Blog / The Game Masters Tournament

Talking crack-bat: Welcome to the Game Master's Board! You've been chosen to play! Would you like to know the rules?
Me: Not really.
Talking crack-bat: There can only be one champion by the end of the Game! If you want to win, eliminate your fellow players – every death earns you points! Use those points at the Pawn Shops to buy the things you need to survive! Round one is a free-for-all – you'd better get going.
Me: ...Yeah sure whatever.
Talking crack-bat: And remember – the Hearts are around for medical aid, so-
Me: How many points do I get for killing you?
— A conversation between Tisiphone and a talking bat explaining the basic plot.

The Game Master's Tournament is a group of blogs that take place within The Fear Mythos. They all feature dfferent characters, but all begin the same way: the character wakes up on "the Game Board," a place with a checkerboard ground and orange skies, and they are instructed that they are a part of the "Game Master's Tournament" and there will only be one winner. To win, everyone else has to die.

Here are the characters:

• Gordon Tayler, a young Yu-Gi-Oh! fan who finds himself over his head with an actual magical deck.
• David Kallaway, an "Enhanced" servant of the Slender Man who finds he dislikes killing more and more.
• Blair H., an androgynous runner from the Black Dog.
• Tisiphone, a murderous young woman who is turning into a Lilim for the Mother of Snakes.
• Debbie Doehrs, an amateur MMA fighter.
• Frog Sorenson, a pre-med student.
• Clara Loomis, a rancher from a dystopian future ruled by the "New Gods," the Fears.
• Marcus Finn, a runner from the Choir.
• Emily Kim, a young woman with a penchant for knives.
• Drake Miri, a young man, and "Genome," the living AI Thoughtborn in his computer that is trying to get him killed.
• Malachi Dewitt, a Private Investigator who sometimes works for the Fears.
• Axiom and Rillek.
• Georgia, a runner from the Grotesque.
• And Ambrose Bierce, himself.

There's also a large group of other characters that appear in the story, many of which act as antagonists. These include:

• The Hanging Man
• The Jack-In-The-Box/The Jack of All
• The Pied Piper of Hamelin

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Tropes displayed in the Game Master's Tournament:

