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The Center Management ([personal profile] thecenter_mods) wrote in [community profile] the_center_memes2020-11-20 04:00 pm
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December Test Drive Meme

december test drive meme
Thanks for your interest in the Center! Not sure what the Center is? Check out our premise and FAQ.

One of the main goals of this game is to make it easy to jump into, so the prompts are relatively short and snappy. If you have questions about mechanics, ask on the Questions comment, or just wing it!

Reserves open December 1st, and apps open December 15th. We plan to open the game officially on January 3rd, 2021. This TDM can be used as game canon if you want it to, and you can assume that your character has been in the Center since the beginning of December.

Each month at the Center, the Experiences are built around a theme. This month's theme is:


getting to know you
Months at the Center are structured with one rest week and three weeks of Experiences. Experiences each take place for one week. They begin at midnight on Sunday morning and last until 11:59 the next Saturday night.

Gwen will announce the the Challenge at the beginning of the month, and will open each week with a short post describing the Experience. It will be vague, and only allude to the actual Experience to come.

The goal of this month’s Experience is to help you and your fellow Participants get to know one another. You’ll be spending a lot of time together.

Learn more on the Experiences page.

Content warnings for this TDM:
Experience 2: small spaces
Experience 3: references to spiders, general fears


arrival
Everyone arrives at the Center in the same way. You arrive at midnight on Sunday morning of the first week of the month.

You wake up in a comfortable bed in a room you have never seen before.

You feel well-rested and refreshed. Everything around you is washed in soft shades of white. You’re wearing neutral linen clothing, and around your non-dominant wrist is a beautiful, rose gold bracelet. You’ll find it very comfortable, and fitted perfectly. As you sit up, the blank concrete wall opposite your bed flickers and turns into a screen, showing a bone-white, smiling face.

A soft, perfectly neutral voice fills the room as the face starts talking.

“Hello. My name is Gwen. Welcome to the Center. We are excited to accompany you on the most important journey you will ever take.

You are here because you are flawed. You are weak. You feel, in your bones, that you are not the best version of yourself.

But you could be.

Here at the Center, you will be pushed to be your best self. It will not be easy. It may be the hardest thing you have ever done, and what you get out of this journey will be equivalent to what you put in.

Everything you need will be provided for. You can find all other information in the book beside your bed.

Good luck. Please know that we will be with you every step of the way. You are never alone.”

Gwen smiles, and the screen disappears, leaving only concrete.
around the center
The Center has two wings of suites and bedrooms, a cafeteria, and a rec room. Your character has access to all of this. Bedrooms lock from the inside, but everything else is fair game. Read a self-help book, have a chat in the conversation pit, try a kale bowl or a kombucha, give meditating or yoga a try. There is plenty to occupy yourself with during rest week at the Center.

this month's kombucha selection
Seasonal Flavor: Cranberry
Effect: Emotion sharing. When you drink the kombucha, you will be able to feel the emotions of the people within five feet of you for the next hour after consumption.

Standard Flavor: Ginger-Lemon
Effect: Boosts your energy and your powers by 20%. However, in addition to boosting your powers, it will also give you way too much energy. You won’t be able to sit still for at least four hours. The more you drink, the more energy you’ll have, although the power-boosting seems to be limited.

Standard Flavor: Green
Effect: Heals you by 20%. It also makes you very suggestible. You will go into a haze lasting at least four hours. During those four hours, you’ll be very open to suggestions from anybody, including Gwen, about things you should do or say.
experience 1: break the ice
At the beginning of the week, Gwen's post reads:

You must learn to be honest with yourself and others before you can take the first step.

Overnight, little plaques have appeared on every surface in the Center: all the tables in the cafeteria, all coffee tables in your suites, counters in the bathrooms, and on your nightstands.

Every time you pass one, it’s like you’re being drawn to your own reflection in a window. You’re compelled to slow down, stop and read what’s on them: ice breaker questions.

As soon as you lock eyes with the prompt, your Bracelet snaps as if heavily magnetized to the nearest surface, trapping you in place. So do the Bracelets of anyone who heard you read the prompt. Not near a surface? They Bracelets lock you together with another person who heard the question.

Answering the questions seems to be the only way to get free, so you’d better be ready to share some fun facts about yourself!
experience 2: just big enough for the two of us
At the beginning of the week, Gwen's post reads:

You are not as singular, or as special, as you believe yourself to be.

You open a door, and instead of being where you were going, you’re in a small, white cement room with another character. The room is just big enough for the two of you to sit down cross-legged in. It’s a tight fit. Every five minutes you spend in this room, it gets smaller by a half a foot on each side.

