Video Summary - Gloom: Amber Benson, Michele Boyd, and Meghan Camarena (Strawburry17) join Wil on TableTop

Game Storyline / Theme (The “World”)

Gloom is a darkly comic card game where each player controls a family of misanthropes—eccentrics like “Hemlock Hall” and “Dark’s Den of Deformity.”
The story is told through your turns: everything you do with cards is framed as a justification for horrible life events.
This session’s overarching “plot”:
- families descend into escalating misery, often through death, calamity, and spite
- rivals sometimes suffer “wrong” outcomes, which can even boost the wrong family’s misery score

On your turn, you can play three types of cards:
1. Modifier cards
  - Negative modifiers on your own family to make them more miserable (good for you)
  - Positive modifiers on rivals’ families to make them happier (bad for them)
2. Event cards
  - Cause special effects (including canceling actions).
3. Untimely death cards
  - Used on characters who have negative self-worth
  - Remove them from the game and award points to the player who caused it
Scoring is “golf-like”:
- You gain points for the dead family members
- The lowest self-worth score wins (i.e., more miserable outcomes are better)
When a family has no characters left, the game ends and you tally the dead’s points.

Amber Benson (Blackwater clan)
- Old Dam, Angel (starry-eyed serial killer), Balthazar (unfaithful hound), Cousin Mordecai
Meghan Camarena / “Strawburry17” (Smythes)
- Mr. Butterfield (butler), Lord Wellington-Smythe (duke), Lola (wild child), the Twins
Michele Boyd (Slogars)
- Professor Helena Slogar (matriarch), Melissa Slogar, Lord Slogar, Grogar (teddy bear scamp)
Wil Wheaton (Darius Dark’s traveling circus)
- Darius Dark (sinister ringmaster), Thumbelisa, Samson O’Toole (bearded man), Elissandre De Ville (illustrated lady)

Wil states the core winning concept:
- Get characters to negative self-worth quickly
- Kill them off (engineer misery, then use untimely death)
The group repeatedly jokes about the idea that stories justify the misery—so even deaths get elaborate comedic “lore.”

Samson O’Toole (Wil’s circus)
- Dies after drinking himself to death following the Twins being trapped and miserable
- Framed as a “tragedy that inspires overdrinking”
The Old Dam (Amber)
- Punished by mob justice after atrocities in her basement
The Twins (Meghan)
- A chain of disasters, including:
  - trapped on a train and stung by wasps after an emergency-exit attempt
  - later celebrated in town while in the hospital, then targeted/beaten by beggars
- Their increased popularity drives Professor Helena into despair, and she dies
Elissandre (Wil)
- Experiences escalating harm (including injury/illness)
- Eventually resolved through a complicated chain involving predators and bizarre outcomes
Wil repeatedly escalates comedic alliteration and escalating hazards:
- mice → “menacing” circus mice, snakes, bears, and other absurd predator logic

Wil claims that with the right setup—and by tracking negative self-worth and available death cards—he’s positioned to win.
However, the final scoring leads to unexpected results.

Engineer negative self-worth on your own characters quickly, then:
- use untimely death cards at the right time to “cash in” misery for points
Use modifier/event cards to swing:
- negative toward your family, positive toward rivals
Events can disrupt opponents
- including cards that cancel actions
Narrative consistency matters (for this group):
- the more coherent the comedic “why,” the better the table experience
- mechanics still ultimately determine the points

The match ended in a three-way tie for first, with:
- Amber Benson: 70 points
- Wil Wheatone: 70 points
- Meghan Camarena: 70 points
Michele Boyd finished at 45 points
Wil notes it’s statistically rare to have a three-way win in a game like this.