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Phantasmal Rift Mods ([personal profile] phantasmods) wrote in [community profile] phantasmemes2018-04-12 11:09 pm
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TEST DRIVE 003

Hello, and welcome to the third test drive for Phantasmal Rift!

Test drive threads are assumed to be game canon for accepted characters unless otherwise noted, so don't feel like you'll have to introduce yourself a second time to everyone you meet! As an added bonus, participation in the test drive comes with the chance to earn up to two items of loot for your trouble! Characters who are accepted can earn one item for having a top level, and one for tagging out to someone else's top level! Your SWEET LOOT will be included with your acceptance notice.

Additionally, characters currently in game can earn themselves a piece of bonus loot for the dungeon by tagging people's top-levels on the test drive! Existing characters get their bonus loot along with the rest of their loot at the conclusion of the dungeon.

This test drive takes place in the Fissure known as Amesta Forest - a forest filled with silver mist and shrouded in eternal twilight, where your dreams become real! For a certain limited definition of real. This is significantly less awesome than it sounds. On the bright side, anyone within the mists will find themselves with no need to sleep, as though trapped in the same spring evening as the rest of the forest.

OPTION ONE: DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

This first option might happen to you just about anywhere. From the swirls of silver mist comes a shape - or perhaps more than one shape? Who knows, it's your dream -

Well, probably. It could also be someone else's.

Those who stay too long in any one part of the mist will find their subconscious minds influencing it into shapes - the exact sort of things that appear in their dreams. As with their real dreams, the details are sometimes strange - too much detail, or not enough, depending on where your focus is. The character who 'created' the dream specter will instantly understand what it's supposed to be, but other viewers might have some difficulty with it.

Fortunately for those of you prone to violent nightmares, these dream figures are incapable of doing harm - any blows struck by them simply leave behind the dampness of walking through thick mist. A hard enough blow will similarly disperse them - or, in most cases, you can simply move quickly and leave them behind.

OPTION TWO: THE MOVEMENTS OF THE TREES


A forest filled with mist is honestly a kind of spooky place, isn't it?

Well, it's about to get spookier, when you notice that there's a tree... somewhere there wasn't a tree, before. Or maybe it's that you were looking around and realized that a tree wasn't there here there was one before, instead leaving behind only a round, torn-up patch of earth from where the roots were buried.

Either way, there's only one conclusion to be drawn - the trees are moving.

Those who pay close attention will soon realize that it's only one kind of tree that moves - an absolutely unfamiliar kind, with mist-silver bark and thin, almost translucent leaves in large handlike shapes. They aren't very tall, and their branches split low to the ground, the structure something like a less crooked Japanese maple. The Wanderwoods seem prone to following specific people, usually only moving when out of sight, though you might catch them shuffling along if you have quick reflexes for looking over your shoulder.

What do they want? Well, nothing, really. They're just attracted to sapient beings and, especially, the way the mist forms into their dreams. So while they won't do anything in particular to the characters themselves, anyone with a dream-form hanging around them might find that manifestation suddenly papered in thin, grabbing leaves... and swallowed up.

OPTION THREE: WHAT NOW IS FOUND?


Not all of the forest is trapped in eternal spring. One part of it is held in exactly the opposite - a brilliantly colored autumn morning, just before dawn, with the trees overhead colored in brilliant reds and oranges. Leaves drift down in a slow breeze, and pile up in random places among the trees (which never seem to run out of leaves to drop), and silver pools of water gather at the bases of the trees and in any other depressions, their surfaces perfectly still mirrors.

The mist is quite a bit thinner here, too, which allows you to see... What is that familiar shape in the distance, between the trees?

While dream manifestations are uncommon in the region of Fall's Heart, it's not only dreams that manifest here. Instead, characters will see the figures of those they've lost - instantly recognizable, but unreachable and nearly impossible to catch, running through the trees heedless of how you call after them. It's impossible to catch up to them by mundane means, and those who use supernatural means to do so -

- will find that, at their touch, the vision crumbles into silvery mist-water, forming another of those perfect, reflective pools at their feet.
misanthropicprinciple: <user name="keycrash" site="tumblr.com"> ([flatline beeeeeeep])

[personal profile] misanthropicprinciple 2018-04-14 11:58 am (UTC)(link)
...Ultimate...?

[Ultimate what?]
press_start: (headtilt nami)

[personal profile] press_start 2018-04-14 12:04 pm (UTC)(link)
I was the Ultimate Gamer, but now I'm just a newbie, I think.
misanthropicprinciple: Edge edge edge edge edge EDGE HARDER EDGEHOG (I grew up.)

[personal profile] misanthropicprinciple 2018-04-14 12:08 pm (UTC)(link)
...Was that a self-proclaimed title, or...?
press_start: (pointing nami)

[personal profile] press_start 2018-04-14 12:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Mn... no. Everyone at Hope's Peak Academy is given a title based on what we're talented in.
misanthropicprinciple: (Explain me a thing.)

[personal profile] misanthropicprinciple 2018-04-14 02:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Wait, your school gave you a title for gaming? Hell, I want to go to that school.

[Junpei, you're twenty-three.]
press_start: (pouty face nami)

[personal profile] press_start 2018-04-15 04:55 am (UTC)(link)
… … it's not that straightforward. All the Ultimates are scouted. And even if you do get scouted you don't get to choose your title anyway… I think that's how it works.

[For a #SUPRC00LGMERGRL she seems pretty eeh about it..]
misanthropicprinciple: <user name="jilli-bean" site="tumblr.com"> (Challenger.)

