MS Point Adventure

[Teto 2609]

MS Paint Adventures are back in style.

 

 

Our new friend stands in the middle of an open field. The rolling grass hills stretch off in every direction through the sprawling dystopian metropolis known as Tokyo City! Seedier and seedier people inhabit the alleys and pubs and stuff. You're just a pretty young human being with nothing to lose except your father and your life, which are both pretty important and so it's not nothing at all. You're pretty vulnerable really as Tokyo City's citizens go. You're in the main street, neon signs hanging from the branches of trees reading "Beware of the dog" and "Emergency phone in case you get scared"

 

What is this person's name?

[T1g 1503]

Richard (dick)

[Teto 2609]

 

Finally, a name to the face! Dick Dickinson. Fortunately, because of the predominantly Japanese population of Tokyo City, you don't get many jokes about your name. Though fellow westerners note the odd choice of name for a fine young woman like yourself. It's almost like the person who named you just simply assumed male because they're a little bitch. Your Japanese name, for the sake of fitting in, is Dikata Dickashita.

 

DiDi's Bizarre Adventure begins.

 

Around the precinct there are shops winding down for the end of the day. Your father is ill and needs medicine which is why you're out here. You're not overly fond of your father, but he provides with his uncanny luck in online gambling. It's a risky life, but somehow it holds up. You stay in the apartment above his, in the treefort in Cherry Tree 293, in the cavernous B sector; the lower level of the metropolis. You are in B sector now. Your father will die without medicine, and you have the money for it. The medicine shop is right there to the west, right in front of you. The money is in your hand.

[Knuckle 484]

Practice wizardry.

[T1g 1503]

Politely ask if they are open, and, if yes, if they can sell you the medicine you need

[Teto 2609]

 

Dikata gazes at the neon lights, and in them she sees the glow of magic as she used to see it pictured in her mind's eye when she used to read fantasy books in her youth. She once dreamt of escaping, but such whimsy is long gone. Her life is resigned to prolonging the slow death of her father. Magic doesn't exist, and least of all in a hellhole like this. No righteous god would let his world deteriorate to this extent. Wizards and fair judgement are dreams, and dreams are for dreamers. Dikata knows and accepts the world she's a part of. She shakes the idea of magic out of her head.

[T1g 1503]

Check if her father has any rich people indebted to him so you can get adopted by them

[Knuckle 484]

[Teto 2609]

 

"Yes, we are open anytime for you, Dikata. Is your father well? Your visits have been more frequent recently."

"He's deteriorating. It's all I can do to keep him alive at this point. Ever since my mother died, he's become more and more reclusive, as you know. He still provides with his gambling, but I worry that his mind will slip and he'll lose that, too. And then we're both damned."

"Dikata, I hate to say it, but your mother would hate to see you in this position. She always told me that she wanted the best for you, and she tried so hard. But with your father's illness she found it so hard to make the best for you, and I think we both agree that your well-being is what lead her to an early grave. Don't let that be for nothing. I can take the medicine to your father on your behalf. Just go out and live!"

"I know you care, and I believe you. But I'm all he has. I might not like it, but I'll keep by him. No human being should die alone."

 

 

Dikata walked away without looking into Mrs Takahashi's eyes. Those kind eyes, so much like her own mother's. Why am I so stubborn? Why am I holding onto this? I could have said it this time. I could have said yes. But if I had... what then? Am I too comfortable in my way of life that I'm too scared to change? I ask myself this every time, but I can never bring myself to answer it. This can't go on forever. I want it to be over, but I'll never feel ready. For all my awareness, I'm all too reluctant to face the reality of it. Still my mind drifts to fantasy and escapism.

 

Dikata has the medicine. Her father awaits in his apartment in Cherry Tree 293 in the residential wing of B sector. 

Check if her father has any rich people indebted to him so you can get adopted by them

 

Dikata's father, while a bit of a good-for-nothing, is a wise and patient gambler. He knows the game, and knows who to play and how to beat them. He picks his bets and his opponents well. He's not indebted to anybody nor is anyone indebted to him. He knows to play only those who he can trust to repay him. He's worked at this a long time. Dikata is 24 years old.

