Being confused about the nature of Carousel and my purpose in it was not a new thing, but usually, that was because I had too little information and very few solid facts to work with. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed with a litany of details and an entirely different type of confusion.

I knew a scripted encounter when I experienced one. There were things that the shapeless version of me wanted to say but was not allowed to, and they had nothing to do with this storyline we had just run. I was left feeling like I needed to sift through everything I had experienced since before setting sail on the Carousel River.

If only I had a minute of peace. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Bobby seemed to think that Carousel had used all of its tricks to get us out here into the middle of nowhere for some purpose that even he didn't know, but he was probably just telling himself that. He had clearly constructed some elaborate justification for the choice he wanted to make. He wanted to blame his actions on Carousel, essentially.

Just because he was lying about his motivations didn’t mean he was wrong.

I walked back toward the others, and as I did, a familiar voice popped into existence.

“He he he, you won a ticket,” Silas, the mechanical showman, said. The faintest scars from the wounds the axe murderer had inflicted on him were still visible.

All the players lined up to see what we had won. I noticed that Ramona was pretty shaken up, so I decided to go grab her arm and guide her toward him. I didn't know how much she remembered, but from the look on her face, it was too much.

She wasn't even speaking. In the storyline, her body had been host to a cosmic being, which had somehow allowed her to survive injuries that should have killed any person. A big chunk of her DNA had been ripped out of her, causing her cells to basically explode, and yet she lingered on.

She was still just lingering.

Everyone was exhausted. It was hard to describe how tiring the Sunken Cradle had been, with its constant psychic debuffs echoing in your mind even after we were returned to our pre-storyline state. That mental fatigue was still there. The memories were painful, like lumps of burning coal in our minds.

I pressed the red button. Maybe all of our suffering had been worth it.

We got all the usual things: tropes, stats, money, but we got a few extras too.

I got two licenses.

One of them said that it authorizes the use of [“The Videotape Case #4”] from the movie [--]. It didn't describe what that videotape case was supposed to do or how it worked into this mysterious plan that I supposedly made in the props department, but it did have a message: “Just because you made a plan doesn't mean you earned it. Maybe one day you will.”

I was glad that one day there might be answers to my questions, but to be honest, I would have also accepted having all memory of that plastic video case erased from my mind. I already had enough to juggle.

The other license was for Bobby's dogs. It was much simpler than the one that he got. It had no rules or restrictions. It didn't even call them the Cole's dogs, which it probably should have, since they were the original owners. It called them Bobby's dogs.

Honestly, I was shocked that he was even acknowledged after going missing. That was a thread that I wasn't going to pull anytime soon. If Bobby died for nothing else, it was proving that sometimes the thread you're pulling is actually a noose.

I got five stat tickets, and I wasn't afraid to say that I was proud of it. In the end, the storyline could only be beaten with an incredibly risky gambit of simply giving the bad guys what they wanted. Honestly, even thinking about it as I looked at those tickets, I almost felt my bowels go watery.

All the adrenaline had helped me sharpen my decision-making and make the call that let us win, but looking back, that was crazy. We didn't beat them with a single stat check, at least not in the finale, once they had basically infinite plot armor. How could I have taken that risk?

In another sense, however, the solution was obvious. If you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em.

I would continue to wonder for many weeks whether or not my plan to give in would have worked without Bobby's sacrifice. Theoretically, we needed that chase scene to end, but maybe my lingering, unresolved emotions with Bobby forced me to theorize about whether his death was needed at all.

The truth was, I was angry at him, and I was angry at myself, and I didn't know if that would ever end.

Anyway, I got three tropes.

Type: Insight/Perk

Archetype: Film Buff

Aspect: Filmmaker

Stat Used: Savvy

Sometimes the best eyes and ears are those built into a video camera. Maybe the camera operator is a friend documenting your joint revelry or a stranger who happened to be birdwatching nearby; having someone to capture clues and kills on film can be very convenient.

