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the_center_memes2020-11-20 04:00 pm
thecenter_mods) wrote in the_center_memes2020-11-20 04:00 pm
Entry tags:
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:
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
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.
Experience 2: small spaces
Experience 3: references to spiders, general fears
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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:
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.
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no subject
Let's do another one. [ He slides down the bench of their table and peers at the next plaque ] What is the best event you’ve attended?
no subject
[ Is he actually enjoying this? No sooner does her bracelet free her than it magnetizes back down again. ]
What's the matter with you? I don't want to answer questions. What I want is to get the hell outta here and back home.
[ There's a murderous look in her eyes before she looks away and exhales heavily through her nose. ]
A barbecue with friends. Now stop reading out questions!
[ Even as she says it, her eye is getting drawn to the next. She tightly closes her eyes. No; fight it, Ashe. ]
no subject
Now, let's see... [ He taps his lips with his free hand ] I wish I could say my coronation was the best event. It was supposed to be, but, honestly, it was kind of the worst. So! I'm going to say Verrick and Zhu Li's wedding! It was amazing, and they're so good together, and the lights were just perfect. [ As he talks, his bracelet releases ] Oh! And they had these little canapés that were to die for.
no subject
Only sad thing here is your enthusiasm for losing your free will.
[ Ashe crosses her arms, as if that will help her from getting attached to anything else. A moment later, she snorts. ]
Canapés are overrated. Unless they're sweet.
no subject
Canapés are delightful, but I do agree, the sweet ones are better.
no subject
Still in control of your body? What do you call this, then, huh?
[ She points to the bracelet and gestures to the table. ]
Getting handcuffed in place isn't what I'd call free will.
no subject
[ It's a weak argument, and he knows it. He just wants to believe that this place is nice. He wants to have something go right for once.
He grimaces. ] Well. No one's tried to mind control me, so that's better than last time.
no subject
[ Let's just say her exploits weren't always legal. But that was in her youth. She's much better at covering her tracks now. ]
Oh, great. Nice to know you rate this one better. [ Another eye roll. ] Look, it sounds like last time was a real bad experience, but that doesn't mean Gwen here's got our best interests at heart either. Both can be bad.
no subject
no subject
[ Which might not be the vibe, but she'll claim it anyway. ]
Yeah, so far. But I'm not about to trust it won't get worse.
[ Like right now, how her eye is being forcefully drawn to the next plaque. ]
What does your perfect breakfast look like? [ Aaaand her bracelet locks to the table again. ] Damn it! I didn't mean to read that. [ She sighs. ] Black tea, biscuits and sausage gravy, and a side of flapjacks. Now let me go—OH!
[ She jerks back only to go flying back as her wrist is released. She waves her arms and just manages to keep her balance. ]
no subject
You have to admit, these questions are a little fun.
no subject
[ Ashe is determined to keep resisting this imprisonment and it's ongoing compulsions. She's stronger than this; she knows she is. ]
I'd hate to see what you guys have for entertainment at home if this is fun for you.