Hisa's Garden

Hisa's Garden is a trapped-in-virtual-reality character game off the traditions of Sword Art Online, Log Horizon and Overlord. The protagonists are a small after-school club trapped by the final server shutdown of Altima, the great MMO of the previous generation.

Background

Released in 2022, Altima was among the first and by was by far the greatest child of the FullDive virtual reality MMO boom. Though hardly the most innovative as a game, Altima defended its incumbency from later products through an enormous advantage in content bolstered by powerful user creation and custom content tools. For nine years the game reigned supreme and for nine years it waned. Eventually, all things come to an end. With the announcement of its successor, HiSA Online, it was also quietly announced that the nigh abandoned world of Altima would finally be allowed to end.

Altima Archaeology Club

In a certain school in a certain prefecture of Amahara, there exists a small but unique school club – the Altima Archaeology Club. Though their reasons for being here are all different, they have been exploring the endless realms of this once thriving game, rambling through myriad realms filled with the works and monuments to the achievements of their forebears. Though it is a reality whose existence has been but an eyeblink to the real world, it is still a reality older than they are. Now, however, the world is ending and with it, so will the club. To celebrate and mourn the end of this reality, the club has gathered in their humble guild hall to wait out the very end.

But it didn't come.

The club members watched the stars swirl and the earth shake is if the whole world were tumbling into the void... and then the stars returned... as did the moon. The smell of grass and trees, the night of the wilderness wafted in through the windows, and you could no longer log out.

Guild Hall

In Altima, individuals or guilds could own real estate. These range from single rooms within larger buildings to vast palaces, dungeons or entire cities. Practically any real estate that wasn't for sale could be had if it is forcefully taken, purchased and then maintained. With sufficient resources and space, a piece of land can be expanded to include practically anything with any amount of functionality. In order to hold it, a maintenance had to be paid or else the title was lost. While much real estate has passed back into public domain in this way, some locations had treasuries so rich compared to their support costs that they would not have fallen out of ownership for years. Even when a location falls into ruin, it remains partially standing and can be explored or cleared of squatting NPCs.

In cases where the holders had enemies amongst other players or if the natural state of the area is to be occupied by NPC mobs, the territory might need to be held against incursion and would be designed with view of resisting attack. While a fortress might be built to withstand regular attacks by NPC goblins from a nearby hostile area, guild sieges were best known for being massive pvp events.

The Altima Archaeology Club has a virtual "club room" in the form of a modest wooden cottage located in the hinterlands of a peaceful area, fairly close to some standing stones (fast travel hub).

Characters (tentative)

The PCs are a small school club dedicated to Altima's VRMMO experience. You actually only joined Altima fairly recently – within the past year following the quiet announcement of its impending shutdown, and in any case long after the game had gone to slumber. In that time, you've played the game for the game's sake, learning mechanics and doing quests done innumerable times before by others. You've wandered a world gone silent and walked amongst the great works of your forebears.

Name:
You're from a school in Amahara but there can be a token foreigner.

Background
You're a high school student.

Plot Hook/Hobbies
Each character has a plot hook. I haven't decided whether these will be assigned or what but they will be unique per character. There may also be hobby slots to further differentiate characters.

Hook Examples:

• Founder of the club?
• Heir of a great guild?
• Designated shounenko?

Appearance
The appearance as well as vocal tone and even body odour of your character in game. This is, in all respects, your new body. In particular, it does not have to be the same gender nor remotely similar in any way to your old body which is now but a memory, though it does necessarily reflect the character's chosen race lines. Altima was notorious for its level of character customization. When you include upper "evolved" races, there are literally hundreds of race options and combinations, up to and including "beholders".

That said, most of the blatantly inhuman races came with heavy drawbacks in return to sometimes quite niche abilities or stat caps, with some being strictly academic choices or curiosities where optimization was concerned. Aside from that, there were real psychological reasons why most players opted to simply be enhanced or beautified versions of themselves, or at least played characters that maintained their real life gender and avoided gross deviations from human norms.

