Gunner's Butte Colorado was not the most liveliest town even before the global pandemic had hit. Situated in the foothills of the Colorado Plateau, it's main draw was North Point University, which like everything else, was suffering under the strict lock-down and quarantine that had gripped the entire planet and human civilization as a whole. Most of the student body and faculty had been sent home save for a handful of students that simply were too poor or were unable to go home because of the restricted international travel. The handful of students left had initially looked forward to having no classes and taking full advantage of the nearby campus strip and it's bevy of stores, night clubs and bars...Only to find that like everything else, those too had been shuttered save for a handful of 'essential' stores in the nearby mall.
It was a dreary life in the high desert, as the college that was known for being more of a 'party' college was reduced to anything but. With nothing to do, nowhere to go and bored out of their minds, the stranded students could do little but sit around in their dorms and wait for something to happen. And for the four students that currently inhabited the Oak Hall dorms, something was indeed happening.
"What kind of a name is 'the Third Wish'?" Peter Tzimeros grunted as he settled down on the worn out couch of the dorm's common room. the football player wasn't used to playing complicated board games like the one in front of him. He'd only ever played games like Sorry! or other simple games as a kid..But there was only so many times he could watch old replays of sports on TV now that everything had shut down and had left him stranded, his parents having been in Greece visiting his grandparents when everything had gone to hell. Still, he could have done a lot worse and been stuck with a bunch of jerks instead of his girlfriend and two cool (for dorks) freshman kids.
"A cool name! Y'know, like with the genie and stuff? Aladdin? Ugh I LOVE that movie! We should watch it later!" Lindsey Michaels chittered as she bounced into her bean bag that she had hauled down from her new room on the fifth floor. Despite her usually 'bimbo blonde' looks, the currently rainbow haired ex-sorority girl was currently taking a break from her IT course, one of the few classes that hadn't slammed to a sudden stop. But she HAD been affected, her Gamma Upsilon Rho Lambda (GURL) sorority house closing down and forcing her to move into Oak Hall. But the Freshman had remained chipper about it, and the fact that with her barista job gone she lacked the funds (or desire) to move back home to Seattle.
"The technical term is Djinn, actually. And I second Aladdin, but only the live action one because it's more historically accurate. But yeah, sounds cool! Maybe we could check it out later? You said it's like a off-brand Hot topic, or something, right Eugene?" Judy Ross said, the top-heavy, purple haired goth said as she walked across the room with a bowl of popcorn and settled onto the couch beside Peter. Judy was majoring in mythology, and despite her punkish exterior was actually quite sweet. She was, in her own words, 'just going through a phase', and she had refused to go home, citing 'lifestyle choices' with her heavily conservative parents. She was Peter's girlfriend, the two somehow coming together across the vast social divide of 'arts nerd' and 'scholorship jock' to end up as freshman sweethearts last year.
And Eugene, the all-american freshman geek on campus, blushed at the attention. The slightly overweight 18 year old had stumbled onto the strange store on his way back from a solo outing to the otherwise deserted Plateau Heights mall on the near side of town. Stranded when his flight back to California was cancelled and without a car and unwilling to put the burden of his already struggling mom, Eugene had been lucky enough to get on the list to stay at the dorms. Besides, he sort of liked having all this time to hang out with Lindsey. She was into computers, and he loved playing video games on computers and they had a lot of geeky stuff to talk about...
"Yeah" Eugene replied as he pulled one of the lounge chairs over to the wide table that his recent purchase sat upon, "It was cool but...Really weird? You guys remember that old store called Spencer's?" A trio of shaking heads forced him to re-gather his thoughts, "Well, it was this old store that used to sell all kinds of weird shit. Like they had a bunch of geeky stuff that you and I would like, Lindsey"
"Oooh, like what?" The girl cooed as she reached over and grabbed a handful of popcorn from the large bowl that currently rested on Judy's fishnet-clad knees.
"Well, everything. Like movie props and video games and jewelry...They even had like costumes and anime and normal clothes. Well, normal for Judy"
"Hey" The goth chimed in through her own mouthful of popcorn.
