Dragon's Lair
April, 2025
Sometime in mid February my friend Jason asked if I'd be interested in helping to build a birthday game for his daughter in April. She had seen the Specter of Grosvenor Place that Beth and I made last summer and wanted something similar. Our son's birthday is also in April, so we decided, why build one game when you can build two? This write up describes my son's game. The next update will be about Jason's daughter's.
One of the party ideas our son asked for was a multi-game tournament of some kind. I think he was thinking about playing Magic, Super Smash Bros, and other games, but I wanted something unique. I spent an evening thinking about inventing a simple physical card battle game he could play with his friends, and got as far as a playtest with the family. I imagined embedding NFC tags in custom cards and coming up with some way where the room reacted to the plays you made.
But then Jason and I started thinking more about possible story ideas. We wanted to develop a general story structure that could be re-themed for both parties, and somewhere along the way we began discussing magic, spirits, and the occult. I quickly moved the tagged playing card idea to become an Ouija board that actually spoke with the beyond and reacted to your choices.
Things spiraled even further from there.
We spent February and March discussing different story ideas and coming up with different game play mechanics that could be incorporated into the story. I began designing and building the Ouija board, and also built a mobile map that could lead you on a scavenger hunt with your phone around the neighborhood. To operate our growing ideas, I upgraded the Director2 software to send text messages, and receive commands from external physical devices to drive the story.
After hashing through many different story ideas, we arrived at a plot that would lead our son and his friends on an epic, 1980's Dungeons and Dragons inspired adventure.
On April 11, 1985, four teenagers disappeared from our Oakland neighborhood, but despite a lengthy investigation, the case remains unsolved to this day. The lead investigator on the case, Officer Mark Mayview, continued his search for 40 years until his retirement. Haggard and defeated, he pulled all of his research together and returned it to the Oakland Police evidence department on his last day before retiring.
But Oakland is in financial trouble right now, and they don't have the resources to continue a 40 year old missing person's case. So the case was closed, and in a last bit of bureaucratic process, all the property that was collected as evidence was returned to the last known address: our house.
Of course, the police didn't even deliver the box to the correct address, and instead accidentally delivered it to a house up the street. The game began when our neighbors Mark and Stacey stopped by our house with a large, old cardboard box. They explained that the police had just come by and delivered the box, but it has our address on it. Our son and his friends were temporarily terrified and not sure what to do. We all looked at the letter from the police taped on the lid, and then I asked James and his friends to take it downstairs to get a closer look.
Opening the box, our son and his friends discovered that it was seemingly full of junk. But looking a bit closer, they found Officer Mayview's folder of notes and documents. They found a set of old D&D books, character sheets, and notes from an in-progress D&D campaign for a group called “Dragon's Lair”. As they dug deeper into the box's contents, they also found a stack of cassette tapes and an old cassette player. And below that at the bottom of the box was a worn out Ouija board.
Initially overwhelmed with everything they discovered, the kids then started reviewing notes, opening the Ouija board, and examining the cassette tapes. One cassette was loose from the rest of the stack and labeled “Listen to this first”. Our son figured out how to set up the cassette player and then he struggled for a few minutes to put a tape in before getting it to play.
Officer Mayview's voice played through the tape player as he recounted his investigation, his disappointment at not solving the case, and a hope that the next set of investigators can complete what he started. He instructed that anyone who was picking up the case should listen to all of the interviews he conducted, which were on the remaining tapes, and to thoroughly review all of his notes, with the hope they could solve the case that he could not.
The four remaining tapes contained interviews with neighborhood residents describing various sightings of a boy named Chris and his friends. Through these interviews, it was clear that something odd happened, but no one could explain it or put the pieces together. Our son and his friends listened to each tape one by one, and matched up the interviews with the evidence found in Officer Mayview's notes.
At the end of the fourth tape just after the interview, static broke in and a new voice came through the tape player: “Play the game. Spell my name. I am the dungeon master. Play the game. Spell my name…”
At this point, they knew through the collected evidence that Chris was the DM that day. They debated what “play the game” meant. Were they to play the D&D campaign? Use the Ouija board? As the debate continued, one of our son's friends took the planchette and said, “I'm going to put Chris' name into the board.” Suddenly as the rest of the group animatedly discussed what to do, the lights went out in the room, a static hum was heard, and then, with the lights flashing, Chris's voice began speaking.
