PKMNB0Y

Emerald Odyssey — An MMO Isekai RP (Now Accepting!)

Shokatsu Yu

Aluvera — City Square

"So that's how it's done, huh...?"

There was a bit of relief in Yu's voice as he finally managed to pull up his character information, his gaze panning slightly to the side as the familiar menu popped up in his peripherals. Finagling with some invisible, possibly-extant hotbar had been unnecessary, it seemed; simply desiring for the relevant information to spring up had been sufficient. Of course, where one success was found, others followed suit, and the young man quickly cycled through half a dozen other menus—none of which seemed to be able to access the usual system configurations, of course—before he paused, an odd shadow slowly creeping over the skies above.

Given how it had been broad daylight moments ago, the weather shifting spontaneously becoming overcast was by no means a good sign.

As he closed the windows to give him back full control of his vision, Yu slowed to a halt as he—and more than a few others who had already begun to gather—turned their eyes skyward, only to see those clouds shift to a dark black.

Any amount of hesitation in the air was promptly cut through as something immediately cut through the clouds from above, a gaping hole from which a single red light began falling—right onto the middle of the square. Those who were aware immediately began to move to make room for whatever was descending, and those who were not were promptly dragged away by the tides of people shifting to make room. Of course, no few number among them—Yu included—furtively drew their weapons in response.

The fountain in the center of the square, it seemed, had been the unknown assailant's target, and its subsequent destruction as they landed threw stone dust and debris all over. When it had cleared, however, what was left behind in the rubble was a brown-haired man, his bronze-colored armor twisted and worn as he knelt upon the ruined earth. The pool of blood forming under him showed no such promising future, but what was more troublesome were his words soon after.

"The gates... Have been opened..."

Whether those words were meant as a warning or as a threat mattered little—at least, compared to the creatures flying out from the clouds unto the city. As far as Yu could tell, they seemed to be a mix of griffins, sphinxes, and harpies—none of which he was pleased to see—and were diving towards the city at an alarming rate. There only seemed to be a few dozen in total, thankfully enough, but that small number was still more than enough to lay siege to the city if left unchecked.

As a massive sphinx swept down from the skies above to strike at him, though, Yu tumbled out of the way before looking back at the creature. Though he had no personal experience fighting with the weapon, it felt as if his body did. Hopefully that would actually mean something, given how it seemed to be moving around for seconds.

With his blade at the ready, Yu took a deep breath and focused his gaze upon the monster before moving into a more proper battle stance, his sword pointed forward as he struck out at its' wings in hopes of equalizing the battlefield——!

Emerald Odyssey — An MMO Isekai RP (Now Accepting!)

@Eloise: All right, let's see here...

• So, not to imply that the game locks players onto a path or anything, but I'm a bit against the idea of your character being explicitly 'employed' to an NPC. The reasons for this are as follows:
  
  • As this character would be in a master-servant relationship, their ability to directly (and actively) interact with the rest of the cast would be stifled—not to mention everyone else that they might have to deal with, NPC or otherwise.
  • While we do have characters that have relationships to NPCs within the world, those NPCs are not necessarily inherently tied to the world, if that makes sense. In other words, I'd be denying this for the same reason I'd be denying the ability for characters to self-insert in-universe and place themselves as, say, siblings or lovers or what have you towards any NPCs that exist in the world.
• The two 'noncombat' things you posited are not classes, they are spells. Putting aside how they're honestly more emotes and RP actions (like, literal RP actions), they don't... Make a class unto themselves, y'know?

That's about all I have to say on the matter for now.

Emerald Odyssey — An MMO Isekai RP (Now Accepting!)

Discord it is!

@Hammerman@Rune_Alchemist@SilverPaw@Sho Minazuki@VitaVitaAR

Invite here. I've set it to expire in 24h, so if you miss it the first pass, just let me know and I'll throw another one out.

Emerald Odyssey — An MMO Isekai RP (Now Accepting!)

@Hammerman@Rune_Alchemist@SilverPaw@Sho Minazuki@VitaVitaAR: RP's begun!

I guess I'll toss this in as a followup offer/question: do you think a Discord would be useful, or are we fine without? I can spin one up a majority leans towards the former.

Emerald Odyssey — An MMO Isekai RP (Now Accepting!)

Sunohara Ryou

With maintenance all but finished and the newest expansion pack pre-downloaded, Ryou was more than ready to dive into Emerald Odyssey and start streaming. He had made sure that his setup was in perfect order the night before—triple-checked it, even—which left him precious little to worry about now. With a few people buzzing about in the pre-stream lobby, the young man was more than ready to greet his viewers and dive into the new content with everyone.

The amount of congestion the servers had to face on patch day was oddly absent, though—a fact that struck Ryou as odd, but one that he chose not to question. After all, looking this sort of gift horse in the mouth was a bit rude, especially when it was most certaily in his favor. But as he moved to log in, his character selected and the loading splash screen appeared on his monitor...

White. His vision was overwhelmed in an instant by something far beyond what any sort of monitor could produce normally. There was no time to react or respond, and before he could even make a single sound in response——

Shokatsu Yu

Aluvera — Silverfield Inn

"...Eh?"