• A God Am I: Dewitt does this after he becomes The Tale Weaver.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: The world in which the tournament takes place; the sky is orange, the ground is checkered, and there are talking bats.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Genome.
• Alternate Character Interpretation
  • See No Yay for the interpretation of the Hanging Man.
• Ambiguous Gender: Blair.
• Amnesiacs are Innocent: Axiom
• Anti-Climax: Dewitt v. Emily.
• Anyone Can Die: There can only be one victor...and so far the dead include Debbie, Marcus, Drake, Axiom, Ambrose, Rillek, Gordon, and Clara. Now that they've reached the final bracket, that list includes the Hanging Man, Tisiphone, Dewitt, Harold, Kallaway, Genome, and Emily.
  • As of the final round, Frog is also dead.
• Arch-Enemy: Quite a few of the finalists had one, and some actually had two, including Kallaway and the Pied Piper, Dewitt and The Jack-in-the-Box, and Blair had a few, including The Hanging Man and Frog
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Emily Kim describing her opponents.
  Emily: "Unsurprisingly, a they were mostly weirdos. Snake-people and masked guys and cowboys with rope fetishes and a kid on a horse."
• Ax-Crazy: A couple people, but Dewitt deserves special mention.
  • Word of God says wait for it, he eventually gets worse.
    • No more need to wait... Dewitt has turned into an evil apprentice of the Game Master known as the Tale Weaver.
• Bad Future: It's heavily implied Clara comes from one of these.
• Big Bad: The Game Master.
• Bittersweet Ending: Congratulations, Blair! You've won, and your prize is...Ambrose and Clara are alive! They just may not remember you. Also, there's no telling where they are.
• Black Dude Dies First: Averted. Subverted, when one considers that in the trio of Ambrose, Blair, and Clara, the two white characters die off.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality
• Break the Cutie: Blair.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Many of the characters drop this sometimes, but Dewitt is well known for doing this more often than not. At least three of his posts have that word in the title.
• Co-Dragons: The Red and Black Jokers.
• Cold Sniper: Harold
• Cool Horse: Windmill. He also has shades of Hellish Horse, as a blog post from Frog reveals that in Windmill's time, horses have fangs.
• Cool Old Guy: Ambrose Bierce. Seriously.
• Cool Old Lady: Clara. Crosses over with Never Mess with Granny.
• Cool Sword: Emily and Kallaway pick up one of these.
• Crazy-Prepared: Emily Kim.
  Emily: "Thankfully, my Boy Scout bag got sucked into this game along with me. So, I’ve got my laptop, my cell (which is dead, unfortunately), my first aid kit, my knives, and all the other stuff I keep in there."
• Cute and Psycho: Both Emily and Tisiphone.
• Death Seeker: Harold. It's unknown at this point in time whether this goal was achieved or not. Odds are: probably not.
• Depraved Bisexual: Word of God says Tisiphone is this.
• Designated Bullet: Blair kills the Hanging Man with Ambrose's Mauser.
• Devious Daggers: Emily Kim.
• Did You Actually Believe...?: Frog, to Emily.
  Frog: "I grinned at her. “Did you really think I was serious?”"
• Did You Just Romance Cthulu: Frog and Tisiphone. Then he starts changing, too.
• Disney Villain Death: Emily gets one in her last fight.
• Dying as Yourself: Georgia, in her last few moments, snaps out of her dream...just in time to die.
• Dying Dream: Ambrose Bierce, who appropriately wrote one of the Trope Codifiers, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
• Elimination Houdini: Frog - horror-movie logic dictates he should have died off early. Somehow, he's a finalist.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Windmill. Literally.
• Evil All Along: Emily - not that she was masquerading as 'good', exactly.
• Evil Versus Evil: Pretty much everyone (except Blair).
• Eye Scream: Dewitt to some random combatant.
• Fangs Are Evil: Obviously, Siph. There's also a very noticeable dip in Frog's morality once his start growing in.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Both Ambrose and Clara. However, since they're all in an alternate dimension, this doesn't put them at much of a disadvantage.
• The Game Come to Life: Gordon's cards.
• Genre Savvy: Knowing their blogs are being read by an enemy, Ambrose, Blair, and Clara set a trap this way. Becomes Death by Genre Savviness when one considers that, because of that trap, Ambrose died.
• Good Animals, Evil Animals – the final match-up. Arguably the most ‘good’ character, Blair, facing Frog – who is a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk, if not outright evil. They are, respectively, a human versus a snake-being.
• Good Guns, Bad Guns: Subverted by "good guy" Ambrose who uses a Mauser. Although it has long been lumped in with Nazi guns, the original Mauser C96 actually dates back to the late 19th century when Bierce lived where it wouldn't have those "bad" connotations yet.
• Groin Attack: Happened to a nameless character, courtesy of Clara and Dewitt.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Very much averted.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Dewitt. After Axiom dies, he gets worse.
