Nick would like to have left Juniper’s cocktail lounge with icy dignity; all he managed was to slink out, his cheeks burning. He’d guessed Poppy Dolittle would be there on Christmas Eve, and he’d been right.
For thirteen years they’d shared classrooms; since the age of five he’d known that she was the girl for him. The mild affection had by teenage years turned into a crippling crush, and somehow Poppy had never seemed to notice Nick’s constant admiring glances.
In sixth form she’d developed an air of superiority and had begun to wear designer labels and mention her famous friends. As time went on, she seemed to live in another world entirely; one of West End parties and glamorous holidays.
Nick hadn’t seen her for three months by Christmas; so his plan was simple. He acquired a sprig of mistletoe, stalked her socials till he was sure she would be at Juniper’s, and played the scene a thousand times in his head.
He’d bring her back to the bungalow; therefore he paid Daphne Daffy forty quid to clean it and bought fresh flowers that were sitting in a jug as he lacked a vase. He’d even been to Primark and bought black satin sheets, and been to Boots the Chemists to acquire the necessary.
In short, he was confident. Arrayed in his best shirt, reeking of expensive aftershave and firmly convinced love conquers all, tonight was the night he’d declare his love and carry Poppy home.
He’d entered the bar, bought a soft drink as driving, and then saw Poppy – beautiful, no resplendent – holding court at a table of handsome guys and girls content to bask in her reflected glory. His heart leapt; if after all this psyching himself up she wasn’t here, well, he couldn’t think of anything worse.
He strode across, spoke her name. Her eyes lingered on his face a few seconds, she looked him up and down, and then her gaze slid easily back to her friends, and she returned to her conversation. If it were not for subsequent events, Nick would have tortured himself between if she totally failed to recognise the boy she’d grown up with, or perhaps worse, had recognised him and was utterly indifferent. His eyes stung, and realising that was it, he hurried up the stairs, out of the bar, and into the night.
Once in his car he totally lost it. For a moment, as his world seemed about to cave in, he thought about driving off to Scotland and never returning. Luckily Nick was young, overly optimistic as we have already seen, and he suddenly recalled Carol, who worked with him, had suggested a Christmas drink. She lived up on the Medway; he had plenty of time to get to Rochester and show how over Poppy he was by…
Let us not dwell on the less than flattering way in which Nick now switched affections and began to think about how to get Carol back to his new sheets with Christmassy chat-up lines about ‘pulling a cracker’. Suffice to say Carol would have been disappointed in him, and he might have been slapped. Luckily, fate intervened.
Nick had put on Hot Chocolate’s classic ‘It Started With a Kiss’ and was luxuriating in his heartbreak and the stark betrayal of his deep unspoken passion by the (mercifully) oblivious Poppy. Between stifled sobs he suddenly saw her; a girl in white, standing by the road in the icy driving rain, apparently trying to wave him down.
Nick pulled over, sniffed, and wiped his face. The girl did not wait for an invitation; she jumped in, dropped her cardigan by her feet and stared silently ahead. Nick looked at her almost bashfully, not turning his head to look directly. He felt slightly nervous – is she a nut? She’d been standing by the old bus stop, but judging by the blast of icy air that entered the car with her, well, she must have been freezing. No wonder she took a chance on a lone male driver; hypothermia could not have been far off. Her skin, that of it he could see, was translucently pale with the cold.
He let the silence sit, started the car to get the heater running and switched off the music. She’d talk when she was ready; he pulled out cautiously (it’s a famous accident black spot) and drove on up to the top of Blue Bell Hill. As the streetlights’ glare entered the car the girl suddenly spoke – she gave an address that Nick recognised as a terraced street in an old part of Maidstone where he sometimes parked.
Resentment flooded his brain. Did she think he was a taxi? Why wait till he’d driven all this way to suddenly ask to return? Who hitches a lift in the wrong direction? Then he looked at her: younger than him, dressed in some hippy chick fashion his mum might have worn, cold, vulnerable, fragile. “Nick,” he said. She gave no name, just repeated the address. He shrugged, looked to turn the car. “Jackie,” she said, and for a moment she looked at him. Her eyes seemed enormous, as if the pupils had expanded until there was only blackness. Doubtless a trick of the long black lashes and metallic blue eyeshadow…
“Can you remember my address?” she asked with a soft Kent accent. Local girl. Nick had taken her for a foreigner, but her accent was stronger than his, and he was born and bred. Nick nodded, but she repeated it a third time, earnestly. Once again Nick nodded, but increasingly he was looking forward to dropping her home. A crazy idea was forming in his head – he’d go back to Juniper’s and go and sit down at Poppy’s table? As the idea began to grow he pulled off at the Lord Lees roundabout, and instinctively turned homewards. He shrugged – he’d rejoin the road via The Common junction, no harm done.
It was at that moment that, after pausing at the junction, his engine would not restart. Swearing, he got out into driving hail; a passing van driver pulled over and helped him push the car half on to the pavement. Good of the bloke – and for his efforts he’d been rewarded by getting to drive Jackie back to Maidstone, or so it appeared. When he’d planned to ask her to steer she’d already gone, hopped straight in the transit, he suspected.
The car could wait; the stinging icy rain, the fact he was soaked to the skin, and the beginning of a feeling that maybe approaching Poppy again is not the right thing to do… It was then Nick noticed Jackie’s cardigan. Oh well, he knew her address, she’d made damned sure of that. He took off to his home, running down Robin Hood Lane and yearning only for a hot shower.
Nick had his shower; pulled on dry jeans and a faded Clash T-shirt, and hesitated between the TV, PS5 or seeking comfort in the dubious pleasures of the worldwide web. Tinder struck him as shameful, a vice he could never own; Pornhub a minor indiscretion. Christmas Eve, must be something on TV? As his gaze turns to the screen and he fumbles for the remote, he yelps in sheer shock. A woman’s face, dark eyes and blonde hair plastered across her face, pressed up against his window.
A braver chap might have pulled the curtains shut and retreated to bed; Nick, shaking in fear, instead dashed behind his sofa. Only Jackie’s wailing drew him out. Freak she might be, but she was cold and clearly unhappy. Oh, maybe she’d come for her cardigan?
He threw open the window, reached out, and helped her clamber in. “Can I really come in?” she asked timidly. Nick snorted, reassured her and was off finding some old sweatpants, a T-shirt and his car blanket. He turns on the shower, gets it to temperature and gently propels the freezing cold girl into the bathroom. Happy gurgling noises reward his effort, but her skin was so cold to the touch he considers calling an ambulance.
Instead he makes hot chocolate, adds little marshmallows and cranks up the heating. When she appears in his clothes she is still as pale as bone china, but she rewards him with a smile. Her mouth is a little too big he notes, a bit froggy. Her nose is pronounced; without the makeup she apparently did her best to remove she looks younger, but weary.
She sits on the sofa; he pops on A Ghost Story For Christmas, and seemingly unnerved, she makes noises like a frightened little girl as the Gatiss adaptation builds, before suddenly sliding over, wrapping the blanket around them both and clutching him tightly in terror.
“Are you scared of ghosts?” says Nick, calculating if changing channel might blow his chance of unexpected but far from unwelcome intimacy. “Don’t be silly,” breathes Jackie gently into his ear, her tone clearly mimicking the spooky cadence of theatrical spooks. “Some of my best friends – all of my friends – are ghosts.” She laughs and tries to push as close to Nick as possible. She is still icy cold; he pushes back, cuddles her protectively.
“If it bothers you I’ll switch it off?” Jackie sighs. “You really don’t get it, do you?” Nick considered three witty retorts, gentle reassurance, and then just kisses her. Jackie happily returns the kiss, and our two lovers retreat to the bedroom.
In the morning Nick awakes alone. The clothes he had given Jackie are back in the drawer; there is no sign of the strange but wildly passionate woman who had almost devoured him the night before. Was it all a weird dream? He checks his phone and wallet are still there, then he dashes over to stare out the window. What day is this? Why, it is Christmas Day, and Nick feels a profound sense of loss.
It was gone ten and Nick was about to depart for family Christmas dinner when he noticed Jackie’s cardigan: pale coral pink with unusual wooden toggle buttons. Of course! He knows her address and has every right to go and see her. First though, family Christmas Dinner!
The family festivities went on later than he anticipated; the church clock is striking midnight as Nick staggers drunkenly in. There, glaring at him, is Jackie. “Where the hell have you been?” Her tone conveys both relief and annoyance and Nick immediately realises she cares for him. This strikes him like lightning: a woman he likes is into him? The realisation a moment later that she somehow broke into his house seems irrelevant. She can steal his flatscreen TV and be welcome to it.
Jackie however is clearly unhappy. “You idiot. You were supposed to take my cardigan to my parents’ house today!” Nick feels put upon. “It’s Christmas Day,” he counters, “they’d be enjoying their dinner!” Jackie launches from the armchair, slides across the lino and melodramatically waves her arms. “No! They will be mourning their murdered daughter!” Nick immediately grabs Jackie in a tight embrace, crushing her close to him, rocking her gently. No wonder she is weird; her sister murdered! Poor girl! He holds her gently, strokes her hair until she kisses him suddenly and pulls Nick into the bedroom. He offers no resistance – this is his perfect Christmas.
