#apo plays amnesia memories

[the-apocryphal-one]

Been playing Amnesia: Memories

I think everyone, even people who haven’t played Amnesia: Memories, knows Toma is the surprise yandere route. Hell, I knew, and I didn’t know anything else about the game (other than Ukyo’s the ‘hidden’ route). so playing with that knowledge was...interesting. I also cheated and looked up a guide bc I did not want to play the yandere route more than once. if I didn’t need to beat it to unlock Ukyo, I wouldn’t have.

for the record, I did Toma third--Shin, Ikki, then Toma because I figured I’d want a ‘cooldown’ route after and boy was I right. my thought process and emotional state went something like this:

- “Toma I know what you do here. I don’t trust you. get away.”

- “no don’t give him your house keys”

- “bastard took apart my computer!!!”

- “I’m your boyfriend” “I don’t believe you.”

- “ ‘not all guys would find that habit cute, you better appreciate that I do’ ” *shudders*

- “oh hi Ukyoh my gosh what’s wrong with your eyes”

- "harassment??? on top of everything else???” 

- “No Toma, I don’t want to go to your house. I’ll stay with Shin or Sawa or at a hotel or literally anywhere else.”

- “Orion, Toma is not my boyfriend. His words and actions are inconsistent, my memories don’t match up, there’s even an entire Doubt Bar. You are literally the only one who thinks he’s my boyfriend.”

- “oh no I don’t want to see crazy Ukyo again...well, I guess if you’re apologizing, and promise not to--no there it is again aaaaaaaaaaaah” 

- “do you think we should we buy a taser or something?” “YES I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO BUY A TASER”

- “I can appreciate that the game is showing that the constant harassment the heroine faces is pushing Toma to a stressful, Bad Place, because I think it makes him more interesting as a character...but seriously, no.”

- “I am on a slow collision course with this yandere and I can’t stop it.”

- “SHIN NO DON’T LEAVE ME HERE. I’M SAYING I CONSENTED TO THIS BECAUSE THE GUIDE TOLD ME TO, BUT I REALLY WANT OUT.”

- “WHY ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT TOMA ISN’T MY BOYFRIEND ORION.”

- “oh god he’s drugging me”

- “I OPENED MY EYES AND INSTANTLY BLACKED OUT FROM THE DRUGS MY LIFE IS A HORROR FILM”

- “HERE IT IS. THE CAGE. THE INFAMOUS CAGE.”

- “again, I appreciate that Toma knows he’s a terrible person for what he’s doing, hates himself over it, and that I can call him on it. still absolutely would not date though.”

- “!!! I can get out!!! of the cage!!! quick grab my phone and ru--Toma’s coming get back in the cage get back in the cage--”

- “no Orion, I don’t care about whether Ikki was my boyfriend or not, I just want to call for help!”

- “AND NOW MY PHONE IS DEAD BECAUSE YOU INSISTED FINDING OUT ABOUT MY LOVE LIFE WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CALLING THE POLICE DAMMIT ORION AAAAAAAAAAAH”

- “he’s gone. run. runrunrunrunrun”

- “OH GOD UKYO NOPE WE’RE GOING THE OTHER WAY NOPE”

- “no Orion, I do not want to go back to Toma’s house. I can ask a passerby to borrow their phone. I can call Shin or my coworkers or the police. I do not have to go back there just because I have a sprained ankle! ...dammit.”

- “okay we made it back before him, we’re safeAH TOMA HAS UKYO’S CRAZY EYES NOW”

- “come out of the cage” “i can’t believe i’m saying this, but I think I want to stay here.”

- “no seriously, I feel safer in the cage than out here with you.”

- *screams*

- “i honestly forgot about the diary.”

- “are you seriously telling me that all this is because of mutual pining? that all it took to stop this madhouse was Toma reading the diary??? what. the. he-”

- *flips Rika the bird* Toma: *flips Rika the bird* “you’re not off the hook either.”

