Chương 75: Book 2 Q&A

This marks the end of Book 2. A while back I asked everyone for questions that you all wanted answered. I've collected them all and they're below. I will say though that I think I might have forgotten to answer a question here or there. If you had a question that didn't get answered, please leave a comment and I'll try to write something about it. Cringyusername Was there anything like books, comics or anything of that nature that was not of Video games produced with the Fracture IP?

A: Nope there weren't any media tie-ins or anything like that. Severance Systems deliberately avoided fleshing out the lore outside the games. A lot of franchises will use books and comics and tv shows to do deep dives on the backgrounds of certain characters. Think about the Mass Effect books and how they're all about Kai Leng and Cerberus and Anderson. The books are meant to flesh out characters that only get a few minutes of screentime in the games.

The developers at Severance Systems wanted players to uncover more of the world through the gameplay. They liked the mystery and forcing players to dive deep in the lore rather than explicitly explain things through novels and comics. Last_Admiral What about the waifus? A: There might be some "waifus" introduced later in the story, but right now that isn't the focus. The story is centered around Zeke and his attempts to come to terms with his new reality.

It's focused on his growth and his abilities and his new normal. While relationships might develop over time, I think I've already proven that I'm not great at writing romance. Y_Ddraig_Gogh Are any of the 'named' characters in Zeke's 'Fanfiction' actually in the games? Like, are Cole and Daryl actually possible to find in the games? A: Some named characters are in the game. Corva was obviously a named NPC.

Patch is a named NPC and that's how the forum was able to guide Zeke to the Roaring Drake once he told everyone he was in The MIZ. Other characters in the story like Cole, Daryl, and Milicent aren't explicitly named in the game. They're more like faceless NPCs that you could see walking around in the background. But in the real world, they're fully realized people with their own stories and wants and desires and everything that entails. In videogames, you can't really have 100, 000 NPCs with their own lives.

It's a scaling issue. Most NPCs are just going to be background figures and they're going to look like any other NPC. That's actually one of the disconnects between Zeke and the Forum. The Forum doesn't really view Cole as a real person, and that kinda screws with Zeke a bit. He's actually meeting these people, and they're not just faceless goons to him. I will say that there will be plenty of named characters that Zeke is going to be meeting in the future.

Plus, the Forum is going to be steering him towards characters like Patch when he visits other cities. Fateweaver Are the pre-Fracture civilizations all from the same world/timeline, or are they different worlds grafted onto each other as an effect of the Fracture's passing? A: That is one of the questions that people on DeepFracture argue about. Unfortunately, there isn't a single agreed-upon answer. The first few games that were released, up to Syndicate's Wake, all felt like completely standalone games.

You'd play Frontiers and you'd be playing on the Frontiers map. You play Null Protocol and it's a completely different setting with a completely different map. This led to the creation of two wildly different theories about the Fractures and the Fracture-verse. The first theory is the Cycle Theory. It states that everything that happens in the Fracture-verse takes place on a single world, and that single world keeps getting hit by different Fractures.

Imagine our world building up, civilization is rising and prospering. They invent TV and guns and velcro and credit card debt. Then, in 2027, a Fracture happens that ruins civilization. After that, the whole world has to adapt. Everything is broken and everyone needs to rebuild it all. And once they rebuild, the next Fracture hits and the cycle repeats. The theory suggests that each game is at a different point in the timeline.

You've got Fracture: the Fall first where your character is dropped into a post-apocalyptic world that is just starting to rebuild. Then, hundreds of years later, society had rebuilt itself and everything that your player character did in the first game led to the emergence of a new civilization. After that, a rogue AI hits and that's a whole new Fracture. Tech Reign was the next game and it saw a civilization trying to rebuild from their Fracture.

Then, after another rebuild, magic starts leaking into the world and that causes another Fracture which leads to Emberveil. It's basically a theory that history keeps repeating itself over and over and over again, and each time there's a different kind of apocalypse. The second theory is called the Synthesis theory and it's the belief that, instead of events happening one after another, all the Fractures happened at roughly the same time but in different parts of the world.

Each game explores a single facet of a multi-faceted apocalypse. Think of it like this: North America gets wiped out by a rogue AI. Africa gets wiped out by an alien virus. Asia gets wiped out by corporations that dug too deep into the Earth and found something weird.

The Synthesis theory suggests that each game is happening at the same time and the only reason that you can't see the magic apocalypse in Null Protocol is because travel is nearly impossible after civilization collapsed and you're stuck dealing with whatever happened in your own little pocket of the world. Those were the two main theories about the Fractures. Then Syndicate's Wake was released and made everything so much worse. That game lets you travel between regions.

You could go from Frontiers to Null Protocol to Tech Reign. With that ability to travel between regions, you'd think it would confirm the Synthesis theory. Except… whenever you'd move between regions there was an obvious loading screen there. Now, obviously the loading screens are due to the technological constraints at the time, right? Unfortunately, DeepFracture is a forum filled with a bunch of nerds who overthink and overanalyze everything, which led to the creation of a third theory.

This was the Multiverse theory. It's a theory that says that there are multiple parallel worlds, each created due to a different Fracture. A good way to think of it is that every time a Fracture happens, reality splits open. Imagine you've got Earth and it's 2000 CE. Everyone is happy and excited about the future and then BOOM, an alien virus hits. That splits Earth into two different worlds, Earth A and Earth B. Earth A continues normally because it was NOT hit by the extraterrestrial virus.

Earth B branches off and deals with the alien virus Fracture and thus evolves differently. A few years later, Earth A is hit by a bunch of rogue AIs that want to murder everyone. That splits Earth A into two planets: Earth A and Earth C. Earth A continues normally because it doesn't have to deal with murderbots, Earth B is struggling with the alien virus, and Earth C is trying to find John Connor to save them.

Then, another decade or so passes and Earth A has a bunch of corporations digging around where they shouldn't be and that splits the worlds again. Earth A is NOT hit by weird strange things from underneath the Earth's crust and just continues on normally. Earth B is still struggling with alien ebola. Earth C is still struggling with a matrix-style situation. Earth D is faced with a cyberpunk dystopia. It's a fun theory, but it's not the most popular one on the forum.

KickInator Do you have plans on ever making the forum goers believe that Zeke is actually isekai'd? If yes, do you see it happening a lot later or in the next few books that you have planned? Have you planned on introducing other isekai'd people from the same Earth? Cause we already know a few Fracture people are aware of Outsiders, especially the Upper Crust of that Society. So will there be other outsiders introduced in the story later? From different worlds? Or from Earth?

A: One of the big challenges is that most people wouldn't take the idea of someone actually getting isekai'd seriously. That's something that happens in Japanese anime and manga, not the real world. So from their perspective, there's no reason to believe that Zeke is actually in the game world. I will say that more and more people from the forum will start RPing that Zeke is in the game. They'll start coming around on his premise, and that's probably the best that Zeke is going to be able to hope for.

As for Outsiders, yes Zeke will be meeting some other Outsiders. Now, whether they come from his Earth, a different version of Earth, or a different planet entirely… that's something you're all going to have to wait for. TurnupDoor Are you planning to have Zeke spend time in each game/zone of the Fracture-verse? A: Yep. That's the plan. I've got some ideas for a few scenes and they wouldn't work outside specific games.

The idea right now is that Zeke is going to be tracking down different hidden locations across the Fracture-verse, trying to find one that might raise one of his skills to Rank 11 so he can go back home. Misfits How often do the Fracture-verse developers keep in contact after getting shut down? I always imagine it as a relatively big company to develop games in so many genres and game engines, especially over the years. How long are the NDAs that the developers signed?

I guess my real question is why the mega-publisher cared enough to put all the devs under a 14+ year NDA when that's not standard? A: The developers have all moved on and they're doing different things. Some are still working in the gaming industry. Some are teaching. Some have started their own companies. Technically they're still bound by the NDA but it's a little… different. There are two main reasons that the devs aren't talking about the games and dropping hidden lore and history on DeepFracture.

The first reason is practical. Horizons Entertainment, the publisher who bought the IP when Severance Systems went bankrupt, has a reputation for being incredibly litigious and aggressive with their lawyers. They're huge dicks. Even if the NDA that the developers signed wouldn't hold up in court, just the threat of a long, expensive court battle is enough to keep the former devs quiet. The second reason is actually much bigger.

The developers who worked on the game all share the same view as Severance Systems which is that the lore is meant to be discovered and not explained. A big part of the appeal of the Fracture games was that they didn't hold your hand. The developers all hid important story details and facts and lore behind a whole bunch of secrets and mysteries, and the players were meant to work together to piece everything together.

If a developer came out and was like "oh, btw, Corva is a body hopper and you can prove it by digging through Shards and fiddling around with your save files," a lot of the former devs would genuinely hate that. It would feel like they were spoiling the whole point of the games. RedMOnty I wouldn't mind seeing reactions to Zeke's lore drops from an outside the forum POV. Like a video transcript from the in-universe equivalent to Zullie the Witch or Vaatividya on YouTube.

A: I've thought of doing something like that. If I was looking to publish these as a book, something like a video transcript of a YouTube video would be a great "last time on…" recap. The tricky part is that it might not really add anything to the story. If this were a traditional book, that recap could let people get caught up to speed. But since this is being released as a chapter fic, most of you all know what's been going on. It kinda makes that chapter a bit redundant.

But yea, it would fit the tone of the whole story and I might try to work something like that into one of the chapters. I just don't want it feeling like filler. Neoseedman1 What was the stories of each game? A: I've gone back and forth about answering this question, and I don't think I'm going to tell you all at this point. The main reason I don't want to talk about it is to give myself some flexibility in my writing.

I've got rough outlines for all the different games and their stories and the different NPCs that Zeke is going to meet, but I don't want to lock myself into those outlines. If I say that Tech Reign is all about a gang war between a bunch of triads, but then I come up with a much better story later on, I don't want to have to retcon what I just wrote. I don't want all of you popping in here and being like "I thought you were going to talk about gang wars and the politics of crime."

RIght now I'm going to keep those stories to myself for the time being. I might share a little more about them in the next Q&A, but it would depend on how the story develops from here. Dash of Salt In Syndicate's Wake I think, people were able to travel between the regions of different games. Is it geographic, could you walk from one region to another? Or was it portals/some kind of vehicle? A: Yep.

You could head between the different regions, but there was always a noticeable loading screen when you crossed from one map into another. That's going to raise a really interesting problem for Zeke though. As I said earlier, the loading screens created a third theory on the forum. Now, if Zeke is traveling around and heading into another region… what's going to happen with that loading screen? He's not playing a game here. He's actually in this world, so it would be stupid for a loading screen to exist for him.

What's going to happen the first time he tries to leave Frontiers and head to Null Protocol or Emberveil? Whatever happens to him, that's going to be HUGE for the forum. Whatever he writes about that transition is going to have a bunch of people complaining about it. It'll be seen as him taking a position on one of the major Fracture theories and it could definitely lead to a lot of butthurt people. C0da_Creator What's the population of the forum and the average users online?

A: This is another question I don't really want to give a concrete answer to, and it's mostly because I'm narcissistic. There are fandoms like Star Trek and Star Wars where people obsessively memorize EVERYTHING about the content. These fans know obscure lore and they know about the background characters and they've memorized the opening crawl and they can tell you anything you'd want to know. I've got to say that that level of passion for a setting is absolutely amazing.

I would LOVE to have people obsess over something that I wrote like that. It's said that Hunter S. Thompson used to type up The Great Gatsby on a typewriter, and when someone asked him why he did that, he said he wanted to know what it felt to write something that amazing. That's kinda how I feel. I would geek out if I wrote something like Star Trek or Star Wars or even Worm where people are creating comics and books and video games and tv shows about an idea that I had. Here's the thing though.

I'd also be worried if I created something like that, because there are people who would know more about the setting than me. There's a bunch of times where I've been writing a chapter and wanted to add something and forgot a bit of my own canon or lore and have to run back to an earlier chapter to see what I wrote.

Can you imagine if I said something like "there are 500 users on the forum currently," and someone out there is keeping obsessive documents on all the usernames that I've ever used in the story and says that there are actually 506 users and then suddenly I'm the guy who doesn't know his own story. So instead of locking myself into a number, I'll just say there are a bunch of die hard fans of the forum who are keeping everything alive.

