Midna-Phobia

In-Game

As attention was brought to it the small creature on Belle’s shoulder perked up and stretched out its wings, roaring in attempt to look more intimidating. However it’s ‘roar’ sounded more like a small cry and was more cute than it was anything else. “Pina is most certainly not a beast.” Belle replied, her tail and ears sticking up for a moment in her huff before they returned to a more relaxed state. “He’s a Feathered Lidra and I got him about a year and a half into my game play from a limited time event and, frankly, he’s adorable.”

She smiled at that and turned to the dragon, the two gently pressing their heads together. “And, like I said, all the good fishing spots are in Undine territory, that doesn’t mean there aren’t others in neutral and all territories will have some source of water, water pretty much always means fish here. You’ll have to get a rod before you attempt to go fishing though and the only way you’re going to get one of those is if you save up some money and buy one. Right now the best way for you to make money is to fight some monsters.”

They’d made it to the field and she was doing a quick scan, low level monsters always spawned around here, it wouldn’t be too hard. “Alrighty.” Belle said as she walked back towards Sif and gave him a non too gentle push towards what looked like a wolf. “Go get it.” She instructed simply. If worse came to worse she could always jump in, these were one of the lowest difficulty monsters they were going to find.

Makeshift Reality: An Aincrad Roleplay

@Kalas Brought up an interesting idea in the Interest Check about time-skipping and skipping floors. Personally I hate time skipping significant chunks of time in an RP because then have to spend a lot of time playing catch up on what happened during the time skip and changes it made to your character personally it was one of the things I hated most about the anime, skipping the opportunity to actually develop concept and character in favour of story progression. I know, I'm an awful person and what kind of person plays a roleplay of an anime they don't like? I love the concept, I beleive it was poorly executed. I understand that we want to avoid people getting bored because we got to floor five and there are 95 to go so perhaps an option would be to simply make less floors? Since they only get to floor 75 anyway and only really visit a few floors in depth.

In-Game

“A couple of times after I’d been playing for about a year.” Belle answered, thinking about it. “Even though I’m not that aggressive of a player now I did have a faze where I wanted to fight, a lot, back before I decided to take the defensive path and go solo. I died. A lot during that year. It didn’t seem worth it after a while, I was too passive. Besides there’s quests… you can join the raiding parties, the risks are high, but so are the rewards if you’re good enough. But if fighting really isn’t your thin you can join a guild, act as a support, maybe just take up a trade like tailor or blacksmith.”

“But in saying that you don’t even really need to do anything if you don’t want to. They have other skills that don’t translate to battle like fishing, though the best fishing spots are all in Undine Territory since they like to control the large water sources since they can breathe underwater. Each Race has its own unique talents, Cait-Si are beast-tamers. We’re the only ones who can go out and have the option to make a monster our companion rather than kill it. But all the best ones are quest rewards.”

In-Game

“Nothing.” She answered simply. “I mean you can attack back all you like but they’ll take no damage. Don’t worry though you’ll never have to go into an enemy territory to get somewhere, there are certain Neutral Roads that are unclaimable, also every race’s main city, their starter town and the world capital at the center of the map are all cemented territories as well, otherwise the game runs the risk of an entire race having no safe zones, which would suck.” She turned slightly once Sif had equipped all his new gear and began leading the way towards the field.

“The only time you would is if you decided to join a raid party aiming to take more territory.” The girl explained as they walked. “Also, unfortunately style does not grant any battle extras.” She said with a small laugh. “Though you can see the benefits of any item in your inventory by clicking on it, the better the gear the better the benefits. Most of that gear I gave you has extra health and defence benefits, because that’s how I like to play but once you get the hang of fighting we’ll take you on a few quests, you can earn some gold and buy things with the benefits you’d like.” She informed him.

In-Game

Belle shook her head slightly, laughing lightly at the question. “There is some gender specific amour… yes; most of it is interchangeable though. If I wore it, then yes it would have a girl’s design. But to keep the item count lower and make trading easier they made most amour able to have a boy’s or a girl’s appearance. It does the same thing just looks different. Don’t worry it’ll look manly on you.” She assured him as she scrolled through her weapons. Most of her ‘light’ stuff was daggers of varying effects. She didn’t have much in the way of rapiers or something like that.

“I have… this.” She eventually said uncertainly as she sent the item over. It was classified as a light sword, but she’d never used it before personally. “I can’t say much about it though; I’ve never used it myself. Okay, you get all that stuff equipped and we’ll head out into the nearby field, it’s still in Cait-Si territory so we’ll be safe there... you do know about the territories and rules surrounding them?” She was certain that was in the manual, but she wasn’t sure where. Either way it wouldn’t hurt to remind him.

“The land is divided up into territories, some belonging to certain races, some neutral. In a territory owned by your own race you’re allowed to attack those from other races but they can’t attack you back. So if you got caught in enemy territory then you’re virtually helpless if one of them decided to attack you. Neutral is more free for all. It’s the primary goal of the game right now, seeing as they didn’t put in a ‘final boss’ because then the game would be over and then what? No it’s just a constant territory war.”