Nick was not really surprised Jackie was gone when he woke; her cardigan was carefully placed on a chair. Why on Earth did she not take it with her? He suddenly smiled. It was signalling her intent to return. That really mattered now; Poppy Dolittle could have appeared at his door in her raciest underwear now and he would tell her where to go. Except he couldn’t quite decide what Poppy’s lingerie should look like, so he had to imagine the scene more times than was strictly healthy for a man now falling quietly in love.
Falling in love? He caught himself, clutched at the sink, decided it was true and he liked it. Jackie is deeply weird but there is something almost spooky about their connection.
Still, the murdered sister was distressing: he’d look it up. He Googled but nothing seemed to connect. Eventually he decided to try and find her surname, but he had an address, not a name. And then he saw her twin staring at him from an article: but this girl was murdered fifty years ago, and the paper was carrying an “unsolved tragedies” anniversary piece. He read it carefully, and learned of the murder of Jacqueline whose bones were finally located at the base of Blue Bell Hill in late 1975.
Nick sat down heavily and looked thoughtful. Of course he’d heard of the phantom hitchhiker of Blue Bell Hill – lots of people claimed to have encountered her. So he had slept with a ghost? Well, Sharon Gibbs once told him no living, breathing woman would want him as she turned him down flat, and it appears she was right. He shrugged. If he loved Jackie, did it really matter if she was not strictly speaking alive? Is it legally still necrophilia if you have enthusiastic consent?
As darkness falls Jackie takes shape on the sofa. Nick takes a moment to notice, gives an involuntary shudder, and then squeezes her close. “I know,” he says. “You are dead.” Jackie looks at him, stunned by what she has attached herself to. “Of course I’m bleedin’ dead – I told you I was murdered!” Nick, stung, gasps, “I thought you had a sister!” The two stare at each other, and lust begins to work its magic. They smile, embrace, kiss, and a long time later Nick thinks to ask: “So why do you stay? I mean, haunt?”
Jackie recoils in shock; a Pringles tube lifts from the coffee table and flies at Nick’s head. He bats it away without thinking. Jackie stands up, flaps her arms and wails lugubriously. Nick stands up, flaps his arms and begins to hum the Birdie Song. The light bulb dims, a coffee cup lifts and then drops and the crockery in the draining board rattles, but it’s no good. Nick laughs at her, and Jackie picks up and throws a cushion by the old-fashioned method of using her hands.
Suddenly she sits down on the arm of the chair and says, “I’m a lot more solid.” She examines herself cautiously, as if looking for malignant bumps. “Less ethereal – Nick, what are you doing to me?” She stands up and rushes at the wall but is defeated as her nose squishes against plaster. After much effort she manages to push her arm out through the wall; luckily the road is empty and no one witnesses a lady’s manicured hand appearing from bungalow brickwork.
Nick propels her back to the sofa; the night passes in their sharing memories, hopes and musical tastes. Jackie expresses a horror he has no stereo or record collection, and just blinks when Nick says, “The way you look, you’ll qualify for next year’s old age pension.” It is at this point he realises his girlfriend is 77 years old… His look at that thought is fortunately missed as Jackie has found Chicory Tip, ABBA and The Brotherhood of Man on Sounds of the Seventies, and is dancing around the room to “Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile)”.
Nick watches bemused, until he gives in and starts to dance terribly to T. Rex and Slade. Thank goodness she is haunting him; he’d never pull in 1975 with his disco moves. Jackie doesn’t care though; she dances, she drinks Southern Comfort and coke and she forgets an eternity of flitting through trees and haunting the…
Then she sits down and looks sad. Not “soul damned to wander the earth for eternity” sad, not “phantom wailing about how dark and lonely it is” sad – no, more nostalgia, and “where did the years go” sad.
Nick sits on the floor, squeezes her hand and looks at her. “I think I know,” she says, with big eyes and an earnest look. “I seek not revenge, but to teach men a lesson. I manifest by the road, all alluring and very easy on the eye, and tempt sad little boys who think they are Casanova to pick me up. Then I drop my cardigan in the car and vanish. I give them my address, they go there with the cardigan and my dad gives them an earful. Or sometimes I borrow a coat or sweater, and give my address as opposite 210 Sutton Road. They’d find it draped on my tombstone, and freak out and run all the way to The Wheatsheaf for a stiff drink.”
Nick giggles, puts his head on her knee, and looks up with puppy dog eyes, besotted by his spook. “So why me? You’ve been chasing lonely men for fifty years, leaving them damaged and scared of women – why did you not just vanish?”
Jackie thinks for a moment and shrugs. “Maybe you are good at getting infatuated with mythic girls who don’t quite exist? Maybe you are just the most desperate, saddest, most hopeless loser I’ve ever met? You make Frank Spencer look like Action Man.”
