He pulled a fresh napkin from the bar. The game had just begun.
Elara hugged the Gun & Slinger rulebook to her chest. “No. We copy it. Page by page. We give the rules to everyone. Let every farmer, every prospector, every orphan roll for initiative.”
Three figures stood silhouetted against the crimson dusk. Each wore the black iron badge of the Guild. The leader, a woman with a revolver the size of a small cannon, smiled. “You’ve been carrying contraband, little scribe. The ‘Gun and Slinger RPG PDF’ is property of the Guild. Hand it over, and I’ll only take your trigger fingers.”
The leather-bound book hit the dusty bar floor with a thud that silenced the room. It wasn't the noise—bar fights in Rusthorn started with shattering glass, not falling books. It was the title embossed in faded gold leaf: GUN & SLINGER: CORE RULEBOOK (5th Edition) .
The Guild of Calculated Chance had spent two decades hunting down every copy, digital or physical, to monopolize the power. They’d turned the world into their tabletop: common folk were NPCs, Guild Enforcers were high-level Duelists, and the rest of humanity were just trying not to trigger a random encounter.
“The math,” Kael said, raising the impossible gun, “is just a PDF. And PDFs get errata.”
As the saloon doors swung quiet, Elara closed the book. The world snapped back to dim light, sticky floors, and the smell of stale ale. Kael’s star-gun vanished, leaving only a faint afterimage on his palm.