- “even Toma says the heroine has bad taste in men. wow.”

- “I guess the heroine must be as crazy as he is to like him after all this, so...happy ending?”

- “but seriously why would you take him back.”

[woytaq]

I wrote some things about my experiences on DMing RPGs

So I have a website, basically a blog on an independent server, safe from <insert blogging service here>’s  TOS changes and bullshit like that. 

I wrote 2 blogs there already about my experiences with hosting an RPG campaign and I guess I could just copy-paste it here and see what happens. 

This particular post is mainly about the introduction and the origin story behind this campaign, so I hope you’ll forgive me simplistic explanations on what RPGs are and so on. Like I said, I wrote it for a different site where I post everything, so some generalizations were required.   

Incoherent ramblings on RPG, part 1 I guess

I’ve mentioned that before but in case you’ve missed it, I’m DM-ing a D&D RPG session. If the abbreviations in the later part of the sentence didn’t mean anything to you, RPG means Role Playing Game, D&D means Dungeons and Dragons, one of the frameworks said RPGs can be based on and DM means Dungeon Master – in this case, someone who leads those RPGs.

I don’t want to write down my incoherent ramblings on the subject in one long post, because nobody will read it. If I spread it across multiple short posts almost nobody will read it and that’s a possible improvement.

But lets start from the beginning and see where that takes us. The particular world-building exercise I want to describe here started a couple of years back when I offered to create a one-shot RPG session for a couple of friends for a New Year’s eve party. It was simple, had no real mechanics behind it and minimal amount of background setting since we had very limited time and most of the people involved never actually played an RPG before. The idea was that a fantasy  world got magically nuked and a number of survivors camps were built, which later became small town ruled by post-apo warlords. And since there were all sorts of weird mixes of races, since refugees just swarmed into those camps after the disaster which lead to a couple of interesting characters cooing together in the form of young and able “tributes” sent out on a one-way quest to get an impossible Mcguffin because their village warlord wanted to make a point in the standard “rule by fear, do whatever you want” kind of way. They stumbled into ancient ruins, run away form a terrifying creature and bumped into a group of gentlemen undead knights who took them into their not-all-that-creepy castle.

So that went well and by that I mean we had to continue the next day since they had fun and my one-shot grew in scope a little bit. We then had a couple of discord sessions to follow up, but that went about as well as you might think with a large group of people scattered across the country. After some time the whole session idea looked like it was about to just die of natural causes, but due to a weird set of circumstances, events in real life, coincidences and a global pandemic a portion of said group decided it would be cool to continue the story, but lets make it based on D&D instead of “roll dice whenever DM wants to do something”. So I sat down, remapped their character sheets and got a brilliant idea for a fresh start in which those three characters wake up without any memories in a crazy wizard’s lair. That gave me an opportunity to start anew without scrapping the past sessions, although so far only I know how those dots are connected, since the world they woke up in appears to be completely different from the one the players knew and their characters forgot about.

In general this is not how things should go. Players usually make up the backstory for their characters themselves and negotiate with the DM what can happen, what goals they can have and how their backstories play into their campaign. I chose a different path for this campaign because I already knew those characters and we all wanted to reuse them, but at the same time I couldn’t have them remembering the previous setting. With the amnesia angle (I know, how very original) both the characters and players explore the world together, but since they played those characters before, they feel comfortable doing so. And they have a lot to explore in this world. This is not the same place they were before, with a bit of a forest, some ruins and a castle. I made them a whole landmass with a dozen or so countries, a couple of conflicts, a fair bit of criminal underworld and a couple of noble courts to explore. So hopefully I’ll be able to tell you a lot more about this world in the future. I mean I can say a lot about it even now, since the campaign is going strong for well over a year, but I don’t want to slap an unsolicited wall of text in your face.

If you want to, know more, the second part is already on the website, but I will post it here possibly next week, if there’s any response.