The Age of Replayer Networks

Transcription

The Age of Replayer Networks
a campaign written for A User's Guide to the
Apocalypse (also known as Replay Value AU or
RV Chuubo's)
powered by Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting
Engine
Elaine “OJ” Wang
This is an early draft with minimal formatting dating from February 14, 2016.
Credits/Copyright:
Written by: Elaine “OJ” Wang
Editing and layout: I dream of making someone else do it.
Based on Replay Value AU of Homestuck, which was contributed to by many people, the ones whom I
remember best being Alana, Bobbin, Cobb, Dove, Impern, Ishtadaal, Keleviel, Mnem, Muss, Ops,
Oven, Rave, Viridian, Whilim, and Zuki. Any omissions here are my own damn fault. In turn, Replay
Value AU itself was based upon Sburb Glitch FAQ written by godsgifttogrinds, which in turn was
based upon Homestuck by Andrew Hussie.
This is an extension to the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine system, which was written by
Jenna Katerin Moran.
Previous versions of this content have appeared on eternity-braid.tumblr.com, rvdrabbles.tumblr.com,
and archiveofourown.org.
For clarity, Elizabeth and Samantha are fictional characters.
This book uses fantastical and supernatural elements in its setting, for its characters, their abilities, and
themes. All such elements are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains
mature content and reader discretion is advised.
In case that wasn't clear enough, here is the content warning: This setting is very dark and includes
horror, trauma, and the consequences thereof. Please understand what you are getting into, and evaluate
whether you can handle it, before you start reading.
This is a noncommercial fanwork and should not be sold for money.
Dedications:
Elizabeth: My first-session coplayers and childhood friends – Michelle (balefulEntry), Cyril
(bicuspidBookkeper), and Mason (errantEntropy). May they rest in peace.
Samantha: PrototypeTowers (Pits) and its community, warts and all. Sure, none of us liked the drama,
but indifferentBem taught me how to write, enlighteningFont trusted me with the mod tools, and
eternityBraid has remained a friend of my heart.
OJ: Myra Henderson, who showed me the strength of anger; Kim Su-Cheol, who showed me the
strength of speaking; and the Internet, which showed me the strength of reaching out.
Also thanks to:
•
Casey Johnson (geostatonary) and the rest of the Jenna Katerin Moran Fanclub chat for being
very patient with me.
•
Jenna Katerin Moran herself, for putting up with my 'senpai noticed me' jokes and letting me
ask miscellaneous other canon-related questions.
•
Replay Value AU. I know you all hate each other these days but I still love you all.
Table of Contents
Credits/Copyright:.................................................................................................................................2
Dedications:...........................................................................................................................................3
Preface...................................................................................................................................................9
Conventions...............................................................................................................................9
Technical Details.....................................................................................................................10
Characters.................................................................................................................................................11
Lifepath: The Heart.............................................................................................................................13
Step 1: Choose your Name.............................................................................................................13
Step 2: Choose your Native............................................................................................................13
Step 3: Choose your Hobby............................................................................................................14
(Optional) Step 4: For Mandar.......................................................................................................14
Step 5: Choose your Replayer Network.........................................................................................15
Step 6: Choose your Favorite Scenes.............................................................................................15
Step 7: Review your Goals.............................................................................................................15
Step 8: Choose your Handle...........................................................................................................16
Step 9: Choose your Connections...................................................................................................16
Step 10: Review Your Powers........................................................................................................16
Character Sheet: The Heart.................................................................................................................18
Summary.........................................................................................................................................19
Common Variations........................................................................................................................19
Character Description.....................................................................................................................20
Presession...................................................................................................................................20
Sburb..........................................................................................................................................20
Replaying...................................................................................................................................21
Now............................................................................................................................................21
Hints...........................................................................................................................................22
Quests.............................................................................................................................................22
Quest XP....................................................................................................................................22
More Options.............................................................................................................................22
XP Emotion: Thumbs-Up........................................................................................................23
Mundane Abilities...........................................................................................................................23
Skills..........................................................................................................................................23
Connections................................................................................................................................23
Miraculous Abilities........................................................................................................................24
Health Levels..........................................................................................................................24
Become Somebody....................................................................................................................25
Arc Powers..............................................................................................................................25
Lifepath: The Gamebreaker.................................................................................................................27
Step 1a (Optional): The Angels Sing….....................................................................................27
Step 4 (Optional): For Antona........................................................................................................29
Character Sheet: The Gamebreaker.....................................................................................................31
Summary.........................................................................................................................................31
Common Variations........................................................................................................................31
Character Description.....................................................................................................................31
Hints...........................................................................................................................................32
Quests.............................................................................................................................................32
Note.........................................................................................................................................32
Lifepath: The Artist.............................................................................................................................33
(Optional) Step 1a: From A Faraway Land….................................................................................34
Character Sheet: The Artist.................................................................................................................36
Lifepath: The Mannerist......................................................................................................................36
Step 2a (Optional): Cataclysms......................................................................................................38
Step 4: The Outcast.........................................................................................................................39
Character Sheet: The Mannerist..........................................................................................................42
Lifepath: The Programmer..................................................................................................................42
Step 3: What The Hell Happened...................................................................................................43
Step 3a (Optional): The Birdbro.....................................................................................................44
Character Sheet: The Programmer......................................................................................................46
Lifepath: The Child.............................................................................................................................46
Character Sheet: The Child.................................................................................................................47
Quest Sets.................................................................................................................................................48
Newcomer (The Heart's Arcs).............................................................................................................48
If You Believe (The Mannerist's Arcs)................................................................................................48
The Quests......................................................................................................................................48
Arc Features: Your Beliefs.........................................................................................................48
Arc Notes........................................................................................................................................49
Otherworldly..............................................................................................................................49
Emptiness...................................................................................................................................49
Mystic........................................................................................................................................50
Storyteller...................................................................................................................................51
Aspect........................................................................................................................................51
Inadequacy (20/30 XP)...................................................................................................................51
Inadequacy (30).........................................................................................................................52
Inadequacy (Simplified) (20).....................................................................................................52
Deconversion (35/45 XP)...............................................................................................................53
Deconversion (45)......................................................................................................................53
Deconversion (Simplified, relatively speaking) (35).................................................................54
Obsession (25/35 XP).....................................................................................................................54
Obsession (35)...........................................................................................................................54
Obsession (Simplified) (25).......................................................................................................55
Dark Night of the Soul (25/35 XP).................................................................................................55
Dark Night of the Soul (35).......................................................................................................56
Dark Night of the Soul (Simplified) (25)...................................................................................56
Synthesis (20/35 XP)......................................................................................................................57
Synthesis (35).............................................................................................................................57
Synthesis (Simplified) (20).............................................................................................................57
Cracked Pedestals (The Programmer's Arcs)......................................................................................58
The Quests......................................................................................................................................58
Arc Features: Mentor.................................................................................................................58
Arc Features: The Work.............................................................................................................59
Arc Notes........................................................................................................................................59
Notes for Shepherd Rissa Hier’s arc..........................................................................................59
Notes for Emptiness arc.............................................................................................................60
Notes for Aspect arc...................................................................................................................60
Notes for Mystic arc...................................................................................................................61
Notes for Storyteller arc.............................................................................................................61
Someone Awesome (20/30 XP)......................................................................................................61
Someone Awesome (30).............................................................................................................61
Someone Awesome (Simplified) (20)........................................................................................62
Responsibilities (20+/25/35 XP)....................................................................................................62
Responsibilities (35)..................................................................................................................63
Responsibilities (Simplified) (25)..............................................................................................63
Responsibilities (Variant Simplified) (20+)...............................................................................63
Feet of Clay (35/45 XP)..................................................................................................................64
Feet of Clay (45)........................................................................................................................64
Feet of Clay (Simplified) (35)....................................................................................................65
Undertow (25/40 XP).....................................................................................................................65
Undertow (40)............................................................................................................................65
Undertow (Simplified) (25).......................................................................................................66
Onwards (20/35 XP).......................................................................................................................66
Onwards (35).............................................................................................................................67
Onwards (Simplified) (20).........................................................................................................67
Supporting Cast........................................................................................................................................69
The Heart's Supporting Cast................................................................................................................69
calculatedTorque.............................................................................................................................69
The Gamebreaker's Supporting Cast...................................................................................................70
apotheosisProtips............................................................................................................................70
Consort Tomb Guardian..................................................................................................................71
quaverAttractant.............................................................................................................................71
stanzicApparati...............................................................................................................................72
The Artist's Supporting Cast................................................................................................................73
conceptualCosmogony....................................................................................................................73
The Mannerist's Supporting Cast........................................................................................................74
charmedMittens..............................................................................................................................74
entropyEquivalent...........................................................................................................................75
The Programmer's Supporting Cast.....................................................................................................75
enturbulatedOccupation..................................................................................................................75
epinephrineElectrified.....................................................................................................................76
lucidChthonia..................................................................................................................................76
ontologyExpunged..........................................................................................................................77
The Child's Supporting Cast................................................................................................................78
alcoholicAnomaly...........................................................................................................................78
tenaciousTheseus............................................................................................................................79
Arcs..........................................................................................................................................................81
The Timeline........................................................................................................................................81
On Tearing Apart Sburb..........................................................................................................82
The Stories...........................................................................................................................................83
Centers............................................................................................................................................83
Void.................................................................................................................................................83
Expressions.....................................................................................................................................84
Parables...........................................................................................................................................84
Mind................................................................................................................................................85
Edges..............................................................................................................................................85
Centers (The Heart's arcs)...................................................................................................................87
How To Play These Arcs.........................................................................................................87
Chrysalis (Prologue).......................................................................................................................88
Into The Center (the first Centers arc)............................................................................................88
Please Read Before Posting (as The Heart)...............................................................................88
Frist Psot (as The Heart)............................................................................................................89
Groupthink (as The Heart).........................................................................................................89
Error 404 (as The Heart)............................................................................................................89
Integrity (as The Heart)..............................................................................................................89
Something Better (as The Heart)...............................................................................................90
A Central Point (the second Centers arc)........................................................................................90
Centering Oneself (the third Centers arc).......................................................................................91
The Center of All Things (the fourth Centers arc)..........................................................................91
Void (The Gamebreaker's arcs)...........................................................................................................93
Networks (Prologue).......................................................................................................................94
Shouting Into The Darkness (the first Void arc).............................................................................94
Science! (as the Gamebreaker)..................................................................................................94
Someone’s In Trouble (as the Gamebreaker).............................................................................94
Engineering! (as the Gamebreaker)...........................................................................................95
Above the Fray (as the Gamebreaker).......................................................................................95
Walking the Boundaries (as the Gamebreaker)..........................................................................95
Wandering the Darkness (the second Void arc)..............................................................................95
Someone's In Trouble (as the Gamebreaker).............................................................................96
Paths Through the Darkness (the third Void arc)............................................................................97
Someone's In Trouble (as the Gamebreaker).............................................................................98
A Light in the Darkness (the fourth Void arc)................................................................................98
Expressions (The Artist's arcs)............................................................................................................99
Parables (The Mannerist's arcs).........................................................................................................100
How To Play These Arcs.......................................................................................................100
Outsider (Prologue)......................................................................................................................101
Mind (The Programmer's arcs)..........................................................................................................102
How To Play These Arcs.......................................................................................................102
Can They Be Saved?.............................................................................................................102
Wireless (Prologue)......................................................................................................................103
The Choices of Myra....................................................................................................................103
Someone Awesome (as the Programmer)................................................................................103
Responsibilities (as the Programmer)......................................................................................104
Feet of Clay (as the Programmer)............................................................................................104
Undertow (as the Programmer)................................................................................................105
Onwards (as the Programmer).................................................................................................105
The Choices of Aelf......................................................................................................................105
Someone Awesome (as the Programmer)................................................................................106
Responsibilities (as the Programmer)......................................................................................106
Feet of Clay (as the Programmer)............................................................................................106
Undertow (as the Programmer)................................................................................................106
Onwards (as the Programmer).................................................................................................106
The Choices of Riley....................................................................................................................106
The Choices of Rissa....................................................................................................................106
Preface
Because there is yet love in this world – because there is yet faith, because there is yet
courage, because there is yet joy – I continue on.
dryadTornado
It was dark, and I was reclining against a tree, talking to Samantha:
<cogitativeMistake> But what will you *do* with it?
<cogitativeMistake> With your guide/setting-book, I mean.
<eternityBraid> Hm?
<cogitativeMistake> Put yourself in the shoes of someone who's just gotten
the book dropped into their hands, and wants to play it as a game.
<cogitativeMistake> But what, exactly, are they going to play?
<cogitativeMistake> Put a handful of characters into a session, or an IRC.
What happens next?
So I wrote this.
Because there's stories that can be told about breaking, and putting yourself back together; because
there's stories about friendship, about reaching out to people who are universes away; because there's
something that makes the pain worth it.
Because it has to be worth it.
Because otherwise, why do we even exist?
This is a game about your wishes coming true; and so I put my faith in tomorrow, and imagine a future
for these children, put them in that legendary time at the beginning of the Age of Replayer Networks,
where they could rub shoulders with those legendary figures who created many of the Networks that
we use today.
And I've extended it far enough into the future that – Skaia willing – if you manage to keep your group
together that long, without anyone dying or dropping out of touch, there'll be enough content to play for
years.
Conventions
So this campaign's got these conventions, which are level-2 Afflictions extended across the whole
game:
•
•
•
You cannot ever completely leave the clutches of Sburb.
There are loopholes out of Death, if you are lucky.
Your mind will break before your body does.
These are explained in more detail in A User's Guide to the Apocalypse (page ???).
Technical Details
You should also know:
This campaign runs on the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine system. The HG will definitely
need to have a copy of that! It's on DTRPG [??? link whenever I get around to it].
This campaign requires the setting-book A User's Guide to the Apocalypse, which I have also made
available for free. If you don't know where it is or can't find your copy, you can find a link to the latest
version at http://eternity-braid.tumblr.com/. Page references in this book refer to A User's Guide
version 1.0... whenever that comes out.
Characters in this setting are built on a single Miraculous Arc, with an inherent Bond and Affliction
and, unlike most Chuubo's characters, have five quest slots. For more details, see Power Level
(page ??? in A User's Guide).
Some of these characters will use quest sets from the Chuubo's core and suplements. However, some of
them don't! Provided in this book are the Arcs for the Heart, the Mannerist, the Artist, and the
Programmer. The Gamebreaker and the Child use canon arcs. Specifically, The Gamebreaker uses A
Scientific Adventure (page 344 of the Chuubo's core), and the Child uses Looking for Trouble (page 354
of the Chuubo's core).
Characters
The world dies a thousand subtly different times, in light and fire and ash. In its place is a
story that coerces you to stay on its path, being forced to rely on strangers, a Game that
threatens you with death by glitches, prophecies, soul-twisting, magic, corruption, and the
struggle to stay alive and whole - in a multiverse that has made it clear that you are a pawn,
a piece to tell a story with, and not a person. You pass through the Door, wake up in an
unfamiliar room, and become just another Replayer, forever barred from the Ultimate
Reward and replaying Sburb by no fault of your own (except, perhaps, competence).
It becomes clear: Sburb has swallowed you whole. What do you do?
– preface to A Collection Of Sburban Legends, severalEntries
This is a story about being in Sburb. It's a game about being a Replayer. And it's a tale of what the
Internet can mean, to you:
It's a story about what the Internet means to me, that you may rely on it to give you a touchstone, to
help you stay conscious of how unfair or wrong your life may be, to help you understand who you are,
to keep you sane in a world that refuses to let you have sanity. It's a story about friendships, and how
far they may be stretched; and mentorships, and how they can break; and the things you put faith in, to
keep you alive.
In such a universe, then, you may be...
The Heart, Amanda Barlow, if you want
• to be sweet and helpful
• to have a hidden core of steel despite (or perhaps because of) being sweet and helpful
• to acquire extraordinary powers of leadership and charisma
(or are you the boy variant, Caleb Barlow?)
The Gamebreaker, Anthony Ott, if you want
• to be daring, dashing, badass, and maybe a little reckless
• to throw yourself into danger for the sake of smoothing the path of those who will come after
you
• to have accidentally pledged your soul to a Lovecraftian horror1
(or are you the girl variant, Magnolia Ott?)
The Artist, Cecilia Favreau, if you want
• to be beautiful and mysterious
• to use florid language and make spectacular art
1
EB: “How do you accidentally pledge yourself to a Lovecraftian horror,” you ask? It involves noodles. Lots of noodles.
It is literally a noodle incident. (Actually it is not a noodle incident, I’ll explain what actually happened later.)
• to awaken the magic in the hearts of people, places, and things
(or are you the boy variant, Laurentin Favreau?)
The Mannerist, Aetius Sewallus, if you want
• to face catastrophic events with equanimity
• to be utterly devoted to the concept of politeness
• to have a tragic past2
(or are you the girl variant, Aynur Sewallus?)
The Programmer, Rissa Hier, if you want
• to make things happen behind the scenes but never get any credit for it
• to be able to make things happen by spouting technobabble
• to become one who maintains and defends your chosen server and community
(or are you the boy variant, Emmit Hier?)
The Child, Loren Yu, if you want
• to be thrust suddenly into the world of Replaying
• to make impossible things happen because nobody ever told you they were impossible
• to be burdened with great power
(or are you the girl variant, Jackie Yu?)
Or you may be...
The HG – the Hollyhock God, Chuubo's-parlance for a GM, if you want
•
to describe the rest of the world, and what happens, rather than being attached to a character
(unless you want to be attached to a character)
•
to pull together a story from everyone else's individual little plots
•
to play the game, if nobody else has volunteered as tribute
So, if you're the HG – you might want to skim over the arcs, at least, and help the other players make
their characters and understand the game. Other than that, though, everything you need's in here! Or in
the other book.
If you're not the HG, you'll be doing character-building; see the appropriate section below!
2
EB: Well, okay. More tragic than anyone else's.
Lifepath: The Heart
Campaign: The Age of Replayer Networks
Academics Skill: Good
Sports Skill: Good
Favorite Foods: Coffee, honey on toast, cheeseburgers,
butternut squash, salt and vinegar potato chips, mustard
Blood Type: B
Animal: Bee
Age: 15, or campaign default
Genres: Pastoral, Gothic, Fairy Tales (although this
version will be best in Gothic/Fairy Tales)
Step 1: Choose your Name
Hi! Welcome to the Murdergame. (Yeah, I know. Sorry.)
You’re a teenager who came of age in this game, and then was torn away from everything you knew
again by the Door. So now what you want to do is help connect people. You’ll learn to lead people!
You’ll also go through scary things that will put steel in your heart. But that hasn’t happened yet. Right
now you’re a sweet kid who hasn’t stared into the full horror of the Game quite yet.
This is your third session of Sburb, and you don’t quite know it yet, but it’s a doozy.
So introduce yourself! Are you…
•
•
•
•
•
Amanda Barlow, a (human) girl?
Caleb Barlow, a (human) boy?
Taylor Barlow, (human) girl/boy/other?
Barley-Clearing Mandar Shine, a hob (dinosaurish Sburb-playing species)?
something else?
My apologies to Caleb and all the others - I’ll assume that you’re Amanda for most of the rest of this
lifepath. But switch around genders and names and it’ll be useful for you, too!
Step 2: Choose your Native
So you played Sburb with a bunch of friends. It was awesome! But what class and aspect did Sburb
give you, exactly?
Were you…
•
•
•
•
the Sylph, someone who learned to listen to your heart and follow your principles?
the Bane, someone who learned to use your principles to serve others?
the Dame, someone who learned to use your powers to protect the people you loved?
the Guard, someone who learned to protect people so that they could use their powers in the
best way they could?
And were you…
• a Hero of Might, someone who learned to use teamwork and take challenges head-on and
honorably?
• a Hero of Space, someone who learned to create beginnings and see things from new
perspectives?
• a Hero of Light, someone who learned to love information and influence probability?
• a Hero of Coins, someone who learned to value things accurately and help people (including
yourself) discover what they’re good at?
Also, you were probably the first person into your session, which made you session leader and
ectobiology-doer! Unless you weren’t…?
• I was first in, yeah!
• I wasn’t first in. One of my friends did the ectobiology!
Step 3: Choose your Hobby
You play a musical instrument! Unless you don’t. Either way, you picked it up when you were a kid
and you’ve held on to it ever since.
Do you play…
• the clarinet?
• the oboe?
• the drums?
Or do you have some other hobby that you’ve done since you were young? Something like…
• writing?
• amateur psychology?
You could also pick a different skill from the Replayer lifepath! But these are the ones that’ll fit you
best.
(Optional) Step 4: For Mandar
You’re a hob! That means you’re a little furry bipedal dinosaur, maybe a meter high, who’s treedwelling and highly social.
You’ll only need two points in (Superior) Hob, but they’ll probably be shifted out of your hobby skill.
Sorry, Mandar!
Also, your hobby skill will probably be one of these things, instead:
•
•
•
•
gardening
carpentry
being good with kids
board games
Something that’d be useful to a commune! Other hobs might have proficiency in things like “starship
repair” and “metallurgy”, but when you were a little one you were less adventurous than some of the
others, so you learned things that were closer to home instead.
Step 5: Choose your Replayer Network
Your coplayers will be the other PCs, at least in this session! But you’ll also discover a Replayer
network pretty early on, too. (Maybe Anthony’s passed around the link to Sburb.org in presession or
something.) You might have a couple options, but one of them will “click” with you and you’ll start
using it more than the others, even if you have accounts on the other services too.
Or the HG might pick one of these for you at the beginning, if they want to keep everyone on the same
network! But if not Would you like to belong to…
• Pits, which is like Archive.org/Youtube/some sort of BBS/a blogging site?
• Sburb.org, which is a forum with a realtime IRC that you’ll be assigned to a channel on for an
instant community?
• Or somewhere else? (Technically the other primary Replayer networks don’t exist at this point
in time, but you could pull out a version of Transamphibian from the past or Corpse Fiesta from
the future, HG permitting.)
You probably shouldn’t use Corpse Fiesta if the Programmer is one of the other PCs, though! Rissa will
have the founder of CF as an important NPC in her arc.
