Arc II, Chapter 49: A Game Within a Game

“Spooky,” Brenda said as she and the other NPC who wasn’t playing started giggling. “Does one of the ghosts smoke cigarettes? I swear I smell cigarettes.”

She took the sheet with the illustrations of all of the missing posters for ghosts in the game and started looking over the entry for each one, trying to see if they were smokers.

“You may need to raise your standard for signs of paranormal activity,” Isaac said. “If cigarette smoke is a sign of ghosts, then every bar in town is haunted.”

Brenda fake laughed.

Truthfully, Isaac acting as Cynic here was good. We didn’t need to encourage any plot threads that would pull us away from the game. My guess was that after Second Blood, the players stop playing the board game and start freaking out somehow. That didn’t work for us. We needed to play the game until we had contacted Jed Geist and figured out which of the pokers was used to kill him.

After that, nothing mattered. We just needed the right poker.

Dina rolled double-fives and got to go again. She rolled seven after that. With that roll, she managed to get her cloaked figure in the house, through the great hall, and into the gentlemen’s parlor while picking up three cards as she went.

She immediately played one of the cards, which stated the following:

“The Wallflower has a habit of following along absent-mindedly, even to their peril. Move them to a square adjacent to yours after you have moved. They must leave any ghost sheets behind.”

This gave Bobby a head start. The card was meant to be a disadvantage, interrupting an opponent as they question a spirit. The ghost sheets represented the ghost on the board. You had to be in the same room as it to ask it questions. We weren’t actually playing against each other, so Dina did this to help him.

“That’s it,” she said.

“No questions?” Serenity asked.

“Nope.”

And so we went on.

Kimberly only got one card and didn’t use it. She was setting her sights on a staircase to get to the second floor.

I rolled a ten and headed for the library. I didn’t quite make it in the door, but I managed to pick up two cards along the way:

“You overhear the other players talking about you. Search the discard pile for any card with your player archetype on it and choose one to place in your hand.”

And

“As a naturally curious person, you can ask one question twice in a turn.”

No players had discarded yet, so I didn’t need to use my first card, and I had no question cards so that I couldn’t use my second.

I needed to make sure that I stayed away from the hall closet where Antoine had found the spirit that I suspected belonged to Bradley Speirs, an enemy I had killed by throwing him off a roof into the clutches of vengeful zombies. It was clear that this storyline was not even pretending to be subtle.

We went all the way around. The NPC, Serenity, got double sixes and said, “Can I get in the same square as another player? I want to ask the smoking ghost a question.”

“You can pass by it, but you can’t land on it,” I said.

Antoine was on the only square in the closet, so she was blocked, thankfully.

She huffed and puffed and decided to follow Kimberly up the stairs. Being that she rolled better and rolled doubles, she made it upstairs in one go. She collected four cards along the way. The limit was five before she had to start discarding. She could only ask one question per category per turn unless otherwise instructed.

When she got to the top of the stairs, she played a card that said,

“You taunt the spirits. Place an Angered ghost sheet in any room. Any players in that room must capture it, calm it, or escape by the end of their next turn, or they will be attacked.”

She ripped off a sheet from the pad of paper and checked a little box that said, “Angered.” Then she put it inside the gentleman’s parlor with Dina and Bobby.

“Come on,” Bobby said. “I don’t even have any cards yet.”

Dina didn’t say anything, but she did give Serenity a look that probably meant anger or annoyance.

Things went back around.

Bobby got a good enough roll to leave the parlor and pick up a card. He was safe. We didn’t know if being killed in the board game meant anything. It was still the Party Phase, so we were safe at the moment, but we couldn’t be too sure.

Antoine rolled enough to get out of the hall closet and make his way down the hall toward the trophy room. On the way, he picked up three cards.

Dina rolled a five, and instead of fleeing the room with the angry ghost, she moved toward it and stepped on a square, which gave her three cards.

One of those cards was a lucky draw.

“There is safety in numbers. Move to the room with the highest amount of players in it.”

Technically, that was still the hallway at the entrance. She escaped by the skin of her teeth.

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Kimberly continued her way upstairs and landed next to Serenity at the top. She collected an additional card but declined to play it.

Cassie had gotten a bad roll at the beginning and hadn’t even collected a card. She got a better roll on her second try and started her way down the hall. She got two cards and seemed happy about one of them.

We were still in the early stages. Soon, we would need to start asking actual questions.

I rolled four and made it inside the library, where I picked up two cards. The library had more special squares than almost any other room, so that’s why I went there.

“You may ask a question about the weapon used to kill a spirit, but as you do, you notice that the Outsider is right on your tail. If you play this, the Outsider can move to your room and ask about the murder weapon if you fail. You must be next to a window to use this card.”

That wasn’t bad. It was another card designed with the idea that the players would not want to aid their competitors, which just wasn’t the case here. The fact that it required you to be next to a window was interesting. Perhaps it guaranteed that it could only be used in certain rooms, or maybe it ensured that you were all the way in the room before using it, meaning that I could not use it to set a trap as easily.

Whatever the case, I couldn’t use it yet.

My other card was more interesting.

“This card can be activated whenever you choose. Select a ghost from the board to manifest in physical form. The ghost won’t know it has passed away. Players in the same room can ask the ghost questions directly without needing another card for it. However, be careful not to mention or suggest that the ghost is dead, as this will Anger it and cause it to attack.”

That sounded familiar.

I must have stared at that card for a while because Serenity nudged me out of my daze.

I started to figure out how this game must work. Eventually, this game must stop being a game, assuming you intentionally take it in that direction by invoking a real ghost. At this point, this card would either help summon a ghost or help players understand what to do when such a ghost appears.