If you’ve stuck with my inconsistencies and scheduling issues, then you probably have an idea of what Pariah is in design, background, and style— if you aren’t, let’s give you the fundamental basics.

Pariah (or Pariah Online) is a semi-linear collaborative story based around the concepts of anime serials like Log Horizon, Sword Art Online, Overlord, Familia Myth, and the grandfather of the “trapped in a game” framework, .hack//SIGN. You’ll notice there is only one real outlier in these influences in that of my mention of Familia Myth, which I’ll admit has more to do with me liking how that particular serial looks at things like guilds, dungeons, and progression in an interestingly designed way. Anyway, as you can imagine the central idea of this roleplay is the whole “trapped in a game” plot device and the hurdles that comes with it. But as with inspired settings, this is wholly original -- this is not set in any fandom and is not an amalgamation of them.

But with that said, I definitely still have ideas for Pariah and I hope for those who are newly interested and those who have put up with me are interested enough to invest their time and energy into writing collaborative stories in this setting. So let’s get on to the stuff I definitely know is important. How the “game” works, what the setting is comprised of, and the character applications.

Pariah is not like conventional virtual reality modules and as such does not use traditional levelling systems. Instead, Pariah holds a framework that is designed to allocate things with a state of the art progression system that revolves around benchmarks, achievements, and attributes. With this it can be simplified generally in an easy context; if you want to be skilled with a knowledge, item, or weapon then you need to put forward effort into experiencing the world with that aspect. With this system, level becomes simply a number used to mark progression and not an extent of a character's power. A character's power is entirely defined by the actions they took to reach a higher level. If the character spent most of their time using a sword and killing monsters then they will become proficient in using swords and killing monsters. Alternatively, if the character chooses to spend all their time baking bread then they'll make the best damn bread around.

The character will initially start with a basic level in all skills which will remain hidden. When the character begins to specialize into these skills by using them (i.e. swinging a sword, baking bread) the skill will become visible. Much like in real life, proficiency stems from practice and abilities are learned through experiment. With abilities, pressing a button simply does not work. The character must independently swing the sword or cast the spell and if the system registers their attempts correctly, it will perform the act. This system heavily favors independence and allows characters to be specialized how the user wishes to specialize them. It might not be efficient or even good but it is possible. Want to be a plate armor-wearing mage? Go for it. Want to be a rogue that drags aggro, sure! Point is, the player is free to build their character how they wish to.