[T1g 1503]

Remember what the city's social, economical, and political situation is like because you mentioned it was dystopian earlier and details on that would be nice

[Teto 2609]

Tokyo City is the grotesque marriage of the rural and urban environment. The lower sectors, descending into the earth from A to D, resemble what you would expect of a fox burrow, held together by metal frames. Engineers and environmental specialists are among the richest of the lot, and they live in A sector on the surface, where scientific and political progress is done. Natural light has been replicated to near perfection, such that plant life is sustainable even in the lower sectors. The sectors accommodate different kinds of plant life, with sector D accommodating fungi and the like.

 

The only thing stifling about the air in B sector is the atmosphere. Imagine a bright summer day, green grass, and a controlling overseer making you sit still, sapping your will to take advantage of the surroundings. Built on the reverence of nature, people are ruled by their obligation to respect and sustain plant life, putting it's maintenance before even their own motives and dreams. In mankind's attempts to marry technology and nature, they instead wound them together into a whip and rope to suppress the will of the people.

 

People work to maintain the ecosystem and the supporting mechanical framework into which it's built. Economically the city is self-sufficient. Politically the whole show is run from A sector. A sector is the combination of city and nature that we're familiar with; zones for plant life and zones for concentrated city. It's bright and clean, and reaps the rewards of having 3 full functioning ecosystems below it that provide food and medicines. Instead of laboring in fields and orchards like the people in sectors B to D, they focus on research and control of the city. Mostly control and maintenance though. They have a good thing going. Sector A has attained utopia; the beautiful flower that blooms from the soil, using nutrients from fallen leaves and animals to grow. Sectors B to D are the providers, and their obligation maintains the balance.

 

Dikata works in Orchard 34, a short shuttle ride from the residential tree zones. They wear some kind of mechanism which, with some sort of algorithm, estimates their relative work done, and converts it into points which they can exchange for goods like medicine, or that they can use for recreational activity like gambling or what have you. While it's not necessary to work the fields, it's the only way to bring money into circulation, since it's the only government-recognised work available. All businesses run on the exchange of points ultimately earned by field workers. You can work in a shop, but all your money was earned for you by the field workers. They are always reminded of the debt they owe those who maintain the Balance. Points are taken back out of circulation through meaningless taxes which serve no real purpose except maintaining the economic balance. The rich and poor are taxed proportionally to their income, and so nobody can get too poor, but progress cannot be made because conversely the rich cannot get richer, and so they can never be rich enough to change their social standing in any meaningful way.

 

Sector B's market place has the seedy atmosphere of a dangerous metropolis-like marketplace, with the resemblance of a frontier-town. Wooden buildings like saloons and stuff, with rusted metal frames and sliding doors. Horses pulling carts reinforced with steel. I dunno.

 

 

I am making this up as I go along I literally have no idea how dystopias work, but this will do for mine.

I just said "rolling fields" and then "dystopian city" immediately after as a confusing joke and now look at me go.

[T1g 1503]

Teto would you be interested in DMing a DnD game or some similar table top rpg?

 

Because I am beginning to think you should. Being able to improvise is actually a really important trait for a DM, especially when you don't want to use an existing module, adventure, or pregen campaign like what i did (although i did make up a lot of the stuff in my campaign)

 

like holy shit this is actually a really interesting city

[Teto 2609]

((Yeah, I've thought about it. I'd probably just try and run a pregen first off, and allow for a bit of manipulation the more I go on with it. Like the other night in this Warhammer Fantasy campaign I'm paying with some friends, we were going through a mine (taken over by an evil witch and now occupied by wolf-riding goblins) and we started thinking on how to best approach the first room with a bunch of wolves and 2 goblins. In the end we decided to use a familiar to find some wolf piss, and we did. We got a vial of wolf piss from a small puddle in the hallway, and rubbed it all over the elf person who had the animal taming skill. We then charged the goblins, killing the first with an arrow through the heart. The second fell from another arrow to the arm, and a sleeping spell. The piss-soaked player stood over the goblin, thrust their sword right into it's skull, splitting it in half. All the while the elf stared at the wolves, and, using some bonuses to intimidate and also being covered in alpha-wolf piss, totally dominated the wolves. Obviously that isn't accounted for in the module, but taking into account that kind of variation is something I'd like to do.