AND, when words gets around about Zeke and people start finding out that more and more lore is being uncovered in these old games, some of those fans are going to be trickling back into the forum. DangerX Is the Fracture-verse real? And not some VR death game like Zeke's been plugged into. A: The Fracture-verse is real. Zeke isn't plugged into some kind of machine or anything… or is he? No. It's real.

DatCameraMON In Syndicates the MMO, was it like WoW with two player factions or was there no faction system or what? A: The way that I envision it, there wasn't a rigid two-faction system like in WoW. You don't just lock in your allegiance at the character creation screen. Instead, every character basically starts the game as a nobody and you get to decide where your loyalties lie as you play. If you wanted to dedicate yourself to PvP, there were factions you could join.

If you wanted to focus only on PvE, there were in-game factions for that too. So, no Alliance or Horde. More like… Eve Online. I think. I didn't really play that game all that much. RidiculouslyAverageGuy Does Corva actually have the Drifter class, or is he simply applying multiple lifetimes of experience with different skills to rapidly level them from 0 to 7? A: Nope. He's got the real Drifter class. Of course… he might have figured out a few things in his years of living that would let him raise a skill above 7.

SomeOneElse007 Besides Corva, what are the major npc "faces" for each game? Like the girl (or guy) they'd slap on the cover to sell each game. A: This is like the earlier question of what the game story is. I do have a few ideas for NPCs who could fill the role of "face" for the game, but again I might want to change the story a bit so I don't want to lock anything in. Zomfgmikeftw How are you making sure each forum member has a different voice?

For some of the oneliners, it's easy but I feel like I've noticed some overlap in phrasing between some members. I felt like Foppery, who is relatively new and has some interactions, sounded similar to Zeke himself. A: Yea… that's because Foppery and Zeke are based off me a bit, and I'm also not that great of a writer. WIth Foppery I tried to write him as a bit more unsure of himself.

He's this guy who is just now being introduced to an incredibly tight-knit community and he's this outsider who doesn't really know how to interact with everything. When he starts writing his Field Report, that's where my natural voice starts slipping out. He was supposed to be different from Zeke, but I think I just fell into a pattern of writing Zeke and that bled over to Foppery. For the rest of the forum, I try to give everyone different tones and ways of speaking.

NullSigil is much more sarcastic than everyone else. SixtySix is a perv. Mushroom has this almost wide-eyed innocence when it comes to the games. StoryLeech is kinda like Mushroom in that it's obvious that he loves the games, but he's also a lot more pragmatic. Binary and Venerated are both dicks, but Venerated is becoming slightly less dickish. Crush basically just wants action all the time. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Some of the users are just there for a single line because I needed someone to say something. Other users are going to have characteristics that are going to come out a bit more once they become the Primary or the Proctor. Nordlending How would the story have progressed in an alternative world where Zeke actually picked Bartender when offered? Would we have gotten a slice-of-life where Zeke bartender for a deep selection of fan favorite NPCs?

A: That's a great question, and it's something that I've been thinking about writing for the Patreon. The problem there is that I want to introduce a certain scene into the story before I write an "alternate" Zeke. It would come after the Glass Archives of Lethoras quest. I talked about that in Foppery's chapter where he discovered the unanchored bug in Syndicates. I've got a good idea on how I want that quest to play out and what it would mean for the rest of the story…

but actually writing it is something completely different. There is a LOT that would go into writing that chapter(s), and I'm honestly a little intimidated when I think about it. Again, I've got an idea how it would go down, but it's one thing to have an idea in your head but it's another to try and put it all on paper. I can tell you one thing, the formatting alone for the quest would be a pain in the ass.

As for what I was thinking about what would happen if Zeke had chosen the bartender class, there's actually a manga that I read back in the day. It was called Bartender and it was about a guy who had a bar and every drink he made tied into the different characters that would come into his bar. It's a pretty slow manga, but it's something that I actually really enjoyed. Shukuen Do you have a list of major and minor forum users? Without spoilers what roles do they have and what forums do they normally post in?

A: I do have a list of different usernames that I've used. Some are important, but also some usernames I've used were just thrown together for the story. I think I had someone called RedCarpetManiac, and that's because I needed someone to say a line and I had to come up with a username and the carpet in this room I'm in is red. SpicyShoyu is because I've got Spicy Shoyu peanuts sitting nearby.

