Tabletop gaming can be
critical to your health.
Forty years in the making
Every August, four thousand people in fancy dress pour into the Meridian Centre for GAMESPIRE, the biggest tabletop weekend of the year. This time the whole floor is here for one thing: the midnight reveal of ROLL OVER AND DIE! II, the sequel that made Gus Marlow a legend and, depending who you ask, a monster.
Gus Marlow
Sixty-one. Leather waistcoat, forty years of feuds, and a nut allergy he announced to every room he ever walked into. He built an empire on a game about surviving a dungeon, then spent a decade making enemies faster than expansions. Half this con owes him their careers. The other half would happily have watched him choke.
3:25 this afternoon
In the VIP green room, Gus stopped breathing over the prototype of his own sequel. A spent EpiPen welded into his fist. A half-drunk protein shake at his elbow. The medics called it his heart and nobody argued. But his hand is clenched wrong, the shake smells of almonds, and you have done this job too long to like either.
You have until four
You’re the nearest thing to law in the building until the real thing fights through four thousand people in cosplay. That gives you until four o’clock, when the doors open and the green room empties into the crowd for good. Whoever did this is still in here. When those doors open, they are gone.
Know the building
Meridian is a warren. The green room is where it starts. Beyond it wait the convention floor, artist alley, the promoter’s office and the cosplay runway. You’ll get to them. First, the room with the body in it.