Step 6: Choose your Favorite Scenes
So what are you usually doing?
(Purple) Talking with new Replayers to help them out?
(Purple) Talking with a coplayer over coffee or ramen?
(Purple) Playing your musical instrument? (Or writing an FAQ, if you prefer writing?)
(Silver) Level-grinding on Underlings?
(Silver) Hanging out on the Dream Moons?
(Silver) Exploring the cultures of the little corners and subforums of Replayer networks?
(Red) Giving people pep talks?
(Blue) Talking about what makes people tick?
(Blue) Talking about what you believe in?
(Orange) Struggling with the feeling that other people need your energy and help more than you
do?
• (Orange) Trying to help someone who’s in really deep trouble that you can’t save them from?
• (Gold) Worrying about other people too much?
• (Gold) Drinking too much coffee and then crashing afterwards?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pick 2-3 of your favorites - it’ll help you figure out what you’re doing at any given time.
(The colors are just there for coding what parts of the game feel a certain way. You don’t have to
memorize them or anything like that!)
Step 7: Review your Goals
So you’re in this new session of Sburb! You’ll be
Quest 1: The thing you’ll be doing most of the time is
• helping people out and setting them on the right path.
Quest 2: More recently you’ve decided to start
• investigating this new Replayer network you’ve found.
Quest 3: And of course you’ll be
• playing Sburb. Again.
• Only to realize that this session is broken…
Step 8: Choose your Handle
Your chumhandle is probably one of these…
•
•
•
•
•
reedyPleasantries
organizedSoprano
caringTrill
reclusiveMelody
or something I didn’t list here?
If you take any reward that lets you earn or change a Bond, even a Bond Perk, you can also revise your
handle. I don’t expect you to do this much - maybe once or twice in a campaign - but I wanted to give
you the option.
Step 9: Choose your Connections
So, you’ll have a couple of starting Connections in your perk slots:
• The Child 2 (This is his second Sburb session. You knew someone just like him in your first.
You might or might not have a little bit of a “this time I’ll do it right” complex.)
• The Programmer 1 (You might not understand all of what she says, but you like her attitude.)
• Prospit 1 (You’ve grown to love the golden moon.)
• The Artist -1 (Blah blah postmodernism blah blah blah. Can’t she just take pride in her work
without being all mysterious about it?)
You can discard any of these connections if you don’t want them, or get a free level 1 connection to any
other PC at the start or after a few sessions if you and their player agree that they should be comfortable
with each other.
You can also improve these Connections later with quest rewards.
Step 10: Review Your Powers
So, you’ve got these abilities:
• You’ve learned to see into other people’s souls and tell how generous they are.
• You can also tell if someone else is giving themselves away, hurting themselves to help
someone else, and who else they’re helping.
• It’s a little bit more difficult than average for people to use miracles and wishes to change the
kind of person you are.
• You can fit in anywhere you want, if you try hard enough.
Character Sheet: The Heart
picture by littlemisscodeless
Name: Amanda Barlow
Handle: reedyPleasantries
Native Classpect: Sylph of Might
Sylladex: Ring Buffer
Specibus: glovekind
Sports Skill: Good
Favorite Foods: Coffee, honey on toast, cheeseburgers,
butternut squash, salt and vinegar potato chips, mustard
Blood Type: B
Animal: Bee
Session Count: 3
Genres: Pastoral, Gothic, Fairy Tales (although this
version will be best in Gothic/Fairy Tales)
Summary
You're The Heart. Your instincts are to make yourself helpful and unobtrusive. Unfortunately, Sburb has
other plans. It's forcing you to reach inside yourself and become the best yourself you can be. You're
pretty okay at it, but you could certainly be a lot better!
Your quests will be to:
•
•
•
help people;
explore your Sburb session and learn that it's broken;
and getting to know the culture of Sburb.org and the #ultimatereward IRC.
You get bonus XP when other handlers are happy for you and give you a thumbs-up for it. Your life
mostly sucks, but you try to be good despite that, and sometimes it pays off.
Because you're learning to pull off being yourself, you have one level of the miraculous arc Become
Somebody. This means that it's unusually hard to change your nature, you can tell when other people
are giving themselves away, and you can adapt yourself to weird environments.
Common Variations
Customize your experience as the Heart! For example, you might be...
•
•
•
•
•
Caleb Barlow, a boy;
Taylor Barlow, a human of any gender you'd like;
good at writing, from your childhood, instead of music;
Barley-Clearing Mandar Shine, a hob;
or you might have a different Pesterchum handle, such as organizedSoprano or caringTrill.
Character Description
As Amanda, you’re going to have a core of being helpful and kind. Really, you’re fundamentally a
good kid. You’re just struggling with what it means to change yourself - will becoming The Type Of
Person Who Leads Things make you a different person?
You help other people a lot. Sometimes you help them too much, and begin giving too much of
yourself away. Then it’s hard for you to stay on an even keel.
Sburb is hard. You keep on keeping on, and survive it mostly by dint of doing the work. You’ve always
done the work - you were good with homework, and the things Sburb makes you do are just… more
homework, to you. Pretend that you are the type of student the teacher wants and eventually it becomes
easier: this still holds, if you’re in Sburb.
Presession
So, you started out as a good kid, if a rather rootless one. Your parents divorced when you were young you ended up in the care of your Aunt Pat for about five or six years while Dad tried to find a job and
Mom moved to Europe - and you whiled away your days doing your homework, practicing the clarinet,
and talking with your Internet friends.
Aunt Pat was well-meaning, if distant. She was always busy. Sure, she worked from home as some sort
of editor, and she paid for your clarinet lessons, and she provided everything you needed and some of
the things you wanted. You always felt like there was something more you needed from life, but Aunt
Pat was no help figuring this out.
You faded into the background, at school. The kids there ignored you, mostly. Which was all right,
since at least they weren’t bullying you. Your teachers liked your grades. You didn’t really volunteer for
anything.
You were close with your Internet friends.
You wondered what it felt like to have something to do with your life.
Sburb
You were fourteen when Sburb came out - you signed up for GameBro’s raffle for free advance copies
of Sburb for you and all your friends, on a whim, and inexplicably won. (You told them not to publish
your name on the website.)
Of course, then things heated up when everyone realized the meteors were coming in. You made sure
everyone else knew how to get into the Game. You ended up being unanimously appointed session
leader because of that - and because you were the only person who was unambiguously, definitely
friends with everyone else in the group.
You were a Sylph of Space (or a Bane/Dame/Guard of Might/Light/Coins, depending - but we’ll go
with Space, for now). You wandered around with frogs a lot. Once Echidna told you to clean out the
Forge by hand, which didn’t make any sense since it was a volcano but it turned out using arm motions
let you better control your Space powers.
You beat Sburb, with all your friends, and you went through the Door holding hands.
You woke up alone.
Replaying
You freaked out and messaged everyone on your replayee’s chumlist. Most of them didn’t respond.
One of them did, though. Trevor, tidewaterWishlist, explained everything he could to you. He was a
good guy. He’d gone through six sessions of Sburb and was still kicking.
Your second session was, if anything, even harder. You couldn’t assume anyone in the session liked
you. It was broken in totally different ways. You had to deal with Derse, when previously you’d
dreamed on Prospit. Trevor knew what to do and you were dragged along in his wake, which you didn’t
really mind since it was tiring doing the entire stand-up-for-yourself thing in your previous session.
People died, during the fight against the Black King. You didn’t know what you were supposed to feel.
It was sad, but you didn’t really know them. You felt like they deserved a funeral anyway, and buried
them, but you couldn’t say anything because you didn’t have anything to say about them.
Trevor made a list of trustworthy people you could look for, afterwards, in case you ended up in a
session with them.
You went through the Door.
Now
This session you showed up about five seconds to impact. You had a cruxite apple in your hand and
you bit into it, and then you were in Sburb. It’s something that happens sometimes. The only problem is
that this didn’t give you any opportunity to prototype your kernelsprite. And now you’re in a broken
session that you’ll need to fix. With a bunch of strangers.
None of it is your fault, you know that, so why do you feel responsibility for fixing it anyway?
You find a strange radio signal promising access to “the Sburb.org timetrav and affiliated networks”.
You sign up, of course, just in case, and you don’t recognize anyone. Not even when you search all the
handles you remember, and those that you can recall of Trevor’s list, which the Door took from you.
None of them are here. There’s nobody for you to know.
Your instinct is to be unobtrusive, to be helpful, to be non-threatening. But Sburb is asking you not to
be these things.
You are the Ward of Doom.
What will you do?
Hints
You're specifically designed to be pretty ordinary and generic, even though you aren't quite
Metaphysically Ordinary like Chuubo might be. Well, technically you're a nerd that spends most of
your time on the Internet, but everyone else in this game is too. Probably OOCly as well as ICly,
although I'm certainly not one to judge.
You probably start out with a bad case of Geek Social Fallacies. Getting over that might be something
you can do over the next Arc or two; you need to understand that not all of your friends can be friends
with each other and there's nothing you can actually do about it.
When faced with someone who's trying to hurt you, you'll probably first react by trying even harder to
be friends, like a Pacifist Undertale protagonist. But if it doesn't stop, you'll snap and become a roaring
protector of your own values. That doesn't happen often, but it's a sight to behold when you do (and it's
often the resolution to an Issue).
One of the story roles of the Heart is to drag other people back into the story when they're starting to
drift away. I'm not saying this has to happen, but you're probably the best character to do it, and the HG
might ask you to do so explicitly. (The Child is a close second for that position, but Amanda's still
first.)
Quests
The Heart'll start out with three quests – you can have up to five at any given time, so you can swap out
or pick up more quests if you'd like. These quests are:
•
•
•
“Always Here to Help”: the “basic quest”, which is your basic character motivation in play;
“Seven Gates (Void Session)”: the quest that defines where you are in this Sburb session;
and “Please Read Before Posting”, in which you lurk and read on the Sburb.org IRC you
happen to have fallen into, too nervous to post much.
Quest XP
The first quest is about being helpful to other people! You can gain an XP by saying “Always here to
help” after doing so. Mark down an XP whenever that happens and go on with play. You'll have to wait
15 OOC minutes before doing it again, though.
The second and third quests both have lists of scene options to play out. You can mark down whenever
any of the 1 XP conditions happen by yourself. For the 5 XP milestones, you'll want to try to arrange
things to hit them, and possibly tell the HG you want that kind of thing to happen ahead of time. The
HG then has to approve the 5 XP, but they should be pretty lenient about it.
More Options
Here are some more sidequests that you could try picking up, for filling the fourth or fifth quest slot.
•
•
Keeping a Record of your Life (from the Chuubo's core)
helping out with Frog Breeding
•
•
Crisis of Confidence (from Fortitude: By The Docks of Big Lake)
Exile (also from Fortitude)
If you really don't want to be on the Newcomer quest set, you could try using the quest set “The Secret
History of Seizhi Schwan” from the Glass-Maker's Dragon campaign, although you'll probably need to
have your guardian birds and such be other people, rather than weird magical animals.
XP Emotion: Thumbs-Up
There's more information on how this XP emotion plays in the Glass-Maker's Dragon campaign for
Chuubo's. To sum it up, though, you want to be the kind of person other people are happy for:
Your life kind of sucks. Pleasures are few and far between. But you're trying to be nice to everyone...
and sometimes that karma will come back around in a good way. That's when people give you thumbsups, or some equivalent thereof. This can technically only happen once every fifteen minutes, but given
how often people seem to forget about XP emotions in my games, you probably don't need to keep
track of that.
Mundane Abilities
This is a game where you don't actually need abilities to do something an average human can do. You
can just declare that you make a sandwich or sit on a chair. Now, if you really need that particular
sandwich to impress someone, you can put Will into it to get a better result, but if it's just a slappedtogether ham and cheese, you can just say it happens.
Also, skill points are extremely coarse in this system; the range only goes up to 5.
Skills
You have a pool of 8 Will. You can use it to do stuff, including these skills that you're good at:
•
•
•
•
Sburban Survival 1 (If you try hard enough you'll probably stay alive.)
Clarinet 3 (You are really good at playing the clarinet.)
Helpfulness 3 (You are also very good at being helpful.)
Leadership 1 (You have some familiarity with being a leader.)
Connections
You start out with these connections by default. They're in Perk slots, so you're free to discard or ignore
them if you don't want them.
•
•
•
The Child 2
The Gamebreaker 1
The Artist -1
You can also claim a free level 1 connection to any other PC you get along with and whose handler
agrees. This means that you could discard your -1 connection to The Artist, then turn around and get a
free +1 with them instead! But -1s are interesting to play for flavor, and can result in much hilarity, so
I'd recommend trying it out at least for a little while.
Miraculous Abilities
Because you are a Sburb player, and because Sburb players have a deep and fundamental connection to
the fabric of Paradox Space itself, there are some things you can just declare to happen, and they will in
fact happen.
Unlike with mortal skills, though, there's no guarantee they'll actually improve your life. It's your
responsibility to use them properly.
Health Levels
You have 2 Normal Health Levels, 1 Tough Health Level, and 2 Divine Health Levels. That's about
normal for a character played on the miraculous scale of Chuubo's. It is also significantly tougher than
your average presession human.
This being said, these health levels aren't really anything like hit points. What they actually represent is
how much plot armor you have.
You see, a presession human hit with Red Miles through the torso would just die. You're rather more
likely to happen to be moving just fast enough to throw off Jack Noir's aim, making it graze and burn
you but not actually kill you.
These health levels are also for emotions. If something terrible happens, you can sort of... stow it away
and keep going, rather than grinding to a halt for weeks or months trying to process it. Mind you, you'll
have to face it eventually, and stowed emotions have an unpleasant tendency to intrude on your life
when you least expect it. But if you can't afford to have that kind of reaction at the time, it might save
your life.
Miracle Points
There is a well of strength within yourself that you may call upon to produce effects far stronger than
would otherwise be possible –
You have a pool of 5 Miracle points (MP), which you can use to call upon difficult miraculous abilities,
enhance miracles, or use them more often than usual. Once you have spent some, you'll regain 1 MP
per week, up to your normal cap of 5.
There are also a variety of other game mechanics that can give you MP. Some of them can give you MP
over that cap: most notably Bonds/Afflictions, Region Properties (which are technically Bonds), and
Issues.
Honestly, your best bet for MP is your arc ability Frantic; it gives you MP up to your cap whenever you
use it, which is a hell of a lot more reliable than the other two arc abilities.
Become Somebody
You are on the miraculous Knight arc “Become Somebody” - since it's a Knight arc, you've earned this
powerset by trying to live up to a social role. If you're from traditional tabletop gaming, think of this a
bit like a character class. Right now, you have one of these arcs done, so you have what the game calls
an arc trait of  Become Somebody 1.
Once you've earned about 120 XP (or 72 XP, if you're using the accelerated XP rule), you'll earn
another arc level. Then you will have  Become Somebody 2! That will give you more cool powers.
Or you could change Arcs, in which case you'll earn something else, obviously.
The powers of Become Somebody at arc 1 are:
Frantic
Type: Special
Cost: n/a
You have an inner strength that expresses itself best when you're overwhelmed, outmatched, and out of
your depth.
Whenever you meet the conditions, you can take a (Be In) Trouble action as if it was in-genre (even if
it's out of genre for everyone else). This will earn you 1 MP (up to a maximum of your starting MP).
For every extra group XP that you earn from this action, you can get an additional MP.
Arc Powers
Frantic is a power that you get when you're currently pursuing an arc that offers Frantic. If you switch
arcs later, it might be replaced by one of the other special Arc powers:
•
•
•
Immortality (if you've decided to step back from day-to-day affairs and start thinking more
about legacies and such);
Sickly (if the traumas of Sburb have gotten to you more than you might like to admit);
or Frantic – in which case you'll keep this power, since it's exactly the same across every Frantic
arc.
All of the other abilities I'm discussing are permanent, even if you decide to go do something else with
your life.
Because You Care
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost: 0MP
You care about people with all of your soul. Maybe too much. And because you care about people too
much, you also understand what it looks like when someone else is overextending themselves for
altruistic reasons. You can see it, just as clearly as you can see the color of someone's text.
Mind you, you won't see precisely why they're overextending themselves, but you should be able to
figure that out if you watch how they interact with other people for a while...
To See Strength
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost: 1MP
One of the lessons of Might is that strength is something that you cannot fully achieve alone. That you
should not just be reliable, but rely on others. And you understand this.
But this knowledge is not exclusive to Might players; not exclusive to Sylphs. You can find others who
strengthen the people around them; you can find others who are the pillars of their communities.
You can just see it, in the way they phrase things, in the way other people greet them, in the way that
they listen to people. And, because this is a miracle, you can even sense this kind of thing with a single
glance at their face... or even just their username.
(If someone wants to hide this part of themselves from you – if, perhaps, they're a current Sand player –
they need a miracle with Strike greater or equal to your Arc Trait level.)
Integrity
Type: Level 1 Auctoritas
Cost: n/a
There is a core of steel in your soul; and that core of steel is made of these two absolute truths:
•
•
I am, and will always be, a native Sylph of Might.
I am generous.
There are miracles that could strip this kind of thing away from someone with less intrinsic strength;
but these things don't touch you. There are miracles that can wash over the world, and remake it – but
you will always know, absolutely, that these are things you are.
Mechanically, this means that miraculous effects without 1+ Strike can't do anything about these truths.
(This doesn't seem all that impressive, seeing as someone could just add 1 MP, but this'll level up if you
earn more Become Somebody.)
This doesn't do much about mundane effects; if someone's spreading rumors that you're not generous,
and that isn't a miracle, you'll have to prove them wrong through your own hard work. (You can do
that, right?)
If you wish to include anything else in this list of absolute truths, you can do so with a Recharge Token.
(Mind you, if you pick something that's obviously impossible, the HG might rule that it's actually
metaphorical or something.)
Adaptable
Type: Special/Affliction
Cost: 2MP
You're surprisingly competent at diving into unexpected places and not making a fool of yourself.
When you're on the strangest little Ring servers, you can tell how you're supposed to act. When the
Consorts decide to serve you their traditional meals of glowing mushrooms and weird bugs, you can
react with genuine gratitude rather than having to hide shock at their taste. When you're on a
pressession Earth, you can slip into the role of your Replayee without so much as a backward glance.
Mind you, this isn't easy for you. (Yet.) But, if you spend the MP and sustain an action, you can
maintain an Affliction, something like [I belong here.]
This'll give you:
•
•
•
•
a +1 (or more) Tool bonus to doing whatever you should be doing,
a free Connection to your environment equal to the Arc Trait's rating (currently 1),
the occasional miraculous coincidence or burst of inspiration, from the HG,
and the feeling that this is where you've always been and what you've always done – memories
of the rest of your life seem blurry and dreamlike.
Because this is an Affliction, it'll take Strike to make you feel out of place.
Lifepath: The Gamebreaker
Session Count: 4
Sylladex: Array
Specibus: frisbeekind
Academics Skill: Excellent
Sports Skill: Good
Favorite Foods: lemon-lime soda, bagels with cream
cheese, canned chili, Japanese curry, pretzels, grated
Parmesan
Lifeplant: spider plant
Genres: Gothic, Immersive Fantasy, Fairy Tales,
Adventure Fantasy (although this version will be best in
Gothic/Fairy Tales)
Yo, welcome to Sburb. Again.
You were a gamer. I mean, of course you were a gamer. Video games were your thing. You were good
at them. So it was perfectly natural, when you heard that Sburb was a game in a genre of its own, that
you wanted to play it.
Which was all well and good right up until your friend died.
So you made a Deal to bring them back. Which would all be very well except that it kind of resulted in
you signing your soul away. Yeah, you regret doing it now, but that doesn’t actually help.
So, what should we call you? Are you…
•
•
•
•
•
Anthony Ott, a (human) boy?
Magnolia Ott, a (human) girl?
Jamie Ott, a (human) boy/girl/other?
Antona Oliots, a troll boy/girl/other?
something else?
Step 1a (Optional): The Angels Sing…
So, usually you made a particularly ill-advised deal with an Other called J'lmieltk, and that’s where you
get many of your powers. But what if you didn’t? What if you’d given yourself over to the Angels,
instead?
It wouldn’t be a deal, I think. It would be a gift. A gift with strings attached.
So you’d go down to the Underworld, and tell them of your problems. They would love you. They
would have faith in you. They’d assure you of this. They’d give you that first hit of power. And they
would start drilling holes in your soul.
So you could…
• skip this step, remaining the default Gamebreaker;
Or you could become
• Anthony Ott, known to the Angels as Ananias?
• Magnolia Ott, known to the Angels as Magdalene?
• Jamie Ott, known to the Angels as Joseph? (Much to your dismay, if you’re not a boy… at least,
until they start corrupting you, at which point you stop caring.)
• Antona Oliots, known to the Angels as Annass?
• Someone else, addressed with a Biblical name?
If so, when you become a Singer (because, given that you’re on a Sickly arc, this is a when and not an
if), you will be known as The Shepherd (other Singers have names like “The Scourge”, “The Shield”,
“The Voice”, or “The Liberator”; so if you don’t like being a Shepherd, you can use those options too,
or make up one of your own).
You played Sburb with your bros.
Who were you, then?
• the Prince, someone who learned to bring all things to their end?
• the Bard, someone who learned to arrange ends for others’ stories?
• the Thief, someone who learned that you have worth as a person and should demand respect for
such from others?
• the Rogue, someone who learned that you have worth as a person and should help other people
recognize their worth as people too?
And were you…
•
•
•
•
a Hero of Void, who learned about hidden things and hidden places?
a Hero of Doom, who learned about how things come to their inevitable ends?
a Hero of Flow, who learned that the greatest virtue is to keep going?
a Hero of Sand, who learned about hidden weaknesses and how to push them?
You got chosen for the Sburb beta ostensibly on merit of work you did with a previous MMO by
Skaianet. And you’ve been playing - and breaking - games since forever. So usually you’re good at
gamebreaking. But maybe you’re not Maybe you were good at…
• leading raiding parties, identifying what other people’s strengths were and organizing them to
best effect?