Chris was extremely excited that he had finally made contact with someone. He then recounted that April 11th, 1985 was Chris Miller's 15th birthday. Chris invited his friends Bruce, Paul, and Jeff to come over to play a new Dungeons and Dragons campaign that he wrote for the party. They first met up at Chris' house, which turns out to be where we live today, and rode their bikes further up into the Oakland Hills to the spot in the woods where they often play their campaigns.
Once they got set up and started playing, Jeff noticed something hidden in the bushes; an old Ouija board. Curious, they set it up to play, which triggered a series of chaotic events. With the sky turning dark, and the wind howling, a demon appeared and attacked Chris' friends. Jeff, Paul and Bruce were each sucked into their D&D figures, and knowing that he was next, Chris quickly grabbed the figures and made his escape.
Chris flew down the hill as fast as he could back to the neighborhood, determined to hide the figures from the Demon. After he stashed them in the best places he knew, he returned home. But as he reached the top of the stairs to his front door, there on his porch was that Ouija board. And as he turned around, Chris discovered the demon was there, too. The last thing he remembered was a pair of yellow eyes…
It was now time for our son and his friends to help rescue Chris, Paul, Bruce and Jeff. They needed to find the
figures that Chris hid and bring them back to the Ouija board, then Chris would help them set everyone free. As
Chris' voice disappeared, our son's phone buzzed. A text message arrived from Chris with a link to a map showing the
hiding locations of the figures.
Our son organized his friends into three search parties, shared the map with each of them, and then they split up to search the neighborhood. Two figures were hidden in separate nearby parks, and one was hidden in the creek that flows through the backyard of our friend Bill's house, the same location from one of the taped interviews. Our son and one of his friends ended up there and had to talk their way into the backyard to search. Bill, knowing they were coming, played the cranky old man, reluctantly letting them into his yard, but warning them to keep an eye out for skunks.
I figured the longest part of this portion would be walking to each location, however the search took much longer than expected. They did not fully realize that the map pins were the exact locations and instead they stumbled around the area looking without success. After being alerted by Bill that they were not making progress, I ultimately needed to text our son some additional hints. He then joined the rest of his friends at the other locations and together they finally found all three hidden figures.
After exploring the neighborhood for a bit over an hour, everyone returned and rushed back down to the Ouija board. Each figure was found in a small canvas bag, illustrated with a symbol from the Ouija board. They placed the figures on their matching sun, moon, and “freaky lady” at the corners of the board. Instantly the background music stopped and Chris returned to congratulate them on finding the figures. But suddenly the lights again went out and a loud, low growling filled the room. The demon had found them!
Panicked, Chris tried to decide what to do and then realized that the current sequence of events matched the D&D campaign he was running for his birthday. Recalling the final battle he designed, he asked our son and his friends to prepare to battle the Demon. They needed to find his D20 and roll to attack. Rolling a 1-10 was a “light attack” and 11-20 was a “dark attack”. After each roll, they needed to move the Ouija planchette to the sun for a light attack, and to the moon for a dark attack.
The friends debated who would roll first and then began the battle. Not wanting to move the figures they previously put on the board, they didn't initially commit their attacks until I pointed out they needed to fully cover the sun or moon. The battle continued long enough so everyone had at least one turn to roll. With one final dark attack, the demon screamed and Chris reported that he was down, but somehow not dead. Chris then had one final recollection from his campaign. The death blow for the demon required that he saw his own name, so Chris urged our son and his friends to spell the demon's name into the Ouija board. His name was in Chris' campaign notes, and after it was found, they spelled out his name and were rewarded with the demon crying out, lights flashing, and then darkness.
The lights came back up, Chris returned, and gratefully thanked our son and his friends for their help. Then as Chris freely departed with his friends, the lights brightened with closing music loudly filling the room. Our son and his friends excitedly congratulated each other, concluding their adventure.
This was a great, fun collaboration with Jason. Many others additionally helped along the way, and it would not have come together without them. Thank you to: