A Reality of a Different Color

You've been waiting eagerly all week and finally, the day is here. A small white box is waiting for you in your mailbox, the blocky PlanarGames logo printed across the side: it must be the new phone accessory you ordered, for Chromata, PlanarGames' brand new science fantasy ARG game - or as the PR copy calls it, "Meta-Reality Game". The box - if it's what you ordered, which of course it is - contains a bluetooth-enabled "meta-reality" headset that lets you see the game as a real-world overlay.

You're not sure what makes it different from "augmented reality" or "virtual reality", but the idea sounds amazing. Loren - your best friend, even though you only talk online - already got one and says it's exactly as amazing as it sounds, so of course you went ahead and bought one. (They're not even that expensive, somehow.)

By the way, you are a:
[] Him
[] Her
[] Them

and your current employment is:
[] College student
[] Retail clerk
[] Office worker
[] Unemployed

...but that's not important right now, is it? Hurrying back inside, you tear open the packaging and retrieve what looks like a small, translucent over-ear earbud with a small wand thing sticking off of the front and a tiny power button in the back. There's no instruction booklet - and you already installed the Chromata app on your phone, but all it indicated was that you needed an MR device attached.

Now, you have your MR device and can hopefully get past that error message. You open the app on your phone and try pushing the little power button on the earpiece, then when nothing happens, hold down the power button for a couple seconds. A little light blinks a couple times at the end of the probably-an-eyepiece, then the "No MR Device" screen disappears, replaced a moment later with "MR Device connected".

Then nothing.

You wait a couple moments longer to be sure, then shrug and put the thing over your ear, adjusting it a little until it sits comfortably in place. The little wand-stick isn't nearly long enough to be visible while you're actually wearing the thing, and you start to doubt that maybe this thing really was a scam… for maybe two seconds after you stop fiddling with it, before you feel a tiny zap and find yourself staring at a Character Creation screen.

In mid-air. Right in front of your face.

It is, as Loren said, exactly as amazing as it sounded.

After you spend a few minutes oo-ing and aa-ing over the MR display - it stays fixed in one place in the room! you can turn a full circle around and it stays in one place, just like your table! - you start to look at how character creation actually works.

The first section is for your Class, which determines your available pool of abilities and avatar outfits. There are three character classes available: Astralist, Martialist, and Spiritualist. You take a look at the descriptions for each one. (Which takes another minute to figure out how to do until you realize that yes, you do just poke the virtual buttons floating in mid-air. That tiny headset must have an amazing motion detector, too.)

Astralist looks like it's the Mage type of the three, focusing on casting spells that have direct effects on your target. It would be good for a high-powered glass cannon build, or a support healer - but you don't have a group to party with. The example character is a woman wearing a knee-length slim-fitting dress under a long swooping cloak, in red with orange trim.

Martialist is definitely the Fighter type. Its abilities all look like physical attack moves and self-buffs. You're not sure how that's going to work with the whole system being some kind of virtual reality ARG, though. Actually punch at imaginary things floating in virtual space? The app on your phone doesn't seem to be an interface at all, just a link-up to the MR headset. The example character is a man wearing a jacket styled like leather armor, tall leather boots, and a pair of brass knuckles, in white with purple trim.

Spiritualist, on the other hand, you can't decide if it's more like a spirit summoner or like a monster trainer. The abilities seem to be for improving and commanding companion creatures to do stuff for you and you start out with one for free, but it's not clear if you're supposed to capture new companion creature spirit things, or if new types of summons are abilities you can earn later - or even if you only get the one and are supposed to train it to be more powerful. The example character is a woman wearing a pair of leather trousers, a lace-up vest and heavy leather gauntlets, in blue with black trim.

Besides your character class, there's also seven different Colors - which it takes you a good few minutes to realize are the equivalent of character stats. They appear to determine your strengths, weaknesses, and types of abilities you can use, but it's not that clear what exactly they do.

For one thing, you start out picking only one color for your character, instead of the more typical method of having points distributed between them. The info box also says you'll get to pick a secondary color at levels 5 and 10, and tertiary colors at levels 15, 20 and 25. (That makes you wonder what kind of a level cap this game has, if it's unrolling your basic stats over the first twenty-five levels….)

And for another, the colors don't have any text description, just icons. The game's too new to have a fan wiki yet, or at least you can't find anything with an internet search, so you're just going to have to guess at the symbolism or whatever.

So! What kind of a character do you make?

Class
[] Astralist. Hell yeah, let's do some virtual magic!
[] Martialist. You do like punching and stabbing your virtual monsters, like a badass.
[] Spiritualist. Supporting and commanding a loyal companion sounds ideal.

Color (Primary)
[] Red - A fist wreathed in flames
[] Orange - An arrow with swirled lines trailing off the feather
[] Green - A tree growing from a rock
[] Blue - A head in profile with small bubble-like circles within it
[] Violet - An eight pointed star with sparkles
[] Black - A black cat in shadow
[] White - A quartz-like crystal spar

This is my first quest ever as QM so please forgive me for flailing around while getting the hang of things!