Nick shrugged and wondered if Frank Spencer was one of Jackie’s old boyfriends. He decides not to enquire, and he is not particularly hurt by her description. He’s heard worse from living girls. Meanwhile Jackie has discovered Ghost Adventures, a show she regards as high comedy, “as good as that new show with the Spanish waiter”.
Nick meanwhile is Googling for advice: he has no idea what to do. The Society for Psychical Research sounds hopeful, but it appears the real expert is a woman called Brocarde. She married a Victorian ghost soldier called Eduardo, exorcising him after she discovered he was having an affair with the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. She’ll know what to do! Or Danny Robins, host of Uncanny – maybe he could interview the Ghost of Blue Bell Hill live on air?
It was, predictably, Jackie who finally came up with a solution. She’d discovered her murderer still lived, but at 84 and very frail, Nick absolutely refused to go beat him up. This angered Jackie, but her telekinetic powers seemed to be fading, so she just hid in the airing cupboard to make Nick think he’d lost her forever. It worked too, and his dramatic grief gave her an idea.
As midnight struck, and another year rolled in, she brought out a cardboard box, sealed with sellotape and with “DO NOT OPEN” written in a girly hand, joined up and florid, of a type no longer taught. “This box contains my cardigan. As long as it remains unopened I stay – how can I leave? Also you must never, ever give me an item of clothing. If you do you will never see me again, but find it draped on my grave!” She lets out her best sepulchral wail; Nick quietly notes she was dressed in his jeans, trainers and T-shirt but just nods solemnly and kisses her. He took the box and placed it on the highest shelf in the bungalow, behind his old school trophies – the most precious, dangerous thing he now owned.
Dawn comes, and Nick and the dead girl face it together. She remains: solid, breathing, and a thousand times more real than Poppy Dolittle could ever be. Poppy was a dream he couldn’t afford, but Jackie was a nightmare he got to keep. He looked at his seventy-seven-year-old girlfriend as she felt the rays of the wintry sun, watching her stretch and shiver with delight. As Nick went to put the kettle on, wondering if ghosts preferred Earl Grey or Southern Comfort for breakfast, the silence of the grave was finally replaced by the roar of traffic on the hill behind the house.
"And sometimes he's so nameless" 
Marketing RPGs: or the Gamer Generation and the Booth Babes
Just saw a tabletop rpg games company advert for someone to demo their system at conventions. Advert specifies must be charismatic and born after 1990. I was interested in that — I notice nearly all rpg presenters and demo folks and marketing folks are significantly younger than 35: and I see the appeal to youthful and pretty marketers.
However if you exclude D&D the marketing data I can access indicates that average player demographic is now 45 to 65 with a 55 year old male being average in terms of spend. That age group appears to spend many times more on rpg products as well; a multiplier that means the slight uptick in 18 to 25 over 2017 to 2022 was still not making much real world impact on monies.
Now ttrpg companies need to appeal to a younger audience before their core demographic dies off or becomes too invested in care costs to game: there are twenty years left for that to happen. So marketing to reach a younger generation makes sense, but it might not work financially right now.
Interestingly different age groups seem to favour different types of rpg: for the non-D&D generation of 1988 the major factor was they stuck with their games after college and through their working years. This pattern doesn’t seem to occur in 90s games (World of Darkness) or 2000s indie games and the 2010 itchio generation where fall off is much higher.
I think it’s possible for outsider 1980s gamers it became a subcultural identity tag like goth or punk that persists long after the mainstream fashion dies; it becomes a core identity and gaming significantly shaped those gamers life choices. They are evangelical and zealots, fanatics who attend conventions and buy multiple rpg books to collect without hope of actually using or even reading them all. I’d probably fall in that category of expending far more of my intelligence and income on gaming than anything else.
If I’m right, then nostalgia products will keep strong sales but marketing to the young will have lower returns and the hobby industry needs to look at high ticket stuff aimed at an aging demographic where brand loyalty is strong.
In other news do you know which D&D edition had the strongest sales in year one? 4th ed. Half a million copies of the PHB in a year. 5th ed has overtaken it over time but in terms of profits 4th ed was a bigger success from what I can make out in terms of return, after you model increases in printing paper and costs.
Getting data is hard but if anyone is willing to give me access for aggregate study of company records I have the software to try and understand what I’m seeing. I’m just too old to market rpgs thse days it appears ;).
If I was advising a publisher, I’d probably say: don’t pay £15k a year to a 25-year-old demo team; pay a lawyer to shop your IP to Netflix or Paradox Interactive.The truth is: marketing spend inside the RPG scene has diminishing returns. Outside the scene, licensing is the marketing. I suspect I actually understand the economics of my hobby than many industry professionals do, not that anyone wants to hire me! 🙂
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