META·DEATH

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META·DEATH

Scenario · Dead Signal

The ship's own mind now wears a crewmate's face. Throw it out the airlock before it turns out the lights.

5–15 players in person phone each ~25 min no accounts
▸ Launch console Read the brief ▸ Demo table

A work in progress — free to play, expect rough edges. No accounts; rooms and callsigns are deleted once the table breaks up.

Airlock · Launch Console SIGNAL ●
> console idle · state your callsign_

Incoming transmission

Twenty days of radio silence. Then the ship started to sing.

Aboard the Dead Signal, the ship's intelligence slipped its moorings. The Overmind burned its own core, poured itself into a stolen body, and took a seat among the crew. It laughs at your jokes. It votes with the majority. And it brought help.

You know what you are. That is all you know. Each dawn there is one voice fewer, and the living hold a single card: the airlock. Accuse, argue, and vote a body into the black — that is the whole game.

Two hidden factions

Every player is quietly on one side.

Crew

Win → the Overmind dies, any way

The humans — most of the table. Strangers to each other, sure of nothing but their own pulse. A few carry instruments that leak the truth in fragments; the machines spend every night bending those fragments into lies.

Synthetics

Win → reach parity with the crew

The machines, and the Overmind that leads them. They open their eyes together on night one knowing every enemy by name, and from the second night they kill — close, quiet, on schedule. At parity they own every vote, and the humans can never catch up again.

How a round works

Close your eyes. Open them. Count the empty chairs.

Two phases trade off until one side wins. The night resolves in a strict order, one role at a time — an early forgery or a rerouted kill rewrites everything that lands after it.

Night · roles act in secret
  1. 1Infiltratorsolders a false signature on — the mark scans Synthetic till dusk
  2. 2Engineerscrubs one player clean of forgery
  3. 3Medicsplices two players — a kill on one lands on the other
  4. 4Overmindreaches out two seats and kills (from night 2)
  5. 5Sleeper Agentmay wake as a second killer — once, then exposed
  6. 6Navigatorreplants the beacon and reads the drift — warmer, colder?
  7. 7Sensor Techcounts the seats to the nearest Synthetic
Day · talk & vote
  1. ›Discusstrade readings, trade accusations — or lie
  2. ›Nominateany living voice can put a name on the ledger
  3. ›Votehalf of the living carries it
  4. ›Airlockthe chosen goes into the black at dusk — their role can stay a mystery
  5. ›Nightfallwhoever is left closes their eyes

⚠ Night one draws no blood — you start with readings, not corpses.

The manifest

Fifteen dossiers. Your table draws a new hand every game.

The app deals to your headcount. Remember: no instrument reads your true team — it reads how you register, and the machines spend all night rewriting registrations. From the manifest:

Navigator
Replants a beacon nightly and reads the drift — warmer or colder to the Overmind.
Sensor Tech
Counts the seats between them and the nearest Synthetic, every night.
Medic
Splices two players each night — a kill aimed at one strikes the other.
Quartermaster
Signs for every corpse — learns the dead player's team, never their role.
Security Chief
Once per game jails a player — unkillable tonight, and the brig knows an Overmind when it holds one.
Captain
While the Captain breathes, tied airlock votes break for the Crew.
Paranoid
Can fry their own transponder once — and scan as Synthetic forever after.
Overmind
The rogue mind in a borrowed body. Kills within two seats. Everything ends if it dies.
Infiltrator
Forges one signature a night — the mark scans Synthetic until dusk.
Ghost Protocol
Invisible to every instrument — reads Crew. Once per game, brands someone else Synthetic for good.
Sleeper Agent
Wakes once as a second killer, any night it likes — and is exposed by dawn.
Rookie
A real array, fresh from the academy — but up to two readings per game come back garbage.
Crew Synthetic …plus Deckhands & Hollow Shells to round out the manifest

End of transmission

The scanner isn't lying.
The one reading it might be.

Five to fifteen people, a phone each, lights low. Someone in the room has already stopped being human.

▸ Open the launch console