 

I'm currently looking at the rulebook for Eclipse Phase, which is basically the anime Kaiba; body swapping and whatnot. You can download that for nothing on their site. I also have a copy of Call of Cthulhu 6th edition pdf but I'm not really looking at it much for now.))

Dikata waits in the mud track between the medicine shop and the saloon. The saloon is filling up. Dikata looks up to the distant ceiling, far enough away that she cannot hear the great fans that keep the air from stagnating. The natural lights are being dimmed by degrees, and it's moving into twilight. After all, the plants need to have their daily cycle remain constant. Summer is moving into autumn now, and so B sector will wind down for their winter, while C sector readies for their summer, to keep everything in good supply.

 

Father is still waiting. It occurs to you that maybe he's not really in such great need of his medicine right this moment. He can wait, right? You could have a wander around the main street and take in the sights. Maybe have a drink. Father's medicine can wait, or can it?

 

What will Dikata do?

((Wont be relevant to this city, but I imagine that if there was a city like this that made it daylight 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, every year, then that'd be a good dystopian-like way of keeping people from rebelling. If people don't have the day and night cycle they don't have a good sense of time, and so they can't structure their time and create order, and so they can't discipline themselves enough to have meetings and make plans. Just a thought occurring to me.))

[T1g 1503]

wander around the main street for a while and take in the sights

[Teto 2609]

 

The main street is home to many of the essential places like government supermarkets, bars, and garden centres; or long-standing family-owned businesses like the Takahashi Medicine shop. The main street leads south from the shuttle station toward the towering shopping mall that reaches the better part of the height of the south wall. While tall at 11 storeys, it is also quite thin. Climbing plants span the height of the mall, and one would think they could predict the age of the mall by the height of the ivy, but the ivy covered it top to bottom, and Dikata had spied workers trimming the ivy from time to time. It houses most of the retail stores in the sector B commercial centre. Dikata has little knowledge of it, but knows that it has a few book stores. Being government-owned stores, however, the items sold there are very selective and samey. Approved fiction and factual books are for sale there; books about people rather than places, and factual tomes of gardening and biodiversity, and other skills necessary to life in Tokyo City. People read when they need to, and fiction isn't well recognised.

 

Stretching out from the main street are narrower streets that house all sorts of gambling establishments and seedier places. Among them however are curious speciality shops which sell items otherwise difficult to obtain in mainstream stores. Dikata knows of at least one book shop among these that sells material pertaining to fantasy and far-off places little-known by most citizens. They are aware of the outside world, but are told little of it; and instead focus on their own community needs. Dikata's mother brought her to this shop several times in her youth when she had enough money to afford the steep prices. Books of this nature are from before the city was closed off to development some years ago, and so are in finite supply.

 

Dikata herself hasn't had the money to afford any books from these places for the majority of her life after she left school and joined the workforce, and so she hasn't been back to the shop since then. Remembering her mother's passion for fantasy and the outside world, Dikata felt a pang of guilt deep in her heart for her turning from it and resigning to the daily routine adopted by most citizens of B sector.

 

All the roads are made from compacted dust. Rain is not often deposited over the centre. Most plant life is cared for by the people who work and live here.

 

Beyond the alleys are office buildings, and further still beyond those are apartment complexes for employees working in the centre. Community centres are spread throughout this residential strip, and the strip surrounds and encloses the centre, limiting it's growth.

 

Beyond that are the fields, orchards, vineyards, and the more residential estates in and around, for the workforce and less well-off citizens who can't afford to live in the centre's apartment complexes. The shuttle tracks span out into the countryside like the veins of a leaf, splitting off from the northward line and into the countryside.

 

((I'll try and draw this sometime))

 

Dikata doesn't often go out by herself to bars, and instead stays home to read or write her own stories. Her friends in the workforce live in various complexes throughout the rural component of the B sector. You don't know of any of them who might be in the centre at this moment, and you have no mode of communication to connect with them at this time. You are in a funny mood, however, and you feel a bit more adventurous/reckless than you usually might.