"Sorry. But yeah they even had like, dildos and fleshlights in the back, right? So the Third Wish was a lot like that only without the sex toys or the blacklights and loud music. It was kind of like a counter-culture antique store? They had a LOT of 80s and 90s stuff in there. Anyway it's like the only store in the mall that isn't closed right? So I go in and it's empty, I don't even see anyone at the front desk and I think maybe it's closed and they just forgot to lock up or something...But then POOF! this girl pops up behind me! And she goes something like, 'Hey, do you need any help finding anything today?' And I, you know, tell her no, but then she goes off, grabs this thing and brings it right back to me!"
"That sounds a little creepy, Geno" Peter said as he draped a muscled arm around Judy, who snuggled in closer, her eyes wide with interest.
"Well that's what I thought too! But then she starts talking about this game and I'm not gonna lie I started geeking out a little bit because of all it can do! Here, let me read you the rules..." Eugene reached down and picked up the empty shell the game had come in and began reading off the text that was printed on the back of the weathered cardboard.
"This is a game that you will find, brings excitement in boring times. Comes with infinite games that come with two modes, each with it's own rules. We can play it like a traditional board game or we can play something it's calling 'Immersive Mode', which if I'm understanding this right, is sort of like playing Dungeons and Dragons?"
"Uh, I don't know how to play that" Peter said with a frown.
"Yeah, me neither" Judy said as she set the popcorn bowl on the table next to the hub-capped shaped game.
"Oh! I do! But I've only played once. I was a gnome! I stabbed some guys in the legs and stole their treasure. It was cool but the guys never invited me back to play again" Lindsey said, and Eugene tried not to just start nerding out over that fact. "But umm, like, where's the board? Or the little action figures? You need those to play either, right?"
"Actually no, the game is all in there!" Eugene said, pointing at the game, which to him looked like an old 1980's prototype game console, "It's like a computer, we turn it on, and then we slide a keyboard out from that latch on the side and type in WHATEVER we wnat as a game! We can make it as long or short as we want, and it has four pre-installed game modes but we can program it to make whatever we want! It even has a little printer for the game map and see that little black box on the side? I can even program in MORE with my computer!"
"Woah! Dude, this must have set you WAY back" Judy said, leaning up off the couch to inspect the game more closely.
"Actually I only spent like fifteen bucks!" The girl was way nice, she said she knew what it was like to be cooped up with nothing to do for a long time"
"Woah!"
"Yeah, I know right? But yeah, it also has little cards it'll dispense if we play traditional, like Monopoly cards or something to 'add challenge' to the game. We use one dice, singles and double rolls get two turns and high rollers have to always draw a card...And there's little action spaces that are a lot like the cards. I guess it's all there to make the game more interesting? Anyway, whoever gets to the middle has to yell 'Morphmanji!' and they 'get a wish', whatever that means. With immersive mode it sort of sounds like we have to RP our characters through the game and complete the quest, we get five lives but if we use up all of them we can't play with them anymore...But whoever wins has to yell the same thing and get a wish like Traditional. There's something on here about how if players leave the game before it's finished that can't play again...And this thing must be really old, most of the print is rubbed off here" Eugene said as he squinted at the faded text as it trailed off. "Oh well, how hard could it be, right?"
"You know, this kinda reminds me of an old movie..." Lindsey said, leaning back in her bean-bag, "But maybe I'm just having a blonde moment. Who made it?"
"I don't know, there's no logo on it" Eugene said, looking at the box and then around the game.
"Well if we're going to do this, let's do it already!" Peter said with a yawn, "I like you guys but this geeky stuff just makes me even more bored"
"Yeah, let's play!" Lindsey seconded.
"Okay...Just press this button here..." Eugene said, pushing on the Big Red Button in the middle of the console's top. There was a series of synthetic beeps and boops, and with a metallic click an old mechanical keyboard slid out of the base of the machine.
"PLEASE INPUT GAME TYPE" A robotic voice squawked from a speaker near the power button.
"This is so cool!" Lindsey squealed.
"Okay guys, what do we want to play first?" Eugene asked as he positioned his hands above the keyboard.
After a moment. the group decided on...
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