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

Tch.

[Xenohart's little pet project, or one of them anyway. She gave him a look over her shoulder. That feeling of 'thank god I don't have to work with that one' was mutual. They had different roles, and she was perfectly happy to keep it that way, though here? Well, clearly it wasn't going to play out that way.

Still, there were much worse options to be stuck dealing with. She scoffed and sneered back at him in a cocky way while off-handedly giggling.]

What's the rush? It's not like you have anywhere to be, now is it? But [A long suffering sigh] very well, if you insist.

She watched the dice shifting and spinning there, and with a flick of her wrist, she let it roll. Oh, a 17. now, the question was... was high good? She waved over her shoulder and started out.]

(OOC: I'll let you pick out if High is good or bad on these rolls. ^.~ I figure I'll roll for mine, and stick to high being either good or bad, or even or odd being good or bad. You can pick.)

[Vanitas didn't bother with the other organization members much. He preferred to do things solo but of them all he really wasn't sure if he had the patience to deal with miss attitude.

He's not interested in this game at all but it does give him a bit of motivation to play if it means beating her. He watches as the dice rolls and Larxene gets a seventeen. Admittedly, he doesn't know much about this game other than what the voice explained about certain spaces being good, bad luck or item spaces depending on what the person lands on.

At least Larxene gets to be the first to test it out. With such a large roll she's getting a choice to keep going forward or to go right. Forward will land her on a skull space while the right path will loop her around but put her on a item space by the looks of it. The skull space will put her closer to the finish line though if she wants to take a chance at it.]

(OOC: Odds being good and evens being unlucky seems easy to me. )

(OOC: Works for me! You can roll yourself on a similar site, or assume. I just like the randomness. We can play to whenever we feel like being nice and letting them go free.)

[The temptation to prove she wasn't afraid of these skulls was definitely there, but really she wasn't actually in any hurry to get out of here, and this was one of the first times she'd gotten to see Vanitas in action. Yes, he was annoying, but the longer she dawdled, the more likely she was to get a feel for what might irritate him, which gave her an excuse to get more digs in later.

Research, research... though not the Vexen sort. She made her way to the right at a casual pace, stopping at the item space, only for the dumbest music imaginable to play... right before the chest opened to reveal a... first aid kit! She looked at the thing with what could only be described a detached curiosity, or disdain. She hadn't really decided yet.]

Oh look, I got a pretty plastic box with a cross on it. Is this some kind of joke?

Edited (stupid html) 2019-08-25 17:08 (UTC)

Could be worse.

(ooc: Works for me! maybe 4/5 or so rounds if they last that long)

[Is it bad he was hoping she'd test out the skull space first?

He was really hoping her ego would make her take it. He's disappointed to see her go right and land on the item space. The first aid kit isn't impressive. If the items are like that then maybe the rest of this game is just as lack luster as well.

But he ignores her and looks up as his dice rolls. He waves his hand carelessly and it rolls a 18.

He frowns at that because no matter if he goes straight or follows Larxene's path, there's a skull space.

Just perfect.

With fist clenched at his side he starts to walk though there's no real rush to his steps. He could refuse but he already has a feeling he'd be forced there anyway. What's with this messed up place.]

[He was lucky this time, relatively speaking. When he arrived on the skull space, it resolved itself and a colorful white hand that could easily have been King Mickey's showed up right in front of him, palm open. It pushed at him, a red '-2 Spaces' showing up as it shoved at him, aiming to force him right back just a little before he'd managed to get.]

Hahaha, looks like the game's decided to give you a hand, haven't they?

[Seriously, she was going to make this as unpleasant an experience as she possibly could, pointing at him and laughing uproariously, her lips pulled in a big, goofy, dumb grin of a laugh. Yeah, she was definitely going to be hamming this up right up until she finally got her come uppance.

The others were rolling, none of them in remotely the same state as these two, and most of them getting far worse than they had, though Larxene did nothing but jeer back at them. Much as she wasn't the most respectful to Vanitas, he was easily the most interesting person on the game board today. As she waited for her turn to come around, she almost stuck a tongue out at him for being all of one solitary space ahead of him.

Sometimes, she could be so juvenile for a sadist.]

[He wasn't too thrilled about landing on a bad luck space or having Larxene ahead of him but seeing what some of the other players got, one even being set on fire, he'll take what he got without too much complaint.]

Better than your useless kit or what some of the others landed on. Keep all that in mind when your luck takes a turn.

[He chuckles a bit. Should he be wishing for something bad to happen to Larxene? Probably not since they were on the same side before but Vanitas has never really cared for anyone in the organization. If anything, it'll be interesting to see how she plays it off. Maybe he'll get lucky and one of these spaces will just glue her mouth shut.]

Haha, that's the sound of a sore loser if I ever heard one.

[She watched them all as they rolled and took their lumps. One after another, they seemed to be having mixed to poor success. She laughed again when her turn came along and barely even seemed to notice as she rolled the dice, getting what looked like a positively outstanding roll, except for one problem.

When she got up to the last of the tiles, looking back at him almost triumphantly, she saw that there was a 'penalty' there. Oh well. nothing for it but to hop on and ...

...

...

Why the hell was she on the first tile again?]

Oh you have gotta be kidding me!