There was another username called SkipperIsaButt and that's because my sister's cat is named Skipper and he was annoying me one day. That said, there is a list of usernames that I've got on a notepad. Obviously StoryLeech, MushroomCleric, Binary_Arcana and others are on there. As the story goes on, more and more of them are going to be taking on clearer roles and personalities. Blazer66 When will the random interlude urchin show up again? A: Next chapter.

Soft&Wet Did the Fracture-verse ever collab with any other IPs? A: Nope. They were pretty insular as far as game companies go. Murmur So, I doubt we'd get an answer as to what Sera Voss has been up to since the first chapter beyond RAFO, but any chance that we'll see any other Outsiders any time soon? Also, if you were one of the forum members, what would be your favorite Fracture-verse game based upon your own taste in games?

A: Sera is definitely coming back into the story and I already know exactly how Zeke and her are going to cross paths. Without getting too deep into spoilers, she's mostly just been hunting down the people who betrayed her and left her for dead. There will be Outsiders out there for Zeke to talk to. As for my favorite game, that's kinda difficult to answer.

I love the Paradox games like CK3 and HOI4, but writing a Fracture-verse game that is just an Excel spreadsheet with graphics wouldn't really be all that interesting. That's why there isn't a Fracture-verse game where the main gameplay loop is painting a map different colors. I'd probably lean towards Null Protocol because I'm basing it off of Cyberpunk 2077 and other cyberpunk-style games. I absolutely loved that game, even though it released as a buggy mess.

Tech Reign also might be up there in terms of which game I would love because it's inspired by 80s Hong Kong action movies. It's also got a bit of Max Payne and Rise of Honor - that Jet Li game from way back when. I kinda see the game as something along the lines of Sleeping Dogs meets Max Payne meets Jade Empire meets Hong Kong movies. You don't really get that combo in average games, and it would be incredibly difficult to pull off. But if done right, I think a game like that would be amazing.

Kerrowe How far and fast will skill teachers typically help the skill growth? How hard is it going from Skill rank 7 to 8? That seems like the biggest bottleneck. Tablet upgrade for Zeke when? A: Yea, getting past Rank 7 is a huge bottleneck in the games. Trying to go from 7 to 8 is where things start slowing down for characters. It's a lot of grinding. There are ways around it, like using skill teachers, but most of the teachers you can find in the game can only get you up to level 5 or 6 or 7.

As for the tablet upgrade, it's probably coming when Zeke reaches the Null Protocol zone. I'm thinking that it's going to be something like a cyberware style upgrade. He would directly be able to interface with stuff instead of constantly needing to pull out his tablet and typing everything up. Demonologist Will the witch from House of Seasons make a return at some point since she's not trapped by the ghost of her family and is free to move on? A: Yep. Kinda. She'll be in the story again, and so will the Eaters.

Hadyoudone What are some cool Easter eggs in the games? A: Ooo. That's not something that I really thought about before, but it's a great idea and it's got me thinking about a few things. There's already a bunch of pop culture references that I've tossed into the story. Zeke tried to pass off the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark as his own adventure is one of them. I also referenced Tropic Thunder when he came back to the forum. There were at least three references to Spinal Tap.

FopperyandWhim is actually a username based on Legends of Galactic Heroes - a phenomenal anime and book series. While I don't have a great answer for your question, I will be sprinkling a few more pop culture and video game easter eggs into the story going forward. Kelasgre Will the relationship between Z3ke and Sophia be similar to that of Joel and Ellie? A: That's a tough question to answer, and I don't really want to spoil anything.

I will say that Sophia isn't exactly like Ellie from Last of Us, and Z3ke is nowhere near the type of father that Joel was. Unowenfanfictionacct How "sensitive" is memory bartering in the Glens? Was simply sleeping in the library and using its computers enough to qualify? A: So… Zeke didn't lose anything from sleeping in the library or using the computers. Since I do still have something in mind for the Eaters, I'm not going to go too deep into the Barter Drain.

Tarticus How do you write from outline to chapter production? Fake_Person Why do you update in the morning with the chapter on Spacebattles then later in the evening on patreon instead of both at the same time A: Ooo. Good questions and I'm lumping them in together. So, let's imagine a standard week for me. My Patreon is four chapters ahead of what I post on RR and Spacebattles. Imagine that I post Chapter 10 on RR, on Patreon they're already on Chapter 13 and I'm posting 14 that night.