• Heel–Face Turn: Kallaway isn't quite as comfortable with killing as the game goes on.
  • Dewitt starts out generally angry but willing to forgive and make allies although he has a serious Hair-Trigger Temper. This escalates when the death of Axiom causes Sanity Slippage and he eventually descends from an Antivillain to a powerful demi-god who acts as The Game Master's protege.
• Helpful Mook: The Hearts. Their sole duty is to heal the 'players'...but they still serve the Game Master.
• Hero Killer: The Hanging Man.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Clara. Kallaway tries one...but is killed before he manages it.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Frog and Siph, again.
  Frog: "Then some chick tried to sneak up on us while we were sleeping and Tisifony ripped her throat out. I think I’m in love."
• Invincible Minor Mook: The Spades.
• It's Personal: The match-up between Blair and the Hanging Man.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Frog, who agonized when Debbie died, finally decides that he would have had to kill her anyway and goes to kill more people. Drake also does this as he goes from a hesitant and pathetic wimp to a much less hesitant but still pretty pathetic murderer once he realizes that he can be free of Genome if he kills enough people. Doesn't actually work and results in him becoming more insane as his attempt to be free of Genome results in Genome slowly taking over his mind.
• Kill the Cutie: Poor Debbie.
• The Last Dance: Realizing his Enhancement is about to end his life, Kallaway draws his sword and rushes at the Game Master. Unfortunately, his heart explodes before he reaches him.
• Let Me at Him!: Dewitt displays this after Axiom's death.
• A Lighter Shade of Grey: Most of the 'good' characters are this.
• Mama Bear: Clara, to two young players she encounters early on; later, Blair.
• Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication: Averted.
• Moral Myopia: Pops up a few times.
• No Yay: Could apply to several, but based on one Alternate Character Interpretation (the Hanging Man is a Yandere towards Blair) this trope could be the two of them all over.
• Papa Wolf: Ambrose again; he clearly begins to view Blair as a 'son', due to his real-life failures with his sons.
• Parental Substitute: Word of God says Axiom viewed/views Malachai as this.
• Platform Battle: The way the semi-finals are staged.
• Prehensile Tail: Siph and Frog each grow one.
• Random Drop: A few players find 'bonus items'.
• Replacement Goldfish: Following Siph's death, Frog is hoping for this, with Emily.
• Sacrificial Lion: The way Ambrose dies, at the hands of the Hanging Man.
• Sanity Slippage: Although Dewitt's last straw was the death of Axiom, he had already had begun losing his temper and his self-control since before the tournament.
• Self-Defenceless: Blair has a taser, which he uses against Kallaway in the semi-final. Played straight in that it isn't very effective...but then, Kallaway isn't a regular person. When Blair, hirself, gets shocked a little, s/he is incapacitated, so this trope is also subverted.
• Sequel Hook: Blair's prize left plenty of room for him/her to continue their part of the story. That story continues in this blog.
  • A more direct sequel is The Tale Weaver Challenges involving more of the Tournament's characters (whether they be dead or...otherwise) and moving along the same vein.
• Sex Is Evil
• Shattered Sanity: Dewitt seems to have undergone this a little after finding Axiom's dead body.
• Snakes Are Sexy: When Frog finally sees Tisiphone's true form, this is what he thinks.
• Snake People: Siph and now Frog.
• Stages of Monster Grief: Frog does not go through this. Even remotely.
• Stripperiffic: The Red Joker.
• Stupid Sacrifice: Marcus dies off very early while trying to learn about the Jokers and Game Master...and is 'disqualified'.
• Tear Jerker: There are so many deaths of good characters that count as this. The death of Ambrose, the deaths of Axiom and Debbie at the hands of Siph, the sacrifice of Clara, and Dewitt's last fight may all count as this.
• There Can Only Be One: The whole point of the game.
• Tragic Keepsake: Blair seems to be accumulating them.
• True Final Boss: Turns out the 'final round' isn't as final as the Game Master first let on.
• Unholy Matrimony: Frog and Siph.
• Villain Protagonist: A few of them.
• Violence is the Only Option
• Violence Really Is the Answer
• Wasteland Elder: Both Ambrose and Clara.
• We Can Rule Together: The Game Master tries to do this with Dewitt. Sadly, Dewitt is going along with it.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Gordon.
• What a Drag: Clara does this from Windmill's back, to the Hanging Man. It doesn't kill him.
• What Could Have Been: Depending on the final outcome, there are a few 'What Could Have Been' scenarios. A few of said scenarios including All Just a Dream, in which Emily goes on to be a serial killer, Debbie beating on Frog for being a jerk before helping him find Tisiphone and the Mother of Snakes in real life...only to be killed again, and Clara going on to tell her non-binary granddaughter Sam about Blair.

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