Blinding though that all-consuming white had been, the young man found that both it and any aftereffects that it might have left were nowhere to be found. While that might have been reason to breathe easy, it took no more than a few passing seconds for him to realize that something was most definitely wrong.

After all, his computer and everything around it had been replaced by a simple wooden desk, and his room far less... 'Modern' than he last remembered. Though that oddity was at the forefront of his mind, nothing had truly quite processed yet—not until he got up and looked out the window. It was the middle of the afternoon when he had logged on, but with the amount of sunlight streaming through past the curtains, it felt more like early morning instead.

Of course, even a single glance outside the window would cause things to start falling into place. He had read enough stories to understand what had happened, and though he was still unaware of exactly why something like this had happened, it was almost undeniable that the world outside was undoubtedly a locale he was incredibly familiar with despite not being anywhere in Japan—or on Earth, for that matter.

"This has to be a joke, right?"

Though still somewhat in denial despite how his voice sounded slightly off, Ryou glanced around once before walking into the washroom, clinging onto some faint hope that this was all some sort of last-moment fever dream. But when he splashed water on his face and glanced at himself in the mirror, that hope, too, came crashing down.

After all, it was not the face of Sunohara Ryou looking at him, but that of Shokatsu Yu, his character.

"...I guess not."

Of course, it was not panic that overtook him immediately after; with a few deep breaths, Yu had shaken at least some of the chaos running through his head as he began to consider the implications of what his current position was. After all, with isekai settings having become so commonplace, it wasn't as if he was left without any direction to center his thoughts.

"So I'm in the world of the game as the character I main. There was no indication of what the cause was, nor what will get me to return immediately..." he muttered to himself, flicking the water off of his face as he left the washroom, "...Which means that the first thing to determine is whether or not I'm the only one in this world now."

Centered though his words may have been, though, Yu could feel his heart pounding as he promptly left the room and the inn proper; whether it was out of excitement or fear, even he couldn't quite tell.

---

Aluvera — City Streets

Clean though the air on the streets of Aluvera were (or, well, as clean as you could expect), the state of the actual city seemed to be... Less than orderly. There was nothing like rioting or havoc on the streets, but the amount of people clearly trying to process the situation was more than Yu could count. In this case, though, that was probably a good thing; after all, that meant that he wasn't alone here. The grander implications of that soon crossed his mind, though, and before long, Yu found himself walking through the city, trying to find someone—anyone—that he knew among the crowd. All the while, of course, the young man began to half-awkwardly fiddle with the empty air with his right hand, hoping that at least some part of the game beyond his current personage was carried over. After all, finding something as basic as an inventory or friends list would be astronomically helpful at a time like this...

Emerald Odyssey — An MMO Isekai RP (Now Accepting!)

@VitaVitaAR: Character seems good to me. Accepted.

@Sho Minazuki: Sketch already looks great as-is! Honestly, that much alone would've sufficed, but all the more power to you if you want to clean it up.

With this, I think our cast is... Just about set to start? Once all the forms are in place, I'll get to writing the first post to kick things off.

Emerald Odyssey — An MMO Isekai RP (Now Accepting!)

@Sho Minazuki: Aye, game character only. I don't suspect that 'real' appearance will become relevant, but if it does, I'll probably ask for it after the fact.

Emerald Odyssey — An MMO Isekai RP (Now Accepting!)

@Sho Minazuki: Yeah, this version looks a bit better. I'd give this a pass.
Now I think it's just the face we're waiting on?

Emerald Odyssey — An MMO Isekai RP (Now Accepting!)

I mean, it is based on an MMO, and not every MMO is WoW (again, Log Horizon was also based on an MMO—Everquest, iirc?), but there are still some core design philosophies to abide by. If the class wouldn't logically exist within the game before the transition to isekai, then I'd probably fight it. Things gotta make sense in-universe, y'know?

But yeah, going over it a second time now and I think the rest is fine. No real qualms about anything else, so once we resolve this issue (and you get an image), we're probably good to go.

Emerald Odyssey — An MMO Isekai RP (Now Accepting!)

@Sho Minazuki: I think that's more inherent in the type of game, isn't it? If we're using MMOs as a point of reference (at least as a starting point), then I'm not sure to what degree you can make it engaging beyond making the subarchetype consist of what are essentially physical casters (instead of mobile ranged DPS without cast times), and even then the way you've set up the class makes it really linear and hard to add anything on to. Like, if you have the core kit at some leveling point, then how do you add skills onto it? If every expansion would add something (or a few somethings) new, it becomes very difficult to given them new tools (as you yourself have stated here).

My personal recommendation would be to take the fundamental ideas of what you want in the class (as after a bit of though I think a physical caster-esque class could be interesting, designating them as 'snipers' is a bit of a misnomer) and break away from the 'box' that is the archetype you've started with. Since the class needs (new) room to grow once the RP starts, which way do you go from here?

That's my suggestion in this case.

@VitaVitaAR: Will go into a more detailed analysis once it's done, then.