On the wall, stamped into the cement is the phrase: Our similarities bring us to a common ground.

The only way to leave the room is to find something that you both have in common and bond over that. What counts as bonding? That’s up to you to decide! If you (or the Center) decides it’s not good enough, Gwen simply won’t let your characters out of the room.

Bonding can look like sharing stories about that thing, talking about why you like it or hate it, what it means to you, etc.

Once you have bonded, a door will open to one of the places that one of the characters was headed before. Yes, you have to go together. You’re friends now!

Throughout this week, this keeps happening to you, often when you enter or leave a room, including the bathroom.
experience 3: are you afraid?
At the beginning of the week, Gwen's post reads:

Facing your fears alone will destroy you.

Overnight, your greatest fear manifests in the Center. If you are afraid of ghosts, suddenly there are ghosts around your person 24/7. Afraid of dying? You’ll see yourself die—viscerally, in a very real way—every time you enter a room. Afraid of spiders? Spiders. Everywhere you go.

Fears will always try to drive characters away from crowds and other characters. They seem to want to get you alone where you're at your weakest.

While nobody can face their fears alone, if you try to fight off their fear with the help of someone else, it works. If you team up with another Participant to face your fear, it will disappear and stay gone for the rest of the week. For example, if your fear is spiders, and you and another Participant face the spiders and squish them all, the spiders will be gone. If you're afraid of dying, if you accept the inevitability of your death with another Participant, you won't have to watch your final moments again.

Notes about this Experience:
  • If your fear is a specific person, that person will appear and they can talk to your character, but they are limited to a script of a few sentences, like a pre-programed doll that can only say a handful of phrases.
  • Fears won't try to kill anyone—after all, you can't face your fears if you're dead—they will attempt to harm characters and can leave physical woulds and certainly mental scars.
  • You can see and interact with each other’s manifested fears. However, only a team containing the person whose fear it is can defeat a fear.
navigation »
arclightning: (shocked | her seriously?)

[personal profile] arclightning 2020-11-21 02:56 am (UTC)(link)
Why? She's said rude things about us all week and I'm pretty sure she kidnapped me.

[ Mako will die on this hill, Ty Lee. He has it out for Gwen.

And he would argue more, but the walls are starting to shake, making him bite off a small curse as he hunches against it.
] Tell me something generic about you so she doesn't crush us, too.
unmatchedset: (07)

[personal profile] unmatchedset 2020-11-21 03:07 am (UTC)(link)
Just because someone else does something doesn't mean you have to do it too. You're your own person. [Ty Lee crosses her arms in front of her and levels Mako with a stare.

But then the room stops shaking and she's certainly not going to die on this hill.]


Fine. I'm from the Fire Nation, I used to perform in a circus and my favorite color is pink. Happy now?
arclightning: (talking | that can't be right)

[personal profile] arclightning 2020-11-22 01:41 am (UTC)(link)
You're from the Fire Nation. You're from the same place I am?

[ Wait, this is good, this is very good. Mako can work with this. They have to get out of here, and Mako's certainly not going to hold up finding common ground with an argument. ]

I've never been there. But my mother was from the Fire Nation. I'm from Republic City. Are you a firebender?
unmatchedset: (09)

[personal profile] unmatchedset 2020-11-22 02:11 am (UTC)(link)
Republic City? I've never heard of anywhere called Republic City. [Ty Lee gives him a skeptical look. After all, she has traveled a fair amount of places in her life so far.] Is it in the Earth Kingdom?

And no, I'm not a firebender. I'm not any kind of bender. [That doesn't mean she's one to be underestimated. She seems to size him up in a new way now.] Are you?

arclightning: (eyebrow | what is he doing)

[personal profile] arclightning 2020-11-22 02:40 am (UTC)(link)
[ That. Makes Mako pause for a good, long second.

How can someone have not heard of Republic City? Especially in the Earth Kingdom, especially after all of the unrest recently. Even the tiny villages fell under Kuvira's thumb, and there's no way that it didn't come up.
] You from a remote village or something? It's the capital of the United Republic.

Uh, but, yeah. I am. I'm a firebender.

[ He flips his palm right side up and produces a small flame, which is sort of the most he can do, recently. It's a pain. ]
unmatchedset: (13)

[personal profile] unmatchedset 2020-11-22 03:37 am (UTC)(link)
The what now? [Now Ty Lee is even more skeptical. Did this guy take a blow to head recently?] And no, I'm from Capital City. I even attended the Royal Fire Academy for Girls.

[Ty Lee's gaze softens as it settles on the small flame in Mako's palm. Despite their current predicament, it did make her feel a little more at home. Even though she was questioning if he really did come from the same place she did with all these weird place names.]