I post Chapter 10 and I'm already working on Chapter 14. While I'm writing, I'll occasionally pop into Spacebattles and RR and read some of the comments people leave. Sometimes I'll reply, but mostly I'm writing the next chapter. The way I outline everything is kinda weird. I've got the whole story basically written out in my head. I've got the major plot points and I've got a ton of scenes I want to play out and I know how it'll all end. What I don't have is all the fillings.

When I started writing this, I knew how the first three books would go. I knew that Zeke would end up on the Veilstrider and he would be dumped in the Glens. I knew he'd be at the House of Seasons (although I didn't have a name for it at the time) and he would unlock some hidden lore that would drive attention to his "fanfic" and everything would start getting more serious with the forum. I also knew that Corva would try and body-hop into him and that Zeke would get the Rockstar class.

With the second book, I wanted to show how the forum could actually help him (the Reclaimer fight) and I wanted Binary to betray him and try to get him killed. I wanted Gravemind to lead him to that room and that note, and I wanted to give him a reason to head out into the other games (the Rank 11 discovery.) I've got a loose plan of how the story is going to go, but it evolves constantly.

Originally, with this book, Zeke was going to head into the Crushed Skirt and the forum would help guide him to a bunch of loot. Then he was originally going to bypass the Flooded Neighborhoods before having a small fight in the Fossilized Factory Belt and finally coming across the Reclaimer in the Research District. But when I got to the Flooded Neighborhood I was like "hmmm, I should add something here to deal with Zeke's emotional state and his development of the Persona skill."

That led to the whole Spine and Flood game and his interaction with the mayor and all that jazz. My outlines are also pretty loose. I often write in a mixture of the first person narrative with some basic note taking. It'll be something like: Zeke starts off in the Flooded Neighborhoods. He knows he needs to get a map, and the best way for him to find one is to talk with the mayor. The mayor tells him that he can gamble for the map. If he wins he gets the map but if he loses he'll have to do a job for the mayor.

Uh… maybe something about him going into the gambling den and gambling and stuff like that but he ultimately loses. Describe the rules of the game and describe how the gambling hall looks like. He complains to the forum because they didn't know the mayor was going to cheat? Holy shit guys, how come you didn't warn me about that? Kinda screwed me over here. From there, I start writing a bunch. I'll write about 2500 words for a chapter and then I go back to the beginning and rewrite everything.

The word count balloons up to 3500. Then I go and delete a bunch of stuff and I'm back to 2400 words now. Then I start writing the next chunk of the chapter and it goes up to 5000. I add a scene and it bumps the words up to 6500. Then I go back in and trim and polish and take some stuff out and add some other things and then the word count lands in the 5000-6000 range. Once it's done, it goes up on Patreon and then I start thinking about the next chapter.

MillerMaz What's the actual state of VR gaming technology in the setting itself, the one Zeke came from? Is it something that's only really unique to The Fracture series entree or did it take existing technologies attempted to do something that the industry wasn't ready for yet? A: The game failed because Severance Systems was really the first adopter of VR technology. The tech just wasn't ready for what Severance wanted to do. That's why it's so buggy and everyone vomits when they try and play it.

If they released it now, it would still be viewed as somewhat gimmicky, but it would also be a lot cleaner. Wizzy Of course Shards is a buggy game, but is it as buggy as the Forum makes it out to be or are there more hidden game mechanics that the fan base just didn't find that creates the illusion of bugs like with the Corva stuff. A: The game really is that buggy. I see it as the first real Early Access game. It used to be that games were released completely finished and all the bugs were worked out.

Once Steam started getting a lot bigger and companies could release into Early Access and make a mint, they stopped fixing their games a lot of the time. I mean… PUBG was making ridiculous amounts of money and it was still considered to be Early Access at the height of its run. Shards was released early and they didn't have much time to play test it so there were tons of bugs that shouldn't have been there. That being said… Severance did have a history of hiding a lot of lore behind "bugs."

