SEPTEMBER 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to September's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: CHAOS.

All Test Drive Memes contain at least one clue to the Deerington's upcoming in-game events for the month! Keep your eyes peeled! But...not literally.

Characters may die during TDMs, but you do not need to count it towards a game-canonical death unless you want to. Consider it a freebie. All TDMs can be considered game canon as TDMs introduce minor aspects about the world of Deerington that can be revisited by characters later on in the game. You may also use TDMs for your application writing sample as well as AC.

CW: Torture (emotional and possibly physical), claustrophobia, potential weapon violence (guns, knives, spears, flamethrowers, etc.), possible body horror, emotional manipulation, emojis
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Prompt Three
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

DICE BLOCK

In case everyone hasn't had enough fun and games to last a life time in the good old town of Deerington, apparently this month brings you one more. Maybe you were just walking through the door to get into your own house, or maybe you were leaving from work — the moment you walk through any door, you'll find that it doesn't open up to the place you were looking for. Instead, you find yourself standing on a giant game board and you seem to be right on the start space. The doors already disappeared behind you, don't bother trying to run back. The only exit is at the end and you'll have to hope you make it there.

But you aren't alone! With you are other unfortunate souls who hopefully weren't just looking for a quick bathroom break. Some of them might look a little worse for wear. What happened? Well, looks like you may have to ask later, because you'll only really have time to exchange names if you don't already know one another before a large screen you didn't notice was hanging from the ceiling will light up. There's a giant image of a typical six-sided game die that's completely stationary. For the moment. Shortly after, a voice will come on over the speakers, echoing in the otherwise fairly empty room. It's overly cheerful, grating, and giggles at the end of every sentence.

Welcome, players! Is this your first time? Yes? Great!
Would you like to hear the rules?
Okay!
Each player will take a turn rolling their die.
You can then move the number of spaces shown — but only those spaces!
You can move forward, backward, right, and left, but not diagonally!
Each space will have a symbol.
The spaces with a clover are lucky spaces! Congratulations! You'll gain some fortune, whether it's an extra turn, moving ahead more spaces, or gaining an important item you can take with you on your journey!
The spaces with the skull are unlucky spaces! Boooooo, that's too bad! You'll befall some grave misfortune here. Hopefully it won't set you back too badly! Make sure to avoid these at all costs!
The spaces with a chest are item spaces! Here you'll be able to win prizes, like medical supplies or weapons! Maybe even a small something from home! Wouldn't that be nice?
Your goal is to make it to the end alive! Good luck! And remember to have lots of fun!

The first player's name will pop up on the screen, before the die will begin to randomly blink between numbers. Eventually it will land on a number. Once the player moves forward and lands on their space, it will repeat for the second player. This will go on until one (or both players) reach the end!

When they said to make sure to not land on an unlucky space, they certainly weren't kidding. Each one seems to come with some sort of random punishment or horror; it can be as light as having to move back a few spaces or go back to the start, or as heavy as breaking a random bone or feeling a blade slice open your skin. Maybe you'll start to slowly turn into a monster or become filled with the desire to kill your opponent. Anything can happen, but it's always going to be bad.

Players who reach the end will be able to go through the door and end up back wherever it was they were intending to go in the first place. Players who lose? Well... It's back to the beginning for you. Time to wait for the next player. Better luck next time.

DANCE DANCE

But what's behind door number two! People are going to start to get tired of walking around in their own houses at this rate. Even if you managed to escape the board game horrors, this new room you've found yourself in doesn't seem much better. In the center is a large TV screen and on the floor in front of it are two pads with arrows pointing in four directions; up, down, left, and right. Anyone who is familiar with Dance Dance Revolution might feel right at home! But fear not, there are instructions on the screen for you to follow if you need them.

Two players only, and you'll have to work together! It's a team dance and you'll want to encourage each other to stay perfectly in sync. The doors won't open until you finish, and should you mess up? Well, look up, friend!

The ceiling is covered in sharp, painful looking spikes and every time someone misses a beat or steps on the wrong arrow, the ceiling will drop down a foot. It's pretty high up there, but miss more than three arrows and you're gonna start to really feel the pressure. The spikes are looking a lot bigger and more ominous than they did when they were all the way at the top. Hopefully you've got some good rhythm.

But this is a good lesson in teamwork! Even the worst dancers might be able to get out of here okay if they've got someone who they can work together with. Maybe their perfect scores will make up for your two left feet. You can only hope you're both so lucky.

THAT'S NOT A "MEH" FACE!

Everyone loves to get a text, don't they? Of course they do! Which is why someone has been kind enough to send out a little special something to everyone's Fluid's this month! There's no name you recognize — in fact, it doesn't even look like a name is attached at all. The sender's identification only looks like this: 🥳

The message you've gotten is pretty simple though! Each person has received a text message with one emoji inside. No rhyme or reason applied! That's... random, isn't it? You can try to text back, but no one will answer, and so you might as well just close your device and forget about it.

Every person who received a text will find that their personality starts to shift. They begin to take on some aspect that's tied to the emoji they received. Did you get a simple smiley face? You're happy and relaxed for the time being! Or maybe a silly face will lead you to become more of a prankster. An eggplant could have someone feeling like sexting a Special Someone. An angry face might get you really riled up, even towards people you love. Did you get a knife? Time to start stabbing. A gun? Those people around you look like really good target practice...

The options are endless. Each emojis effects will last for twenty-four hours or until another emoji is sent from the same user.

