Casting Shadows

With 31 posts over 31 days, there is no time for taking a prompt like we are doing today to heart. Our path through the prompts has brought us to ‘rest’ today, and the map infographic has a cool little coffin in the room (Area 13) to lend some weight to possible meanings. The numerical prompt for today is humor. We will be getting to that one fairly soon – and the rest of the ones that we have done out of order from everyone else.

As our ghostbusters march, heads high, out of the seminar room, the thin smell of the homicidal AI’s fried wires and dead electronics still filling their nostrils, the session starts to hit its stride. The players have things to say and they have places that they want to go.

With the AI dead, the door locks present no more obstacles to the ghostbusters as they make their way back to the main areas of the complex – looking for a fast and safe access point to the rest of the hidden areas that their map does not cover.

In the next room (Area 13, our stop for Day 24) they find a scale model of the retirement community in which they have set up shop in the now ridiculous seeming belief that it would be the ghosts of retired landscapers and dentists that would keep them in green, not mad scientists, alien plants, and rivers of ectoplasm… and a giant mantis.

“Look! There is Lou’s Pizza!” Gray shouts as his player regards the map of town that I slide across the table to them.

Then it hits them.

Why is this model here?

They have been feeling pretty pissed off about getting hurt, being attacked, being made to feel small by a loser from their school days…. it has all been personal – and that matters, but…

“This town has a population of 14,000 and it’s not that far to the city,” Diego says softly.

I tell them there is a date on the model with the notation: P-day. The date includes a time: dawn. The date? Tomorrow, just a few hours from now.

Looking at the community and seeing pizza shops, bowling halls, small theaters, book stores, game stores, restaurants with funny names like Buns ‘ N Burners, Polished Sausages, and Frank’s Beans and Gas, and recognizing that as ‘older gamers’ that this sort of thing represents a world that exists mostly in our memories gives them a little dig.

It’s enough to fight the villain because they are the villain. It is better to fight them when you hate them on a personal level.

It is a whole other thing when it is just you standing between the villain and the rest of the town when Hell is coming.

It is a whole other thing indeed.

Questions: How is the prompt used in this entry? What is the point it makes?

Link: A video, believe it or not, will be posted below later today~