Syndicate's Wake also had a bunch of bugs, but the community has debated whether they were actual bugs or whether they were part of the story. The Barter Drain down in the Glens was thought to be a bug, but it's actually not and it's part of the backstory for the Eaters. I'll be circling back to them at a later date. Short answer, yes it was buggy and yes there is still plenty hidden behind those bugs. Rooroo Did the game create the universe or is the game based off the universe.

Did the Dukakis' datamined troll with the generic NPC actually happen in the universe or is it just in-game content. Will there ever be an explanation on why or how Zeke is seemingly randomly abducted, conveniently got the power to access the forum? What was your inspiration for this story? How did you come up with it? Does Zeke exist in the game? A: I've debated answering this question and I've decided that I'm just going to kick the can down the road on it.

Maybe I'll answer it in the next Q&A, but right now I'm going to just go hmm? And ignore it. I actually do have a scene talking about the generic NPC, but I haven't decided if I'm going to add it or not. It might not add anything to the story. It might just be something weird that people can talk about. Or I might decide to tie it in later on. There will be an explanation on why Zeke was abducted. And there will be an explanation on why he has access to the forum. But it's going to take a while.

This is a big question, and I'll answer it at the end of the Q & A. Uh… he exists in the Fracture-verse world now. You wouldn't be able to spot him in the games as an NPC or anything. RedMonty You got any recommendations for other stories on Royal Road? Are there any threads on the forum that discuss the bugs and exploits that the Devs never patched? Are there any NPC's created by the devs that are references to real people? Like someone they wanted to immortalize in their game or a make-a-wish foundation kid?

A: So… this might be a question that I go back to later on. I've thought about doing some story shoutouts on RR to try and get some more readers, so if when I post this on RR or Spacebattles, this section might change. Right now, I'll say that I read a lot of what everyone else reads. I read Super Supportive and I read Dungeon Crawler Carl, although I don't even think DCC is released on RR anymore. I also read Player Manager from Ted Steel. I mentioned that already in the story.

It's the book about a guy named Max who gets the ability to see the world like he's playing FM26. It's all about soccer and how he can tell how much potential different players have. It's absolutely amazing, and if you're at all interested in soccer you should check it out. There are 14 Player Manager books and he's currently writing book 6 of the next series which is called Soccer Supremo. As for the question of threads discussing bugs and exploits, there are.

I'm not sure if I'm going to write too much about them. It might be something like, the forum asks Zeke to go and investigate it to see if they're actually bugs or if they're hiding lore. And for the NPCs that reference real people… I want to say no but it's again one of those situations where I don't want to limit my options going forward. Kelasgre Regarding the mechanics of Frontiers, do you think you could give us a list of all the skills and classes in the game?

A: Since you mentioned that you wanted to use the skills for your own campaign, I kinda feel bad about saying that I don't want to answer this question. Again, it's because I don't want to limit myself going forward. I might want to introduce a skill or introduce a class into the story, and I don't want people saying "you didn't talk about this during your Q&A. I will say that both GURPS and the old Cyberpunk 2020 pen and paper books have a bunch of skills that I'm going to be using for the story.

So if you wanted a skill in your own DND, you could do worse than using those. https: //gurps. fandom. com/wiki/List_of_Skills https: //kolidascope. fandom. com/wiki/Skills_(Cyberpunk) Rooroo What was your inspiration for this story? How did you come up with it? A: This is a big question and it kinda leads into a bunch of different ideas that I've been batting around for the past year or so. After finishing writing up my last story I had around five or six ideas rattling around in my head.

One was a Naruto fanfic that would have been different from what I usually write. It would have been much more of a shonen protagonist style story than what Zeke's going through. The guy would have been pretty OP and would have focused on fixing all the stuff in Naruto that is kinda messed up. If you stop to think about it, there's a ton of things in Naruto that are kinda shitty.

The Fourth Hokage was a war hero who fought in the 3rd Shinobi war and sacrificed himself to save the village and seal the Nine-Tails in his own son. Then that son grows up to be neglected and hated by the very people his father died protecting. I mean… what the hell? How the hell does that make sense? Nobody checks on Naruto. Hiruzen doesn't stop in and be like "yo, your father was awesome and I'm going to take you under my wing." Kakashi doesn't look after his former mentor's kid.