• making fanart or writing fanfiction and lore for the game?
…or was it something else entirely?
Step 4 (Optional): For Antona
If you want to be Antona Oliots, you’ll be an Alternian troll: someone who grew up on a strange world
entirely populated by children, growing strong and knowing what it was like to survive. I think you’re
probably a rustblood or possibly brownblood, someone at the very bottom of the status hierarchy - but
that you grew up with a rather remarkable lack of shits to give about your status.
…and if you want, instead of (or even alongside) gamebreaking expertise, you can start with a psychic
power. Only one point of it, mind you, but even just the one point can give you some interesting
options.
Do you have the power of…
• telekinesis?
• being able to talk to ghosts?
• being able to commune with animals?
Or something else? (The other kinds of psionics aren’t common in lowbloods, but you’re a PC - if the
HG approves, you can try taking them.)
• (Gold) trying to explain something you think is obvious to someone without any of the
background knowledge?
• (Purple) doing something repeatedly, with subtle variations, and recording the results?
• (Purple) following some mnemonic or other for doing a dungeon puzzle?
• (Purple) level-grinding on Underlings?
• (Purple) showing your tender side while interacting with someone innocent?
• (Purple) working on mathematical models for parts of Sburb?
• (Silver) reading a book while perched in a tree?
• (Silver) playing Ultimate Frisbee with consorts or carapaces?
• (Red) prowling the Prospitian prophecy libraries?
• (Red) taking notes on the Skaian clouds or the whispers of the Furthest Ring?
• (Green) spending time outside during Derse eclipses to hear the Furthest Ring better?
• (Green) listening to J'lmieltk’s voice whispering in your head?
• (Blue) trying something really dangerous for the sake of testing a gamebreaking theory?
• (Blue) monologuing for a while and then taking decisive action?
• (Orange) claiming you know exactly what to do while you’re just making it up as you go along?
• (Orange) throwing yourself into danger for the sake of someone else?
• wondering how things work, and making theories about them.
• looking into an interesting problem: something about this session is broken, and you know that
you should be able to fix it if you poke around enough…
•
•
•
•
negativeSpace
audacityCharted
justifiedMeans
you the option.
• The Programmer 2 (You can’t really understand the details of code, but you can follow along
when she talks shop and vice versa, and she asks good, incisive questions.)
• The Heart 1 (She’s easy to get along with.)
• Derse 1 (You’ve dreamed on Derse for years and years and years…)
• The Mannerist -1 (You understand intellectually that he’s the way he is because his childhood
was shitty, but you kind of feel like he should get over himself.)
with each other.
Character Sheet: The Gamebreaker
Name: Anthony Ott
Handle: negativeSpace
Native Classpect: Rogue of Void
Session Count: 4
Sylladex: Array
Specibus: frisbeekind
Sports Skill: Good
Favorite Foods: lemon-lime soda, bagels with cream
cheese, canned chili, Japanese curry, pretzels, grated
Parmesan
Lifeplant: spider plant
Genres: Gothic, Immersive Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Epic
Fantasy, Adventure Fantasy (although this version will
be best in Gothic/Fairy Tales)
Summary
Common Variations
You can customize your Gamebreaker experience: for example, you could be...
•
•
•
•
•
Magnolia Ott, a girl
Jamie Ott, a boy/girl/other
Antona Oliots, a troll
◦ and possibly telekinetic?
pledged to the Angels instead of the Others
audacityCharted or justifiedMeans on Pesterchum, instead of negativeSpace.
For more customization options, see the lifepath!
Character Description
Hints
Quests
You'll start out with three quests – you can have up to five at any given time, so you can swap out or
pick up more quests if you'd like. These quests are:
•
“What If”: the “basic quest”, which is your basic character motivation in play;
•
“Seven Gates (Void Session)”: the quest that defines where you are in this Sburb session;
•
and “
Grandstanding
Your bonus XP emotion is denoted by fist-pumping or saluting you.
You probably have a catchphrase. You might have several catchphrases! Just be careful that you don't
have too many. I don't want for you to end up with catchphrases growing out of your ears. That would
be terrible for your hearing, and also not earn you nearly as much XP because it wouldn't be
recognizable as a catchphrase.
In general, you're already acting bombastic – but the salute is something extra. The salute is when you
finish up a dramatic monologue. It's for when you use it to call people to action. It's for when you state
who you are and what you stand for.
Here's some ideas for catchphrases. I'd recommend picking two or three of them. You can have more
later, but establish your first few in play first.
•
•
•
•
•
•
“Yo, Anthony here!” (At the beginning of a video blog, perhaps. Replace with your name.)
“Let's get started!” (Usually at the beginning of a session meeting, or as a signoff after a daring
proposal.)
“We can change reality!” (To pump people up for doing big things.)
“Sburb's just a game, like any other.” (To introduce the explanation for a bug, or to justify why
gamebreaking is a totally reasonable occupation.)
“Since it exists, it was clearly meant to be exploited.” (To justify why you're taking advantage
of a bug, while dodging any discussion of the consequences.)
“We'll do it live!” (If it turns out your planning got overturned by events.)
•
•
•
“Fuck it.” (Before taking a particularly big risk.)
“Be awesome!” (A signoff, or an ending for a speech.)
“Be badass!” (Similarly.)
Most XP emotions don't let you just declare that you want an XP and then stare at everyone
expectantly. This one does. Use this power wisely. By this I mean that you should be keeping an eye
out for other people's XP emotions, too.
Oh, and you can earn up to one XP every fifteen minutes, unless someone’s specifically daring you to
say a catchphrase (in which case you aren’t bound by this rule).
Mundane Abilities
Miraculous Abilities
Because you are a Sburb player, and because Sburb players have a deep and fundamental connection to
the fabric of Paradox Space itself, there are some things you can just declare to happen, and they will in
fact happen – no matter how strained or impossible.
But be careful; you can only declare that they happen (not that they will be appropriate or productive),
and it is quite possible to cut yourself apart upon that blade.
Note
Most gamebreakers are actually not on Wounded Angel! I actually think that most gamebreakers, on
the Arc level, actually have Specialist and/or Gatekeeper. But Anthony's weird, in the way that PCs
usually are...
Health Levels
You have 2 Normal Health Levels, 1 Tough Health Level, and 2 Divine Health Levels. That's about
normal for a character played on the miraculous scale of Chuubo's. It is also significantly tougher than
your average presession human.
This being said, these health levels aren't really anything like hit points. What they actually represent is
how much plot armor you have.
You see, a presession human that got off a high cliff would just die on impact. But the pacts you've
made, and the things you still need to do with your life, require that you survive; and so you're more
likely to break your fall on several trees, emerging bruised and battered and alive.
These health levels are also for emotions. If something terrible happens, you can sort of... stow it away
and keep going, rather than grinding to a halt for weeks or months trying to process it. Mind you, you'll
have to face it eventually, and stowed emotions have an unpleasant tendency to intrude on your life
when you least expect it. But if you can't afford to have that kind of reaction at the time, it might save
your life.
Miracle Points
You have worked for years at imposing your will onto reality, and because you have faith in your own
abilities, they can push you further than anyone would have thought possible –
You have a pool of 5 Miracle points (MP), which you can use to call upon difficult miraculous abilities,
enhance miracles, or use them more often than usual. Once you have spent some, you'll regain 1 MP
per week, up to your normal cap of 5.
There are also a variety of other game mechanics that can give you MP. Some of them can give you MP
over that cap: most notably Bonds/Afflictions, Region Properties (which are technically Bonds), and
Issues.
Specifically, since you (currently) have the Arc Power Sickly, you can get the issue Sickness without
unusual difficulty; and since Issues give you extra MP, this is probably going to be your most reliable
method of getting extra MP.
Wounded Angel
You are on the miraculous Bindings arc “Wounded Angel” – since it's a Bindings arc, you've earned
this powerset by working with wicked and forbidden powers. If you're from traditional tabletop
gaming, think of this a bit like a character class. Right now, you have one of these arcs done, so you
have what the game calls an arc trait of  Wounded Angel 1.
Once you've earned about 120 XP (or 72 XP, if you're using the accelerated XP rule), you'll earn
another arc level. Then you will have  Wounded Angel 2! That will give you more cool powers. Or
you could change Arcs, in which case you'll earn something else, obviously.
The powers of Wounded Angel at arc 1 are:
Sickly
Type: Special
Cost: n/a
You are deeply aware of the terrible things of the world, in a visceral way. There is a Horrorterror
within you; there is the Murdergame outside you; and even your own memories are not safe.
And so, once per session, you may invoke this power and do all of the following, in order:
•
•
•
declare yourself under attack by corruption or trauma;
declare a suitable  (Suffer) Corruption or  (Suffer) Trauma action (surreal effects, and
then the corruption, sickness, or psychological trauma gets worse); and then
automatically pick up a point of  Sickness or  Sburban Corruption, unless you have
Sickness/Sburban Corruption 5 or you have just recently resolved a Sickness/Sburban
Corruption issue.
This is functionally a narrative power; ICly, it's not quite the power to be sickly but the power to be
right about how much your life sucks.
Arc Powers
Sickly is a power that you get when you're currently pursuing an arc that offers Sickly. If you switch
arcs later, it might be replaced by one of the other special Arc powers:
•
•
•
Frantic (for if you decide to pursue your goals through the sweat of your brow, rather than
through catastrophic and transformative powers);
Immortality (for if you retreat from the affairs of the world to cloister yourself in theoretical
work);
or Sickly (in which case you'll keep this power – every Sickly arc shares this power).
All of the other abilities I'm discussing are permanent, even if you decide to go do something else with
your life.
Sickly and Fairy Tales
Wait, I hear you saying. In this genre, Corruption and Trauma are already things that anyone can
declare without approval. What's the difference between that and Sickly?
The difference is that the HG gates access to most Issues. Just because you got in a good Trauma XP
action during the past chapter doesn't necessarily mean the HG will give you a point of Sickness. It will
certainly tip the scales in that direction, but it will not guarantee anything.
Sickly, by contrast, is a guarantee.
Issues give you uncapped MP, and a handful of extra XP when they resolve. They are valuable. And
that is why this is a power that you can only use once a session. You may get more Issue points from
the mere unfolding of events than that; but this, at least, will be certain.
And – especially to a Replayer – certainty is valuable, even if it guarantees a life like this.
Unprecedented
Type: Imperial Miracle
Cost: n/a
Many bugs in Sburb are well-documented and relatively easy to avoid or exploit. The ones you tend to
find, however, are not.
Whenever someone shows up on the memo with an unprecedented or dangerous bug, you tend to be the
only one available who can help. And when you yourself poke around in Sburb, you're unusually likely
to find dangerous, novel bugs.
(Not that you couldn't find the kinds of bugs that require just a bit more polish around the edges of the
well-documented solution; you're just not looking for them.)
Mind you, this isn't actually a useful power; the choice of which scenes to show up in is something you
control at the handler level. Anyone can ICly show up in anyone else's scene, barring obvious barriers
like imprisonment or the Ring. And you can pretty much declare “I think I found a weird thing in
Sburb” at any time, and the HG's probably just going to flap their hand and say sure, you can assume
that's a thing that you're dealing with now. None of that has anything to do with this miracle.
But whenever it's important that someone deal with the newbie's horrifying bug, right the fuck now?
Your name always seems to come up.3
The TTTooooTollTlssT of Your Trade
Type: Special
Cost: n/a
3
EB: If you're not careful, people are going to start chanting your name three times to summon you.
Sure, you're a gamebreaker. And part of any gamebreaker's job description is skirting the edges of what
Replayers consider safe. But even the Gamebreakers think you're terrifying.
You see, you use your permanently Corrupted state as a tool to help you gamebreak.
Whenever you narrate yourself specifically using Corruption to help your gamebreaking – using the
broodfester tongues and the dread magics of the Horrorterrors to coax the impossible into happening –
you get a +1 Tool to Gamebreaking. This often leads to a  (Suffer) Corruption XP action, although
I'm not going to require it.
Whenever you have at least 2 points in the  Sburban Corruption issue, if it is Otherwise-flavored,
this Tool bonus increases to +2.
Divine Health
Type: Special
Cost: n/a
Theoretically, you receive (Arc level + 1) additional Divine Health Levels. However, one of your later
powers specifically uses divine health levels as its power source, and you've already bound your
(current) 2 extra health levels up in said power, so you don't actually see any of them right now. Sorry!
Speaker of the Furthest Ring
Cost: n/a
Your soul has long since been pledged to J'lmieltk, and you know it is only a matter of time until she
claims you again. You... haven't really made your peace with this notion, yet. It's mostly just terrifying,
when you think about it, and most of the time you try not to think about it and smother it with a thick
blanket of “fuck it, if this is all the life I'll get I'm going to be awesome”. But sometimes... sometimes
you know that if you lose your last Divine Health Level, the tentacles of fate will tighten upon your
soul.
In an NPC this Blasphemy would play out as a standard Speakerfication, to keep things simple. But
since, if you're reading this, you're not going to be an NPC, this is going to be a little more interesting.
This is a wish, then, that your skin will turn ashen-gray and your blood will turn to ichor; and that you
will descend upon your session in a cloud of darkness; and that your very speech and writing will be
tainted with Corruption that endangers everyone who hears or reads you; and that everything you touch
will drip with the corruptive ichors of the Furthest Ring; and that wherever you walk, the Game will
crumple behind you.
Mind you, in a desperate enough situation this might even be useful. If someone is trying to kill you
and only manages to give you a final Deadly Wound instead, you can call upon this power, the power
of the Horrorterrors. And because the Game crumples behind you wherever you walk, so will the
Game-given abilities of whoever did this to you.
The main problem with this is that you don't think you'll be able to make it stop. After disposing of
your attacker... then what? Do you just... eat the rest of your session, since you'll never be able to
complete it in a Speakerized state? Do you throw yourself to the mercy of the Furthest Ring? Or are
you going to do the truly insane thing and try to capture and control this power for yourself?
I don't know how long this will last. Maybe it'll pass by itself, once the immediate danger is over.
Maybe it'll take a Tier-and-Clear. Maybe healing that Divine Health Level will make it stop. Or maybe
none of these things is true.
If you've used Empowered Wounds (below) to bind up your last Divine Health Level (as you should,
with any Wound; it gives you better powers than the default), this'll free the blasphemy. If someone
manages to deal with it, though, you can keep it from happening again...
...if you keep all your Divine Health Levels bound and refuse to ever earn a new Divine Health Level.
I mean, one Tough Health Level and two Normal Health Levels is still more than most presession
humans ever get to play with! But are you really sure you want to be running around with three
available health levels, in Sburb?
I guess only you can make that decision.
Empowered Wounds
Cost:
•
•
0MP + 1 Divine Health Level – once per decitimestamp (book)
4MP + 1 Divine Health Level – the second (third, etc.) time you do this within the same book
For you, “what doesn't kill you makes you stronger” isn't just a cute platitude. It's the way your life
really does work. You have very nearly been killed by many things, and they still hurt; but from these
experiences you have been able to draw power.
When you take a Deadly Wound, you can ritually transform it. (Usually you'll use any wound or attack
that you decide is important enough, but you can self-inflict it if you'd rather.) To do this, you will
remove the entire Divine Health Level – wound and all – from your character sheet, binding it to a new
miraculous ability. (At Arc 2+, you'll be able to do better, but right now, it's just a miraculous ability.)
This power replaces the normal benefits of a wound.
You have (IC) rough control over the kind of powers you get, but it may take some experimentation to
figure out your power's boundaries and limitations.
Empowered wounds cannot heal, and you are the only one who can free yourself from their burden;
you must invoke Recover (below) before any sort of healing can begin.
Recover
Type: Special
Cost: n/a
You can disempower any of your wounds at any time; the associated powers go away and you return
the Divine Health Level – with the wound still recorded inside – to your character sheet. You do not
heal immediately; this power only makes healing possible.
Empowered Wounds
These are the wounds you have already empowered, and the powers you have from them:
A Damned Soul
You know that the Horrorterror who has a grip on your soul will ask for it back, one day. It's not a fear.
It's an inevitability.
The power attached to this Wound is identical to the Paralyzing Fear power from the Indomitable arc.
The Eternal Present
Sburb has taken away your future; and as for your past, you've started wondering if it ever existed in
the first place. All you have is now.
Live For Today (Miraculous Action, 0MP): You have access to Miraculous Will... but only if you're
doing something for short-term gain that will hurt in the long term, and you're consciously ignoring the
long-term consequences.4
And For The Future...
I figured I'd leave you some suggestions, for if/when you find your way to Wounded Angel 2; at that
point, you'll gain the ability to attach Imperial Miracles to your wounds as well.
Claimed: An Imperial Miracle power, to attach to A Damned Soul. You have already been claimed by
a Horrorterror, and Horrorterrors' claims are sancrosanct. Mind, you, the Horrorterrors may fight back
in self-defense (if, say, you smuggle five ICBMs out of a session and aim them down a Horrorterror's
gullet); and J'lmieltk may have her way with you if you ever find yourself in front of her. But other than
that? No Horrorterror will touch you, not even if you are in the Ring unprotected.
Future Imperfect: An Imperial Miracle power, to attach to The Eternal Present. I'm not as sure about
this one. I think it's a power that ensures that, if you do something rash and without much
consequences, somehow you tend to dodge the consequences? Unfortunately, they might land on
someone else's head instead.
4
EB: This is why you have the catchphrase “Fuck it.”
Lifepath: The Artist
Age: 16, or campaign default + 1
Session Count: 3
Sylladex: Color
Specibus: chiselkind
Academics Skill: Very Good
Sports Skill: Good
Favorite Foods: tonic water with lemon, crepes, onion
soup, roast chicken, dandelion salad, fresh-ground
pepper
Lifeplant: daylily
Fantasy, Adventure Fantasy (although this version will
be best in Gothic/Fairy Tales)
Bonsoir, sir or madam. Warmest welcomes to Replayerdom.
You grew up a child who was under-raised, under-appreciated. While you did well in school, that did
not mean that anyone was your friend, or that your parents loved you, or that anyone understood.
Mother drank too much. Father alternated between always being at work and… well, making you wish
he was at work.
But then there was that teacher you had in école, in elementary school, who taught you how to work the
clay. The fire of the kiln set you afire.
People loved your work. You won prizes. You learned how to use chisels on stone. You won national
prizes. And in those competitions, in the halls of art, you fit there - perhaps they were passionate for
pastels, or oils, but you understood what drove them. And you understood that first impressions are
important, and became very good at acting mysterious.
Then there came Sburb, where the highest form of art was writing. Oh, those Sburb people liked
cooking, too, but you were never good at cooking. So you have decided that you are going to learn to
write.
You have decided that you will start a blog.
I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten your name - were you…
• Cecelia Favreau, a (human) girl?
• Laurentin Favreau, a (human) boy?
• Florence Favreau, a (human) boy/girl/other?
• Or have I not mentioned your name here?
My deepest regrets to Laurentin and Florence; I shall continue under the assumption that you are, in
fact, Cecelia. You may, however, take the liberty of substituting in your name and pronouns; you may
well then find that this document is also useful for you.
(Optional) Step 1a: From A Faraway Land…
By default, you are Cecelia/Laurentin Favreau, a mysterious French sculptor. But perhaps that is not
how you express yourself.
Perhaps you are an amateur filmmaker hailing from the former Soviet Union, toting your camera, and
your perspective on the world.
Or perhaps you are a mural-painter from South America, with a backpack full of spray paint and a head
full of the stories of your people.
I mean, either way, your childhood will be difficult. I’m sorry.
Would you like to
•
•
•
•
skip this step, remaining the original Artist, a sculptor?
become the aspiring filmmaker from Poland, Jagoda or Bazyli Starek?
become the mural artist from Bolivia, Valentina or Samuel Quispe?
pick some other kind of art that you were doing that wasn’t sculpting, filmmaking, or murals?
Sburb was… difficult. Your coplayers were people you’d known from your travels to competitions, and
from the Internet, so you knew what they wanted, but the game expected something else from you.
Something that was difficult for you. You have not mastered the art of being a Player, but you are
trying.
So, were you…
• the Sage, someone who learned to act on foresight and long-term planning?
• the Seer, someone who learned to use foresight and long-term planning for the benefit of
others?
• the Smith, someone who learned to become less self-destructive and extended and complexified
the session to have more time to make cool stuff?
• the Muse, someone who learned to become less self-destructive and extended and complexified
the session to give others the time to do interesting things?
And were you…
• a Hero of Dreams, someone who learned to use carefully constrained creativity?
• a Hero of Sight, someone who learned that perspective is everything, and used metaphor to
achieve that end?
• a Hero of Heart, someone who learned of the strange and wondrous thing that other people have
their own perspectives?
• a Hero of Hope, someone who learned to reject what other people were trying to turn you into?
Or were you something else in your native session entirely? (You can pick this, although I don’t
recommend it.)
You’ll have a Bond based on your native classpect.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
(Purple) sketching from life?
(Purple) writing or editing blog posts?
(Purple) telling stories about how you made your art?
(Purple) tidying up?
(Silver) cloud- or sky-watching?
(Silver) playing with a bit of clay or whittling wood?
(Red) people-watching?
(Red) unveiling your newest piece of artwork?
(Red) suddenly being hit by the possibility of representing something in artwork and paying
very close attention to it thereafter?
(Blue) exploring the possibilities of using something in the environment as an art medium?
(Blue) talking about who you are and the purpose of making art?
(Orange) ending up in trouble and being too proud to ask for help?
(Orange) refusing to acknowledge your feelings?
(Gold) being completely overwhelmed by your feelings?
(Gold) baiting an Internet troll?
(Gold) tearing your hair out trying to figure out what to write about next for your blog?
(Possibly literally.)
(Green) staring at the work you yourself made and ending up really disturbed by it?
(Green) being self-indulgently melancholy and “mysterious”?
• marbleClouds
•
•
•
•
catharticPerspective
retiringArtist
integralIridescence
you the option.
• thinking about art, and about how to do your art.
Quest 2: More recently you’ve been
• feeling stuck in yourself, stuck in the past.
