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!