The user will control an NPC camera operator, whose role they will determine. Their stats are an extension of the user's stats.

Meet Danny. He’s been filming horrific events since before he came to Carousel. He’d gladly lend you his point of view.

I was pretty happy to get my own companion cameraman. While the benefits weren't exactly clear to the novice survivor, in Carousel's land of horrors, being able to point a camera in the direction you wanted is a powerful narrative ability, and it is so much more convenient when you don't have to do it yourself.

Type: Perk/Insight

Archetype: Film Buff

Aspect: Filmmaker

Stat Used: Moxie

Animals know first. The dog stiffens at an empty hallway. The cat stares at a spot on the ceiling. A horse refuses the trail it has taken a hundred times. By the time the characters understand what’s wrong, the animals have already warned them many times over.

The user will have a psychic connection with plot-important animals. These animals will gain the trope Animals Are Psychic, granting them knowledge and guidance they could not otherwise possess.

They say animals can sense evil. Now, so can you.

This trope didn't come from anything I had done in the storyline. It was one of Bobby's. He was able to use it because of his background trope, which made him an animal doctor. It just so happened that I was also able to use it because of my psychic background trope.

Carousel did know how to twist the knife, didn't it? Maybe I could look at it as a positive: one last legacy of everything Bobby had accomplished.

Type: Rule/Insight

Archetype: Film Buff

Aspect: Filmmaker

Stat Used: Savvy

Every screenwriter learns it eventually: the studio has notes. The character you wrote to die in Act One tested too well with the focus group. The execs love her. They want her in the poster. You change the story to make it work. The vision suffers. The body count holds.

During the Choice Phase, the user may delay the assigned First Blood to Second Blood, granting the targeted character more narrative weight in the meantime. First Blood will then be based on narrative plot triggers.

Notes from the studio: she lives. Figure it out.

What was interesting about this trope was that its primary use wasn't actually what interested me. Simply by equipping it, we would have a prolonged choice phase, which would allow us to change out our tropes after getting a bit more information. Being able to adjust the death order was just a cherry on top.

~

“You had better give her a mental health trope,” I said as I stared at Silas, the mechanical showman. I didn't know what his deal was, but despite his prominence in the game, I had mostly managed to ignore him as of late. But now that he had saved me from the axe murderer, he had my full attention.

And he didn't disappoint.

Ramona was our lowest-level player, but because of a little narrative footwork, she had been imbued with a cosmic deity that kept her alive long after she should have been captured or killed. This gave her the opportunity to have a lot of prominence, and I had to assume she got credit for the things that her eldritch parasite had accomplished.

She got seven stat tickets and a few tropes.

Type: Insight/Healing

Archetype: Hysteric

Aspect: Craven

Stat Used: Moxie

She was going to be locked up whether she told them what she saw or not. Now, she doesn’t tell anyone anything. When the evil comes again, she may be the only person who knows how to survive.

The user will have an informative pre-storyline encounter with the enemy and begin the storyline in a roughly catatonic state, leaving the user in an impenetrable mental fog. This state can be healed through contact with allies as they try to reach through the trauma.

Outside of a storyline, the healing effect works the same way: the user can recover from trauma through contact with allies.

The doctors called her hopeless, but you’ll call her a witness.

This was a fun, creepy trope that could be incredibly useful for both restoring Ramona's mental health and gaining great insight into future antagonists. The question was: was she up for it? Knowing her, she was going to say she was, whether she was or not.

Knowing me, I would probably let her.

Type: Perk/Rule

Archetype: Hysteric

Aspect: Defiant

Stat Used: Grit

There is no accounting for the power of emotion. The same terror that paralyzes one person might only embolden another. In a dangerous situation, unpredictability might be a liability, but it might sometimes be an asset.

The user will have an unexpected or counterintuitive reaction to tropes and powers meant to cause a particular emotional or mental state.

There’s no telling how you’ll react, but odds are, anything is better than what the enemy intended.