• The Mannerist 2 (He gets it.)
• The Child 1 (Children should be protected.)
• The Programmer -1 (You don’t understand. You don’t… understand.)
with each other.
Character Sheet: The Artist
Lifepath: The Mannerist
Native Classpect: Mage of Time
Session Count: 3
Sylladex: Hashmap
Specibus: chainkind
Sports Skill: Excellent
Favorite Foods: Milk, cornflakes, soy-protein
sandwiches, meatloaf with lots of gravy, candied lotus
seeds, lemon zest
Lifeplant: aloe
Genres: Gothic, Fairy Tales, Adventure Fantasy
(although this version will be best in Gothic/Fairy
Tales)
Hello. I will be your guide through the character creation process tonight as we build you as a Replayer.
You understand, this isn’t a matter of obligation. I wish to be here. You did not have that luxury. You
were ostracized in school (for whatever reason), so you found people on the Internet to speak to. You
are good at writing, and good at surviving. You are, notably, not much good at much else.
On the other hand…
So what may I have the pleasure of calling you?
•
•
•
•
•
Aetius Sewallus, a (human) boy?
Aynur Sewallus, a (human) girl?
Anat Sewallus, a (human) boy/girl/other?
Ariell Saewal, a (troll) boy/girl/other?
something else?
I do apologize to Aynur, Anat, and Ariell; this document has been written for Aetius. However, if you
can overlook the pronouns, the rest of this should still be very useful.
You were born an outcast. You met your first session coplayers through something called the Digital
Debate Team, which was pretty much what it said it was - you would stage debates between your team
and others, all through the Internet, and argue for topics through text-only means.
And then Sburb came; and it forced you to admit that you were, and always have been, an outcast.
Maybe in the future you’ll learn to convert it into a strength, or embrace your quirkiness; but right now,
you’ll just settle for pretending to be capable of making friends.
Were you…
• the Mage, someone who learned to embrace your extraordinariness and use your unique skills
and experiences to help other people do things?
• the Witch, someone who learned to embrace your extraordinariness and use your unique skills
and experiences to make things happen?
• the Waste, someone who learned to live in the spotlight by having Sburb force it upon you in the
worst possible way?
• the Grace, someone who learned to use taking the spotlight to prevent other people from falling
victim to it?
The Waste and Grace are Cataclysm classes. Properly speaking, they’re supposed to be rare in Sburb but they fit you so well that I’m not even going to try to discourage people from using it. Their core
schtick is that instead of a Berserk Trigger they have a Cataclysm - an event that fundamentally
changes the nature of an Sburb session. See below.
And were you…
• a Hero of Time, someone who learned of the terrible beauty of how Sburb enforces its alpha
timeline?
• a Hero of Stars, someone who learned to accept all things, up to and including death itself?
• a Hero of Law, someone who learned that voluntarily giving yourself rules and constraining
your actions makes you stronger?
• a Hero of Rage, someone who learned that they had a voice and it deserved to be used?
Step 2a (Optional): Cataclysms
If you are the Waste or Grace, you’ll need to work out a Cataclysm related to the Aspect and Class you
had in your native session - and, considering that you’ll probably roll it again, you’ll need to work out a
new one.
The rule of a cataclysm is that it has to fundamentally change your session’s purpose, and the
assumptions you make to play it. It is not enough for a Cataclysm to scoop out the Forge and leave it
floating inside the Medium - it is more like it if you end up teleporting the Forge into the Furthest Ring,
or shove it through Skaia so it ends up popping out someone else’s Skaia like some screwed-up game
of Portal.
Or if you make there be more than one Alpha timeline, only all such timelines only share the one Door
Beyond The End, so now you have to figure out which versions of who get to make it through.
Or if you scourge the session so thoroughly with sandblasts that all the Planets are worn down to the
bedrock and it takes literal weeks to get things back to the point where the game is even playable.
So… something like that happened in your native session.
The default is that you ended up putting the Veil Labs into overdrive; Derse and Prospit were sending
carapaces to the Lands because there was literally no room left on the dream planets or moons for
anyone else (I mean, they’d built little floating spheres off the chain between the moons to cram more
people in, and partitioned the usually secret underground tunnels, and everything). The intrusion of
carapace politics - especially with freshly tube-born carapaces who expected fully to have a job to do
but then got stuffed onto a Land and asked to twiddle their fingers - into Land quests was not exactly
welcome. So you started launching floating space habitats…
But maybe that isn’t what happened. Maybe it’s one of these:
• you somehow managed to Stars the planets around and screw up the orbital mechanics, and then
the Lands were smashing into each other with regularity instead of proceeding around Skaia in
an orderly fashion;
• something involving a Ringwraith (one of the Agents took the Queen’s Ring and started fucking
shit up);
• or something else entirely that I haven’t listed here.
What was it?
Usually you started out good at enduring impossible situations, and with a little skill in writing.
But if you’d rather, you could be good at…
• meditation?
• tinkering with electronics?
• …or something else?
It’s something solitary, that kept you away from other people, and it’s something that’s a little bit nerdy.
I’d advise not choosing sculpture, if you have an Artist in your game, or programming, if you have a
Programmer in your game, mostly so you don’t overlap stories too much.
Step 4: The Outcast
By default, you were born with a large and highly visible birthmark on your face. Corrective surgery
and treatments reduced it but did not eliminate it, and you were basically an outcast - not because of the
birthmark alone, but because of what it implied about your parents - that they hadn’t gotten your
genome properly cleaned.
Is this what happened?
• Yes, I did, in fact, have a birthmark.
• My parents were poor, so I couldn’t afford clothes that weren’t old or patched.
• I had another problem that made me a physical outcast, such as
• missing fingers due to a congenital deformity
• teeth that needed constant orthodontic care throughout childhood
• something else?
• Though I looked normal on the outside, it was something internal that isolated me:
• I was hard of hearing, and could either get along with an obvious hearing aid (that I
would get picked on for, because kids are mean) or misunderstand people by reading
their lips.
• I had a learning disability, like dyscalculia or ADHD, that made basic tasks a struggle for
me.
• I was on the autism spectrum, where the disability was in social skills in the first place.
• I was a nerd, absorbed into a subject nobody else cared about. Apparently nobody else in
elementary school cares about 18th century French literature. (Or whatever it was you
liked.)
• As far as I can tell, I was normal. The kids just picked on me because… well, do they really
need a reason?
They called you a dirtbaby. They called you worse. And… honestly, it wasn’t so much that it made you
ashamed of how you looked, as that it made you ashamed of who you were.
That there was something wrong with you was known. And it wasn’t so much about you as about the
choices your parents made. Bastardy, I suppose, would be roughly equivalent as a stigma. You’ve been
convinced that you need to constantly pretend to be someone else in order to be accepted.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
(Purple) doing stretches and exercises?
(Purple) playing video games, even though you’re not much good at them?
(Purple) letting someone else teach you how to do a thing they like?
(Purple) participating in friendly debates with other Mannerists?
(Silver) reading aloud some of your favorite passages from the Etiquette Guide?
(Silver) watching videos of cute goats on the Internet?
(Blue) talking through how to fit something that recently happened in your life to the Guide’s
scriptures?
(Blue) writing essays about your interpretations of the Guide?
(Green) being unpleasantly reminded of your childhood?
(Green) punishing yourself by deliberately thinking back to times you were torn down?
(Orange) assuming nobody will like who you really are?
(Orange) hiding intense shame?
(Orange) struggling on with a conversation even though you’re certain you’re screwing up?
(Gold) debating the merits of the Etiquette Guide as a scripture in general?
• (Gold) going after Someone Who Is Wrong On The Internet?
• (Gold) having a BSOD when someone says something that the Etiquette Guide doesn’t cover?
• (Gold) repeatedly tweaking the theme on your homepage/blog? (You’d think this would only
happen once, but you’d be surprised how much time you can waste this way on a regular basis,
if you let it.)
• assuming everyone will hate who you really are.
Quest 2: More recently you’ve been
• finding holes in what you believe in.
•
•
•
•
etiquetteException
determinedDecorum
perfectDecency
you the option.
• The Artist 2 (You feel like you’re on the same wavelength as her.)
• The Gamebreaker 1 (Even though he’s rude as hell, he actually read the Guide too, and he
doesn’t realize just how much it influences his thinking.)
• The Heart -1 (Why does she have to be so sickeningly upbeat all the time? Doesn’t she realize
that life is inherently brutal? You kind of want to shake some sense into her.)
with each other.
Character Sheet: The Mannerist
Lifepath: The Programmer
Session Count: 3
Sylladex: Database
Specibus: keyboardkind
Sports Skill: Good
Favorite Foods: strong black tea samovar-style, granola
bars, fresh peas, orange chicken, mixed nuts, soy sauce
Lifeplant: laurel
Fantasy (although this version will be best in
Gothic/Fairy Tales)
Hey. So you’re playing this game, too? Fantastic, fantastic. Well, we may as well get started, right?
Oh, right, I should tell you who you are first. You’re a kid who learned how to program, and who really
wants to help people. You’re comfortable with who you are, for the most part - at least more than most
of the other kids in this session are.
You don’t like being in a position of authority. You prefer not to be in the spotlight. You work quietly to
help people, and you don’t mind not having recognition – at least not anymore. Not after what
happened in your first session.
Only the problem is, the Game is huge. Where would you start, to help people?
Maybe you’ll see if you can contact people in other sessions, first…
What’s your name?
•
•
•
•
•
Rissa Hier, a (human) girl?
Emmit Hier, a (human) boy?
Takam Hier, a (human) boy/girl/other?
Kav Hier, a (bird) boy/girl/other?
something else?
Your first session was fine. You were quirky, but a nice kind of quirky that other people liked. So you
helped organize a session of Sburb. I think, when it turned bad, you knew it was a game - a piece of
software - and figured out that thinking of it as software actually helped you get through it.
Well! Either way. In that session, were you…
• the Maid, someone who learned to facilitate everything else falling into place?
• the Page, someone who learned to fight, to continue on when all seemed lost, and to win?
• the Knight, someone who learned to fight, to continue on when all seemed lost, and to make
sure your coplayers won?
(I’m certain you weren’t the Clown! While it is the active version of Maid, Clown is hideously bugged,
and I really don’t recommend it.)
And were you…
• a Hero of Mind, someone who learned of the power of choice, free will, and thinking before you
act?
• a Hero of Blood, someone who learned just how important connections between people are?
• a Hero of Sound, someone who learned of the importance of communication?
• a Hero of Dust, someone who learned to salvage, mend, and make do?
Step 3: What The Hell Happened
Your first session was unwinnable, and you were helping your friends fix it and another session just
collided into yours –
With the postscratch versions of all of you… post-nuclear-war.
Well… long story short, you don’t trust authority quite so much anymore, and you trust yourself-inauthority least of all. I mean, you’ll be an authority if you have to, but you kind of hate the idea. You’d
rather be working behind the scenes.
Does this sound about right?
• Sure.
• Oh absolutely, but I was already shy of the spotlight even before any of this happened.
• Yeah, but it instilled me with a belief that I should discover and put the truth out whether
anyone else wants it out or not, and if that swings the spotlight onto me… well, I’ll suck it up.
• That’s what happened, but I learned another lesson entirely from it…
• No, something else happened in my first session. (What was it…?)
Great! Let’s keep going.
Step 3a (Optional): The Birdbro
So, if you’re Kav Hier, you’re a bird.
Your native world was solar-powered. You had light-based computers and traffic lanes in the sky. Your
planet was ruled by a (mostly) benevolent technocracy, and your treehouse (where you lived with about
a dozen unrelated people, because the technocracy liked rotating young adults into and out of new
housing every year or so to make sure you met people) finally got high-density fiberoptic laid to it a
couple months ago.
This was when the Game of the Year came out. You gathered up a bunch of your Internet friends and
played it, and then the thing mentioned above happened.
One of the most notable things to come out of that was that you learned to be… I guess less carefree
than you were before. I mean, birdbros are constitutionally upbeat, but some serious shit went down
then, worse than it would’ve if you were a human.
Because the technocracy never told you that you were on the verge of nuclear war. I mean, uh… they
didn’t even tell you they had nuclear weapons in the first place, and since they had an iron fist on the
media, nobody knew about it. Well, except that conspiracy-fringe friend of yours that was also yelling
about deliberately seeding the seas with methane, or secret weather control, or whatever.
Basically, it really put a dent in your belief that things would be just fine, and you learned that you’d
have to work if you ever wanted things to be fine… not that Rissa or Emmit or Takam didn’t learn that,
but you learned it most of all.
Your hobbies will mostly be the same, but you’ll have two points of (Superior) Birdbro wedged
somewhere in there.
Yeah, your hobby skill is Programming because you’re a programmer.
I mean, I guess you could choose another one, or reflavor it slightly to something like “systems
administration”, but really? The entire computers thing is pretty thoroughly baked into your character.
If you want to play a character like this that isn’t terribly interested in computers, try The Heart?
Thanks.
• (Purple) working on code?
• (Purple) talking about coding problems with (or at) other people in an attempt to work out
what’s actually wrong?
• (Purple) sifting through bugs and support requests?
• (Purple) talking, completely nonchalantly, with people that others would be intimidated by?
• (Silver) keeping an eye on the logs to see if anything interesting pops up?
• (Silver) reading FAQs, manuals, and other such giant walls of text?
• (Silver) alchemizing fun stuff?
• (Red) alchemizing weird stuff?
• (Red) lurking in IRC channels or forums, watching things unfold?
• (Red) investigating the libraries on the Dream Moons?
• (Blue) coming up with ideas for how to fix bugs or implement new features?
• (Blue) analyzing the Game as a piece of software and coming up with a new angle from which
to exploit it?
• (Gold) repeatedly solving other people’s problems and disregarding your own until things reach
a tipping point?
• (Gold) basically completely forgetting that you have a physical body until it reminds you quite
forcefully that it still has needs?
• (Orange) talking to people in hopeless situations, trying to give them hope?
• (Green) dwelling too much on old mentorships and failures?
• (Black) programming in a trance state where everything unfolds beautifully and you do nothing
else for six straight hours (or however long)?
• waiting for your code to compile, or upload, or execute, or chew its way through a database, or
something (in lieu of you actually working on code onscreen, which wouldn’t be terribly
interesting)5.
5
OJ: I considered having this basic quest be “speculating about how to fix a bug”, but that would require actual tech
knowledge on the part of the handler. If you know about computers, feel free to replace it with a blue quest instead!
• looking into someone cool that you just found out about.
•
•
•
•
regexHandler
compiledAttention
unassumingCoder
you the option.
• The Gamebreaker 2 (You both think in terms of game logic and computer functions.)
• The Mannerist 1 (You kind of want to get to know him better. He seems like he needs a friend.)
• The Child -1 (You haven’t the heart to break it to them what they’ve gotten themselves into, and
their apparent disregard for the consequences annoys you.)
with each other.
Character Sheet: The Programmer
Lifepath: The Child
Name: Loren Yu
Handle: miscellaneousMythology
Native Classpect: Heir of Rain
Age: 13, or campaign default - 2
Session Count: 2
Sylladex: Pictionary
Specibus: fankind
Sports Skill: Very Good
Favorite Foods: white grape juice, oatmeal, fish tacos,
anchovy and six cheese pizza, string cheese, pepper oil
Lifeplant: fiddlehead fern
Genres: Gothic, Immersive Fantasy, Techno, Fairy Tales
(although this version will be best in Gothic/Fairy
Tales)
Hi! Welcome to the murdergame!
You were pretty unrooted from your native world, so you didn't really miss much when the meteors
started coming. And you've known about your destiny since you were young, so Sburb wasn't much of
a surprise. Replaying, however, was a surprise.
This is going to be your second session, and your first introduction to Replaying. Not only will you
never see your friends again, everyone thinks this session is unwinnable.
Hah! Replaying? Unwinnable? You aren't going to give up that easily.
Wait, what was your name again? (And you're a human, right?)
•
•
•
•
I'm Loren Yu!
I'm Jackie Yu!
I'm Emery Yu!
Hey, none of those names work for me...
◦ I want to pick a different one!
◦ Actually, I'm not a human. I'm something else! (Go to step 2a or 2b.)
Usually Loren Yu is a boy and Jackie Yu is a girl, but you can be whatever gender you want, really.
(Optional) Step 2: Lehata from Beforus
Step 3:
Character Sheet: The Child
Quest Sets
As discussed previously, some Age of Replayer Networks characters don't use quest sets from the
Chuubo's core or any of the supplements! I've provided three arcs.
Newcomer (The Heart's Arcs)
If You Believe (The Mannerist's Arcs)
We define ourselves by what we know. What we believe. So what happens when you’re forced to
change what you believe in?
I wrote this quest for the RV Chuubo’s character “The Mannerist”. However, I tried very hard to make
it portable to other settings as well.
The Quests
This quest set consists of five quests, each with a full-size and simplified version. I am posting them in
the order in which you would play them for Otherworldly.
Here’s a quickref of the quests, their XP numbers, and the arcs they can go on:
Inadequacy (20/30 XP) Otherworldly 1 / Emptiness 1 / Mystic 1 / Storyteller 3 / Aspect 2
Deconversion (35/45 XP) Otherworldly 2 / Mystic 3 / Aspect 3
Obsession (25/35 XP) Otherworldly 3 / Emptiness 2 / Mystic 2 / Storyteller ½/4
Dark Night of the Soul (25/35 XP) Otherworldly 4 / Emptiness ¾ / Mystic 4 / Storyteller 5 /
Aspect 5
• Synthesis (20/35 XP) Otherworldly 5 / Emptiness 5 / Mystic 5
•
•
•
•
Arc Features: Your Beliefs
So, you’ve got an old belief. It’s probably connected to a group you’re in - not necessarily an actual
religion, but at least some sort of social circle. They’re people you feel comfortable with - that you’d
hate to lose - but they’re together because they all have the same belief.
One day your old belief is going to crack, and fall. And then you’ll end up having to switch to a new
belief. You’ll be forced to leave your old social circle or group, and while you might end up in a new
one it will hurt. Like, a lot.
What happened?
• I believed in a religion, and then one day I lost someone I cared about and I couldn’t believe in
the god(s) I grew up with anymore.
• I believed that there was justice in the world, and then I watched a sociopath get off scot-free
and someone innocent get dragged in the mud.
• I believed in prosaic reality, and then one day someone did a miracle in front of me and the
Mythic World dropped open beneath my feet.
• I believed that it was possible to be safe, and then someone I trusted betrayed me.
• I believed that people were inherently selfish, but then someone saved me, without any
discernable benefit to them.
Or… was it something else?
Arc Notes
This is a story about ideas and how they worm in under your skin, make you believe that what you’re
doing is right (or wrong), the notion of truth, and what happens when you actually try to take your
beliefs seriously. The important thing is - it takes a certain amount of zeal to become a devoted follower
later in life. Being born into your ideas is easy. Changing them is hard. And by hard I mean most
people maybe manage to do it once in their lives. At best.
This quest set is, for what it’s worth, entirely repeatable. There are few people with that kind of mind strong enough to take a new idea and seize hold of it, yet pliable enough to let go of that idea and seize
a new one. But they do exist. It’ll be a lonely path, though. Few people will stick around to watch you
tear yourself apart and sew yourself back together that many times.
(The few people that don’t mind you being Theology Georg (he converts to 18 religions a day!) are
your real friends.)
Here’s what it looks like on the arcs, in order.
Otherworldly
•
•
•
•
•
Inadequacy
Deconversion
Obsession
Dark Night of the Soul
Synthesis
Otherworldly is the canonical order for these quests. It’s a fairly standard story, as these go: your ideas
break apart in front of your eyes, you have to commit to a new idea, the new idea drives you to do
things that seem less and less like things that you would’ve done, the new idea eventually drives you to
a sort of crazed despair, and finally you figure out how to live with it.
Emptiness
• Inadequacy
• Obsession
• Dark Night of the Soul
• Dark Night of the Soul (recommend replacing)
• Synthesis
These make a strange little set of Emptiness quests. A crowbar may be required. Specifically, there isn’t
a place for Deconversion in this sequence, so I’ve put Dark Night of the Soul twice - but you really,
really should replace one of them with something else. Preferably the second one.
In essence: This isn’t so much about having a new set of ideas captivate and then transform you. This is
about the fact that you’re desperately reaching for new ideas, because they promise to help you patch
the hole inside you… but you can’t. You can’t rely on a mere idea to do that for you. It’s more likely to
tear the hole wider than to actually fix things.
Ideally, if you go all the way through this quest set, you realize this, and settle back down and just live
with yourself and your curse. But life isn’t always ideal.
Mystic
•
•
•
•
•
Inadequacy
Obsession
Deconversion
Synthesis
This Mystic arc should also be reasonably straightforward.
The thing about this arc’s Obsession is that you’ll go public afterwards, during Deconversion; this
means that at first you’re playing it off non-seriously - “I’m just researching Ouija boards for a book,
I’m not actually planning on consorting with evil spirits” - and likely as not are lying to yourself about
what you actually believe right up until everything cracks right open.
Because Mystic arcs want a tempter for quest 2, this is going to be a little weird. Here are two ways to
play it out:
First, you can have the new idea be the tempter. This means that you’ll fall into the new idea, and it’ll
probably be a bad new idea - something like “I should study at the Bleak Academy”. Around Dark
Night of the Soul or early Synthesis, you’re going to take what was good about that advice - things like
“appearing confident” - and run. You’re not going to stay with the new idea, but it was worth it to delve
in temporarily, because you at least learned something from it.
Or, you can have the old idea be the tempter. This is more in keeping with the Otherworldly arc: you’re
inexorably sliding towards the new idea, but someone or something about your old life is trying to lure
you back, for reasons of their own. Here’s a question that you’ll have to answer: why do they want you
back in the fold?
Storyteller
•
•
•
•
•
Obsession
Obsession (recommend replacing)
Inadequacy
???
This arc’s Storyteller set isn’t really a complete set - you’ll have to fill in the blank. Sorry again!
Basically, while you certainly can use Obsession twice (emphasizing your interest in the belief system
in the first, and your determination to evangelize in the second), I’d recommend replacing one or even
both of them - most likely the second one - with something else entirely. Similarly, there is no good
Storyteller 4 quest on this set.
