You’ve been invited to a haunted house...

April 25, 2023 3:50 PM

That haunted house is a Discord server. Will Jobst, previous creator of cozy story-telling RPGs and collaborative games ditches pen-and-paper for a new creation: "This Discord Has Ghosts In It"

Players split into two teams: investigators and ghosts.

Ghosts may only type, filling the channels of a Discord with frights! Spreading horror throughout the rooms and spaces of this house with text, images, audio, or video.

Investigators may only speak in a voice channel, with everyone listening in, like walkie-talkies or shouts throughout the space.

Throughout the game, ghosts haunt rooms while investigators explore, get spooked, and learn about the ghosts, all while narrating the horror to all players and hinting at their secret motives. Ghost players reveal parts of themselves by creating new rooms, in turn making the house a labyrinth. Investigators get to the bottom of these mysteries and spill secrets of their own.

Every game culminates in a supernatural seance. In this final act, confront each ghost about their mysteries, and each investigator about their secrets.

Jobst is previously the creator of other games such as TORQ, a post-apocalyptic "car-PG", Campfire, an anthology storytelling horror game, and Black Mass, a tarot-based roleplaying game about two women leaving a community that doesn’t want them.

posted by The Pluto Gangsta (2 comments total)

Oh, I like the look of his Shipwrights game, despite the double bitterness that burbles within me as an actual failed shipwright and a failed player of epistolary games.
posted by ursus_comiter at 4:29 PM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Also, anyone who bought the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality already owns This Discord Has Ghosts in it and Shipwrights along with several other of Jobst's offerings.
posted by ursus_comiter at 4:34 PM on April 25, 2023 [5 favorites]