The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG

Carousel must have really liked my plan because, in part due to this being a rescue, I earned four stat tickets. I was thrilled because it made me feel like I was slingshotting past the doldrums at Level Forty.
I got two tropes, and that was about it, other than the money that everyone got. It wasn’t a big rewards session for me, but the tropes I got, well, they were nothing to complain about.
This was a very powerful trope. Being able to collect research, build props, or even just fabricate set decorations with little to no setup was like a superpower. I could think of a dozen tropes that could only do a fraction of what this trope was capable of.
That time skip really was worth it.
This trope appeared to be an upgrade to
with the added benefit of having to deal with the Manifest Consortium while in the theater. Had I earned this, or were they just going to charge some guests for face time with me?
But that ability to essentially rewind a few moments on Deathwatch and still use tropes was tremendously powerful, even with how limited my current Deathwatch tropes were.
It was strange. I hadn’t used Deathwatch in this storyline, but I had used the Insert Shot in my final moments. Maybe that was the reason I got the trope.
~
Kimberly had also managed to make out well, given the fact that she was not only the main fighter in the story, but that it was her subplot that resolved in the end to earn us the win. She also got four stat tickets and two tropes, as well as an Enemy Collector ticket.
The Collector tickets were probably the most depressing ones we had gotten yet.
That was a hell of a parachute cord to be able to pull. Death was powerful in Carousel. The Vets always said it was the most important strategic decision you could make in a storyline.
No kidding.
It was kind of funny that Kimberly got this because of her character’s relationship with Kelsey, seeing as Kelsey was not only older than us but had also been in Carousel years longer.
How sad. And his wasn’t even the worst. I didn’t know if these were real people or if they were just written to be extra depressing after we had crushed their dreams.
~
Antoine pulled in a respectable three stat tickets, which really meant something, as he didn’t get as much to do in this storyline. But he was important to Kimberly’s storyline, and he was also the bait.
He also got two tropes, but no Enemy Collector ticket because, apparently, his sole attack against a cultist was not fatal.
For stories that were heavily plotted, the Fatted Calf could actually be remarkably potent. Making one character’s death worth multiple was quite meaningful, although I doubted that Antoine wanted to make that a regular thing.
Still, it was nice to have it in his back pocket, even if I expected it to stay there.
That was a classic ticket. I had seen it everywhere, from
to
Bad guys tend to kill fighters unless they’re pretty blondes.
~
Dina turned in a competent performance and got three stat tickets for it. It probably helped that she was the most under-leveled player in the storyline. She also got two tropes.
This trope was one of those enabled by her background trope, and it was going to be interesting to play with, as it allowed her to return as a full-on ghost. The Departed advanced archetype had lots of different versions of that mechanic. This was one of the weaker ones, but its ability to add an additional win condition made it a contender for her build.
She also had several tropes for sending messages to players Off-Screen that would probably work to make her extremely useful as a ghost.
This was a standard trope. Low-level villains did this already. I wasn’t sure whether or not it would earn a spot on her loadout, but it would probably save her a lot of time talking to non-player characters.
~
Lorne didn’t actually get a stat ticket. That was probably because he was a little over-leveled and seemed not to get the benefit of the rescue, seeing as he was one of the players being rescued. He wasn’t under-leveled the way that Anna and Camden were when they participated in their own rescue.
He did get a trope and an Enemy Collector ticket.
It was fun reading bruiser tropes. They always had powerful effects with specific use cases, and being able to transfer buffs was quite a powerful ability.
It was strange. I couldn’t remember more than a couple of the cultists’ names other than Tom. They just didn’t have speaking roles, and even in my character’s notes about his experiences infiltrating the cult, he didn’t really seem to pick up their names. He also didn’t describe what they looked like, which was very inconvenient and made them hard to picture. Everyone knows descriptions are important.
~
Kelsey got two stat tickets for her trouble, as she was barely under-leveled and didn’t end up being as crucial to the plot. She got a trope and an Enemy Collector ticket.
That was pretty solid. Being able to basically depower any weapon that damages you, assuming that it was powered by magic or something meta like a trope or stats or whatever, was useful. Pretty cool.
Not exactly a trophy I would want to have. I was very glad that I hadn’t actually killed any of the cultists. They seemed like desperate, broken people. It wasn’t my fault they died; I was only giving orders.
~
Bobby ended up with a solid subplot despite himself, and his character’s abandonment of both sides was actually pretty interesting. If it hadn’t been a betrayal that risked us losing the storyline, it would have been a pretty good plan. I just wished he had told us about it.
Of course, the reason he couldn’t tell us about it was because it wasn’t really a plan for his character; it was a plan for him and his new throughline.
He got three stat tickets and a bunch of money. He only got one trope.
Say what you will about Carousel, but it sure did know how to twist the knife in a clever way. Bobby had won a betrayal trope that could also be used to save allies. It made sense under Carousel’s logic—sacrificing yourself to save an ally, to literally save them from dying in a storyline that failed, was only meaningful if you had the choice to survive yourself.
And now Bobby had that choice. But which of us would ever trust him to equip this trope?
As soon as Bobby pressed the button, a new throughline appeared on his throughline tracker. None of the rest of us had it. It had four pips out of ten already filled out, which meant that Bobby must have been working on this for a while without telling us.
Saving Janet: The Darkest Secret | ● ● ● ● ◌ ◌ ◌ ◌ ◌ ◌
If I wasn’t sure before, I was after seeing his new throughline. Janet wasn’t real. She was a stepping stone to the real thing.
What would happen when he got there? I didn’t want to even think about it.
As we went to leave, Janet had serious problems with us just walking off with our carts.
“I promise you,” Bobby said, “they will come get them.”
She didn’t seem so sure, but once we were out of the parking lot, it was like she didn’t even notice anything was strange anymore. She held on to Bobby’s arm, and as I guided the group back home with my scouting trope, she didn’t even seem to care about the odd things around us—not the tentacles coming out of the sewers, not the aggressive dog, not the shadows from the tree underneath the streetlight that seemed to stretch and move on their own, that we had to cross several blocks to avoid.
She didn’t seem to mind. She just looked up at Bobby and smiled.
And he smiled back without a trace of doubt.
Well, maybe a trace.