The thing about this quest set is that assuming Inadequacy comes after Obsession results in an
interesting dynamic: you’re obsessed with a belief system before it starts showing cracks. And I’m not
sure what the cracks are. It might give you a boost in Storyteller 4 - although even then it’s more likely
to be a quest that centers on the fact that you know about the belief system rather than that you believe
it - but if you get space enough after your Ascent to process things, everything is going to fall apart.
Aspect
•
•
•
•
•
???
Inadequacy
Deconversion
???
The Aspect set for this one is an even rougher sketch. I don’t even know what the Aspect 1 quest would
be - while you could probably lever in Obsession, if you’re not sick of it from the Storyteller arc I just
drew above, it probably won’t fit. Maybe try Frozen Heart from Glass Maker’s Dragon (you know,
Natalia’s starting quest with the orange flipcard).
Similarly, you’ll want to do something about Quest 4. Replace as desired, preferably with some sort of
fight that involves agents of one or another belief system. (Perhaps you go after the Spanish
Inquisition?)
Inadequacy (20/30 XP)
1:   
2: 
3: 
Your ideas are breaking - things keep happening that your current knowledge and beliefs can’t explain.
You try to justify what you know, try to shore up the edifice that is what you believe the world to be,
and it just keeps getting worse.
Inadequacy (30)
Major goals: The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:
• you are in a situation that blatantly breaks your current beliefs about what the world is like
(being shown the Mythic World, someone you love dying, a religious authority betraying you);
• someone explains to you how your old belief system can adequately explain what went on, and
you nod along but you can’t understand what they’re talking about or don’t think it actually
patches the hole;
• you take part in some sort of ceremony with your old belief system, pretending you’re still part
of it.
You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.
Quest flavor: 1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP for this quest when you:
• scribble furiously
• have an entire scene happen long-distance, without showing your face - i.e. through a phone call
or an IM client
• try to explain what’s going on to someone who doesn’t actually understand
• remain silent when asked to speak
• view a thing of great beauty but cannot enjoy it due to your inner turmoil
• (day)dream of leaving your life and setting out on a long journey, even and especially if it’s
implausible
You can combine this with an XP action, but you’re not required to.
Inadequacy (Simplified) (20)
• you are in a situation that blatantly breaks your current beliefs about what the world is like
(being shown the Mythic World, someone you love dying, a religious authority betraying you);
• someone explains to you how your old belief system can adequately explain what went on, and
you nod along but you can’t understand what they’re talking about or don’t think it actually
patches the hole.
• boggle vacantly at these shenanigans
• try to explain what’s going on to someone who doesn’t actually understand
• (day)dream of leaving your life and setting out on a long journey, even and especially if it’s
implausible
• play idly with something until it breaks
Deconversion (35/45 XP)
2: 
3:  
Your old beliefs - some of them are not true. But you still, desperately, want to believe - even though,
now, you know that you no longer can.
Changing what you believe - what you really know - is a difficult and scary process, and you do not
know what awaits you on the other side.
There really isn’t any short way to do this. I’m sorry. 35XP is the shortest it gets.
Deconversion (45)
• you try to do something that in your old belief system should have brought luck or comfort, and
things just get worse instead;
• you confess to a close friend for the first time that maybe you no longer believe;
• you have to walk away from an old friend, or even family, because they believe and can’t accept
the fact that you don’t;
• you find a group of people that have your new belief system and muster up all your courage to
make overtures.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
eat strange food
state that you want to believe, but can’t
prod at something painful, or pick off a scab
compulsively seek out criticism of your old belief system
discuss what it means for things to be true and real
are stranded and have to spend the night with strangers
wonder why anyone believes anything
read something forbidden (i.e. the adult section of the library, the books in the Queen’s personal
chambers if you’re just the maid, deobfuscating the talking of someone Corrupted)
Deconversion (Simplified, relatively speaking) (35)
• you have to walk away from an old friend, or even family, because they believe and can’t accept
the fact that you don’t;
• you do something really decisive to mark that your beliefs have changed, even if it’s just to
yourself;
• you’re sullen, resentful, or angry at a representative or symbol of your old belief system.
• try to contact someone and get no response
• literally have nothing to hold onto (jammed into a crowded subway car or shuttle and can’t
reach any of the grip bars, bouncing around in the back of a truck, etc.)
• compulsively seek out criticism of your old belief system
• discuss what it means for things to be true and real
• use a chart or table of some kind to make decisions
• wonder why anyone believes anything
• silently watch an animal
Obsession (25/35 XP)
1: 
2:   
3: 
Your new beliefs force you to change - something that you thought was perfectly legitimate is now
wrong, or perhaps the other way around. Your habits collide with what you believe to be true. What you
believe to be right. You cannot follow doctrine and yet you must.
Obsession (35)
• someone important in your life tries to Stage an Intervention because you’ve gotten way too
wrapped up in this;
• you participate in a major festival, holiday, or initiation ritual of your new belief system;
• you have a profound spiritual experience of becoming part of something larger than yourself.
(This can technically happen in a dream or imagine spot if you’re intent on keeping reality
intact, but I’d prefer it was “real”, even if all that’s actually happening is a crowd song or
cheering at a football game.)
•
•
•
•
•
•
feel incredibly guilty for doing (or not doing) something
evangelize to someone who clearly isn’t listening
seriously ask yourself “what would [a role model] do”
fast (whether intentionally or by accidentally skipping meals)
insist you’re not taking this too far
drag someone else along by the hand
Obsession (Simplified) (25)
• you have a profound spiritual experience of rebirth, baptism, or consecration;
• you do something downright stupid because you (mis)interpreted your new belief system’s
rules.
•
•
•
•
•
feel incredibly guilty for doing (or not doing) something
evangelize to someone who clearly isn’t listening
indulge in mind-altering substances (caffeine counts, as does sleep deprivation)
are running late for something but can’t get yourself to leave the house
insist you’re not taking this too far
Dark Night of the Soul (25/35 XP)
3: 
4:   
5:  
The beliefs you hold are - were - a big part of you. But you’ve followed your new ideas far past where
anyone else would - and lost something important about yourself along the way.
It might be your memories of the old world. It might be a friendship that you used to have. But usually
it’s a feeling - more specifically, your ability to simply relax into and enjoy doing something. Which
means: you’re having trouble finding joy in the things you do.
Dark Night of the Soul (35)
• you establish what exactly it is that you’ve lost;
• you are gripped by existential terror and darkness swirls around you, possibly in a dream or
imagine spot;
• you dissociate from your body and then can’t get back into it, leaving you feeling like you’re
trapped behind a thick pane of glass, and this persists for at least several hours.
• try the trappings of worship or prayer (candles, icons, going to a temple, etc.) to see if they’ll do
anything, even if your belief system doesn’t include them
• pull something apart by the seams
• show up at someone else’s door at 7AM (or the culturally equivalent “way too early in the
morning”, if “7 AM” isn’t a meaningful measurement)
• quote scripture or literature
• throw away or delete pictures, memorabilia, etc.
• gaze into the night or the Furthest Ring
Dark Night of the Soul (Simplified) (25)
• you try to turn your back on your new belief system (“Sorry, guys, I’m not going to be a
Religionist anymore, this is just too much” - this is unlikely to actually work, but you might be
desperate enough to try);
• someone reaches out to you, offering you help, and you try to refuse. (Again, this is unlikely to
actually work. They’re probably going to help you anyway. That’s just how these things go.)
• wake up in a cold sweat, certain you’ve forgotten something
• use divination/superstition to figure out what you should do, because you can’t trust yourself
• quote scripture or literature
• tear apart a room looking for something that wasn’t even in that room, because you’d put it on
the counter in a different room/are still wearing it/already gave it to someone else
• run from something dangerous but can’t outpace it as it closes in, inexorably (possibly in a
dream or imagine spot)
Synthesis (20/35 XP)
5:   
You come to terms with your new life - having careened past the extremes of believing and the
extremes of not-believing, you’re ready to settle down and just live your life for a change.
Synthesis (35)
• someone from your old belief system contacts you saying they’ve decided to follow you into
your new belief system;
• someone informs you that you’re not as insufferable as you used to be;
• you erect some sort of signpost. (In RV Chuubo’s this will usually be a Ring server.)
• follow your own advice, or catch yourself being hypocritical and fix that
• sit in an old, twisted tree
• explain the principles of your old beliefs to someone you know who has your new beliefs, or
vice versa
• savor an unusual/exotic food
• write some part of your life story (even if it’s a tiny part)
• watch clouds go by
Synthesis (Simplified) (20)
• you release an old pain, or reconcile yourself with the loss of someone you cared about;
• you encounter someone who’s struggling along the same path of belief-change as you just came
out of, and share your experience with them to help them.
• follow your own advice, or catch yourself being hypocritical and fix that
• explain the principles of your old beliefs to someone you know who has your new beliefs, or
vice versa
• throw something from a very high window
• mix concrete or dirt
Cracked Pedestals (The Programmer's Arcs)
This is a story about creating a great and beautiful work, but at the cost of losing someone you once
idolized and learned much from. It is a fundamentally bittersweet tale, a Shepherd quest set for a Fairy
Tales universe - but you could just as well make it the quest set of a different arc in a less horrifying
genre.
Note: This quest set was originally written for Rissa Hier, who is a character in The Age of Replayer
Networks (for RV Chuubo’s). Among other things, RV Chuubo’s (Rissa’s setting) does have the
Internet, so several quest flavor options involve it. If you’re going to use this for characters who don’t
have Internet access, you might need to tweak things some. Sorry!
The Quests
This quest set consists of five quests, each with a full-size and simplified version. I am posting them in
the order in which you would play them for Shepherd. Arc notes are here.
Here’s a quickref of the quests, their XP numbers, and the arcs they can go on:
•
•
•
•
•
Someone Awesome (20/30) (Shepherd 1 / Emptiness 2 / Aspect 1 / Mystic 2 / Storyteller 1)
Responsibilities (20/25+/35) (Shepherd 2 / Emptiness 4 / Aspect 3 / Mystic 3 / Storyteller 2)
Feet of Clay (35/45) (Shepherd 3 / Emptiness 3 / Aspect 4 / Mystic 4 / Storyteller 3)
Undertow (25/40) (Shepherd 4 / Emptiness 1 / Aspect 5 / Mystic 1 / Storyteller 5)
Onwards (20/35) (Shepherd 5 / Emptiness 5 / Aspect 2 / Mystic 5 / Storyteller 4)
Arc Features: Mentor
So you’re going to have someone who works on the same thing that you do, except that they do it
better. (At least at first! By the end you might even do better than them.) This person will be your
mentor. They’re someone that you can learn from. Maybe they only tolerate you, maybe they actively
like you? It doesn’t matter very much on this quest set but you should establish whether they actually
like you early on, for consistency.
But my mentor is dead!
That’s no problem. Hell, if you’re Rissa/Emmit, you’ll start with a dead mentor!
Basically, you discover some sort of log, diary, or collected works from them, and the rest can follow
on from there.
Arc Features: The Work
Because this is a Shepherd arc first and foremost, the other major feature of this Arc is that you have
something you’re working on, or someone you’re guiding. The thing you’re working on is thus called
The Work (even if it’s a person). You have a Craft (some kind of skill, or some clump of skills) that
you are using to cultivate The Work (if what you’re doing is mentoring someone, you’ll probably be
using ‘long heartfelt conversations’), and you’re at least not bad at it (although you don’t necessarily
need to be good at it, at least not at the beginning).
The Work is big and awesome, and you don’t believe you have the skills to do it. It’s something like
this:
• mentoring someone to teach them a skill (that you’re not that spectacular at yourself)
• building a house from scratch, with only your life partner to help you
• taking over a website after the owner disappears and stabilizing it, fixing the bugs, and trying to
establish yourself as an authority
• making the biggest wedding cake in the world
• making the biggest anything else in the world
• capturing/photographing something that most people think doesn’t exist or that’s legendarily
elusive (Pokemon trainers aside. This is a pretty sad quest set so be aware of that if you’re
considering it for that type of character.)
• creating a new community or club from scratch
• rescuing a neighborhood from decay
• establishing a farm using all the cutting-edge techniques
• writing a novel
You’ll take on the burden of the Work during the quest Responsibilities, so this isn’t something you
need to decide right away, and ICly you probably don’t know it’s something you’re fated to take on at
first.
Arc Notes
This quest set has five possible full arcs! Some of them are pretty tenuous if you look at the quests
alone. I’ll explain more about how to use them here.
Notes for Shepherd Rissa Hier’s arc
To give you some more context for what’s going on, instead of giving you the usual notes (this quest
set in canonical order seems straightforward enough to me), I’m going to excerpt a bit from Rissa
Hier’s upcoming playbook:
Myra disappeared a while ago - and nobody knows what happened to her. You’ve
discovered her writings, her tutorials, and eventually the code she wrote (which is really
well-documented). They’re fascinating. Windows into the mind of a brilliant woman who
turned the full force of her reasoning to computers and how they worked.
After someone figures out how to hack Sburb.org’s server software, you end up
volunteering to help maintain the codebase. Only to try to back out when you discover just
how large the Sburb.org codebase is. It’s worth it for Myra’s often-snarky, always-useful
comments, buried throughout the code.
Then some loop of ~ATH somewhere posts what’s clearly Myra’s video will to the site.
She’s dead. She killed herself. Why did she kill herself? She’s got plenty of former friends
and mentees contemplating that question, but - even though you never knew her - you find
yourself getting sucked into that question, too.
Essentially: the idea of volunteering to help with Sburb.org6 occurs to Rissa at the very end of Someone
Awesome; that video, Myra’s will, posts during Rissa’s first iteration of Feet of Clay. Shenanigans
ensue.
Notes for Emptiness arc
I suspected - and friends confirmed, relatively early on - that this arc had a lot of silver woven into it.
Replayers have not lived pleasant lives, and by Shepherd arc standards this arc is very, very sad.
By the standards of an Emptiness arc, on the other hand, this is almost upbeat.
The arc storyline is straightforward - Undertow has you lost and without guidance, you find someone
cool to follow in Someone Awesome and then promptly have your hopes dashed with Feet of Clay; in
Responsibilities you’re struggling with the sheer size of the work you’ve taken on, and in Onwards you
come to terms with your Mentor’s disgrace/death.
Notes for Aspect arc
Hero worship doesn’t get you anywhere. That’s the problem with having a mentor, if you’re on an
Aspect arc - you’re so obsessed with the way they do things that you can’t see past it to the way you
should be doing things. Onwards lets you push past this in a mostly mature fashion, as does
Responsibilities. It’s almost like this isn’t the same set of quests at all!
Feet of Clay is where this quest set gets a little tenuous. In that quest, on this quest set, you and your
Mentor are struggling against the same thing - loneliness, perhaps, or being hunted by the Azurites - but
you hold your own, manage to win yourself back, and they can’t. They fall.
It’s generally a good idea to go on to Undertow after this, or to proceed to a next quest set that starts
somewhere dark like Down, or at least take some breathing room to experience your losses before you
go back to the top.
6
CM: The very same position I volunteered for, back in the day!
Notes for Mystic arc
You’re lost, and your Mentor offers you a way out. They’re fascinating! But they’re a trap. You follow
them around blindly for a while. Thing is, you get to Responsibilities; your Mentor might try to help
you, or talk loudly about helping you, but they aren’t actually helping you at all. (Maybe they’re
working at cross purposes! Or being counterproductive! Or too absorbed in complaining about their
own problems to you to be useful.) If your Work works it’s because your other friends or other forces
have aligned to make it possible, not because of anything to do with your Mentor.
If you cut off the quest set at this point, separating yourself from your Mentor, shortly after this quest,
is relatively uneventful. (Although they might return at some future point.) In Feet of Clay, if you
decide to continue on instead, that’s when you realize that you’ve lost the way, by following your
Mentor; your footing keeps crumbling out from underneath you, and landmarks keep shifting. Your
response is to try to cast this increasingly incompatible/toxic 7 mentor figure out of your life, but their
teachings have hooks sunk deep into you and tearing them out is painful.
If you manage to make it to Onwards, you’ll figure out how to synthesize your Mentor’s teachings with
your own sense of what is right.
Notes for Storyteller arc
This Storyteller arc8 is about tangling your self-worth up in someone else, and then having to untangle
yourself back out, and the things that can result. It’s dangerous for a Storyteller to try and subsume their
identity to someone else’s: not because of any particular thing about the other person, but because a
Storyteller might actually succeed...
Someone Awesome (20/30 XP)
1:   
2:  
Your mentor is cool. Really cool. At least to you.
Someone Awesome (30)
• you read a letter from your mentor specifically addressed to you (or at least “to whoever will
read these manuscripts”);
7
8
OJ: I believe that toxic relationships don’t always require a toxic person. So I’m not necessarily blaming your mentor
here! There are many relationships that break because both partners are at fault - or due to mutual compatibilities, where
neither partner is at fault. It’s like a drill sergeant trying to teach a beehive tricks - even though the drill sergeant and the
bees might be perfectly good on their own, it’s the expectations between them (and how they act towards each other)
that sets everyone up for failure.
Incidentally, I guess that means that after I give my (hypothetical future) kids the birds-and-bees talk, I’m giving them
the drill-sergeant-and-bees talk?
OJ: I almost didn’t make this quest set have a Storyteller arc; Storyteller-type characters remain relatively unchanged
and this arc is about learning something. But on the other hand, I was about this far from making Rissa Hier a Creature
of Fable. So I think I’ll leave it in.
• you witness one of your mentor’s major achievements or a memorial thereof;
• you accomplish something small but meaningful with your Craft that prefigures or echoes your
Work (i.e. publish a little program that changes file formats; point a newbie in the direction of
helpful information; write a short story).
•
•
•
•
•
•
do something repetitive and let your mind wander
put down something you’ve been squinting at when someone approaches
gush about how amazing your mentor is
eat sandwiches while sitting on a high ledge with a friend or your Mentor
lean in close to a computer screen and type rapid-fire for a while (maybe into this?)
cap off some hard work with a shower or bath
Someone Awesome (Simplified) (20)
• your Mentor reaches into your life and improves it somehow;
• you witness one of your mentor’s major achievements or a memorial thereof.
•
•
•
•
watch birds, butterflies, Land Familiars, or something else that flies
do something repetitive and let your mind wander
put down something you’ve been squinting at when someone approaches
work on making yourself look impressive
Responsibilities (20+/25/35 XP)
2:  
3:  
4: 
You suddenly end up with The Work, because nobody else will take care of it. What? Seriously? You
still have a mentor yourself! You’re not ready for this!
Note that on the Storyteller arc, only the full-size version and the variant simplified version are
appropriate - the storyline simplified version can’t be played quite the same way.
Responsibilities (35)
• you establish your responsibility for The Work;
• you establish just how frightfully huge and difficult The Work is;
• you establish some sort of plan for how to do The Work.
• wonder if you’re up to the task of doing the Work at all
• struggle through dense underbrush
• end up in an Internet argument (or, I suppose, repeatedly write back to Letters to the Editor in a
local newspaper)
• stay up too late working
• don’t realize you’re hungry until you actually see food, at which point you start scarfing it down
• draw a huge table, chart, or diagram
Responsibilities (Simplified) (25)
• you try to foist the Work on someone else (this isn’t likely to actually succeed long-term, but
you can try…);
• you implement some sort of proof-of-concept of a small piece of The Work.
•
•
•
•
lug around a very, very, very heavy backpack
stay up too late working
struggle with feelings of inadequacy
are a passenger in a bus, shuttle, plane, helicopter, van, etc. (Note: while the form of
transportation isn’t important, the fact that you’re a passenger is: you should have no control
over where the pilot/driver goes, even if you booked tickets to a specific place.)
Responsibilities (Variant Simplified) (20+)
This is a blue quest, the kind where you get an XP by theorizing about how you’ll approach some
aspect of The Work. For example:
• if your Work is building a website, you’ll wonder what kind of programs you can use for the
databases, the “front end”, and any monitoring that it might need;
• if your Work is wildlife photography of a rare animal, you might wonder about disguising
yourself, learning the animal’s habits so you can be around when and where they’re active, and
so on;
• if your Work is helping someone learn to program, you’ll keep wondering how to get across
ideas like assignment and recursion, or what they should do for their next project;
• if your Work is a platemail suit, you might wonder which plate of metal you’re going to shape
next, or how to attach it to the rest of the suit, or about new techniques you could use to do
things more efficiently;
• if your Work is a wedding cake, you might wonder about what kind of frosting you should use,
what the decorations should look like, or its flavor.
Now this doesn’t have to be a reasonable thing, necessarily, but you have to ICly at least briefly
consider the theory.
Feet of Clay (35/45 XP)
3:   
4:  
In the process of your Work, you discover that your mentor was, in some way, fundamentally flawed or watch them self-destruct.
It’s hard to get this across in the quest flavor. But - basically, what’s happening here is that you don’t
want to think of them as flawed. You wanted them to be beautiful and perfect and awesome, like you
thought they were at the beginning. You assumed that they were a pillar that you could depend upon.
And they’re not. So you’re torn between confidence and doubt - and there sure is a lot of doubt.
Feet of Clay (45)
• you apply your mentor’s advice on doing something and fail;
• you’re caught in a cave-in (maybe a literal cave, but as likely to be the sudden collapse of
towering piles of papers, books, etc.);
• your mentor meets some great downfall or loss;
• you discover some massive flaw in your attempts at implementing The Work.
• test an assumption you had and find it lacking
• sift sand idly between your fingers
•
•
•
•
•
•
talk with someone about lost things
take out your frustration on someone who did nothing wrong
apologize for nothing worth apologizing for
discard a pair of shoes
are led astray by an unreliable map
interact with a convention or other large gathering of people who practice the same craft
Feet of Clay (Simplified) (35)
• your mentor meets some great downfall or loss;
• one of your critical tools of the Craft breaks when used on the Work (including conceptual tools
such as ‘the structure I was going to use to write this book’) and you can’t replace it (at least not
immediately);
• you ruin part of the Work and it’s your own damn fault.
come across a deeply weathered or crumbling statue
test an assumption you had and find it lacking
talk with someone about lost things
act less-than-appropriately, only to realize you’re in the presence of people you wouldn’t want
seeing you that way (swearing and then turning around to find there are children behind you,
etc.)