Sometimes you come across a trope and just want to see it in action. I couldn't imagine all the uses for being able to counter the various mental manipulations Carousel's enemies had to offer. It had great utility and entertainment value.

Type: Rule/Insight

Archetype: Hysteric

Aspect: Frantic

Stat Used: Hustle

The enemy must be weak to something, but sometimes it isn’t so clear what that is. Without book learning, meta insight, or psychic intuition, finding an enemy’s weakness can be impossible. Unless you’re willing to try anything.

The user will not be penalized for making multiple attempts to solve a narrative puzzle or to figure out an enemy’s weakness. The more solutions they try, the more information will appear on the red wallpaper about the true solution.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways not to slay a vampire.

Not all archetypes and aspects were great at gaining information, and it turned out that the Frantic aspect was particularly bad at it, but it wasn't without tools. I didn't see her ever needing to use this, given how Insight-heavy our player base was, but it was nice to have.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

~

Cassie was our MVP. It was hard to deny. I would later ask her what it was like as nothing more than a spirit trying to guide us away from the afterlife. She told me that it was like knowing everything but not being able to remember anything.

That sounded about right. It would have been too easy for Carousel to just give her the information she needed to pass along. She remembered her time in the afterlife, but not well. The axe murderer made a distinct impression on her, but her response to my questions about him intrigued me.

I knew that both she and Ramona were aware of the cognitohazard enforcer of Carousel because I could freely talk about him in their presence without feeling his breath in my ears.

The thing was, when I asked Cassie what she thought about the axe murderer, given her unique perspective on him, all she could say was, “Is that what you saw?”

Her mind was too scrambled to clarify what that meant.

She got eight stat tickets due to her low level and her huge impact on keeping us alive.

She also got a few tropes.

Type: Action/Rule

Archetype: Psychic

Aspect: Seer

Stat Used: Moxie

The camera can follow characters anywhere they go, even the great beyond. All mortals must take that trip, but some will make it more than once.

The user may project their consciousness from their body, becoming a disembodied spirit until they return. The user gains Deathwatch while in use and may continue on after their body dies. The user may equip Departed tropes for use while projected.

She left the room. She just didn’t take the body with her.

It was no surprise that she would gain the power of astral projection. The problem with this trope, like many psychic tropes, was that in a mundane storyline, it would be practically useless. I guess literal superpowers had to be balanced somehow.

Type: Action/Debuff

Archetype: Psychic

Aspect: Occultist

Stat Used: Moxie

Horror has a pecking order. When the wrong character dies first, the whole story flinches. The killer is exposed, vulnerable, off-script. He was supposed to start with someone else.

Using ominous phrasing, magic, or other means, the user may mark a player for death as First Blood. The Enemy is debuffed based on how far down the death priority the marked player fell.

Some deaths are scheduled. This one isn’t.

More blood control was always welcome. We would have to work together to come up with a combo that let us use all these tropes to great effect. We had enough of them by now that we could probably stop leaving things to chance, although having people volunteer to die was always a hard conversation.

Type: Insight/Perk

Archetype: Psychic

Aspect: Seer

Stat Used: Moxie

She has watched her own death so many times that it has stopped frightening her. She knows the day. She won’t flinch.

The user will be given visions of their death. This will numb their fear and pain in the moment. The vision will change if they change the future.

She woke up already knowing. The day has been waiting for her.

It was nice that she wouldn't have to fear or feel pain from dying. What I was most interested in was seeing how much future knowledge she could get simply by preventing each death for which she was given information. It would take some experimenting.

Type: Action/Perk

Archetype: Psychic

Aspect: Exorcist

Stat Used: Moxie

Evil does not have power everywhere. The shaman’s hut. The church on the hill. The little curiosities museum that gets blessed by priests. The killer pauses at the threshold, and the camera lingers there with him, and for a moment, the audience can breathe.

