Author: Tomash
Granz/ECT ehyrobbxf (spoilers)
The Source of All Joy
Granz's doorbell rang. He lept out of his chair and ran towards the door "Oh my oh my oh my it's finally here!" he said quickly, rubbing his palms together.

He opened the door and took the somewhat thin, large, rectangular envelope from the delivery driver and hastily scrawled a signature on the appropriate line.

Granz ran back up to his room and set his newly-acquired package on his desk. He began to peel pack the sear on the envelope slowly, trying not to damage the contents. About halfway through the opening, Granz realized he couldn't take it anymore, and tore the envelope to bits.

Inside, he found the RPG rulebook he ordered. He picked it up and rubbed his hands over it, caressing the wondrous source of unusual items and possibly overpowered skills, savoring the sensation of all the new ways to minmax the party's characters he could find inside.

Grenz then sniffed the book, inhaling the luscious aroma of never-opened pages full of role-playing goodness. "Mmmmm." he moaned, admiring the cover art.

He gripped the front cover gently with a few fingers, pulling it open slowly enough that someone might think he was checking the book for traps. (He wasn't. He just loved this part.) Granz began slowly reading the entries in the book, savoring the armor and gear described within. "Eh, that's not that useful.", he said at one point.

"Hm ... maybe" he commented, after tenderly flipping a page. He scrawled the name of that psychic power on a very full notepad on his desk.

A few pages later, Granz yelped in excitement. "Oh my god! Yes! This is perfect! And I have enough XP!" he shouted. His fingers flew over the keyboard, firing off a message to his GM, asking if he could take the psychic power he'd just found.

As he waited for the reply, Granz slowly lost control. He stopped being so tender and caring, and started rapidly flipping through the book, keeping a mental tally of all the super-awesome extra-useful stuff he was finding. The pages of the rulebook almost flew as Granz pawed through them.

Eventually, he reached the end of the book. He turned everything back over and went through it again, making sure he hadn't missed a corner of those delectable extra rules. His reading method varied from a measured, careful investigation to a fast, hyped-up, almost predatory flip.

Throughout all this, he made a lot of comments on the contents of his new acquisition, sometimes taking tens of minutes to debate the relative merits of two options with himself. A few times, he even got up to get other rulebooks to compare against. More books were more fun, after all. Whoops of triumph often fell from Granz's lips a few times as he used the contents of his new book to formulate the greatest plan he'd ever had - which was, rather frequently, superseded be the new greatest plan he'd ever had as he noticed an item he'd overlooked.

Many, many hours later, it grew late. Rather reluctantly, Granz closed his new book and carefully placed it on the rulebooks shelf, lovingly arranging it next to his existing collection. Finally, Granz turned away from his RPG rulebooks, his true, eternal loves, and went to bed logged onto Amazon to buy another one before picking up another one of his precious volumes from the shelf. I don't need sleep tonight anyway. he thought, getting ready for more cavorting with supplemental rulesets. It's not like there's a session tomorrow.

And so, Granz had a long, simulating night, which he loved every minute of, even though it drove him closer to exhaustion and the lightbulbs in his lamps closer to burning out.