• can’t properly empathize with someone else’s little life problems, but you pretend
• watch something happen and feel like you should intervene, but don’t
•
•
•
•
Undertow (25/40 XP)
1:  
4: 
5:  
You are without guidance. You are without mentoring. There is nothing to depend on. You soldier on.
Undertow (40)
• you hit an unexpected roadblock while practicing your Craft;
• you lose your glasses, your phone, or something similarly important to you (and can’t find it for
at least the rest of the chapter);
• you’ve missed a major social incident (such as a festival, or the banning of a long-term
member) and can’t find any explanation of what happened, or how;
• something terrible happens to you while you’re alone.
•
•
•
•
•
•
discuss human nature (or, I suppose, the nature of any sapient species you interact with a lot)
brush past people brusquely
suck on a Popsicle stick or straw even after all of it’s gone
discuss what it means for things to be reliable and/or secure
react to unpleasant news very badly (although not necessarily to full ‘breakdown’ levels)
get lost in a cloud of smoke
Undertow (Simplified) (25)
• you offer yourself up to someone else’s mercy in hopes of them accomplishing something you
can’t (i.e. let someone experiment on you; ask your friend to use you as bait to try and draw out
a dangerous monster);
• you experience a spiritual/moral/philosophical crisis.
•
•
•
•
miss deadlines
struggle with categorizing something
discuss what it means for things to be reliable and/or secure
have to do something in total darkness
Onwards (20/35 XP)
2: 
4: 
5:   
Maybe your mentor comes back, maybe they don’t. Either way, though, you learn that they are flawed and you surpass them.
If you’re on the Aspect arc, you’ll need to omit the “sense of closure” and “remember your Mentor
fondly” XP-bearing options of this quest, but everything else works just fine.
Onwards (35)
• you redress some flaw in your mentor’s methods, or adapt their ideas to apply to a context they
didn’t originally apply to;
• you meet with your Mentor again, possibly in a dream or finding an extra letter from them you
didn’t know of before if they’re dead, and find a sense of closure therein;
• your Work bears fruition in some major way - your mentee taking on a pupil, for example, or
your website becoming respected.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
discuss the state of the art of your Craft
cook food that you remember from your childhood but haven’t had recently
break rotting boards
tell a story based loosely on your experiences but with all the names switched out
traverse a balance beam
lace something up, or use drawstrings to pull something shut
remember your Mentor fondly
Onwards (Simplified) (20)
• you meet with your Mentor again, possibly in a dream or finding an extra letter from them you
didn’t know of before if they’re dead, and find a sense of closure therein;
• your Work bears fruition in some major way - your mentee taking on a pupil, for example, or
your website becoming respected.
• tell a story based loosely on your experiences but with all the names switched out
• remember your Mentor fondly
• work on a collage or scrapbook
• mark out large circles on the ground
Supporting Cast
Here's most of the major NPCs that'll show up over the course of this campaign!
Not all of them – you might have to roll your own at some point or other, especially if the characters
decide to go way off the rails – but enough of them to make an awesome campaign happen without too
much work.
They're sorted by whose arcs they're most likely to show up on – but, especially if you don't have a full
complement of main characters, feel free to dip into the other categories for inspiration!
The Heart's Supporting Cast
calculatedTorque
Hey, if you could do me a favor? Put in a good word for me with your boss. That'd be
awesome, thanks.
calculatedTorque
Levi Storm, who gets promoted to a Sburb.org admin later on, shows up in the first Centers arc, Into
The Center.
He's damned good at a lot of things. He can write, he can argue, he can do math, he can punch things in
the face, and all of these things without overly much effort on his part; and I'd honestly think that
would be it, that everyone would just acknowledge this and unanimously hail him, but that isn't
generally enough to get you promoted to Sburb.org admin –
Especially in those early days, when if you don't get assigned to #ultimatereward, as far as the
Sburb.org admins are concerned, you're at best an afterthought.
So what Levi does is he mounts a campaign, across the boards, and part of that campaign is to rope in
people who look like they're going somewhere. (Such as The Heart. And possibly the other PCs, too.)
He sidles up to them, early, and he makes himself known as a cool and helpful person, and he makes
sure they know his name.
Now, granted, this kind of ambition doesn't make him a bad person. I mean, he's actually one of the
better guys who ever ended up in power! I think he'd be a bit like Horace Slughorn from Harry Potter:
maybe not always willing to be the first one to stand up for the right thing, but perfectly willing to be
the second or the third – and to bring his small but influential army of supporters along for the ride.
You probably build him like this:
•
•
•
•
 Sentimental 1+
 The Ace 1+
Academics 3
Networking 3
•
•
•
Sburban Survival 2
level 1 connections to most of the PCs, after spending a while near them
level 2 connections to The Heart or anyone else he “sponsors” (if the player of The Heart
agrees, you might even eventually make this a level 3 connection and have them become a fullon Treasure)
The Gamebreaker's Supporting Cast
apotheosisProtips
Are you kidding me!? We could do more than use the Green Sun as a beacon! We could
build a Dyson sphere around it! We could harness its power to become as gods unto
ourselves!
apotheosisProtips9
Jack Rutherford or Anne Sklodowska is a rival for the Gamebreaker's prowess who shows up in the
third Void Arc (Paths through the Darkness).
Both the male and female versions of this character have last names of scientists; the character claims
to be directly descended from Ernest Rutherford and/or Marie Sklodowska-Curie 10. There is of course
no way of verifying this claim!
He or she (I'll just use 'he' from now on, for simplicity) is a native Prince of Light, high-internalization,
who is maybe ten or so sessions old – old enough that his skill at being able to use the Game is not
something that you can dispute, but somehow not quite old enough that anyone would quite take his
sweeping pronouncements (“I can find a way out!”) seriously.
He runs a little gamebreaking site called the Lotus Network, and while it's not particularly notable it
has been the source of a few decent discoveries... which really just means that he's been the source of a
few decent discoveries and has an ego large enough that people just avoid the site because they assume
he'll take all the credit.
Then he breaks a session, and people have to pay attention.
•
•
 Knave of Hearts 2
◦ Mythos: I can do anything with Science!
▪ Science requires you to pay careful attention to everything you see.
▪ Science uses the principles of the world as scaffolding to reach even the most fantastic
flights of fancy.
▪ Science can replicate a freak event, and generalize the example.
▪ Science can be wielded to the service of any task.
 Specialist 1
9 EB: Technically this is a quote from androgynousAutarch, which is one of the people I based Jack off of.
10 CM: She is in fact of Polish descent and retained both last names when she married. As far as I can tell, the only reason
we only know her as “Marie Curie” is because nobody can spell her Polish last name.
•
•
•
•
•
•
◦ Hidden world: Gamebreaking
◦ Specialty: (Superior) Internet Rationality
Sburban Survival 2
(Superior) Internet Rationality 2
(Superior) Science! 2
Computers 1
Know-It-All 1
Bond (2): [I have the biggest ego you have ever seen.]
Consort Tomb Guardian
The Consort Tomb Guardian is a figure that might appear on the first Void arc (Shouting Into the
Darkness).
It was created by the Consorts to guard their mausoleums and resting places. It's very lonely. It's there
to do things like explain to you where all the Consorts went, and to make sure that the Consorts' tombs
don't get defiled before their time, and so on and so forth.
Its stats will probably look like this:
•
•
•
•
•
Patience 3
Sburban Lore 3
(Superior) Robot 1 (It can do stuff like “eat” from power outlets and recall everything that
happens to it in detail, although its physical strength and precision leave something to be
desired.)
Fighting Underlings 1 (It is adequate as a partner for you to take along on fights, at least at first,
but it'll probably lag behind after the Denizen stage is cleared.)
Social -1
quaverAttractant
Jai Potorda, a native Smith of Time who helps Handle for the 0AD timetrav network, shows up on the
second Void arc (Wandering the Darkness).
He's unusually open to trying weird new stuff. He likes poking things and seeing what will happen,
which makes him get along just famously with the Gamebreaker. He is also not well-internalized at all
– which means he'll reroll more, which lets him be useful as a Handler, sure, but also means that he has
a tendency not to consider consequences and a tendency to be self-destructive, both of which are only
somewhat mollified whenever he rerolls.
In the second Void arc, while working with the Gamebreaker, he'll probably be on an aspect reroll as
the Sage of Time. Sages can't actually linearize more than three or four timelines at once easily, but
even that's helpful to a timetrav, as a backup if nothing else. This means that he gets a couple of
timelines to play with.
Jai's stats should look something like this:
•
Sburban Survival 2
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Theater Tech 2 (The HG may replace this with another childhood hobby that doesn't require
them to do as much research, if desired.)
Mitigating Otherwise Disastrous Situations 2
Sburban Time Magic 1
“I'm not panicking!” 1 (While clearly panicking.)
“I wonder what this [button/ability/lever/etc.] does...” 0
Bond (2): [I'll do it again and again until I get it right.]
Bond (1): [I have duties with the 0AD timetrav network.]
 Called Away (Doomed Timelines) 2
 Sentimental 0+
He's probably around 8 Sburb sessions, i.e. old enough to know better than to do most of the things he
does.
stanzicApparati
Zeimah Dalyce is a Sburb.org moderator. She (or he) shows up on the third Void arc (Paths Through
The Darkness).
She’s a ceruleanblooded troll who grew up out in Troll Siberia. She likes knitting, poking things with a
stick (or even emoting poking something with a stick, when she’s sufficiently nonplussed by a situation
- I am completely serious, this is something she does), and being very helpful.
She’s really good at making friends. It’s great! But it’s also strange. Most Replayers have closed their
hearts off to varying degrees. Zeimah’s heart is open, and as far as I can tell it’s going to stay that way.
She'll show up asking for help with the entire apotheosisProtips thing.
Her skills and bonds look like this:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Helping Others 3
Sburban Survival 2
Camping 2
Crafty 1
Bond (2): [I keep sliding into riddles and ridiculously dense metaphors.]
Affliction (1): [My ears bleed when I’m exposed to Corruption.] (You’d think this would never
be useful, but it actually is - you’re a very sensitive detector for low amounts of Corruption, so
unlike most people you can tell when anything with the potential to Corrupt people is around.
On the other hand, it hurts.)
And her Perks probably have, among other stuff, these things in them:
• Connection (4): epinephrineElectrified/Su-Cheol “Riley” Kim (They are moirails in all but
name. The presence or absence of this Connection depends on whether Rissa Hier’s arcs are
proceeding faster or slower - Riley also appears on Rissa’s third Arc, and because he dies on
that Arc...)
• Bond (2): [I’m a moderator for Sburb.org.]
• Bond (3): [I belong to the #ultimatereward IRC.]
• Bond (1): [Toni and I grew up together.] (Toni is lunarLungfish/Tonya “Toni” Arsenic, a native
Rain player who practices mad science (like deviant science, except with less cogs and more
explosions). Their friendship has cooled off some by now but it’s still present, and if Zeimah
was in big trouble she’d be able to ask for some help.)
Miraculous-level-wise, she most likely she has  Self-Made 0+,  Sentimental 1, and  Become
Somebody 2.
Her Become Somebody powers are based off these truths:
•
•
•
•
Truth: You can trust people.
Truth (2): You are a trustworthy person.
Failing: You’re stubborn!
Role: You want to be a legendary figure in your own right (as opposed to appearing in other
legends’ stories).
The Artist's Supporting Cast
conceptualCosmogony
Claire “Coco” Liu is a Pitsblogger, a native Maid of Dreams, who usually shows up in the first
Expressions arc (Beauty in Tragedy). She's an average Pitsblogger. Her blog is, if nothing else, a really
good snapshot of the views of Pits at large. And she'll be very eager to help The Artist learn the ropes.
Very, very, very eager, to the point where it might make the Artist confused or suspicious.
You see, Coco is a compulsive follower. If she were a PC her XP emotion would be the finger-snapand-beckon-over. She seems to be dependent upon finding someone really cool to emulate.
I remember her chasing lucidChthonia around, offering to help with Game research in what ways she
could even though she simply couldn't wrap her mind around most of the more complex theories. I also
remember her religiously following vermilionSparkle's blog, constructing attempts at Rube Goldberg
machines. She actually got pretty good at that, to be honest, although she's still better when following
someone else's blueprint.
But there's something about Coco that you might not notice at first glance: she's stubborn. She can stick
with things to the end, even when there's absolutely no benefit to her. When she claims someone to
follow, she will not be easily dissuaded; similarly, when she decides someone is evil, it will take her a
very long time to realize that it might not have been a good idea.
Coco's stats go something like this:
•
•
 Become Somebody 1
◦ Truth: Coco is stubborn.
◦ Failing: Coco is always following other people around and emulating them.
◦ Role: An Absolutely Average Pitsblogger
 Specialist (Pitsblogger) 0
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
◦ Specialty: (Superior) Endurance 1
Pitsblogger 2
Watching Other People And Copying What They're Doing 2
Sburban Survival 2
(Superior) Endurance 1
Ridiculously Well-Read 1
Apologies -1
Bond (1): [I must always be idolizing someone or something.]
The Mannerist's Supporting Cast
charmedMittens
i'm just here to keep all of you from killing each other
nothing to it
except for the fact that all of you keep trying to kill each other
charmedMittens
Bill Tellurian is a moderator of Sburb.org who is liable to show up in the third Parables arc (Parable of
Sisyphus). He is a native Guide of Coins, and consciously puts on a pleasant and relatively innocent
face to the many channels and forums he frequents (although his native channel is #denizenlair).
He takes after the former Sburb.org founder specificNihilism in this regard – he's been through a lot of
shit, but you wouldn't know it talking to him; he uses lowercase letters and presents himself as cute and
naïve. Likely as not it's to lull people into thinking he's a pushover. To their dismay, they tend to
discover that he is not a pushover.
For example, if he encounters the traditional Alternian troll who takes glee in murder, he's not
necessarily going to tell them that he disapproves to their face, at least not the first time – but he is
going to be keeping a very sharp eye out for opportunities to ban them, nudge the local philosophers
into arguing eloquently against the troll's beliefs, be supportive towards anyone whose feelings are hurt,
and readily share links that advocate the opposite perspective. And, yes, if you push him far enough,
he'll argue against it himself.
Bill hails from a postscratch world where he lived in a moon base; he thus knows a lot about space
survival and space travel. This means he is a good resource to pull out onto other Arcs if you need
advice on that kind of thing, although technically he was promoted pretty late on (about ts50).
Bill is someone who, like the Mannerist, was brought up in a postscratch world; but unlike the
Mannerist he is secure in himself and knows what his place in the world is. His influence will do a
world of good to the Mannerist, if the Mannerist lets it.
Bill looks something like this:
•
•
•
•
•
•
 Sentimental 2+
Not As Soft As I Look 3
Spaceborn 2
Sburban Survival 2
Well-Read 1
Bond (2): [I never act like I've put up my guard, even when I have.]
entropyEquivalent
Susan Bones is a Mannerist-adjacent (not a devout Mannerist, but involved in the theology and politics)
who will show up in the first Parables arc, Parable of the Ropes.
The Programmer's Supporting Cast
enturbulatedOccupation
Myra LeJean (nee Henderson) was one of the founders of Sburb.org. She shows up on the
Programmer's first arc (The Choices of Myra).
The thing about Myra LeJean is that... well, she's kind of dead when the story starts. On the other hand,
being dead in the Game doesn't necessarily mean you stop being able to act. I mean, that's what ~ATH
wills and the Bubbles are for.
(Although I guess that the “Nothing here is important.” property of the Bubbles is pretty bad for being
able to take any meaningful action from them.)
She's an ex-Corpsef_g, i.e. a veteran of imageboard culture – although you don't have to play her that
way; you could play her as an ex-radical leftist activist, a BBS or Usenet type, or a Richard Stallmanlike iconoclast instead, if you'd rather. (None of these are technically false. They're just not the whole
story.)
She usually shows up posthumously – the Programmer will only ever know her as someone who wrote
a lot of fantastic documentation and incisive essays. This is one of the reasons I think that The Age of
Replayer Networks needs to be played on the Internet: so that you can do stuff like reference old
textfiles for her. But I'll give you some stats anyway in case you need her to show up later – say, in a
bubble on a ring voyage?
So her mundane abilities look like:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Computers 3
Sburban Survival 3
Showboating 1
Mind Magic 1
Bond (2): [In the face of adversity and oppression, I stand up first to inspire others.]
Affliction (2): [I don't believe I'm a good person.]
She was a Waste of Mind to the end, and so generally I give her  Accursed 2+; but her skill at
computers might net her a bit of  Specialist as well.
Ideally she'd pump her level of Accursed all the way to 5 – this means that what happened to her is an
Emptiness 5 quest miracle – but that means that she'd have way more power than the PCs would, and
that might steal the spotlight too much.
epinephrineElectrified
lucidChthonia
Aelfrida Smithson (female) or Aelfric Smithson (male) (nicknamed “Aelf”, defaults to female) is the
Programmer's mentor on the second Mind Arc (The Choices of Aelf). She is a gamebreaker with a blog,
and also a guilt complex the size of an iceberg. She is also a native Sylph of Mind, well-internalized,
and a member of #ultimatereward. She came from a postscratch Earth.
While I don’t intend for this to specifically come up in the arc itself, there are reasons for her
psychological damage. I think she has what psychiatry would call “complex PTSD” 11, although it stems
less from her childhood and more from an incident in which a Bard of Heart deliberately broke her to
keep her lasting longer –
Aelf Smithson was a brilliant rising star. In her second session, she was already talking about such
hubris as doing deep hacking to discover and claim the source of Denizen omniscience. But in Sburb,
people who think that they can break the Game die, messily and horribly..12
So one Esmeta Pethon (human, troll, or otherwise? You decide) tricked Aelf into relinquishing her
shiny and then forcibly destroyed her ability to believe that she could change the world. I believe this
was intended as an act of kindness, as did Aelf, but there is no denying that there was a shard of cruelty
behind that act. Maybe more than a shard.
Aelfrida Smithson subsequently fell in with the Seer Network. There, she was a glorified gofer, who,
subject to the Seer Network propaganda that Seers were superior, decided that as a native Sylph she
was inherently inferior. At the same time, the Seer Network's exclusive research and her alreadyestablished gamebreaking blogging career resulted in her being the Seer Network's de facto
mouthpiece. Whenever people had a beef with the Seer Network, they generally took iti to her, because
she just happened to be their most visible manifestation.
Events continued in this vein until epinephrineElectrified dissolved the Seer Network; Aelf was already
the lightning rod for Seer Network criticism, but this was the point at which it escalated until it
destroyed her. She became, I am told, rather interpersonally unstable.
11 OJ: Which is kind of like PTSD except that, because it stems from childhood damage, it tends to result in damaged or
nonexistent coping mechanisms.
12 CM: See the fate of Jack Rutherford from the Gamebreaker's arcs.
Finally, when it all became too much, she tried to have someone remodel her personality the way that
Myra did. This went according to plan for a while, but the moment she experienced pure happiness, she
was killed by that session's Black King. I don't know if this part happens in your game; it's possible she
just gets herself killed blindly. But I've always thought that, for as long as she wanted to die, she
couldn't; it wasn't until she no longer had a wish for death that she could die.
Aelf can be modeled something like this:
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•
•
•
•
•
•
 Gatekeeper 2+
◦ Her primary Other would have been the Seer Network, or possibly individual members of
the Seer Network if your particular game/HG is willing to engage in higher-resolution
backstorying.
◦ However, she tends to treat “glitches in Sburb” as also being Others, and can mitigate or use
them to achieve other Gamebreaking goals appropriately.
Survival 3, both Sburban survival and more classic wilderness-survival (At one point she was
landed in a presession, in the middle of an American temperate forest, during hard winter. She
did just fine. Apparently it reminded her of her governess.)
Research 3
Blogging 2
Bluntness 0 (She is very blunt, but it does her no favors.)
Bond (2): [I will always be searching for ways to change the world, but I do not believe for one
second that I could ever actually do so.]
Affliction (2): [As long as I want to die, I cannot die.]
ontologyExpunged
Dawn Henders shows up – at first as just a supporting character – on the first Mind Arc (The Choices
of Myra)... only for it to become clear that she's a lot more involved than she seems.
She's the one who helps the Programmer get into the Sburb.org codebase. On the one hand, she seems
pretty good at coding. On the other hand, she has some rather mysterious qualities. These turn out to be
because...
Because when Myra decided that she could no longer live on anymore, she couldn't just die. You can't
commit suicide in the Game. That's not a thing that happens. And Myra thought that her knowledge
was too valuable for her to just die, which was probably one of the effects of her being a native Waste
but either way meant she couldn't just ask someone to kill her.
So what Myra did was, she foisted all her traumatic memories onto someone else, and then had
someone help her do some drastic changes to her Shiny so that the resulting empty shell would have a
personality perfectly suited to playing the Game.
Which would be all very well if that change stuck.
It didn't.
Dawn Henders comes in asking for help because she keeps remembering horrifying things she doesn't
have any context for. And it becomes clear that those memories haven't actually been permanently
removed at all. They're growing back.
Dawn's powers look like this:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
 Called Away 0+
◦ Estate: Cynicism
◦ Realm: The memories of Myra – although calling them with Into the Mittelmarches is less
about them physically manifesting, and more about Dawn acting more like Myra herself (a
bitter, broken woman who simultaneously showboats and feels guilty about attracting any
attention). Often this manifests with the usually pleasant Dawn suddenly launching a stream
of curses and invective.
◦ Shadow: This would, naturally, be Myra... or more specifically, the version of Myra that
thought sealing these memories away was a good idea.
 Accursed 1+
◦ As noted in Myra's writeup, what happened to her was likely an Emptiness 5 quest miracle –
but I don't want to give her quite that many arcs at once.