The user may figuratively bless a location, establishing a Sanctuary. Within the Sanctuary, enemy threats can only manifest as weak portents.

Step inside. He cannot follow you here. He will be waiting.

Sanctuary tropes were always welcome. Better yet, this one seemed to work on mundane killers as well. Some types of spirituality are still acceptable even in storylines without magic.

~

In a storyline where everyone went home with a pretty good haul, Anna somehow hit the jackpot on tropes while getting modest stat tickets. She only got three, poor thing.

But when it came to tropes, she got six. It was hard to decipher how Carousel decided to hand things out like that.

Type: Buff

Archetype: Final Girl

Aspect: Girl Next Door

Stat Used: --

Every audience knows the moment. The kind one stops being kind. The girl who flinched at every shadow picks up the weapon and walks toward the dark. Relying on the goodness of others hasn’t worked. Now, it’s time to break through the chrysalis.

In the Finale, the user’s Grit and Mettle will be buffed by the level of trauma they have endured throughout the narrative.

She was never going to stay quiet. The audience just had to wait for it.

Basically, she would get stronger depending on how sad the audience was for her. She hadn't quite found a way to really live up to her role as a main character, but tropes like this could at least give her some easy steps to create a character arc the audience would like.

Type: Action

Archetype: Final Girl

Aspect: Girl Next Door

Stat Used: Moxie

She steps into the open and calls out. The killer turns. The score swells. The camera tracks her, only her, and the rest of the cast slips into darkness where the audience can’t follow. It’s no longer their time to protect her

During the Finale, the user may initiate a solo Chase Scene that will take them through all nearby set pieces. All living allies are moved Off-Screen for the duration of the scene.

Stop looking at them. Look at me.

Ah, yes, the Final Girl circuit. I was wondering when she would get a trope for that. Looking at this, I couldn't help but laugh out loud. I wondered if it could have been the key to ending that chase scene.

Type: Healing

Archetype: Final Girl

Aspect: Girl Next Door

Stat Used: Moxie

It is the cry that cuts through walls and miles and reason. The audience hears it, and so does everyone who ever loved her. They run before they decide to run. They fight through the pain, ready to make a stand

When the user is Mutilated, they can call for allies to aid them. Allies that hear the call and respond will heal based on the user’s degree of injury.

They were in pain, but her pain was more important.

Solid healing, but again, it would require Anna to step into the spotlight after having stepped out of it for so long.

Type: Background

Archetype: --

Aspect: --

Stat Used: —

The user is cast as a backup chosen one. While destiny doesn’t favor them at first, they will get the opportunity to rise to the occasion.

The Player may equip the following tropes:

·

From Humble Beginnings (Underdog-Wallflower)

·

Fall From Grace (Sport-Athlete)

·

The Missing Piece (Newcomer-Outsider)

·

Written Into a Corner (Critic-Film Buff)

·

Equivocation Evocation (Seer-Psychic)

I wasn't exactly sure how this background would play out. Would she have bad luck until she forced her way into prominence? It was too soon to tell, but if she could find the narrative hook for this background trope, it could definitely help her build her character up.

Type: Rescue/Insight

Archetype: Final Girl

Aspect: Girl Next Door

Stat Used: Moxie

Carousel never runs out of missing posters. They go up faster than they come down, taped over each other on telephone poles and gas station windows, faces fading in the rain. Most people stop seeing them. She does not. She stops, she looks, and she asks.

While this trope is equipped, if the user is holding a missing poster and makes an impassioned plea for help to an NPC, the NPC will share rumors about the missing player’s death. Following their leads will eventually trigger the storyline even without the Omen. The storyline will be a Rescue.

The plot will be changed to a search for the missing players, whose fate will be modified from their original to help create a narratively compelling reveal. The storyline will become a solo run. No player allies may be added.

Takeover: This trope will cancel out any story alterations except those inherent to the Archetype or Advanced Archetype associated with this ticket.