Talent

Talents account for the natural aptitude and experience you have for VR games. There are six in three categories – Skills, Smarts and Socials. These paired Talents have overlap but are also very complementary. While they are often both able to accomplish something, they will do so in significantly different ways and often with very different consequences. Of particular note, only one of the two in each set can be used to actually initiate an encounter but the other one always wins initiative. They can be seen as "active" and "reactive" counterparts to each other.

Every rolled action in the game is based on a pool of dice derived from the relative resources being thrown at the problem against a difficulty modified by the Talent the action is based on. Each dot you have in a Talent reduces your difficulty threshold by 1 from 10. This threshold of (10 – talent) is what you're actually using when rolling dice. Additionally, each dot of Talent provides quite significant bonuses to the character, the intent being to make them quite different from each other.

Regardless, rolling a 1 is always a failure and a 10 is always a success.

You start with one dot in everything and X dots to further distribute. The maximum number of dots you can have in one field is seven. Talents may drop temporarily due to damage but unlike White Wolf attributes raisable by exp, you should not expect permanent gains very often.

Skills

Skills cover your actual ability to play the core game, which is mostly about fighting computer controlled entities or other humans in a virtual reality. It is important for fighting, tolerance of builds with a high skill floors, negotiating dangerous environments and any task that requires speed, precision or timing.

Focus (Active Skills)

Focus is a matter of execution – it allows you to put a game plan into action with precision and timing even if you aren't a particularly precise or timely person normally - at least not without practice. When necessary, tasks requiring sheer patience and dedication also fall under Focus. One way of looking at it is as a measure of how hardcore a gamer you are. Characters approaching from the perspective of a genre veteran may well have high Focus as a result. Those with high levels of this Talent almost always log more hours than their peers. Focus may rarely serve as a Resource for some types of willpower checks.

Reflexes (Reactive Skills)

Reflexes are your ability to react quickly and effectively to enemy movements and sudden danger (if you see them coming). This correlates well with skill in fast-paced traditional video games, or real life athletics or martial arts. Nevertheless, FullDive ultimately transcends the limitations imposed by the human body and some otherwise unassuming people happen to have incredibly well wired brains for this interaction. Reflex based players are flexible and unparalleled in their ability to survive unexpected situations or blind encounters.

Smarts

Smarts cover the perceptual and intellectual aspects of gameplay in the virtual(?) reality of the world. These are the foundations upon which savvy players can build advantage, mould situations and win battles before they are fought.

Knowledge (Active Smarts)

Knowledge is the province of those who like to understand the game before playing it. Unsurprisingly, those with high levels of this Talent are often smarter (or more curious) than everyone else and usually spend a great deal of time doing research. While knowing is only half the battle and is sometimes found wanting for practical solutions, Knowledge covers a vast array of topics like encounter mechanics, build synergy, obscure locations, NPCs and items, or server politics and economics.

Perception (Reactive Smarts)

Perception is the ability to quickly and accurately perceive even amidst complex or distracting situations and is especially effective if the character also knows what they are looking for. This is of remarkable importance in combat since there's no defending against an attack that you do not see coming. While fairly passive in nature, a character with high situational awareness can mitigate damage or avoid dangerous situations entirely.

Socials

Socials govern your interaction with the characters and communities of the virtual world and participation in the unavoidable social aspect of massively multiplayer gaming.

Charisma (Active Socials)

Charisma is your ability to make an impression, draw a reaction, to be popular and welcome or hated and reviled with particular animosity – your mileage may vary. You can use it to fit in or to stand out though more often than not it will only bring the tsun out of the tsundere at first. This is obviously a very important talent for those who want to be visible leaders in some capacity – perhaps even more important than the smarts to actually do things yourself, so long as you have clever allies. Finally, Charisma also governs a person's deeper reserve of will, which is part of what makes them compelling people.

Manipulation (Reactive Socials)

Manipulation is your ability to get what you want out of social interactions; where Charisma governs the amplitude of reaction, Manipulation allows you to sway opinion one way or another. You can find out the intentions of others while hiding your own, withhold information, deceive, and bring out either the tsun or the dere from a tsundere as you prefer. It can also be used for things like manipulating aggro from enemies in combat. People with high Manipulation have a sharp air about them that can seem scary to bystanders.