Sburban Survival 3 (despite nominally being maybe four sessions old)
“It's logical.” 2 (Although it's less that she's good at logic, and more that she tends to somehow
gravitate towards useful answers due to the memories she isn't supposed to have but has
anyway.)
Computers 2
Writing 1
Bond (2): [I am always cheerful, pleasant, and kind.]
Affliction (1): [I'm weirdly good at the usually-impossible Mail Quests.]
The Child's Supporting Cast
alcoholicAnomaly
Heries Croton is one of the main NPCs of the first Edges arc (The Edges of the Light).
This character could also be “Leucas Croton”, male seadweller troll, or “Hera Costas”, postscratch
human. She is a terrible person... but #ultimatereward can't get rid of her.
See, she's a PK, but she was unusually good at ban-evasion using other people's accounts. Often the
accounts of people she killed.
The thing is: People don't just get this way for no reason. Heries Croton's childhood and early Sburb
experience was... frankly, horrifying. This does not excuse what she does, but #ultimatereward has a
hard time telling the difference between “excuse” and “explanation”. They kept letting her happen
because she was very good at talking people into giving her second chances and letting them believe
she had changed.
Her stats probably look like this:
•  Wounded Angel 1+
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
• Ideally I'd give her 3-4 levels of it, but she's an NPC, so I don't want her to overshadow
the PCs in power level. Even so, she did seem to use Salvation at some point, as I note
below.
• Dramatic: Heries shows up in chaotic situations, specifically to shitstir and make things
worse.
• Devices: …She gets a +1 tool bonus to writing unintentionally amusing bad fanfiction
when drunk. I… I don’t even know.
• Blasphemy: This is speculation, since she got Blacklisted and we don't actually know
how she died, but I suspect if Heries gets close enough to defeat she'll instantly get taken
over by a Horrorterror and go Speaker.
• Empowered Wounds abilities:
• Weakness: (1/chapter) she can see the weakness of a situation: where and how
she should push to make things worse or more catastrophic.
• Be Still My Heart: 1MP (1/chapter), starting midscene, Heries Croton can
disable someone by grabbing their Heart in such a way that it instantly stills. (She
still needs to grapple them in the usual way, but once she has a firm hold on the
Heart, the other person becomes as limp as a rag doll.)
• Winding Key: She can return a Heart she stilled to motion, reanimating the
person she grabbed the Heart from. (This is a power that complements the first
and thus does not have a cost or restriction.)
 Creature of Fable 1+
• Again, I suspect she probably had 2 or more levels of this, but I don't want her to steal
the show!
(Superior) Seadweller Troll 3 (Full highblood strength, toughness, cold-bloodedness, and ability
to survive underwater.)
Silver-tongued 2
Sburban Survival 2
Fanfiction 1
Violin 1
Bond (2): [I must always try to get the upper hand in a situation.]
Bond (1): [I will do damn near anything for attention.]
And these things are probably in her perk slots:
• Skill: Sburban Heart Magic 2 (She does not have access to this skill when she’s not a Hero of
Heart, which is why it is in a Perk slot; slip it in and out as appropriate.)
• Skill: (Superior) Hunter 1+ (from Creature of Fable)
• Connection: tenaciousTheseus 3 (Believe it or not, I suspect she has already used Wounded
Angel's Salvation. For him. He used to, after all, have severe Angelic corruption problems
which inexplicably disappeared, after which he had an extremely close relationship with Heries
Croton…)
tenaciousTheseus
Adam Spector, tenaciousTheseus, is likely to show up on the first Edges arc (The Edges of the Light).
He is a native Bane of Space, well-internalized, and moderates #ultimatereward. He's notable for
having had long-term Angel corruption problems... and for having said long-term Angel corruption
problems suddenly disappear.
Arcs
Here are the stories – the many stories of those six children that I have thus described, and their
associates, and how they intersect with our knowledge of the world.
The Timeline
I wish I could give you a coherent timeline of the time before Sburb.org began. I really do. But there is
no such thing – before then there was nonlinear time, Medium time, time without a timetrav to tame it
and give it form, or time with too many timetravs, several moving at different speeds and a few
jumping around and at least one that definitely went backwards compared to the others for a while.
All we know is that before Sburb.org, insofar as there was a “before”, there was Transamphibian, and
Corpseparty, and probably other little Ring servers, floating in the void.
But with Sburb.org, and the standardization of timetravs to join it, we begin to have a coherent
timeline:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Timestamp 0: The Sburb.org founders land in a null session, and begin working on it.
Timestamp 1: The Sburb.org founders “publically launch” their system. The time it took to
complete the Sburb.org system is the unit of time, serverside, that they use as the “timestamp”.
Timestamp 5-10: The Seer Network is founded somewhere around this time, over a series of
conversations in which genesisArtificer gathers himself a few friends and starts a subforum. It's
kind of squidgy exactly when it happened, since most of the details have been lost and/or aren't
public record.
Timestamp 18 or so: PrototypeTowers is launched.
Timestamp 20: The IRC system – the one that assigns each user to a default channel on the
Sburb.org IRC – is launched. While people still congregate in special-interest channels such as
#writing, etc., the primary IRCs quickly become
Timestamp 26: The Vine timetrav, carrying many of the old Transamphibian and Corpseparty
members but not all of them, connects with and aligns to the timetrav of Sburb.org.
Timestamp 35: enturbulatedOccupation disappears. [This is also the default game start.]
Timestamp 46: Seergate – the destruction of the Seer Network – occurs.
Timestamp 48: Corpse Fiesta is launched.
Timestamp 49: genesisArtificer follows enturbulatedOccupation into the void. What precisely
happened is a matter of speculation, although the official story is that he just decided to
abandon Sburb.org's timetrav one day.
Timestamp 50: The Etiquette Guide is updated with an appendix regarding how to behave
towards aliens. This splits the Mannerist community on Pits into traditionalist and reformed
sects, a breach that quite frankly has not so much healed as most of the traditionalists died.
Timestamp 55: #ultimatereward is disbanded after social pressure on the “smoke-filled room”
became too great, marking the first time the Sburb.org admins removed an IRC channel rather
than just trying to crack down harder.
Timestamp 57: calculatedTorque is promoted to Sburb.org admin.
Timestamp 60: specificNihilism dies.
Timestamp 61: Ivory Tower is launched.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Timestamp 63: artisticHourglass and calculatedTorque put out a call for people to help work on
the Sburb.org core code.
Timestamp 65: severalEntries is promoted to Sburb.org admin.
Timestamp 66: ventricularPipefitter dies.
Timestamp 68: orderlyDipthong is promoted to Sburb.org admin.
Timestamp 69: epinephrineElectrified dies, taking Corpse Fiesta with him.
Timestamp 72: PrototypeTowers has what we call its Great Reshuffling; several moderators are
promoted to admins and several regular users are promoted to moderators.
Timestamp 75: This is the “present day” for us, Elizabeth and Samantha. So we don't actually
know what happens next.
If you're playing this campaign starting at Timestamp 35, everything past then is pretty malleable –
although I still think, assuming you haven't seriously messed with any administration or something, the
deaths happen pretty much the same way they do here.
I haven't added in most of the promotions and deaths and stuff of the Pits admins, but mostly only
because Pits admins seemed to have higher turnover... and because this campaign focuses on Sburb.org.
Look, I'm a proud Pits user like the rest of you – but let's be honest, in those days of #ultimatereward,
you wanted to be on Sburb.org, you wanted to be assigned to that IRC with the admins. And, since
player characters are special?
These kids are going to end up assigned there. All of them.
On Tearing Apart Sburb
It's the ambition of many characters in Sburb to leave it. But “You cannot escape Sburb” is not just a
campaign convention, not just a level 2 affliction It's written into the very fabric of the setting on a level similar to that of any Imperial Miracle.
Escaping it will require, not sufficient miracle-slinging, but a sufficient amount of narrative weight for
it to be a satisfying ending. (Because let us not be mistaken, leaving Sburb will end your campaign. I
don't know what you'll be playing after then, but it certainly won't be Replay Value AU.)
What the hell does that mean, you ask? It means that, if there's a plan posed to leave Sburb, and it's put
into motion and will end during the first few arcs of the campaign? Something is probably going to
make that plan fail. There's still story left to go through, after all.
But in the fourth arc? If you know that you are going to have the game end? If you know what it will
mean, for your campaign; if you have worked on research and foreshadowing for (IC) years and years
beforehand, and networked, and you're leading an army of willing followers (both living and dead), and
great and fundamental breakthroughs have been made that allow one to grab hold of the fabric of
paradox space itself?
I will not say that tearing apart Sburb is impossible, then.
That is the most I can give you.
The Stories
The stories of our characters are:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Centers, the stories of The Heart
Void, the stories of The Gamebreaker
Expressions, the stories of the Artist
Parables, the stories of the Mannerist
Mind, the stories of the Programmer
and Edges, the stories of the Child
I shall tell you, first, of what these stories are, and then we may proceed to how they play...
Centers
[the arcs of Amanda/Caleb Barlow, who must Become Somebody]
She, or perhaps he, is a sweet kid, whose encounter with the terrible trials of Sburb does not bow her.
She learns that there is steel in her soul. And she chooses to embrace the virtue of being there to help
others, of learning to reach out to and lead others. Because it's not so much about finding a reason to
make it all worth it, as choosing that reason, each and every day.
And so her stories include:
•
Into The Center: In which the Heart learns of the Replayer networks that exist, and delves into
the strange characters who reside in Sburb.org's #ultimatereward.
•
A Central Point: In which the Heart learns of the existence of aliens – trolls, usually, but another
species may also be used – and tries to understand how they think.
•
Centering Oneself: In which the Heart picks one of the other networks – usually Pits, but
sometimes Ivory Tower or a smaller network or a Sburb.org subforum – and learns much about
the people there.
•
The Center of All Things: In which the Heart either ascends to adminhood or creates her own
Network...
Void
[the arcs of Anthony/Magnolia Ott, of a Wounded Angel]
He – maybe she, but usually he – is a child of the void, a teenager who is pledged to those things
beyond understanding, those Horrorterrors (or perhaps those Angels). There is no going back. He must
find a way to make his strange and terrible powers worth it.
These are the stories of how he learned to break the Game; or, perhaps, of how one learns to use
terrible powers for the cause of good.
These stories include:
•
Shouting Into the Darkness: In which the Gamebreaker is trapped in a session that's apparently
failed, null, broken, and learns Sburb gamebreaking through a crash course in fixing it.
•
Wandering the Darkness: In which the Gamebreaker acquires a blog, and begins to write in it;
and in so doing learns of an unsolved problem that he acquires an insight into.
•
Paths Through the Darkness: In which the Gamebreaker helps a troll and her coplayers survive
a session that's crashing and burning – not because it's broken inherently, but because it's being
broken by one Jack Rutherford, a brilliant but amoral fellow-gamebreaker.
•
A Light in the Darkness: In which the Gamebreaker needs to help someone, does something
impossible, and tells these methods to the world.
Expressions
[the arcs of Cecelia/Laurentin Favreau, of one who is Sentimental]
The Artist is a troubled one, one who cannot speak their emotions but is instead driven to manifest
them as art. Which wouldn't really be important, but for the fact that the Medium is a dangerous place.
So this art becomes less an emotional expression than some true fraction of her soul, given out to
protect her and others.
And so her, or perhaps his, stories include:
•
Beauty in Tragedy: In which the Artist builds a blog, and experiences her losses.
•
Beauty Given Form: In which the Artist builds a kinetic sculpture, and rolls a new Classpect
that challenges her greatly.
•
Beauty Made Extraordinary: In which the Artist builds a great set of sculptures – ones that just
barely can't be replicated by alchemiter – and loses someone who looked bright and promising
that she let too close to her heart.
•
The Essence of Beauty: In which the Artist designs something that will stay in the Ring when
launched into the Ring, without a Deal; and comes to terms with herself.
Parables
[the arcs of Aetius/Aynur Sewallus, following a Spiritual force]
The Mannerist is quiet, faithful, and utterly devoted to the concept of politeness. The Mannerist is this
way because he (or she?) grew up completely rejected by the society that he lived in, and – when he
found the Etiquette Guide – he held onto it like it was the only thing that would keep him from
drowning.
The thing is that in some real sense, it is.
And so his stories include:
•
Parable of the Ropes: In which the Mannerist finds Replayer networks – and the existing
Mannerist communities, with other interpretations of the Etiquette Guide.
•
Parable of the Willow: In which the Mannerist meets stranger and stranger people, aliens of
myriad forms, and comes to terms with the concept that his interpretation might not be “right”.
And the concept that there may be no such thing as a “correct” interpretation.
•
Parable of Sisyphus: In which the Mannerist has a birthday – most commonly 18 or 21 – and
must reconcile himself to the notion that he is still living, that he has not died, that he deserves
to live.
•
Parable of the Flame: In which the Mannerist writes a Talmud, and acquaints himself with the
idea that he might be an authority, a veteran, someone worth listening to.
Mind
[the arcs of Rissa/Emmit Hier, becoming A Keeper of Gardens]
She – usually she, but sometimes he – is a programmer, has always been a programmer. But there's
always more to learn, from others, and so she seeks them out and learns what they do.
Which would be fine, the Programmer thinks, if they didn't keep dying.
These are some of her stories:
•
The Choices of Myra: In which Myra LeJean disappears – and then leaves a suicide note. The
Programmer digs into what happened, while teaching themselves the Sburb.org codebase.
•
The Choices of Aelf: In which Aelfrida Smithson wants to learn programming, so The
Programmer proposes a bilateral relationship (she teaches the Programmer about Gamebreaking
and the Programmer teaches her about code). This gives them a front-row seat to watching her
self-destruct.
•
The Choices of Riley: In which The Programmer joins Ivory Tower. Kim “Riley” Su-Cheol
notices them volunteering and lets them become one of Ivory Tower's code monkeys. Then Kim
Su-Cheol's Deal for the Server of Ivory Tower goes south.
•
The Choices of Rissa: In which Ivory Tower's on shaky ground, after Su-Cheol's death – and
The Programmer's the one who ends up in control of everything, quite unintentionally, after
they step in to fix things.
Edges
[the arcs of Loren/Jackie Yu, speaking the tales of the Knave of Hearts]
The Child – such a young one, flung into the Game. He (or she) keeps a sense of childish wonder, and
continues to explore, out to the farthest reaches of our knowledge – despite the fact that the Game does
not tend to react well to such things. The Game is a great and terrible force, and the Child is toying
with it as if playing with the paws of a half-asleep lion. But the strangest thing is:
It is that very childish wonder that helps him survive, in the face of such darkness.
These are the stories you may tell of him:
•
The Edges of the Light: In which The Child learns of the existence of Replayer Networks... and
immediately becomes familiar with the kind of people who live on the fringes of them.
•
The Edges of Knowledge: In which the databases of the Replayer Networks are vast and
incredible – but not at all complete: the Child must deal with a bug that nobody has ever written
of before.
•
The Edges of Sanity: In which the Child ends up right in the middle of the affairs of the Others
and the Angels – which are not only undocumented, but undocumentable.
•
The Edges of Time: In which a great braid of time is at risk of unraveling, and the Child turns
out to be a critical player in the structure of Replayer Networks themselves.
Centers (The Heart's arcs)
Amanda Barlow is your average protagonist, I suppose, from one point of view: because she needs to
learn to stand up for herself and to lead others. But from another point of view From another point of view, everyone in Sburb has to take on a role like this to survive. Everyone in
Sburb is, quite ostensibly, a protagonist. And Amanda knows this. Furthermore, she knows that, in the
end, all things must die, and that she is afraid: afraid that she will die, afraid that there is not something
for her to live for.
So she needs something to live for, between now and then, if she is not to be destroyed.
This is a story about Amanda learning how to carve out a space of her own, and of those who would
follow her:
And this is a story about Amanda learning just how strong she can really be.
So: Are you this young woman (or, perhaps, young man, or something else entirely), learning to draw
upon courage and find the steel within yourself?
Or are you someone that's been drawn into her orbit – someone touched by her personal charisma –
someone who wants to become her noble steed first disciple?
How To Play These Arcs
The Heart uses the “Newcomer” quest set, which is a story about finding, and fitting in (or perhaps not
fitting in) with, a group of strange people.
The quests on this set are:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Please Read Before Posting. You draw close to another's hearth fire, but do not join.
Frist Psot. You decide that there's nothing to it but jumping in.
Groupthink. The group has some strange ideas, ideas that start getting under your skin.
(or) Error 404. You're cut off from the people you care about and have to make do with these
assholes.
Integrity. You try to stick to your principles.
Something Better. You do something big, to try to improve the world as it stands.
If you're The Heart's friend – if you're their first and best follower, perhaps, or just someone who gets
dragged in by their story – you'll be using a quest set loosely based on Literary Medal-Bait from GlassMaker's Dragon, which it turns out I actually do want to write myself after all. Oops?
[??? TODO: Replace this reference once I write said quest set]
Chrysalis (Prologue)
Amanda Barlow, at fourteen, is shy, and earnest, and faithful.
But that's not the kind of personality that gets you anywhere, with Sburb. Sburb takes in young
teenagers, bends them to their limits, and watches them break.
Amanda Barlow, at fifteen, is shy, and earnest, and faithful: but she's learned that that isn't enough. The
shyness is erased by ARC-related conditioning. The earnestness and faithfulness are sorely tested by
events. She's learned that she will have to come out of her shell, she will have to show strength, to
survive.
And sometimes, when you force yourself to have courage for long enough... that courage becomes (in
some sense) very much real.
Into The Center (the first Centers arc)
I remember what it was like to be a part of #ultimatereward. I remember what it was like, to
be so tightly knit with the other “greats”, and to go through life together with them. And
yes, it was a place that had to die – but I mourn it anyway, the same way you would mourn
the death of a fucked-up relationship, because on some level I guess that's what it was.
Memoirs of a Seer, epinephrineElectrified
This is a tale of Sburb.org's #ultimatereward.
UR, as I shall abbreviate it, is the place where the original Sburb.org Founders resided, in those days
where more than two of them were alive. It was like any Sburb.org channel, in that the people there
considered each other something different than “friends” or “put together by circumstance”. They
considered each other kin.
It was beautiful, in the way that you could find a cathedral beautiful. But Amanda Barlow can see, like
with a cathedral, that in a very real sense it is built on others' blood.
There are many people who were never part of UR, never knew they had access to cross-session
casting before it was turned off, were never “kin” to the Founders, were never known for themselves as
people by the very administrators of the entire network.
In the process of becoming the person she wants to be, Amanda is struck by the realization that UR is,
in some sense, inherently corrupt.
That the apple has already rotted from the inside.
Please Read Before Posting (as The Heart)
Sburb.org won't let you lurk on the IRCs forever, mind you. But you can watch for a day or two at a
time, so long as you log off when asleep and log back on in the morning. And the forums are eminently
lurkable.
Amanda will watch the Sburb.org forums, and the IRC, and get to know their strange characters. She'll
talk about them, to her coplayers, the other PCs, sometimes. I expect a lot of this to be about Amanda
talking to the other PCs about this stuff, actually: it's hard to conjure up a whole channel full of vibrant
characters, especially if all the PC is doing is watching!
Frist Psot (as The Heart)
If she hasn't formally introduced herself at some point in the previous quest(s), I expect Amanda to do
so here.
She'll meet one or another of the Founders – specificNihilism or ventricularPipefitter are probably best,
them being the most social of the Founders. If the Heart has any interest in science, genesisArtificer
can also be a decent choice.
It is important to note that these are the Founders who were neither already dead nor survived to the
time of this writing.
This is important because I think you will lose them, on a future arc.
Groupthink (as The Heart)
You should understand, here, that UR is a clan. They defend their own, even when “their own” commit
murder. They love each other fiercely, and will go to great lengths to protect each other. And this is the
quest in which you end up growing into them.
I think one of the other main characters needs some resources that only this exclusive group can
provide. I think you help with that, and end up being inducted into their number.
I'm not sure how attached you get. I just know that for you... you can't stay complacent that way. Not
when so many others are left out in the cold.
Error 404 (as The Heart)
If you're using Error 404, you fall in with the Clan not necessarily of your own will, but because your
session is finishing up, or you've already finished and you're now in your next session, or Pesterchum
goes down...
And while you can still contact your old coplayers, the other PCs, the only way you can contact them
now is through UR.
Have fun with that.
Integrity (as The Heart)
I'm not sure if you'll get to this quest on this particular arc – you could quite plausibly cut it off and
never play this one.
But if you do, this is when you meet Levi Storm.
calculatedTorque, as his handle goes, is a native Sage of Mind, and unusually well-internalized at that –
he knows that Sages and Mind players have an inbuilt tendency to be insufferable assholes, and he
works not to be too much of one.
He is also ambitious, and knows that he should get to know UR so he has any chance of being seen as a
person, let alone being promoted.
On this quest, you probably help with that.
Something Better (as The Heart)
Again, I'm not sure if you'll get to this quest on this particular arc, but if you need to pad it out a little,
this is the deal:
You try to reform UR without destroying what made it good.
I don't actually know if it'll work. But at least you'll satisfy yourself, and make at least a bit of real
progress.
A Central Point (the second Centers arc)
This is a story about understanding aliens.
Well, on one level, everyone's alien to each other anyway, so this isn't much further away than
understanding a foreign culture. But on another level, they're literally aliens, so shouldn't they be alien?
No. Of course not, not if you understand Sburb properly. They are strange, but ultimately, their versions
of Sburb, and thus their coming-of-age stories, are very close to your own; which means that they grow
up in the same way as humans do. Sometimes they might have different inbuilt impulses, different
ways of viewing the world.
But I think they're all still people... not that most people are willing to admit this just yet, not at this
point in Replayer time.
Centering Oneself (the third Centers arc)
The Heart decides to branch out, a little. They decide to reach out further than #ultimatereward, and
learn how other Replayer networks think.
Most likely the network they'll find, to familiarize themselves with, is Pits, or Ivory Tower. Sometimes
it's a Sburb.org subforum, or even Corpse Fiesta or a Corpselike.
The social norms there are fundamentally different. And the problem with this arc is that the Heart
might not remember that. They might try to crosspollinate, put one person from her new group into her
old group or vice versa, and that's going to spin out of control.