You're a woman in your mid twenties. You have a job doing email customer support for a small company and you live in a single-bedroom apartment, on the edge of downtown.

I'm currently planning to leave the vote open until after my dinner (so about 4 more hours) and then close it to write up and post the second stage of character creation tonight. In the meantime, I wrote up a bit of an extra!

An excerpt from an article about Chromata, dated a week before release.

...

The secret, of course, is no secret at all. Chromata and VR are being mentioned in the same breath wherever you go, with advertisements and hopeful players alike enthusing over the low price tag of this new "meta-reality device" - the key ingredient and selling point for the new ARG. But information about how this "MRD" works is non-existent, even this close to release day. What we do know is it's a small device - small enough to fit in the palm of your hand - that fits over your ear with a headphone speaker for game audio and some kind of visual projector.

Even without the virtual reality, however, what we've seen so far of Chromata is visually impressive. Characters wear detailed, vividly-colored outfits that range from classic fantasy robes with detailed embroidery, to sleek futuristic catsuits sporting glowing cyber-stripes. And the monsters in the world come in just as wide a range - a pack of fiery hell-hounds leaping out from a man-hole, a crystalline wyvern diving between skyscrapers, and a lethal-looking many-limbed robot assembling itself out of a junk-yard are the most notable examples from the recent trailer. The monsters and fantasy outfits all have a faint glow of color to them, like holographic projections, which in the trailers proves effective at countering the inevitably awkward "CG over real footage" problem of VR overlays.

But while it looks impressive, that's all we have to go on. PlanarGames has been notoriously closed-mouthed about the mechanics of the game. Nothing about classes, stats, mechanics, or even the game's final interface are anywhere to be seen. With the unbelievably low price of the MRD and the free phone app, however, that mystery seems less of a risk and more an added spice of anticipation. How will this new VR headset work? Will it work? Whether it does or not, what kind of game will it be?

After poring over the options for a while, you settle on Violet Spiritualist. Having a summoned companion to do the fighting for you sounds safer than melee fighting or traditionally low-defense spellcasting - especially if you're going to be playing solo. Choosing between Blue and Violet was harder - but while you're pretty sure Blue is a mind or intelligence kind of stat, the star icon for Violet is impossible to figure out and you're intrigued. Maybe you'll pick Blue as your first secondary in five levels.

The interface in front of you dissolves in a curtain of sparkles, reforming with an image of… you. Well, someone that looks a lot like you, in a vague kind of way. Your build, your hair, your face shape - and currently wearing an outfit a lot like the example Spiritualist character. Leggings, a laced-up vest (it's really more like a bodice that actually covers your shoulders), a pair of boots, all in a bright violet.

As a matter of fact, the whole interface has turned violet, although a pale, less vibrant version. And next to the image of you-as-your-character (you think that's what it is) are three empty boxes, labelled Abilities.

You look between the two for a moment, then nod to yourself and decide to check out the starter outfits first. Besides the Renn Faire get-up it gave you to start off, there's also a lighter violet fitted jacket that flares out in long panels to the back of your - your character's knees and a low V neck, and a darker violet leather jacket with matching leather pants and glowing violet star emblems on the shoulders - it looks more Matrix than Lord of the Rings.

There's no indication that the choice of outfit has any mechanical effect in the game, it's probably just aesthetic.

[] [Outfit] The lace-up vest.
[] [Outfit] The low-cut long jacket.
[] [Outfit] The leather jacket.

That done, you go through the available starting Abilities. It looks like you can pick any combination of three that you want, instead of having to pick, say, an attack, a defense, and a support move. As you expected, most of your abilities are really for your summoned creature - which you don't have yet. Maybe you won't get to see it until you've finished character creation, since you don't get to choose it.

Choose three:
[] Attack - Command your companion to attack your target.
[] Shield - Command your companion to summon a defensive Violet shield.
[] Beast - Transform your companion into a Beast. Beast form cannot use energy attacks but is immune to them.
[] Wisp - Transform your companion into a Wisp. It cannot attack or be attacked in Wisp form.
[] Astral - Transform your companion into a Spirit. Spirit form cannot use physical attacks but is immune to them.
[] Flare - Use your companion as a focus point to create an AoE blast of your own Violet energy.
[] Swap - Change places with your companion.

Judging by the way the ability descriptions use Violet, colors aren't just stats, but also elemental types. Some of them are obvious in retrospect - Red is fire, Green is probably some kind of earth or nature thing, Black is clearly darkness - but yours? Violet? What kind of an element is a sparkly star? It would be way too overpowered of them to offer something like a celestial element right at the beginning.

Besides, you were pretty sure that your color choice was supposed to affect what abilities you get - and you got several transformation options. Maybe that's the Violet thing? Werewolf master, element of… transformation? You know what, you're going to leave the speculation until you start actually playing.

Once you've picked your outfit and your abilities, there's only one thing left to choose…

A name.

[] [Name] Write-in