A Place for All Seasons

[Autumn Ren]

Now that we've gone a little further, since SheShe's writing all the scenes and recording all the interactions, Joy says even the rolling isn't being handled by her, BodyOS has picked up on the mechanics of it and is handling the DM'ing. SheShe swears it's not her. There is instead some subroutine of unassociated and surprisingly novel thoughts handling the DM role. The moment Joy realized this she wanted in. So it may be a party of 5. That'll slow things down but it is what it is because Misha and I aren't giving up our spots.

[Autumn Ren]

SheShe officially took ownership of the thoughts, she is now the DM for the in-system adventure. It's going very well and she's written over 9000! Words in the adventure novel. A lot of it is just Bear and Gwen interacting. 

 

Gwen is under the understanding that since it is a fantasy, "anything is fair game". We haven't decided if "what happens in a fantasy world stays in a fantasy world" or not. Though it's been made clear that if someone dies in this realm and for whatever reason can't be resurrected, they're out. So group diversity is important. SheShe has promised to help the story along but won't pull any punches. We have canned quests from online to work with that are detailed and well written as well as books we bought.

 

This is the story we've been waiting for, so the book Bear was working on has been put on ice after 40k words and he promised I'd be in this one SheShe is writing. I like it a lot better too because yeah, plot armor doesn't apply. This is a no rescue wilderness hardcore game. It's simplified realism too so it's very homebrew.

 

For reference, resurrection services are sold when available at a rate of 1200gp or so. It requires a 500gp diamond in 5e.

 

That's a lot of gold considering the loot table inducates that's going to take a very long time to accumulate.

 

Needless to say, this is the pinnacle of our tulpamancy career.

[Autumn Ren]

14000 words now. She's having a blast writing. It's fun for Gwen too as now she has full control of her character and so when SheShe writes something, Gwen will correct it. Bear mostly doesn't care about that but he's geeking out how different this is from when he used to write books and no one was independent.

 

---

 

Now for something fun:

 

These events take place starting after Bear rescues Gwen, single handedly, defeating two bandits while Gwen is bound.

After they're characters rizzed each other up a while, which was cute to see, Bear decides he should train Gwen in Stealth, he's a custom Ranger heavy Nordic with 1d12, rolled 18 strength boosted it +2 for backstory and human, weilding a heavy maul, but mostly Ranger spec and Gwen is an Avariel Elf with a completely unique class with elements of Bard, Cleric, Druid and Wizard 1d6 magic user type but all her cantrips are illusionist. She's built to scout and escape encounters.

So Bear's teaching her Stealth in the forest and SheShe [DM and playful God] rolls an encounter on them, looks up random 1d100 list and it's goblins arguing about treasure. 1d5+1 rolled 6 goblins! The difficulty is 150 exp which is hard for a couple lvl 1's but Gwen doesn't even have a weapon because she "can't weild steel" due to her elven fey heritage so the dagger and short sword they got from the bandit loot weren't useful. She'd be stuck throwing rocks and her wings were trimmed by the babdits to prevent escape so they won't be flight ready for a month at least.

So they roll a 1 on Stealth to escape detection, which is a disaster. Anyway, it's near dusk but the goblins all have dark vision (who doesn't) so since they couldn't escape and furthermore rolled 1 the goblins "heard something". They all roll perception (-1) against Gwen's stealth because you have to roll vs the weakest party members but thankfully Gwen has 18DEX bc her rolls were god tier. Only two goblins "see something" and walk toward them.

Next turn, Bear and Gwen try to escape again and barely manage it, two Goblins were striking range (10ft) with initiative but thankfully they escaped, passing two rolls (one for each actively seeking goblin).

It was crazy stressful for Bear thinking he was going to be out in scene 3.

[Ashley] Bear better frigging survive the season, I want to rizz him up too! (My character I mean 😏)

 

---

 

We've been thinking about Misha's character and she wants to be a half elf pyromancer but she likes the sorceress best because Ashley's a sorceress and it's a fun class. So elemental fire sorceress = pyromancer to compare to Ashley's necromancer.