The Center of All Things (the fourth Centers arc)
None of these networks are what The Heart wants. Some of them are close. Some of them are very
close. But The Heart...
This could be the quest set in which she rises to a throne, become an admin. Or it could be the quest set
in which she decides to build her own network.
It's possible – especially if you're going with the “build your own” option – that you'll need something
totally different from “Newcomer”, here. It's possible you'll need to piece together your own, from
loose quests, or use someone else's quest sets. I mean, The Heart isn't finding a new network to join.
She's creating her own.
If it is Newcomer, it can be about how weird it is to join the ranks of moderators and admins. Please
Read Before Posting is reading up on the standards of moderation, and being afraid of using the mod
tools; Frist Psot is about
Void (The Gamebreaker's arcs)
Anthony Ott traded his soul for his friend’s resurrection. It was supposed to be a straightforward deal,
one where it’d end once they went into their new universe.
Only the Door didn’t work, and he ended up Replaying, with his soul pledged to a Horrorterror, and
with his life already forfeit.
But it was because his life was forfeit that he learned to be a hero, I think.
It was because he knew he was already dead that he was there to make sure that others would live.
The Gamebreaker (Anthony or Magnolia Ott) will be playing these arcs as Scientific Adventures, most
of the time. I think there’s also the option of him, or even other people interfering in his life, to play
them as Rinleyventures. This is all pretty much the same as it looks in Nightmares’ Angel’s arcs,
although a large fraction of the flavor will probably be swapped out; let’s move on.
Networks (Prologue)
The signal came to the session, beamed through the Furthest Ring.
It was a signal that promised a social network: companionship and help, for Replayers who otherwise
spent their lives alone.
Most people would gravitate to the forums, or perhaps the chats; but that wasn’t the kind of person
Anthony was. Anthony found their FAQ section. Anthony learned that there were other people like him,
who wanted to understand the Game. Who wanted to make it better.
Shouting Into The Darkness (the first Void arc)
If Anthony had understood what it had entailed to make a deal with a Horrorterror, he wouldn’t’ve
made one at all. As it is, he’d rather never do it again.
Unfortunately, this session might be too broken to let him just stand by.
Science! (as the Gamebreaker)
You’ll discover, pretty much immediately, that this session is broken. How it is broken is another matter
entirely. But this is the section in which you figure out what the hell is going on.
See, you ended up in this session without any time to prototype your Kernelsprite. Usually, when you
don’t prototype, the Game fills your Kernelsprite in with your Replayee and/or your Replayee’s
prototypes. But in this case, it appears that the Replayees did not prototype anything - and the Game
decided to preserve this instead of filling in with the Replayees as it usually does in these
circumstances.
You’ll explore, poke around in strange places, and figure out exactly what’s broken. Which turns out to
be a lot: the Lands no longer have any consorts on them, the Underlings are half-spawned
indestructible skeletons (which, thankfully, spawn a hell of a lot less often than regular Underlings
would, but, not thankfully, leave you grist-starved), both Prospit and Derse are even more fatalistic
than usual, your Sprites are amazingly unuseful and eventually just pop out of existence, leaving Sprite
Pendants behind, without ever bonding with you…
Someone’s In Trouble (as the Gamebreaker)
At some point during the previous quest, or early in this one, you’ll wake up your Denizen. And, see,
the thing is: your Denizen doesn’t do any of the usual Denizen things. Your Denizen is asking you for
help. So, co-occuring with this, you’ll be running the relevant Sburban Tale quest.
And at the same time: your coplayers need your help. If any of them is an NPC, they become subject to
a glitch in their sleep ratio: that they end up flickering in and out of their dreamself unpredictably,
multiple times a day. If this is the problem, you’ll end up figuring out how to stabilize their Sleep Ratio
stat with judicious use of things like stacked land beds and autotransporters that drag them over to a
safe place if they fall asleep out in the field, and eventually solve the problem (to an extent) by voiding
out their Sleep Ratio stat near the end, when you are sufficiently confident in the use of your
Voidpowers that you’re willing to try to use them. (As such, a significant part of this quest will be you
experimenting with and expanding your ability to use your Void powers.)
If not, you might find the Consort Tomb Guardian: a mechanical construct that the Consorts of your
land made to guard their tomb. It’s desperately lonely and wants to be useful, but has no idea how. You
fix it up, maybe give it a databank full of etiquette guides, and show it things like “cooking” and
“watching your back”.
Engineering! (as the Gamebreaker)
Herein, you implement daring plans to attempt to fix your session. They are, weirdly enough, actually
likely to work.
Maybe you have to put a beacon out, to attract another session’s worth of Players who will come
bearing the missing pieces of session through a Ring Voyage. Maybe you engage in some memory
editing (be careful about the Null-Terminated String modus). Maybe one of the Denizens is letting you
earn a working Skaia via a bunch of deeply strange and dangerous quests (step 1: sneaking something
Angel-corrupted into the Black Queen’s personal quarters). You can totally do something else, if it
seems the story’s pointing in that direction, though.
Above the Fray (as the Gamebreaker)
You pull back a little bit and think about what’s left of you, and why you Dealed in the first place.
And eventually you decide: You’re going to go out into the Ring, and you’re going to ask J'lmieltk if
she has anything else she’s neglected to mention about the entire Deal thing. (Since the actual meeting
won’t take long at all, I suggest flashbacks, flashforwards, and weird Corruption-fueled dreams. Or
having most of this quest taken up by your preparations to try to shield everyone else from what you’re
going to end up doing.)
For her part, she says that Mike, the friend you signed off your soul for, is still alive…
Walking the Boundaries (as the Gamebreaker)
This’ll be - I’m assuming it’s after either Someone’s In Trouble or Engineering - an exploration on
what the objects of one or another of these quests are doing now. Is your session finishing up, and
everyone scattering off to somewhere new, perhaps?
Wandering the Darkness (the second Void arc)
The thing about being a gamebreaker, in Sburb, is that you aren't alone.
Well. I wouldn't say that this is specific to being a gamebreaker. You aren't alone in general, especially
if you're connected to a Replayer Network. But this is about being... extra-not-alone? That sounds a bit
silly. Let me try again.
The Gamebreaker knows that there are networks out there: and this is the arc where he decides that he
should try to contribute to them himself.
This is the story of he – of you – recruiting a Co-Investigator.
The thing about being a gamebreaker is that sometimes you have to spend time actually investigating
gamebreaking.
Each arc, then, I expect the Gamebreaker to be working on making something happen.
If you don't have any ideas for what the Gamebreaker might want to innovate right now, a sane default
is that he figures out how to use timetrav encryptions to estimate the length of a presession. The main
trouble with this is that it requires you to establish relations with the operators of a timetrav network,
and work closely with an individual Time player. Sburb.org is categorically not going to be open to this
kind of experimentation. You might try the 0AD standard, which is used by a sizeable minority of Pits
users. May I suggest that your Time player be quaverAttractant, the native Smith of Time? (You'll find
more on him in the NPC section.)
If that doesn't seem like something that you want to do, you might also consider something like
working on the food hack (page XX of A User's Guide), investigating whether you can get into the
Denizen's secret grist hoard, or venturing into the catacombs of Derse to see if their utility tunnels have
any interesting controls that might affect life on the surface. (I mean, there's obviously water and
power, but you could find the switchboard for all their telephone calls. Or the controls for the fourth
walls that the Queen uses to track what's going on on the battlefield. Or a room full of swords.)
You should probably find someone to work with, either way; that's important for later. Let's call this
person your Co-Investigator.
Someone's In Trouble (as the Gamebreaker)
Your Co-Investigator opens up to you. It turns out that they have Corruption problems of their own.
You don't really know how to handle this. You read up on everything you can, and try to help as best
you can.
It isn't enough, probably. But I'm guessing it helps. At the very least, it helps you figure out how best to
live with yourself, even if your Co-Investigator takes a nosedive shortly afterwards...
I think –
I think this quest is about your Co-Investigator getting Corrupted with your kool-aid flavor of choice,
and being lost to Speakerdom or Singerdom.
This... this isn't a problem that you can fix, not immediately. You have to set things up to get them into a
session with people who can bring them down, and you have to make sure that, while they're defeated,
they're not flattened with massive overkill. You want a person back, not just a smear on the ground.
I think you make them a trap.
I think you figure out what the Horrorterror they're channeling, or the Angels they're a representative
of, want or need. You arrange for it to be set up in a session – quite possibly your session, unless you're
in contact with people who are closer to them, say, on the memo.
Near, or at, the end of this quest, they draw near – and you pounce.
You and your Co-Investigator decide to write up what you've figured out so far about the
gamebreaking topic of your choice, whether by research (Aspect) or by experimentation (the other
arcs).
You make sure you've investigated all the nooks and crannies you can. You see if you can get someone
else to replicate your findings.
Maybe you venture back in and fill in some of the gaps you've found.
This one's hard, because I'm not actually sure this quest is on-point for the Gamebreaker at this
particular juncture. I'll give you a couple options.
Maybe this is the quest about you presenting your findings to the Replayer networks, and watching
what happens. This is probably best on the Aspect arc.
On the other arcs, probably this is the quest about you wondering why you're alive, when so many
others are dead; or about you wondering why you made the stupid choice of contracting with the
Others/Angels, when you could or should have just accepted the loss.
If it's that one, you try to find Mike, to reach out to.
Nothing.
Was it even worth the Bargain?
Paths Through the Darkness (the third Void arc)
This is a story about another Gamebreaker.
Jack Rutherford (or perhaps the genderflip, Anne Sklowdowska) doesn't understand that this is not an
Epic Fantasy game. He's going around, coming up with audacious theories, inventing weird methods of
investigation, trying to change the nature of the world. Unfortunately, because this is not an Epic
Fantasy game, not only are these methods not going to advance his story much, but they're probably
going to backfire horribly.
This is Sburb, after all. If you are not suffering, or if you are not connecting to other people despite that
suffering, something has gone very, very wrong.
Jack Rutherford is going to start experimenting with truly dangerous stuff – corruption, perhaps, or
editing the CD to one's session – and the results are not going to be pretty. This would be all very well,
everyone would just let him crash and burn, if not for the fact that Jack Rutherford is in a session, and
that therefore there are people affected by this all who are innocent.
The Gamebreaker is working on cool stuff, probably. They notice Jack Rutherford working on things
that might be dangerous.
It's possible that the Gamebreaker ends up with a nervous maybe-partnership with Jack that has to be
broken off when Jack starts doing scary things.
It's possible that Jack will try to recruit the Gamebreaker to the Lotus Network, Jack's personal
gamebreaking network.
Someone's In Trouble (as the Gamebreaker)
A Light in the Darkness (the fourth Void arc)
Expressions (The Artist's arcs)
The Artist's story is about creating beauty in the midst of this life.
But it is hard to so much as survive, let alone live, in Sburb. It is exhausting to go through the same
storyline a hundred times with only minor variation, and know that a lapse in concentration is the only
thing that stands between you and a terrible fate.
And it is so very tempting, to let go of the thing in you that wants something more to live for, because
it's taking up precious energy that you cannot spare. There are times when caring for anything at all
seems like an impossible burden.
But Cecelia Favreau learns that she must try anyway; for without it, there is no point to living at all.
The Artist, Cecelia or Laurentin Favreau, plays these arcs through as [Literary-Medal-Bait alike].
If you're in the Artist's world, though... this will most likely play out as Cracked Pedestals. Cracked
Pedestals looks like this:
•
•
•
•
•
Someone Awesome: You're enamored with someone really cool.
Responsibilities: You work on a big project.
Feet of Clay: You discover that your mentor was, in some way, fundamentally flawed – or
watch them self-destruct.
Undertow: Despite the fact that you have lost everything that could guide you, you continue on.
Onwards: You figure out how to surpass your Mentor in some way.
Parables (The Mannerist's arcs)
This is a tale of beliefs, and the people that hold those beliefs; and, furthermore, of what it means to
believe something.
This is a tale of a boy who loses himself, to the words of a great writer, and who loses everything he
loves, as it falls into the strange tales of Sburb and is consumed therein.
But this is also the story of a boy who gains strength from those words and those ideas:
Who emerges from these tests shaken, and yet still stands.
Would you be he, then, the strange one, the stigmatized one, the one who turns to the books of the
Mannerists to give some meaning to your life?
Or would you be someone who thought you could be a friend, only to serve as the Mannerist's tether to
reality instead?
If you are the Mannerist, you will play this as the quest set If You Believe, like so:
•
•
•
•
•
Inadequacy
Deconversion
Obsession
Synthesis
If you're tagging along, you'll probably be playing it on somethng like A Bittersweet Saga, available in
the Chuubo's core.
Outsider (Prologue)
The problem with being an outcast since your earliest years is that, socially, you fall further and further
behind.
Mind (The Programmer's arcs)
This is the tale that started it all, that I wanted to write from the beginning:
A set of stories about imperfect people falling, a set of stories about the worlds inside a computer, a set
of stories about life in the midst of death, a set of stories about strength in tragedy and beauty in chaos.
A set of stories, in other words, about the characters I played in RV Classic, and about how the
Programmer gets to know them –
And then watches them die.
I never told you it was a happy story, after all.
The Programmer generally uses the quest set Cracked Pedestals, which goes like this:
•
•
•
•
•
Someone Awesome: You're enamored with someone really cool.
Responsibilities: You work on a big project.
Feet of Clay: You discover that your mentor was, in some way, fundamentally flawed – or
watch them self-destruct.
Undertow: Despite the fact that you have lost everything that could guide you, you continue on.
Onwards: You figure out how to surpass your Mentor in some way.
If you're not the Programmer but someone who's tagging along, you can either play this storyline as
iterations of Cracked Pedestals (above), or you can play Scientific Adventures, as from the Chuubo's
core.
Can They Be Saved?
The Programmer could quite reasonably deduce the fact that her mentors are marked for death. So, you
ask, is there any way to keep them from meeting their fates?
To that I say: you can try.
Really, it's not the death that's the important part. It's the fall from grace. The realization that the
Mentor you idolize is lazy, selfish, and makes bad decisions. Not all the time, mind you, or otherwise
you wouldn't be idolizing them at all, but they are only human.
And death is usually the fate of the mentor figures I've written into this arc, because in their own
stories, they are tragic heroes, with fundamental flaws; and eventually those flaws will tear the entire
structure apart. You can postpone that death, but I don't think you can put it off forever. Because
eventually they'll find something that they can't change, and, driven to change or die, would rather die.
Few can survive Sburb without going against what they hold dear. Your character, of course, is trying
their damnedest to survive Sburb. So they may as well learn how to endure that kind of thing now.
Wireless (Prologue)
The Programmer was using her first computer at the age of four. At the age of eight, she was writing
programs. (They weren't good programs, but nobody's programs are good at that age.) By the age of
fourteen, she was actually getting good.
Sburb cut short the Programmer's dreams. In the place of those dreams the Programmer put something
else: she wanted to find a way to network computers across Sburb session boundaries.
She was actually on track to figure it out herself, without any outside assistance, when she found that
the Ring was already filled with wireless signals from hundreds of servers.
That's fine, Rissa Hier thinks. She'll volunteer to help them.
The Choices of Myra
Myra LeJean was a genius. Myra LeJean just disappeared. The Programmer is fascinated by her writing
and tutorials and code, which is beautiful and brilliant.
Then some loop of ~ATH somewhere posts what's clearly Myra's video will to the site. She's dead. She
killed herself. Why did Myra kill herself? She's got plenty of former friends and mentees contemplating
that question, but – even though the Programmer never knew Myra – she finds herself getting sucked
into that question, too.
Someone Awesome (as the Programmer)
So, if you're the Programmer, you'll most likely start out being fascinated by Myra's writing, and
eventually Myra's code. She writes some damned fine code13. If you actually read it, it's commented
with snatches such as this:
/* This is magic. Don't touch it. */
Or this:
/* If some smarmy fuckface figures out a way to break out of this sandbox,
I am going to personally hunt them down and use their entrails as the
patch. */
Or even this:
/* This is totally a hack, but “luckily” DIS* has decided that there must
always be at least one disaster in every universe, even if it has to
incarnate said disaster itself. So I feel safe assuming that the number of
disasters in the universe is greater than zero. This assertion is most
likely supported by your personal experiences as well. */
The point is: Myra had a wicked sense of humor, one that is probably going to leave you starry-eyed;
even while you know you can't hope to match her intellect.
13 CM: I would know. I worked on it myself. No, I didn't have an intellectual crush on Myra, shut up.
One of the people hanging around the code is ontologyExpunged – right now you mostly just need to
establish her presence. She'll be more important later on.
Responsibilities (as the Programmer)
Myra's account logs on, for the first time in ages. Posts a video. Logs off.
It says that she's decided to kill herself, has found some way around suicide being impossible in the
Game. She's saying goodbye, retroactively; that if her attempt has succeeded, the video will post itself.
The other five Founders, after a brief shock, take it completely seriously.
And then it hits you:
That brilliant woman is gone, is dead, and Sburb.org will need people to help them maintain the code
that keeps their site running. You manage, somehow, to volunteer. In their grief, the admins let you try.
But they doubt your ability to do any better than Myra.
You doubt yourself just as much.
But then you read her code. You fix a thing. You fix another thing. You implement a feature people
have been asking for.
One of the Founders – tungstenTinkerer, probably, or artisticHourglass – somehow becomes a friend,
along the way; neither of them knows the code quite as thoroughly as Myra did, but they can appreciate
your work.
Maybe, you start to think, this isn't so bad after all.
Feet of Clay (as the Programmer)
ontologyExpunged starts to disintegrate, her usually cheerful demeanor developing increasingly
worrying cracks. You start figuring out what really happened. And you realize, increasingly, that your
hero-worship was quite largely unwarranted. It's a weakness that you only realize now, when it's staring
you in the face how wrong it was.
Because Myra was only human. She tried to ban people who said Wastes didn't exist. She was
absolutely insistent on trying to improve people's lives in presessions, despite the fact that the residents
of presession planets are slated for death in days or weeks, and despite the fact that this insistence led to
her neglecting and breaking relationships with coplayers and mentees.
And, if you are close to ontologyExpunged as things come to a head, you will hear the story of how
Myra groomed a small brace of second-sessioners into following her every word, and then forced one
of them to carry all her traumatic memories.
The logic, such as it was, was that even though she didn't want to continue, she didn't want her
experiences and memories to disappear from Paradox Space. But surely that could've been
accomplished in a less destructive manner?
Maybe Myra had some other reason to do it that way. Maybe she feared having to sort through and
process her memories, and foisted that job onto someone she thought could do it better. Or maybe it
was just sheer ego. I honestly don't know.
Undertow (as the Programmer)
Should you wish to continue the quest set, or should this be part of the quest set if you're playing it in a
different order, in this quest you're left adrift.
You're stuck in this strange limbo, not knowing who to trust. Maybe you're watching as
ontologyExpunged falls the rest of the way apart. Maybe most of the people who had volunteered to
sift through the codebase with you dropped out of the endeavor, and you're the last one still bothering
to do anything.
One of the things you might do on this quest is try to put the pieces together – try to figure out what the
hell went so wrong, that someone so high-profile could conceal that kind of depression so well. That's
probably a futile project. But at least it's something to do.
Onwards (as the Programmer)
If you need to, you can finish up here. Perhaps you're finishing up some sort of project to upgrade the
boards or add features?
One of the things that you're going to do in this quest is figure out that, for all Myra's genius, her
programs were not perfect. You're going to fix something she did wrong. Well, if you're playing it on
anything other than Aspect, anyway. For Aspect you're going to expand on something she never did.
Here's an idea for that: there's this feature on Sburb.org that only showed up around timestamp 40:
should one so choose, there can be a wiki-style introduction attached before the first post. This has
actually been used for a lot of things, like community-written FAQs where every section is written by
whoever gets to it first; or big projects where, even if the OP somehow disappears, one can still keep
the wiki entry updated with links to where the latest stuff has been going on. Maybe this could be your
idea and your execution, in the game?
The Choices of Aelf
Aelfrida Smithson is a Pitsblogger with a lackluster personal reputation, but an impeccable eye for
gamebreaking. More importantly for the purposes of this story, she was also assigned to
#ultimatereward... which will put her in contact with the Programmer.
Aelfrida Smithson would like to learn how to code; and so she contacts the Programmer, asking for
assistance doing so; in return, she will provide gamebreaking knowledge and advice.
But then someone manages to hack Pits' server software, and is about this close to splitting the
network. If they'd succeeded, that would result in two competing versions of Pits, neither of which
would trust each other (software-wise, anyway).
This points out an opening: not for working for Pits (the Programmer could, I guess, but I think
something else is more likely), but making a secure, stable Ring server software suite, designed and
tested with the utmost of care from the ground up.
The only problem with this is that, even while beginning to put down the groundwork and organize
people to help, the Programmer is watching Aelfrida Smithson self-destruct.
Someone Awesome (as the Programmer)
Responsibilities (as the Programmer)
Feet of Clay (as the Programmer)
Undertow (as the Programmer)
Onwards (as the Programmer)
The Choices of Riley
The Choices of Rissa
•
The Choices of Myra: In which Myra LeJean disappears – and then leaves a suicide note. The
Programmer digs into what happened, while teaching themselves the Sburb.org codebase.
•
The Choices of Aelf: In which Aelfrida Smithson wants to learn programming, so The
Programmer proposes a bilateral relationship (she teaches the Programmer about Gamebreaking
and the Programmer teaches her about code). This gives them a front-row seat to watching her
self-destruct.
•
The Choices of Riley: In which The Programmer joins Ivory Tower. Kim “Riley” Su-Cheol
notices them volunteering and lets them become one of Ivory Tower's code monkeys. Then Kim
Su-Cheol's Deal for the Server of Ivory Tower goes south.
•
The Choices of Rissa: In which Ivory Tower's on shaky ground, after Su-Cheol's death – and
The Programmer's the one who ends up in control of everything, quite unintentionally, after
they step in to fix things.
Edges (The Child's arcs)

The Age of Replayer Networks

Transcription

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