In-Game

Belle opened her mouth as if to say something but eventually closed it, pressing her hand to her forehead. “No that’s not what I… what weapons speciality did you pick? Cait-Si is your race, that’s something you can’t change unless you deleted this entire account and started over. But your class is the type of weapons you’re proficient with, you get to pick one when you were making a profile for the game but it can be altered if you simply starting using another weapons class enough. Like, for example I’m an archer class, with a light weapon sub class.”

She turned slightly, displaying the bow on her back to him and the small dagger at her hip. “I was asking to see if I had anything worth giving you. Here,” she clicked a final option and four notifications suddenly appeared on Sif’s menu, informing him he'd recived some items including new amour, gloves, boots and a belt. “There’s some better gear that will give you an advantage over other people with your experience.” She was still waiting to see what class he was though before giving him any of her weapons. If she had any he was compatible with that was. Usually unless she could use them herself she sold them for gold.

In-Game

Belle shrugged slightly. “Everyone was new at some point.” She assured him as she glanced over at the phoenix and smiled slightly. “Though some of us decided to read the manual before jumping right in. Either way there’s nowhere for you to go from here but up.” She brought up her menu by using a small flick of the hand downwards and tapped into a few screens before a small noise could be heard and Sif would see a small notification icon on his screen. “I’ve invited you to join my party.” She explained, hoping she didn’t have to explain the term ‘party’ to him.

There was being new at this game in particular, which did take a lot of time to master since it’s one of the first fully immersive games of its kind. And there was being new at MMORPGs all together. If he was the latter she really had her work cut out for her. “Just do what I did to bring your menu up, and follow the little ‘notification icon’ to the invitation screen. This way we can keep track of where the other is, see each other’s health bars, things like that. What class are you?” She asked absently as she began scrolling through more screens quickly.

Makeshift Reality: An Aincrad Roleplay

Real Name: Renee Carter
Avatar name: Kitty
Age: 13
Type: Beast-Tamer
Real life Appearance:

Real Life/ After the Mirror

Avatar Appearance:

Avatar

Skills:
-Acrobatics
-Light Metal Equipment
-One-Handed Dagger

Equipment:
-Light Metal Amour
-Blue Steel Dagger
-Healing Crystal [x7]
-Teleportaion Crystal [x4]
-Companion: Fire Hound (Beau)

History/Bio/Personality: If it's all the same I'd like to leave this stuff out since no one would know any of it anyway. I feel like it makes the experience more realistic this way.

In-Game

Pina looked up suddenly from Belle’s shoulder and her eyes turned to follow his gaze until they fell upon the boy approaching them. She realised, before he got close who he was, his player ID betraying him. However formal introductions were still always a nice touch. “I’m Belle.” She said, her voice gentle as if anything too sudden may startle him. “This is my friend Pina and you’re the one who the system paired me up with for the mentoring program aren’t you?” A rhetorical question really, they both knew that.

“Look… don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but I think the idea of permanently being paired up with someone is… stupid. So I have to reject the invitation to be your mentor.” She informed him, trying to be as delicate about it as possible. “But I’d be happy to form a party with you and be your mentor unofficially.” She offered, feeling maybe a little bad for the kid. She remembered what it was like to be new, it was a big scary world out here. Sometimes the people were a bigger danger than the monsters. Who knew, maybe this would be good for her, she’d gotten Pina later than she was supposed to, so it wouldn’t hurt to get some safe practice with him on lower level quests and monsters.

In-Game

"To Belle,
You have been selected as the mentor for Sif. He has used the mentor option to select a mentor for him, and you have been selected by the program to be his mentor. If you would like information on mentoring, please visit your nearest help center. Sif's current location is Lemea Town. Remember: Be nice to your mentee!
Best of luck,
Lemea Town Help Center"

Belle looked at the notification and sighed softly. She’d read about the new ‘mentor program’ whilst the updates had been loading. Personally it wasn’t something she liked the sound of. Not yet. It was still a beta experience in her opinion and the idea of ‘being bound to another player forever’ was something she could see causing a lot of outrage amongst players. It wouldn’t last. She was happy to help someone, but this was just a little over the top. She hadn't had any help when she’d started all the way back when it had been first released.

She kind of thought it was really lazy on the part of new players, especially considering this wasn’t a levelled game, they got rid of that function very early into the project to avoid players becoming too powerful. Everything here was skill based. It was about as equal field as a MMORPG was ever going to get in her mind. Sighing she decided to ignore the message for now. She was going to decline, but she could at least explain herself in person. “Looks like we’re heading back early.” She said, glancing at the small blue creature on her shoulder, who made a small noise in reply, causing Belle to smile.

Pulling out a teleportation crystal she appeared at the Lemae Town Square within seconds. It would have taken too long to travel from the woods she’d been in. Now the only challenge was finding this guy. He was the Cait-Si beginner village, rather than the main city so that made things a little bit easier. He had been near the help center just a few moments ago so maybe he was still there. She took off at a quick run, glancing at any character she passed as the small feathered dragon flew high above her.

As she arrived at the information center Belle stopped, looking around for this ‘Sif’ guy. She had no idea what he looked like but he would have a player identification above his head if you were looking for it. The small dragon glided down to rest comfortably on her shoulder. Turning Belle smiled again, running her hands through the creature’s feathers, momentarily forgetting herself in how real and soft an artificial creature felt. It still amazed her sometimes, just how real this all felt and how easily she was able to forget about her real life when she was here.