"Why make this game now?" is a question I think most designers should ask themselves while they're creating a game. In my case, when I saw Tropes Jam, I figured why not and hit the random trope button. Getting "Beware of Hitch-Hiking Ghosts" was serendipitous. It was just shortly after the anniversary of my father's death ten years ago, and I've been gearing up for the Halloween/Fall season here in Michigan, so ghosts seemed a perfect fit.

The rest, oddly enough, came pretty quickly. I had already been striking up conversations on Twitter about using card games as base mechanics for RPGs (a different game in development is using a variant of Blackjack as its core mechanic) and it occurred to me at first to make the passengers in the car introduce themselves until one was revealed to be the ghost. What could be more ideal for that mechanic than the card game Old Maid?

If you're not familiar with Old Maid, the entire idea of it is that a single Queen is removed from a deck of cards, then the cards are dealt to each player. Each player lays down matching pairs of cards, then begin offering the player to their left to take a single card from their hand without seeing it. This continues until all possible matches are made, and the player with the odd Queen out is the "Old Maid." (Old Maid being slang for an old, unmarried woman.)

However, when it started to play out, having three players be alive and one be a ghost led to the same basic horror reveal every time. By shifting the game to having all results equal ghosts, but only one of the ghosts fully accepting of it changed everything. This led to organic stories growing in the first half only to be struck dead in the second half with the players salvaging what they could as they realized some stories simply can't have an end wrapped in a bow. Some end messily and we have to come to grips with that.

Once I realized that untidy endings were a hallmark of the stories the game would prompt, I realized that the matched pairs could offer guidance to players responding to the news that they were dead and on their way to whatever happens after. I made no attempt to hide that the four suits were being matched to the first four stages of Grief. It's only once all the pairs have been turned in that each player character determines whether or not they've gained Acceptance as they head into the tunnel at the very end.

Just like we're the only ones who can determine if we'll accept it when we stand to fade from this life, or if we'll rage until the very end.