A Gaymer’s Guide to Dungeons & Dating: An M/M Guideverse Cozy Portal Fantasy by Olivia Starling (Pre-Order)

After coming out of the closet at fifty, I just wanted to learn how to play D&D to make some friends. Instead, I became the center of a world-ending prophecy!

When a massive dungeon break tore straight through the floor of my local game shop, my dice, my cat Shango, and I were plunged into a pitch-black abyss. The catastrophic fall did something worse than break my glasses—it awakened my dormant core, empowering me with the rare, stabilizing magic of a Guide. Before I could even process my new reality, I crashed straight into a superhero on the brink of going supervillain.

Tae-Hyun's a lethal, beautifully broken Esper from an elite, S-ranked Sentinel force, and his fiery starlight magic is losing control, threatening to go supernova and incinerate the entire dungeon floor holding the remaining monsters at bay.

The moment we touched, a fated resonance sparked to life. I became his ultimate human lightning rod, anchoring his raw power with a single touch—that somehow also transformed Shango into a seven-hundred-pound werepanther who shoots lightning beams from his eyeballs!

According to ancient system lore, our bond is prophesied to save both worlds. But I don't care about being a legendary hero or falling in love with a deadly warrior—even if he is completely devoted to me in a totally-not-hot way. I just want to soothe my aching lower back and save my niece and nephew trapped on the surface.

Standing in our way are five brutal floors of carnivorous loot boxes, shadow beasts, and a holographic dungeon system that glitches between a soul-crushing DMV employee nagging me to speed up, and a sarcastic cheerleader mocking our intense emotional bond.

I survived the closet and the eighties, but surviving the end of the world will take every ounce of old-school nerd luck, love, and logic these old bones can muster—and maybe an overprotective murder kitten... or two.