Changing Verses

This is to several of [profile] lilfuff‘s Prompts

I do not know the title(s) of the book(s) the narrator references, but I recall reading at least one, possibly two, about characters stepping into a D&D-like world.

The borders moved at night, usually on the nights when both the moons were dark.

It wasn’t like those books I’d read as a kid, the ones about living in a roleplaying game. There weren’t dark lines on the ground. The world hadn’t reshaped itself into hexes. And, whatever the rules were – and only a select few were actually told – we didn’t, quite, have to limit our movement to gridlines.

That much was different.

Considering what we had, though, I think I would have taken the solid black lines.

You’d wake up in the morning, and you’d have finally gotten used to the ‘verse you were living in. You understood the rules. Maybe you’d found someone who had been a fan, or who had all the books. They knew what was going on, and they could share. Or, if you were particularly lucky (or particularly unlucky), you’d ended up in a ‘verse you yourself knew by heart.

(Don’t think that could be unlucky? Think how popular Vampires have been recently. And Zombies. Those ‘verses aren’t any fun at all).

So you knew what was going on, again, enough to function. And then you’d wake up to find that the border had shifted, and your house – or your place of work, or the corner grocery store, or all of it – was suddenly in another ‘verse.

Sometimes the borders were easy to cross and you could manage commuting between ‘verses to get to work (if your job still existed). Sometimes, however, they were damn near impossible, and you’d find yourself on an epic quest for The Right Key just so you could get a gallon of milk.

Crossovers weren’t nearly as much fun as they’d seemed in the fics.

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0 thoughts on “Changing Verses

  1. Oh no, a ‘find the right key’ quest for milk? The DM is cruel, very cruel. 🙂 Sounds like a fun place to watch, maybe visit, but not to live in.

  2. <giggles> Having played in a larp with genre zones, where taking a walk across town with some friends was problematic because what you were and who your friends were sometimes shifted at genre boundaries … no, thank you, do not want to live there.

      • It was certainly an interesting experiment. It had some issues both with mechanics and as a game, but also some good moments, which IME is what people remember and tell stories about later.

          • Yup. They’re mostly experimental, one way or another. If nothing else, very few of them are ever extensively debugged and retested and … And that doesn’t even some pretty bad ones from having excellent moments.

              • You could find one to play! (I am not either too old to be running around in the woods trying to hit people with birdseed and plumbing supplies.)

                  • Thwacking people with plumbing supplies is more satisfying than playing rock-paper-scissors. 🙂 (Can’t speak to your local games in particular.)

                    • <big eyes> Have you tried it? (But yes, I would probably not be so fond of boffer larps had I started at ~thirty with one that was mostly populated by late teen / early twenties males. I’m more fond of the running-around-in-the-woods part, honestly. In my limited experience, rps games are mostly indoors and/or in the city. The larping I did in college was ~all toy gun games on campus, no thwacking people, and one-shot rather than campaign … switching styles involved a surprising amount of culture shock.)

                    • I haven’t tried it, no, but I really like RPS Larp for the social interaction and politicking and costumes.

                    • There are boffer larps that have all those things! And also hitting people with padded sticks. And trees, and stars. Proportions vary wildly, though. Your local game(s) might be mostly about the thwacking. (Note to self: Consider dragging out for Intercon.)

                    • Should you have interest in dragging me at some point, MA and Maryland are both within dragging range.

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