played."

Whit nodded. He'd heard that story before.

"Well, after the game was over, but before we left, he came up to me and Mike—he was the other guy from the D&D club I was in—and said that we'd impressed him with how well we'd done, that we were some of the guys capable of appreciating this new game he'd found."

"Castles and Cauldrons."

Andrew nodded. "Yeah. He made it sound like it was a step beyond the usual LARPing. And I wanted that. I told him I wanted in. Mike…Mike wasn't so sure. He told Niall that he didn't have time for another gaming group, and that the LARP we were already in was about his speed. At which point Niall nodded, said that he understood, then gave me a cardup with little twists and turns to draw you in."

"Len mentioned 'interferers'—people who would try to stop the game from being played. Did you always play in somebody's house?"

Andrew shook his head. "No. The main reason the introductory night was at Niall's place was because it was character setup night, and the fact that it's customary for parties to meet at an inn or tavern or someplace like that. Most of the time we played outdoors."

"Where?"

"Fields, forests—y'know, places where there weren't many people. We only ever actually had someone stop us from playing once, and that was because it was dark and we didn't realize that his house was only a hundred yards away, and Len got a little loud when he spellcast."

Andrew paused. "That was another weird