[personal profile] misanthropicprinciple 2018-04-15 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, shit. Never mind, the creepiness of the selection process again outweighs the chance to go to school for video games.

[...Thoughtfully, he looks at another podium, and then shakes his head and punts his foot through it. Bye, podium.

He doesn't think he'll ask.]


So how old are you, Nanami?
press_start: (headtilt nami)

[personal profile] press_start 2018-04-16 06:23 am (UTC)(link)
You can always pick a title for yourself. ...I can share mine if you play with me. [That's... an exciting prospect, she's lowkey vibrating. Nanami whacks the dissolving mist to get some practice in- then Junpei asks that question and it’s like a browser crash.

….

… …… …..]


… seventeen.
misanthropicprinciple: (That's not a GOOD sound.)

[personal profile] misanthropicprinciple 2018-04-16 01:26 pm (UTC)(link)
[Well, that was a super weird pause.]

Okaaaaaaay...

[Junpei can't quite come up with a reason that should have taken her so long to come up with unless she was, you know, actively coming up with it. One more thing to take note of.]

...I have my own title, anyway, technically. Not really in the market for another one. I was more interested in the concept of gaming for grades.
press_start: (annoyed nami)

[personal profile] press_start 2018-04-16 01:59 pm (UTC)(link)
...Games aren't as fun if you play just for the grades.

[She’s absently practicing a few swipes with her branch, showing very little skill. But she sounds very serious about this. She's even fluffing up a little, like she has Opinions on minmaxing or skipping story, but if you're inclined to laugh at her just wait till she's kicking half the cast’s asses at Mario Kart.]
misanthropicprinciple: <user name="nemissa" site="tumblr.com"> (Do you know who I am?)

[personal profile] misanthropicprinciple 2018-04-16 02:03 pm (UTC)(link)
But grades would be a lot more fun if you got to play for them, right? Besides, what else is a game's scoring system if not a kind of grade?

[He likes this kid.]
Edited 2018-04-16 14:04 (UTC)
press_start: (annoyed nami)

[personal profile] press_start 2018-04-16 02:25 pm (UTC)(link)
No, no. School isn't fun. And even though the mechanics might be the same, it's not a game anymore if you're not having fun.

What's your favourite kind of game, Tenmyouji-san?
misanthropicprinciple: <user name="thankyouze" site="tumblr.com"> (It's in the eyes.)

[personal profile] misanthropicprinciple 2018-04-16 05:20 pm (UTC)(link)
[Is that true? It's not a game anymore if you're not having fun? Junpei looks back over his experience and thinks, no; it's a game if there are rules, if those rules turn a slice of space into a new reality, if there's a goal to work towards, that's a game. There are bad games out there, just like there are weapons wielded by the wrong hands and philosophies warped to warped minds.

But the assurance with which Nanami says that, it's not a game anymore, hits an answering note in Junpei. That's what games should be.

(He wonders, too, if there isn't some part of him that enjoyed even the worst Games. The challenge. The creativity. The reaching for epiphany.)

Does he love puzzles or hate them?]


Easier to tell you what kind of games I don't like.

[That's true on two levels. Junpei only elaborates on the second, more mundane one.]

I don't know if I can pick a favorite genre. I like all sorts of challenges. But there's something...

[He pauses, looking out at nothing, before he finds the words.]

You can tell when someone's made a game thinking of the players. When they've put real love into it.

[After another moment, he sighs through his nose and disperses another podium with a thrown knife.]

If I could only play games like that, I'd be a happy man.
press_start: (happy nami)

sdr2 spoilers

[personal profile] press_start 2018-04-19 10:33 am (UTC)(link)
[She pauses and then she tilts her head and smiles. You can tell when someone's made a game thinking of the players, and something in her code sings yes, that's how games should be. She's not sure if the real Chiaki feels the same way, if someone hasn't edited the minmaxing part out of the SHSL Gamer because a hunger for challenges might have ruined things. The Killing School Trip could easily be considered a game if you go about it technically. Maybe in another life Chiaki Nanami snaps her neck climbing up a service chute because she wanted answers, but in this one-]

A lot of developers miss the point of challenges. Of course, it's not fun if it's too easy… but one way to make a bad game is to care so much about the game design you forget the players. … so I guess, yeah, you're right.

Mechanics are for the players, you know? Anyway. Do you think the mobs here respawn or should we move out?
Edited 2018-04-19 10:34 (UTC)
misanthropicprinciple: <user name="olistvrk" site="tumblr.com"> (How you get so Marty McFly)

[personal profile] misanthropicprinciple 2018-04-19 10:42 am (UTC)(link)
Hm. I bet they do respawn eventually, but I don't know if we're getting much EXP fighting these guys, anyway. I mean, they're stationary, and even at this level they only take one hit.

[He's so glad he can speak this kid's language.]

I'd rather focus on the map at this point. Establish a save point, where the item shops and armory might be, find some kind of announcement hub from the administrators so I can figure out what the hell is going on. All that good stuff.
press_start: (sadnami)

[personal profile] press_start 2018-04-19 11:11 am (UTC)(link)
That's a good idea. I wonder why there're no signs to the nearest hub, starter areas usually...

[She takes a few steps forward, looking around, and then tries what every player does first in Minecraft. She punches a tree.]

… Ow… so this isn't Minecraft...
misanthropicprinciple: <user name="nemissa" site="tumblr.com"> (Free me from this mortal coil.)

[personal profile] misanthropicprinciple 2018-04-19 07:30 pm (UTC)(link)
It... looks a little too detailed to be Minecraft, don't you think?

[Child...]