Toby spoke up. "I'm sorry about earlier," he said. "I promise I'll try to get this over and done with as soon as possible."
Mary nodded. "Seeing that we might be here for a long time, why don't we take a break every now and then to test out whatever happens to us? I'd like to have played around with those cat enhancements from earlier, come to think of it." The others considered this, then agreed.
The display changed. "Second phase: the six of you were normal tourists, but the cruise ship you were taking suddenly sunk in the middle of the ocean. You are the only survivors. You have managed to find safety on a large island nearby. The island is magical, so magical that after the first round, every player will receive a card per turn. This makes it very hard to lose all your cards, but you can still lose the phase by all being killed. To win the phase, find 13 gems and leave the island. If you leave the island without your friends for too long, the phase is lost."
For no reason at all, the room started to shift and expand. The players looked around in amazement as the room grew to the size of a reasonable district, with the table in the center. As they watched, the ground turned to sand in the center of the room, while the large outside turned to what certainly was supposed to be sea. A small tropical forest burst into bloom to their side. Ryan stood up and looked around.
"Wow," he said quietly. "I wonder why this didn't happen last phase?"
The display changed. "The player Ryan has asked a question. The answer is: all the players were new to the game, and may have been overwhelmed by a change in scene. The room changes so that certain transformations are more well adapted. For example, in this phase, there are cards which will change someone into a fish. This would be bad for them, as they may be badly hurt without water to breath in. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
It changed again. "The players are to roll in the same order as last phase: Mary, Dina, Ryan, Toby, Lissi then Bob. It is now Mary's turn. Good luck!"
Mary inhaled, exhaled, then reached for the dice, at the same time turning to see her new five cards which had appeared as the room had changed.