Occasionally he would find a serious magical text in the collection of junk only to be dissapointed again by the content. There were explicit textbooks on tantric metamagic, an annotated magician's edition of the Kama Sutra, a instruction manual on turning an adept into a twisted sex slave, and several volumes on sexual congress between astral forms. While interesting, none of these could provide material for a Masters Thesis titled "The Dead and You: Magicial interactions with the deceased." He had hoped that these boxes would contain a trove of old school necromancy.
As he pulls yet another H.P. Lovecraft novel out of a box and throws it aside, Sam spies a faint glow on the astral plane. Sam digs beeper into the box, hunting out the magically active artifact. What he finds is an ornate hardwood box, with the name "Monopoly" clearly inscribed into its top. Opening the box reveals that it is, indeed, a Monopoly game. However, instead of having places for the community chest and chance cards it has two crystals. Those crystals are the source of the astral glow. Assensing reveals that they are indeed enchanted but doesn't reval the exact nature of the magic. The mana pattern resembles that of the divination metamagic ever so slightly but is very different. It seems that the crystals were supposed to replace the cards somehow. A cursery inspection of the rule book confirms this. Everywhere the word "card" should appear it is replaced with "magic eye."
Sam inspects the came pieces one by one, placing them down on Go as he is finished. Each is made entirely from an alchemical radical of gold and are fairly hefty. They'd be worth the price he paid for the boxes by themselves. However, they were also tied into the enchantment somehow. The dice are made from the ivory of an awakened animal. Sam can't identify the species but the traces of critter magic are certainly there and they were tied to the same enchantment, as well. Sam decided that he would take the game to someone more knowledgable than he in the morning. and droped the dice onto the board before closing the box.
He didn't see the racecar move on its own.
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In 2057 a brilliant but inane Parker Brothers employee saw that mundane board games could no longer compete with DNI based video games that are all but indistuniguishable from reality. He successfully lobbied for funds to magic up classic Parker Brothers board games in the hopes that enchantmments would give board games an edge over their electronic counterparts. The first protoype, a version of Risk, cost over half a million nuyen to manufacture. In order to make a reasonale profit they would have to sell them from
850,000 each. No one would pay that much for a board game that normally costs less 19.99. There was also the incident where a playtester was shot with a flintlock musket. Due to the spectular failure of the enchanted board game concept, this visionary employee was fired. However, he continued to secretly make magical versions of popular board games with the help of an underground initatory group and taught his skills to others. For this reason a variety of such games can be found. All are dangerous.
Recently, this magician has been hired by Milton Bradly and their are rumors that they are incorporiating a less expensive version of this magic into their new board game, Attack of the Horrors, due out this Christmas.
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There are many different metaplanes and many are influanced by human thought and culture. Some even take on the trappings of pop culture. There are metaplanes of trid shows. There are metaplanes of novels. There are even metaplanes of board games.
These enchanted games serve as metaplaner gateways linking our physical world with the board game's metaplane. It can pull through as many spirits as are required to complete the game but none can be of a force greater than the force of the enchanted board. Spirits come through the gateway to enforce the games rules and makes its imaginary effects real. The spirits remain untill the game is finished regardless of anything else that happens. If they are disrupted they can return instantly and they cannot be destroyed so long as the board exists. If the board is destroyed any spirits that came through it remain but can be disrupted or destroyed normally. If the game is finished, all spirits return to their metaplane instantly.
Games of a force greater than 8 can also physically pull people and objects into the metaplane.
All of these games are dangerous. The spirits that come through follow the game's rules through the letter without regard to anyone's safety. People have been known to die while playing these games. Just recently, a little girl was eaten by a Burmese Python while playing an enchanted version of Snakes and Ladders.
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