Find the Truth is the only Win Condition. No others may be added to the Rescue.

Digging for answers may mean digging your own grave.

I was astounded to see that not only did she get a rescue trope that did not require her to have the Omen or know where it was, but also allowed her to rescue people on her own during a solo run. Solo runs were a bit controversial. They were seen as incredibly reckless, but on the other hand, if you managed to beat one, they rewarded you handsomely.

Type: Rule/Buff

Archetype: Wallflower

Aspect: Underdog

Stat Used: Moxie

Everyone loves an underdog story. Unfortunately, the first step of climbing up out of the mud is being thrown in the mud in the first place.

With this trope equipped, the player’s stats will receive a 30% debuff in the Party. However, their stats will raise 15% of their original amount in Rebirth, then again in the Finale, and then once more in the Final Battle.

If you can stick around long enough, you might just get the hang of this.

Another one of Bobby's tropes back to haunt us. It was one of his better tropes, too.

Camden did a solid job playing a bit character. He was my old army buddy, and he proved his worth by providing the supplies we needed and delivering a big bang at his end. He didn't live long enough to know that firepower wasn't enough to beat these things, but I like to think he made the film a little more fun to watch for the audience.

He got four stat tickets. Carousel seemed to recognize the overall difficulty of the storyline.

He also got some tropes.

Type: Action

Archetype: Scholar

Aspect: Strategist

Stat Used: Savvy

Every blueprint has its own short list of ways it can kill you, and the engineer who drew it knows all of them. As long as the audience knows some of the dangers of a high-octane plan, they can rest their mind about others.

The user can state several realistic dangers associated with a plan or event about to take place. The party will be tested on its ability to survive only those dangers. All other dangers will become trivial.

The audience can’t feel the shockwaves from the explosion, so why bring them up?

Camden would have a heyday with this. Being able to decide the downside of any plan or stunt could be incredibly useful.

Type: Perk

Archetype: Scholar

Aspect: Researcher

Stat Used: Savvy

Sometimes, the audience doesn’t care to know the details. They just want the highlights. You say you can make a bomb from household ingredients? All they care about is watching the explosion.

If the user has established the credentials to plausibly construct a contraption or device, the construction materials are handwaved as being in his reach.

Oh, he’s a master mechanic? I guess he could get that abandoned vehicle running. Tires don’t rot in this apocalypse.

In the future, it looked like Camden would be able to build improvised bombs without the trouble of actually finding explosives to put in them.

Type: Background

Archetype: --

Aspect: --

Stat Used: —

The user has some mysterious security clearance that elevates them from the level of a citizen. How did they get it? Who knows. What are they capable of? The audience will have to wait to find out.

The Player may equip the following tropes:

·

Need to Know (Agent-Soldier)

·

Character Upgrade (Celebrity-Eye Candy)

·

Up for Interpretation (Stranger-Outsider)

·

Secret History (Doomsday Prepper)

·

Anything Can Be a Weapon (Commando-Soldier)

This background trope would be useful in basically every storyline, although it would probably pigeonhole his casting. Not that he would complain.

Type: Action/Insight

Archetype: Soldier

Aspect: Agent

Stat Used: Moxie

Secretive organizations can be a godsend to a screenwriter. They can know everything, or nothing. They can be everywhere or nowhere. They might be a government, a cult, or a secret society. They are a plot device incarnate. They are listening.

The user may invoke their clearance to compel an NPC to share information they could only obtain through membership in a high-level organization. Depending on the story, the NPC’s membership need not have existed prior to the invocation.

Usually, the organization will be pretty mundane, but in some stories, it will be anything but.

That information is need-to-know. And if you’re going to survive, you need to know.

It was nice to get some general information-gathering tropes. Having lost Bobby, that was what we needed most.