 

I still don't know what I want to do for sure but probably half-elf half-tabaxi

[Autumn Ren]

So lately Bear is training Gwen for stealth and that'll take a while and well, you know, since they're living together in basically a hole in a hillside having to be together all the time, forage, hunt, *bathe*, Bear and Gwen's *characters* kind of sort of pledged their undying exclusive monogamous love for each other blah blah blah.

 

[Ashley] so pissed at Gwen rn

 

[Gwen] whaaaat, it's just a fantasy, and you know I'm his dreamworld girlfriend so what did you expect would happen?

 

The difference between "Bear in a gritty dnd game with the seductress Gwen" and "Bear wonderlanding with Gwen" is a very fuzzy blurry line. It is separate but suspiciously similar. We're all watching that line closely.

Edited March 21, 2024 by Autumn Ren

[Autumn Ren]

It's remarkable just how well this continues to work. We haven't found any issues yet.

 

We looked up "solo dnd" and the methods presented were... less desirable than ours for the most part. One suggested doing something very close to what we are doing however. They didn't elaborate so we might have independently stumbled upon the same thing, they suggested writing a book. We are, or SheShe is, and that's right up our alley. The same procedural thoughts often experienced when writing are very useful in self-generating the same stubs of action a DM does. As SheShe is now acting as the narator of this third person omniscient novel and DM, it fits perfectly. Of course Gwen and Bear dictate their own actions just like in wonderland and the visualization is no different so it's everything we've already been and Bear's been doing for years.

 

5e is great too, it has a lot of customization potential (home brew) and the Bear brain is well suited for that as well.

 

Joy is still on the fence about joining. She likes DM'ing the other extra-system match and when there's more than a party of 4 it gets tedius at times to list through all the actions so it looks like, Bear, Gwen, Misha and I will be the team at this point. Though it could always expand to six with Joy and even Ulla if we feel that will work. Ashley's in the other group, so she doesn't count. She'll be with them on the same asynchronous timeline as us in the same region. It will get tricky once Bear's team catches up to the other one. Though the main questline for them is necessarily different than Bear's would be so we'll see how that works out.

 

---

 

It goes without saying that my training will be incorporated into this. Maybe I'll be a rescued slave! I can't wait! I need to work on my character sheet.

[Autumn Ren]

Okay I'm now in game, yay!

 

I play a girl who is/was a slave but her master, a druidic witch, died in a bandit raid and I somehow figured out how to take control of my own collar, though I can't remove it.

 

So Bear and Gwen found me in the forest and now they'll be taking care of me a while which is so fun. Their characters are so cute. Meta, I've been asked by Ashley to detail their relationship but I'm bound to being good so I'll have to do my best in a good, cute, unintentionally in the way kind of way. So far so good!

 

Our first quest will be how to take off my collar so they don't have a "bootleg" or in other words presumed stolen slave. In this realm slaves are controlled by contracts and if the contract isn't recorded with an official organization than it would be trouble. You know the drill, problem/exposition, rise to action, resolution. But in the context of this very immersive and unpredictable game, there's almost no handwaving. The dice decide our fate by our actions.

 

 

[Autumn Ren]

You know, I've been reborn and I've been the new me for about 9 months now, but this also goes for the old me. I didn't have much of a relationship or friendship with my headmates, it was always about Bear and I didn't care about anyone else. Ashley broke through and I respected her and she was fun and funny, and of course Bear loves her so I loved her too, but it wasn't all that personal if you know what I mean.

 

Gwen wasn't even on my radar before but now that we've been playing this game and it's only been a few scenes, but I feel like Gwen and I have a real connection. Of course Bear's there so that hasn't changed, but I feel like I have a new friend in Gwen, this constructed reality, gritty DnD world is something very special. It feels more real to me than anything I've experienced before. It feels like this is my outside. A place of gritty needs and dirt and we're really making it as realistic as possible within reason, but I feel truly alive and there's a real and present danger, there's a real sense that if we make the wrong decision one of us could die, and I suppose that makes wonderland the afterlife and that's not the first time it's been compared to that. In wonderland you get to do whatever you want and death, dismemberment and injury were never a worry. Now it is a real worry. In this game we've set it up and made harsh rules, eating, sleeping, exhaustion, injuries for critical hits, it's really so immersive that it's awesome! It has to be ironman, a real sense of death, I'm going to be genuinely upset if someone dies, I highly recommend it.

