Description

Premise:

You are a group of nerds and/or geeks who have discovered a secret tomb of a long-gone fanatic of geek/nerddom. Inside you discover a spiraling tower of RPG, video game, and movie stereotypes of every sort on each floor, and must collect treasures and artifacts from each of them in order to challenge the Master Ghost and claim the title of Master Geek for yourself.

But meanwhile, a deranged, shadowy psychopathic killer stalks your strongest party member, believing that he would get your champion's powers if he kills him/her. He's slow, but insanely powerful, and to meet him would mean almost certain doom.

Once someone challenges and defeats the Master Geek, the dungeon starts crumbling, but the psycho-killer still stalks you (unless you killed him before).

Goal
The goal is to get the most prestige upon exiting the tower, getting prestige points for each treasure item collected, each artifact acquired, along with bonus points for the person who defeats the Master Geek and/or the psycho-killer.

Gameplay:

The players start outside of the tower, and walk inside to a lobby and a staircase leading upwards, where they may or may not encounter enemies. These are all represented by cards. The stairways/lobbies and tower corridors/rooms are represented by wider and larger cards, and each detail a special conditional effect that takes place with everyone who stays in the corridor/room/stairway/lobby, even if the conditional effect is "this is just a normal room." Some examples include rooms where battles are tougher in some way, rooms where each player's gender is changed, rooms where there's treasure lying everywhere, and a room where all the enemies are flying and thus are more difficult to fight.

The tower begins unexplored. As players explore the tower, going up stairs and walking through the floors, a room/stairway/floor effect card is drawn and placed onto any unexplored space they walk into. If a room is empty (void of monsters) upon entry, a new battle is triggered.

Battles are fought with a bit of luck combined with overall strength. Each floor has a certain "battle size" (with certain rooms having increased battle sizes), which determine the number of monsters that can fight in any single battle. Upon entering the previously mentioned empty room, players draw a number of encounter cards (which are smaller than the room cards) equal to the battle size of the floor/room they are on. The encounter cards can include everything from the monsters themselves, to traps and curses that affect a character negatively, to positive boons, and any number of special training (which allows the characters to have a class analogous to the genre they are currently fighting in, or a DNA transformation that allows them to do something very similar with their "race" (includes standard fantasy races in floors 1-2, "horror" races like vampires and werewolves in floor 3, and so on...). If a character draws the number of encounter cards required and ends up not having to fight a battle equal to the battle size of the room/floor, other players can add additional monsters to increase the battle up to the battle size. Other players can also play cards to strengthen either side. Multiple monsters add to each other's strengths, and special other cards allow players to add monsters beyond the maximum battle size. Players can also negotiate another player's help if the other player is on the same floor. Battles are fought by rolling a d12, and adding the result to each side's total strength.

If a monster is defeated, the player who is playing his turn may find a special floor artifact (each of which adds to a character's strength) if the monster was sufficiently powerful enough. In order to enter the top floor, the players need a certain amount of artifacts from each floor below. Monsters also drop loot, and players can pick up a certain amount of loot each turn. Other players can also swerve in to raid a large loot pile. Loot can include anything that could be considered treasure: equipment that add to character strength, free artifacts, temporary power-ups (like grenades and pixie dust), protection items, and items that are otherwise worthless but are value at high currency (totaled for points in the end). If a player doesn't fight a battle in a room he's entered, he can draw additional encounter cards for future (or immediate) use.

Once a player has acquired a certain number of artifacts from each floor, he can enter the top floor, where the Master Geek resides. Battles there are tougher than any other floor, and draw from the monsters that the players might have encountered previously on every other floor. The players might also encounter the Master Geek himself, who's obviously a lot stronger than those tougher battles. If a player manages to defeat him, the tower starts crumbling (one room/stairway is removed at the end of each player's turn), and the players' goal is to then escape the falling tower).

A twist is that there's an insanely powerful psycho-killer who's always stalking the strongest player (changing targets if that position is taken by another player). He only moves 2 rooms per turn cycle (each player can always move 3), but if he catches you, it's very bad news. It's very likely he'll kill the character [i]and[/i] drain him of several artifacts (other monsters can kill you as well, but he's the one that'll probably have the easiest time doing it). He's still stalking you once the tower starts crumbling, and very likely, he'll be standing between your characters and the exit. If a player dies, they respawn at the entrance, but leave all their equipment and items as loot in the last room they were in (free for other players to raid, or to get lost in the crumbling of the tower at the end).

When all characters have exited the tower successfully after the defeat of the Master Geek, points are calculated, factoring in: 1) the amount of treasure/equipment a player has retained, 2) how many other players the player beat to the exit, 3) how many artifacts the player has acquired, 4) whether or not the player was the one to defeat the Master Geek, and 5) if the player defeated the Psycho. Whoever is found to have the most points is the winner.