorry I'm posting it so late; I spent the weekend killing hornets.­

While in Paris on business, the German historical archeologist Fabian Falatyk received a tweet from the elderly curator of the Musée jeux de rôle moderne: D&D not what seemz:  Gygax hid plot world domN8shun  Hard 2 b-leev?  lol  ;-)

But when he got to the curator’s office, the man was dead, stabbed through the heart by a Klingon bat’leth.  A Sumerian D-17 die lay by his outstretched hand.  What were the odds?  Falatyk knew what it meant.

Thus began a frenetic adventure in which, joining forces with a gifted French cryptogamologist, Falatyk bounced about every country in western Europe like a silver ball in some vast, mystic pinball machine.  In Monaco, he was texted by Cory Doctorow to drop the case.  In the Vatican, he had a near-fatal encounter with an albino Cleric Assassin.  In San Marino, he was saved from drowning by a strangely reticent Steve Jobs.  Everywhere, he found clues visible for all to see – advertisements on the back covers of comic books, fanfic on the Web, demonic Clickables being sacrificed in black masses – and yet cleverly disguised by their creator, the late Gary Gygax, to escape detection.

Every clue led back to a global Originalist conspiracy to roll back gameplaying to the supposedly pristine condition of the first published version of Dungeons & Dragons.

After a climactic battle in World of Warcraft, Falatyk discovered the terrible secret behind the Gygax Code:  D&D was originally based on Monopoly, only played collectively and with dragons and dwarves and other fantasy markers instead of utilities and hotels, and thus its copyright properly belonged to Parker Brothers.  Realizing that if this information was ever made public, all gaming would quickly cease to be, Falatyk and the cryptogamologist agreed to keep silent about this forever.  Also to have hot sex.

Then it was off to Japan for the sequel.

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