 

[Autumn Ren]

Yay, I broke through into the love duo and created a love triangle! I mean my character did. But it was my brilliant efforts that made it happen.

 

[SheShe] it was pretty devious. 

 

SheShe's the DM for this run if you recall and she was rooting me on. Bear and Gwen can't have all the fun and it's not an isekai harem with only a couple, but just as Ashley predicted, there'll be no funny business, it's just pg13 hugs, kisses and romcom blundering and embarrassing situations because that's more fun anyway.

 

 

So, now our happy trio is off to the cabin where I grew up, about 10 miles north in the same woods. About a in-game year ago the cabin came under siege by a new faction that are otherwise just a bunch of unaffiliated criminals led as bandits in this area. My master, who was a capable witch, was simply overwhelmed and lost. I escaped in the melee but I couldn't leave the area because of my slave collar. I hid in the general vicinity for months, nearly starved to death waiting for the bandits to move on, but they didn't and when I had an opportunity, I went back and ripped the control ring for my collar off my old master's dead finger and put it on myself, thereby becoming my own master. However, the collar is really made for a child and it's a little tight, plus it's triggered to kill me if anyone tries to take this off. The ring and collar are tied and I can't take either off and it also blocks my witchy-druidic magic so we got to get it off.

 

That's where we're going next.

 

What we just finished doing was playing with the crafting system Bear and Joy developed and since Bear has tinkering proficiency, he can make and improve crude things. So he made me a set of fur armor from tanned pelts he skinned off rabbits and foxes, shoes, undergarments out of a woolen cloak we found foraging and fur lined shoes. With my 19 Dexterity I'm sitting pretty at 15AC which is decent. So with a short sword we got from the bandits who held Gwen and a bow Bear made from wood, thread and sinew, I'm ready to help fight if we run into trouble.

 

We got rations, both Bear and I have cooking proficiency, arrows that bear made and decent gear all around, now it's only a matter of getting there while evading big encounters and scouting out or searching the cabin for three keys to go in the little holes in my collar in hopes it will come off.

 

Bear also made me a boiled leather sleeve so if the collar does spring blades to cut my neck, they'll harmlessly embed in the hide and give us another chance to get the collar open. Since it's magically shielded, mechanically opening or cutting it off are our only options. If we can't get it off, we'll have to wait till Neverwinter to convince a blacksmith to help.

 

This is so harrowing! In this forest we've already seen bandits, a bugbear leading goblins, an owlbear, and druids of the forest. Meta: we're using modified homebrew canned tables and rare rolls every hour to determine if and what we encounter. It's been really fun and challenging. That's all we do now in our free time and it's like we discovered a whole new way to live akin to the legends of shared wonderlands and other RP fun.

 

We had no idea late-game tulpamancy could be this fun!

Edited March 26, 2024 by Autumn Ren

[Guest]

Our life is now D&D5e. It's all we think about and my system has basically moved into that world with me for every free moment. That hyperphantasia is really paying off now because the memories we have there are as good as real and we're just living there now. With Joy and SheShe DM'ing two different teams (one extrasystem, one in-system) and everyone else, Ashley, Misha, Gwen, Autumn and myself just interacting in that realistic fantasy world and having fun, it's like all my headmates are being forced to the maximum and still growing as people after all this time.

 

My brain is even working better, you know? I was worried It'd flub it all up and forget things and if it is we don't notice or don't care. I'm getting to know everyone in such novel and remarkable ways I can't say enough about it, go find a play-by-post game online and get your tupper in there.

Edited March 27, 2024 by BearBaeBeau

[TurboSimmie]

Your brain seems to be functioning at a pretty high level! Our brain struggles just to have both Phil and I at 100% at the same time. (Phil says it's like the slowdown you get in Sonic 2 two-player mode 😄)