Ghost onboarding Manual
How to Play
You are a ghost. You are dead. This is not an excuse.
Welcome to the afterlife! Yes, there's paperwork. You're a ghost, freshly assigned to Briarwood Court -- a quiet suburban cul-de-sac full of oblivious residents who have absolutely no idea you exist. Your job is to haunt them. Try to act professionally. The Department of Supernatural Affairs is watching you, evaluating your performance, and filing reports about everything you do.
This page is a work in progress. Rules and components are still in development and subject to change.
Equipment Manifest
What's In The Box
Ability Cards
Each round, the D.S.A. issues you a hand of ability cards. Rattles. Flickers. Chills. The heavy stuff. Deploy them to win Haunts and score points. The D.S.A. expects results.
Haunt Cards
Every Haunt targets a specific Briarwood Court resident and requires a specific ability to pull off. Win the Haunt, score the points. The game is simple. The residents are not.
Artifact Cards
Steal points. Cancel bids. Generally ruin someone else's afternoon. Artifacts are chaos in card form, and the D.S.A. neither endorses nor discourages their use.
Backlash Cards
The more you haunt Briarwood Court, the more agitated the neighborhood becomes. Backlash cards are their response. The good news: these people are just about as incompetent as they are alive. The bad news: they're trying anyway... and they have a cat.
Mission Parameters
Object of the Game
Out-haunt, out-wit, and out-sabotage your opponents to become the Ghost With The Most. The neighborhood is going to fight back. That's fine. They're terrible at it.
The Haunt Protocol
How a Round Works
Each round, a set of Haunt cards flips face-up. Every player secretly deploys (bids) Ability cards toward Haunts they want to win. Then everyone reveals in turn order.
Here's the catch: matching bids cancel each other out. If two ghosts go after the same Haunt with the same ability type, neither one wins it. So you're not just deciding what to bid. You're trying to read what everyone else is going to bid, and whether you can outmaneuver them. Artifacts are weaponized power-ups you reveal at the right moment to inflict chaos and turn the tide.
Surviving cards win their Haunts. Artifacts do their thing. Points are scored. The Neighborhood Threat Level Meter ticks up. Briarwood Court fights back with Backlash. A new round begins.
Keep going until someone hits the score limit, or until the neighborhood gets organized enough to attempt an Exorcism. At that point, only the ghost with the highest score survives.
The D.S.A. wishes you luck. The D.S.A. does not actually wish you luck. Good haunting.