Nobody Stays | A Ghost Story
One night at the Stardust was supposed to be a stop along the way. Then the fire came. You wake as ghosts, still bound to the lives you left behind.
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SYSTEM
LANGUAGE
EXPERIENCE
AGE
$25.00
/ Session
Details
1 player following this game
Bi-weekly / Thursday - 11:00 PM UTC
Session Duration / 3 hours
Campaign Length / 14–16 Sessions
0 / 4 Seats Filled
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About the adventure
Three or four strangers spend one night at the Stardust, an aging roadside motel in Wallace, Idaho. Before morning, a fire tears through the building. You die. Then you wake up. The motel is still there, but drained of warmth and color; the living cannot see you, the people you left behind are already beginning to grieve, and something inside you has begun whispering all the reasons you should give up. You are met by Carver, an experienced Reaper who cuts you free from the strange cocoon of death and teaches you enough to survive. He is courteous, patient, and may even come to care about you. There is something about him that doesn't fit. An older ghost named Ruth has haunted the Stardust for decades; she has seen plenty of strange dead things pass through, and Carver isn't like any of them. She won't say more than that, not yet. Something beneath the motel has been sealed away for years. Other dead things are beginning to notice you. And as you learn how to reach across the barrier between the living and the dead, it becomes increasingly clear that your Reaper knows far more than any ordinary ghost should. This is a ghost story first. You do not need to know Wraith lore or World of Darkness cosmology going in; your characters begin knowing almost nothing about what has happened to them, and the larger setting will emerge through play. Expect strong roleplay, supernatural investigation, moments of real danger, and an emphasis on the people, places, regrets, and unfinished business that still bind your character to life. Your character can have been almost anyone: the only requirement is that they had a reason to be passing through Wallace that night, and somewhere they expected to go afterward. The chronicle is designed as a finite biweekly campaign for a small, dedicated group, with a definite story arc from beginning to end. This is a dark game, but not an exercise in uninterrupted misery: there is room for friendship, strange beauty, humor, and triumph alongside the horror. You died. You are still here. What do you do now? Wallace, Idaho, and the Stardust Motel are real places that inspired this setting, but the characters, events, and history depicted in this chronicle are entirely fictional and are not associated with or endorsed by the real motel or its owners.
Game style
Roleplay Heavy
Theater of the Mind
Puzzle / Mystery Focused
Combat Lite
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
4.9
(18)
3 years on StartPlaying
93 games hosted
Highly rated for: Creativity, Knows the Rules, Storytelling
About me
I got into roleplaying games for the thrill of real stakes: a character I cared about could actually die, and something about that possibility made everything else matter more. From there I learned, through years of playing and running, how to fully inhabit a character rather than just pilot one. I run games to build worlds that feel lived-in, whether I’m running for one player or a whole table: NPCs with their own agendas, events that keep moving whether or not the characters are looking at them, and consequences that actually stick. I lean roleplay-forward and character-driven, with a particular love for horror, mystery, danger, difficult choices, and stories where relationships, loyalties, regrets, and ambitions carry as much weight as any dice roll. I run a rules-solid game, but I use the rules in service of the fiction rather than stopping the fiction to admire the rules. If you want a game where your character’s choices and attachments genuinely shape what happens next, come find me.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Characters will be created individually with me before Session 0. Session 0 will be used to bring the group together, establish tone and boundaries, discuss Shadows and other Wraith-specific mechanics, and make sure everyone is ready for the opening session. We'll be using the standard Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition character-creation rules. You do not need to know the system in advance or own the book; I’m happy to walk new players through Attributes, Abilities, Arcanoi, Passions, Fetters, and the other parts that make a wraith who they are. Your character begins the chronicle as an ordinary living person passing through Wallace, Idaho, with somewhere they were coming from, somewhere they expected to go, and people or things that mattered to them. The motel fire and your death happen at the beginning of the story, so your character should have no prior supernatural background, powers, or special occult status. The point is that you die without understanding what comes next and learn the supernatural world through play. We’ll also create your character’s Shadow together. I will portray the Shadows initially so that you can learn how they work through play; if the group is comfortable with it later, we may hand Shadowguiding between players. For published material, we’ll use the W20 core book as the default, with anything from supplements by approval.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
Before the first session, players should: * Join the campaign Discord server, which we’ll use for voice chat, scheduling, handouts, and between-session communication. * Expect a Foundry VTT access link from me closer to Session 0. It'll be used for character sheets, rolls, tracking, and visual handouts: no purchase required, and there's nothing you need to do yet. * Have a working microphone and a reasonably quiet place to play. * Complete an individual character-creation session with me before Session 0. No prior knowledge of Wraith or the World of Darkness is required, and you do not need to own the rulebook. * Come to Session 0 ready to discuss tone, safety boundaries, Shadows, and how the group wants to approach a fairly character-focused horror game. There is no homework assignment to learn Wraith lore beforehand; in fact, I would rather you didn’t. Your character begins knowing almost nothing about the afterlife, and discovering what being dead means is part of the game.
What souldiver brings to the table
I run games with a strong emphasis on character, atmosphere, and consequences. I want NPCs to feel like people rather than quest dispensers, and I want the world to keep moving even when the characters are looking somewhere else. I have a story in mind for Nobody Stays, but not a script: there are mysteries, people with agendas, things already in motion, and consequences waiting to unfold. What the chronicle actually becomes will depend heavily on who your characters are, what they care about, and what they choose to do with the strange second life they have been given. My GM style is roleplay-forward, with a solid grounding in the rules and an emphasis on keeping play moving. I use the system to give choices and consequences weight, but I don't want a good scene to grind to a halt while we hunt through a book. When something genuinely ambiguous comes up, I'll make a quick ruling, keep the moment moving, and revisit it afterward if necessary. Combat and danger matter, but this is not primarily a tactical-combat campaign; investigation, haunting the living, relationships, difficult choices, and the slow accumulation of clues will carry much of the game. I’ll provide the setting material, NPCs, visual references and handouts, and the larger mystery behind the Stardust. I also try to give every character real space in the story: their Passions, Fetters, loved ones, regrets, and Shadows should matter as much as the central plot. My goal is for the chronicle to feel less like following a prepared sequence of scenes and more like something strange that is happening to these particular people: messy, surprising, and sometimes a little more like life than a story ought to be.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How souldiver creates a safe table
We’ll use Lines and Veils, Breaks, Open Door, Session 0, and quick Debriefing to keep the table comfortable without interrupting the flow of play. Before the campaign begins, I’ll share the Monte Cook RPG Consent Checklist, which we’ll use to establish our Lines and Veils. Players can complete it privately, and boundaries can be updated at any time. In Session 0 we’ll go over the game’s tone and content, establish boundaries, talk about how personal themes such as death, grief, family, religion, and body horror will be handled, and discuss Wraith’s Shadow mechanic in particular. Shadows are meant to be cruel to characters, but they are never an excuse to make a player uncomfortable or attack the player personally. We’ll take a normal break during each session, and anyone can ask for an additional break whenever they need one. Open Door applies throughout the game: you can step away from a scene or from the session for any reason without having to explain yourself. After especially intense sessions, we’ll take a few minutes for an informal debrief before everyone signs off, giving players a chance to come out of character, mention anything that landed particularly well or badly, and flag anything they would like handled differently next time.
Content warnings
Safety tools used