Carousel was clearly impressed with Antoine's performance, and I was too. Even though the twist was that he wasn't the main character (I assumed I hadn't yet watched the finished product). He still performed it very well. I had to wonder whether he got credit for his clone's acting performance. If anything, he would lose points if that were the case. Carousel had very specific ideas about what it wanted the shapeless ones to do in this storyline, but it didn't really align with their actual motivations. I wondered how that would end up in the final cut.

He got five stat tickets and a few tropes.

Type: Perk

Archetype: Adventurer

Aspect: —

Stat Used: Hustle

The dotted red line traces across the parchment, mountains shrinking under it, oceans crossed in a smear of ink. The audience understands the journey; they don’t need to meet the travel agent.

The user may initiate instant travel between set pieces by opening their map.

The trope may be used shortly after a storyline to travel around Carousel. The available range scales with the difficulty of the completed storyline.

Be careful with fast travel. You never know how soon the action will begin when you get to the next scene.

This was a literal treasure. If we used it soon enough, did that mean we could get back to Halle Castle without having to go back on the river? I sure hoped so.

Type: Rescue

Archetype: Athlete

Aspect: Health Nut

Stat Used: Grit

Staying healthy is a marathon, not a race. While defeating a microscopic foe can be impossible, outlasting it is possible.

Taking this trope and relevant missing posters into a storyline will trigger a Rescue.

The setting in which the Omen is triggered becomes the containment zone, wherein hosts of the viral pathogen central to the original storyline will attempt to infect the user and their allies. If they survive the waves of infected until the chosen time (e.g., sunrise), then all infected will be cured. Most storylines can be converted into an infection of some kind.

Takeover: This trope will cancel out any story alterations except those inherent to the Archetype or Advanced Archetype associated with this ticket.

Survive the Night is the only Win Condition. No others may be added to the Rescue.

Lived to Tell the Tale: Any players who survive a storyline altered by this trope will not die regardless of whether the storyline is failed. Those who die will need to be rescued.

Hold the line. They’re still in there.

The biggest reward of all was a rescue trope designed specifically to help us get Kimberly back. It said that it would adapt to pretty much any storyline. Did that mean the infection would sometimes be a curse? What about mundane storylines with simple slashers? Would that turn into a rage virus situation?

There was no telling.

Type: Rule

Archetype: Adventurer

Aspect: —

Stat Used: Grit

The body falls. The music swells. The team grieves and moves on without him, but somewhere Off-Screen, he is still climbing. The audience will refuse to believe a rugged Adventurer died like that.

The user may sacrifice themselves for First Blood or Second Blood, suffering an apparent death. However, the user will now enter a physically arduous subplot, the completion of which will allow them to rejoin the cast after the next player dies.

If the audience doesn’t believe you are dead, maybe you won’t be.

A classic adventurer trope and more blood control. We were doing well.

Tickets were not our only rewards.

I got three pips in the Adventurer's Advanced Archetype tracker, as well as two in the Detective tracker, and one additional point in my mystery ??? advanced archetype. I still wasn't sure what it was, but I was only two pips away from finding out.

Ramona got six pips in her Eldritch conduit AA, bringing her up to eight. I didn't know what Carousel was waiting for. She deserved more than that.

Anna got three in Adventurer, as did Camden.

Kelsey and Isaac went up and pressed the red button, but got almost nothing. Isaac got a single stat ticket. They didn't manage to escape before being copied by the shapeless ones, and we never really had time to rescue them and fold them into the story. That was a bummer.

Cassie jumped up to eight points in the Departed AA. I didn't know whether that was something she earned all at once from this one storyline or had accumulated from other storylines. I suspected the latter.

After Silas disappeared, we sat around waiting, thinking about what our plan should be. We still had to debrief on what had happened, and we had to do it with the complication of the axe murderer and his bewildering need for secrecy.

We were tired, but we were alive.

Little did we know that the end of that storyline was only the beginning.

On the Throughline Tracker, a throughline was labeled Lucien’s Carousel River Cruise.

It was maxed out. Ten out of ten pips.

It was time to see what that had earned us.