20th Official Meet n Greet (Officially a Temporary Unofficial Event Name)

🚗🔥 BOARD GAME NIGHT XX – THE WIZARD’S LOFT GRAND PRIX 🔥🚗

The legends will say I witnessed this night. They are wrong.
Tuesday did not wait for me.

Tuesday arrived, dragging chaos behind it like an emotional support animal with boundary issues. And for the first time in a long while… I wasn’t there to witness the moment it slipped its leash.

Far from the roar of cardboard engines, far from the heat rising off reckless strategy — I was just a man, blissfully unaware, while destiny went racing without me. It surged forward, wild and unrestrained, leaving tire marks across the fabric of reality while I stood miles away, powerless to intervene.

Some nights, fate invites me to the table. Other nights, it hurls me bodily from the premises and conducts the chaos in my absence.
This was the latter.

The race began without me.
The engines roared without me.
The chaos blossomed —
and I was left only with the fallout.
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🏁⏱️ WHEN THE ENGINES ROARED WITHOUT ME — A FRAGMENTED ACCOUNT ⏱️🏁

I wasn’t trackside at the Wizard’s Loft Grand Prix.
I didn’t hear the engines.
I didn’t see the slipstreams.
I didn’t smell the smoke from overheated gearboxes.

What I did get was the aftermath:
a stack of scorched timing sheets, half-melted lap counters, three wildly contradictory incident reports, and a set of notes so charred around the edges they looked like they’d been rescued from the inside of an active volcano.

Someone had written “DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS” across the top page.
Someone else had written “THIS IS FINE” directly under it. Neither annotation was comforting.

LAP 1: THE OVERCONFIDENCE SURGE

Richard — first-time guest, first-time teacher — allegedly started the race by shouting something equivalent to “Gentlemen, start your engines!” except one player reported it as:
“Shift responsibly.”
This advice was ignored instantly.

Jon P attempted a launch so aggressive that witnesses claim the café lights flickered. Meanwhile, Cody — a first-timer with suspiciously natural racing instincts — accelerated like a man who believed brakes were optional.

Kelly shifted with professorial certainty, muttering cornering statistics under her breath. Paty threatened to downshift so hard “the engine would file a grievance.”

Heat levels rose immediately.

LAP 2: THE FIRST CORNERING INCIDENT

A sharp hairpin turned the field into a full-blown physics experiment. Jeff entered the corner at a speed best described as legally actionable, the kind of decision that makes insurance companies bite down on pens. Sasha tried to slipstream behind him, only for both cars to compress into a moment where witnesses swear they saw two vehicles attempt to occupy the same air molecule.

Meanwhile, Richard — still teaching the rules mid-race — somehow managed to explain a cornering mechanic, apologize for something that wasn’t his fault, and accelerate all at the same time. The chaos was immediate. One car spun out with such dramatic force that someone claimed they heard the engine whisper, “I regret everything.”

Heat tokens began raining across the table like confetti at a deeply irresponsible parade.

LAP 3: STRESS CARDS BECOME LIFE CHOICES

By Lap 3, every driver found themselves staring down their stress cards like they were reading the results of a medical test they definitely failed. Cody’s burst of speed was described by one witness as “optimistic to the point of spiritual recklessness,” while Jeff’s was more of a sudden, bewildering lunge that no one — least of all Jeff — seemed prepared for.

Sasha’s stress play, on the other hand, triggered the kind of reaction normally reserved for natural disasters; someone at the table allegedly whispered, “That should be illegal.” Kelly approached her own stress card with mathematical confidence, announcing a probability that sounded reassuring right up until the moment everything went catastrophically sideways.

Paty’s engine heated so dramatically that the table briefly considered roasting marshmallows over her player board.

LAP 4: MECHANICAL FAILURE, HUMAN FAILURE, MORAL FAILURE

By Lap 4, the race had fully detached itself from common sense. Duncan remained eerily calm — too calm — navigating each turn with the quiet confidence of someone who had either transcended fear or sold his soul to a gearbox deity. Everyone else, meanwhile, appeared determined to wage war against their own engines.

