Page 68 of The Player Next Door

Clare shrugged. She hated thinking about that stupid online teaser and the humiliation that followed. Craig had been quietly sympathetic, but hadn’t seemed interested in steering the rest of the team away from putting the failure on her shoulders alone.

“It wasn’t so much that it was my fault, more that it was my first project, you know? We did what the company asked and it just didn’t pan out. But it set a tone with the rest of team, and I’ve been trying to dig myself out of that hole ever since.”

There had been red flags all over the project, mainly the fact that no one had any clear vision of the prospective audience. Theoretically, new players would find the one-shot, play the interactive version the web team set up, and then buy the game, but Clare had been tasked with crafting a story for players with characters who had already reached level twelve, meaning they had years of experience. If someone had years of experience, they were already playing the game, and if someone had no idea how to play the game, having no introduction to character classes, levels, or rules would be far too confusing. But Clare was too new at the job to point any of that out, so she’d done the best she could, and then bore the brunt of the failure.

In retrospect, maybe her problem was that she never managed to find her voice at work. She wanted so badly to work there that she had a tendency to make excuses for everyone else.

“And so that’s why he assigns you extra work?”

“Something like that.”

Logan frowned thoughtfully. “And this character is for a one-shot? But she doesn’t fit in with the rest of the team’s pitch?”

Clare shook her head. “Captain Ellis is a non-player character; someone to act as a guide to the world. I designed her as a sort of lady rogue, someone who sleeps around and has a paramour in every place the players could go. It’s just a gimmick, really, but it’s a different tone from a lot of our more recent stuff. She’s more playful and light, and so the one-shot I’m designing around her has that same tone. There’s a couple of different ports that players could call on, with some fairly loose storylines in place for each one if a Game Master is new at it or just wants to rely on someone else to call the shots for a little while.”

“And the other one is a horror movie?”

“It’s more complicated than that, but yeah. It’s a gore-fest, which is a huge hit with a lot of our existing players, for sure.”

“But it won’t bring in anyone new,” Logan ventured.

“No. Not in my opinion, anyway. We’ve already got them; why not branch out?”

“That makes sense from an economic standpoint,” Logan agreed. “And yeah, I don’t really see how those two pitches go together, or why no one else on your team could help you with yours.”

Clare leaned back in the lounge chair, wine glass clutched tightly in her hands. “I just really think Captain Ellis would be good for the game,” she said plaintively.

“You said she sleeps around, right?” Logan asked with the beginnings of a grin.

“She does, yeah.”

He leaned over and whispered conspiratorially. “She’s based on me, isn’t she? It’s okay, you can be honest.”

Clare’s stomach jolted uncomfortably. “I created her before we, uh, you know.”

“Had sex?” Logan supplied helpfully. “We’ve had a lot of it, you know. You should probably try saying it out loud.”

“Oh, I’m aware,” she said in an attempt to match his playful tone.

She should have known Logan would pick up on her discomfort. He drew his brows together. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “She isn’t based on me, is she? I was just kidding, but—seriously, what’s wrong?”

Clare licked her lips. This was as clear of a choice as she’d ever had regarding her Logan dilemma. If it were in a campaign, she knew how the group would push her to respond, and she also knew that lying to him now would be nearly unforgivable. She had been so sure that not telling him was the right thing to do, but that was before he had come so close to the truth. She was going to have to roll the dice.

Clare took a deep breath and set her glass down on the table between them. “Before I go any further, you have to know that this was all before I knew you.” He lifted his eyebrows but didn’t say anything. “When I first proposed Captain Ellis, Craig pointed out—well, I’m someone who is pretty monogamous, you know? That’s not a secret. Anyway, Craig—he didn’t say it outright, but, well, he said I needed more experience to handle a character like her.”

“Your boss. Told you you needed to have sex,” Logan said flatly.

“Of course not,” Clare replied, aware of how defensive she sounded. “He just pointed out that I’m sort of, um, sheltered, and that I could use more life experience.”

“And I was that experience.”

“I—yeah. That day in the elevator. It seemed like exactly the sort of thing I needed to . . .”

“To try,” Logan finished. His tone was hard to read, and he was staring fixedly out at the river rather than looking at her. “I was your proof you could write her.”

“Yes,” she admitted, and waited for the hammer to fall.

But it never came. Logan just looked out at the river for a long time before turning to her. “And that’s why you wanted to keep things casual.”