Character Arrival

You can read how all characters arrive in Deerington here.

There is not a collective "all these characters showed up at the exact same moment" occurrence in Deerington. Since characters fall asleep, die, or pass out at various times throughout all their worlds, it wouldn't make too much sense if they arrived in game all at the exact same time. There should be some discrepancy between character arrival, whether by a couple minutes, hours, or even days up to a week.

The players are entirely in control of how/when they want to play their characters arriving in Deerington. For TDMs, you can play it like your character has just arrived and that can be maintained as your game canon, or you can wait until game events for that moment. Or you don't need to acknowledge it at all. The flexibility for character allows a bit more of an organic feel to the character arrival situation, so please play it to whatever feels right for you.

If you are interested in having an "arrival" introduction for one of your TDM prompts, you are more than welcome to explore that option.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The dimension cannon? But that's before---

[That's before she met Martha. That was before she found the Doctor again and they saved the world. The Doctor wouldn't want her sharing information about the future----at least, he wouldn't if he knew who she was.]

Do you know who I am?

[Rose shakes her head no.] Sorry, no. Usually, it's vice versa. I know people who've never met me and can't tell 'em anything but a code name.

But I trust you, does that count?

[Martha smiles]

Yeah, that definitely counts. I'm Martha, by the way, Martha Jones. You'll work it out when you meet me.

[she reaches down to take Rose's hand. That's what the Doctor would do when they were in bad straights, so why not do it now, with Rose? They could get through this.]

Can't be too hard a game!

[Shakes her hand and holds it!] Yeah, it'll be a breeze! We can take it slow and practice until you're ready, okay?

[Since she'd rather not point out that there might be electrical shocks for missteps or something nastier.]

No, I think I can---it can't be that bad. It's not like our lives are on the line, anyway. Just a game until we get out.

[Martha gives Rose a look. Right? She is right, right? This can't be as dangerous as it feels, can it?]

[Rose just gives her a tight grin.]

Things here aren't what they seem. Their idea of a game last month has been surviving in the woods hunting each other. And I wasn't kidding about that demons thing. If you follow their rules, they give you presents. And if you don't... yes, you can die. [Taps the machine with her foot.] Pretty sure that's not the case here, but my friends have been pretty seriously injured or worse before. I'm the last person to suggest caution, but yeah, let's not take it lightly, okay?

Hunting each other? For their amusement?

[Oh, Martha is not about this at all]

There has to be a way to stop them! We can't just play their games!

I agree, but they are able to control puppets made of void, and create monsters. There's ways around most of their evil, but things like this? [Rose just gestures.] Daleks don't give you a way out. Sometimes it's better to take it when it comes.

[She remembers the game station and Weakest Link and Anne-droid a little too well.]

I don't believe that.

[She reaches out and takes Rose's shoulder.]

I've seen you stand up to the entire Dalek fleet, to their emperor and creator without any fear. How can you give in to something like this? This is just...it's just a game. You're stronger than this!

[Snorts and pulls Martha in so she can whisper in her ear.]

Because I'm picking my battles. This IS just a game. What they want is horror. What they want is tears, fears, and people lashing out at each other. They don't want cooperation or people refusing to be scared, and when they get that, they get bored.

[She glances up looking for a camera of some kind and just shrugs, back to normal volume.]

Not everything's horrible, yeah? First time I was here, they had a sort of blueberry festival goin'. T'was nice! Could do without the giant sandworms though. [Or centipedes, or wasps, or the kill or be killed bullshit that Rose was always defying, of course.]

You ready to give it a go?

[Martha hadn't thought of that. Rose is playing along. Martha trusts Rose, she's seen her do some really amazing things. She's not about to question her if she knows what she's doing.

She steps up to the game pad, then leans down to pull off her shoes.]

Have you ever played this before?

Nope! [Brightly cheerful all the same!] But I was a backup dancer for my boyfriend Jimmy's band when he convinced me to run out on school. I'm good at synchronization. Mostly how I got through gymnastics so well as a kid. Floor routines.

And the directions are right there. [Points to the paper.] Sure you don't want to try to practice first?

Do you think it will do us any good?

Yes. [Firm nod.] Unless... what are you just coming off of in your time?

[Rose and the Doctor have been eating fine, her arms are mostly healed, though there are so messed up track marks all over them from July, and she didn't get seriously injured in the last month, and since she and the Doctor had each other's backs for most of it, they didn't have any broken bones or extreme hunger and fatigue. But Rose has spent the last two years almost solely meeting people surviving under end of the world conditions. Even if Alex hadn't died, she'd have been hesitant to put more pressure on his ankle. And for all she knows, Martha has claustrophobia or -- well, she said she saw her face down the daleks. Daleks that should be gone, but they never were, were they? Funny that, and Rose still thinks the Doctor must be mistaken about Gallifrey. If he didn't kill all the daleks with his weapon, there's no way he killed children. It's impossible for him. Though tricking himself into thinking he did? That she could believe.]

[Anyway...]

S'just arrows, so I guess the idea is we both hit the arrows at the same time, yeah? They're not daft, they know people will always work together in situations like this, buuuut if I had to guess, their aim is that the stress would make most people blame each other and fight and turn. Sort of a worst belief in humanity rather than the best.

It's what they did last month. Making people hunt each other even friends.

It'll be even easier when we play for real because there'll be music, and even if it's not on beat, there's a psych advantage.