Downshifts were executed with the kind of aggression usually reserved for breakup texts. Engines overheated so violently they sounded like they were filing workplace safety complaints. And at least one slipstream attempt was aimed directly into a corner clearly marked “DO NOT ATTEMPT,” resulting in a moment witnesses later described as “a philosophical disagreement with the laws of motion.”

A corner marshal’s note from this lap simply read:
“One car took the corner at a speed best described as emotional.”

And frankly, that was the most generous interpretation available.

FINAL LAP: THE INEVITABLE OUTCOME

In the final lap, everything unraveled with poetic inevitability. Duncan surged forward with a precision that defied probability, game balance, and perhaps morality. He made no errors, no miscalculations, no panicked card plays — just a cold, relentless march toward victory that suggested prior communication with supernatural forces.

Behind him, however, the real story unfolded in a whirlwind of questionable decisions. Kelly clung to life through sheer mathematics, calculating her survival one desperate corner at a time. Jon P attempted something so electrically ambitious that witnesses described it as “an unlicensed science experiment.” Paty generated enough engine heat to be classified as renewable energy. Jeff attempted a final, dramatic push that would later be summarized in the official notes as:
“Bold… but regrettable.”

Richard — still teaching, still accelerating — visibly reconsidered his life choices. And Cody, the rookie, overshot a corner with such enthusiastic velocity that someone swears they saw his slipstream collide with the pantry door.

When the smoke settled and the heat tokens stopped smoldering, one truth remained undeniable:

Duncan crossed the finish line first — by skill, by luck, or by dark racing magic — and the result stands.
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🚀🛣️ THE ROAD AHEAD 🛣️🚀

The engines may be silent now, but Tuesday is never finished. It gathers strength, coils like a storm on the horizon, and prepares to descend upon us once again with fresh chaos, fresh stories, and fresh opportunities to regret our strategic decisions. What happened on the racetrack was only the prologue — and the next chapter is already waiting to be dealt, drawn, or disastrously improvised.
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🎲 WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW 🎲

🎉 New Players Welcome — Whether you’re a rookie, a veteran, or someone who can’t tell a gearshift from a grapefruit, there’s always room on the starting grid. The pit crew (us) will get you race-ready.
🎯 Game Selection — Decided during the chat or at the table, usually by negotiating cornering speeds, interpreting suspicious tire marks, or emotionally blackmailing the group like a true motorsport professional.
🎮 Got a Favorite Game? — Bring it to the garage, rev the engine, and pitch it like you’re trying to win sponsorship money. Confidence counts, even if the strategy doesn’t.
🎭 Dress Code — Retro racer energy encouraged: goggles, faux leather jackets, scarves fluttering heroically in nonexistent wind, or simply the expression of someone who overshot Turn One.
🍇 Etiquette — Respect your fellow drivers, mind your slipstreams, and avoid drafting directly behind someone carrying emotional baggage. Share snacks like you're passing water bottles on a long straightaway.
⚠️ Warning — Tuesday has a known history of generating heat spikes, catastrophic downshifts, and spontaneous aerodynamic failures. Side effects may include laughter, chaos, and the need for hazard pay.
📜 Fun Fact — Every game night adds a new lap to the ongoing championship. Some drivers chase glory. Others chase survival. All of them leave skid marks on the story.
🧂 Table Talk — Trash talk permitted. Engine noises encouraged. Dramatic declarations of speed, fury, and gearbox betrayal welcome. Excessive gloating may be penalized by public ridicule.

— Your Absent Narrator, Piecing Together the Wreckage

📜 Since Our Last Meetup… 📜

🪅Paty returned from her travels insisting she saw “a sign.” She refuses to elaborate.
📬 A sealed envelope labeled “Turn Back” appeared on the table. No one has opened it.
🚪 Jeff encountered a closed door. The door won.
📓 The Archive of Unfinished Stories has quietly updated itself to include “The Night of the Grand Prix I Didn’t See,” filing it between “The Great Loft Incident” and “That Time the Donut Was Evidence.”
🪞 After his victory, Duncan walked past a mirror. The mirror blinked first
🎄 The red-coated figure hasn’t reappeared, but footprints have — and they’re getting closer to the building.