Jiraiya, Naruto's GODFATHER, doesn't step in and look after the kid. He's living alone and eating spoiled food and his diet is nothing but instant Ramen and nobody cares. They just allow this tiny kid to be a WMD and don't even tell him about the Nine Tails until he's already a genin. That's just one small example. You've also got the Hyuga family turning the branch family into slaves. You've got Yakumo who has her powers sealed instead of being taught how to control them.

You've got the Uchiha who are massacred and Danzo starts collecting all their eyes like they're pokemon cards. Orochimaru was experimenting on kids (and about 30 of them died because of it) and all Hiruzen does when he finds out about it is say "you're a disappointment, please leave the village." You've got 12 year olds sent off to war to be killed. Jiraiya doesn't take Nagato and the other 10 YEAR OLDS with him when he leaves the village, instead just saying "hey, good luck surviving without me."

There's so much about Naruto that pisses me off that I would be writing about in the fanfic. Another idea I had was a story called EPOCH and I actually wrote about 30-35 chapters of it. It's about these aliens called the Ariam who create this massive board game that is like Civilization. Each player gets a giant 3D printer board where they can create an alien civilization and guide them through history towards different victory conditions.

You could focus on an economic, social, political, conquest, or bureaucratic victory. The main character is an Ariam named Millietwinellius - but she's been trying to get her friends to call her MIllions - and she's super excited about a new DLC that introduces a brand-new playable species: Humans. Another story was going to be called Hello Doll-E. It was about a company that invented artificial bodies that people could sync their consciousness into.

It's kinda like that amazing comic and shit Bruce Willis movie: Surrogates. The company would have been trying to promote their tech to governments, militaries, and the average consumer by holding a tournament where gamers, soldiers, and regular people compete in everything from races to extreme sports to battle royales, all using these artificial bodies. Behind the scenes, the company also created this fully artificial human.

It was this woman who would have been entered into the tournament as proof of concept that the company could create assassin's/bodyguards who are faster, smarter, and deadlier than everyone else in the competition. Another story I fiddled around with was called Anno Magicae and it actually made it onto RR. It didn't really take off, but it eventually became the foundation for Emberveil in this story. The premise of the story was that magic started to leak back into the world.

You've got monsters appearing and people throwing around fireballs and gangs capturing fairies to grind them up and turn their bodies into new illegal drugs. Different regions would develop different forms of magic. You'd have some voodoo-style magic, some more traditional fantasy magic, and things like ki in parts of China. There were going to be monks in China that would be racing through mountains and flying through the air. Another story idea I had didn't even get a title.

It was set in 1947 and it would be about this guy who had just got back from WW2 and he gets a job as an animator at a studio. Then he somehow manages to create a real, living "Toon." It would have been this huge, decades-spanning story about Toons. Are they the property of studios? Do they have rights? If they're sentient, doesn't that mean the studios are participating in slavery? What happens when the studios mass-produce these Toons and discard the ones that aren't popular?

The whole story would have been a mix of The Wire, The Deuce, LA Confidential, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It would have followed multiple Toon characters over the course of 50 years, from 1947 to 1997, and there would have been actors and criminals and cops, and activists. It would have talked about the first Toon cop. It would have had the military trying to weaponize Toons, criminal organizations trying to take advantage them, discrimination in the work place and Toons trying to become citizens.

It would have dealt with both the glamorous and darker sides of Hollywood. You would have had a massive movie star, a Toon that is nothing more than a glorified extra, and a Toon who is at the forefront of political and civil rights activism. But none of that answers the question of how I came up with this story.

My original plan for it was called Theorycrafters and it started with a basic premise: if someone were dropped into a videogame world, how strong would they get with a forum filled with nerds who knew the meta and lore and all the hidden secrets? I've played a ton of games and if you dropped me in Skyrim or Fallout or Cyberpunk, I'd be able to get pretty wealthy and powerful.

But at the same time, there are tons of people who know more about the games than me and could break everything and make the MC incredibly overpowered. There are people who write about optimal builds and know hidden mechanics in the games and could help you exploit obscure tricks. If you gathered 30-50 gamers together who are all obsessed with a game, how quickly could they create a truly broken character in Skyrim? That was the core idea in this story.

A guy would get isekai'd into a game and instead of needing to figure out everything by himself, he's got a bunch of nerds guiding him along. If you read comments on fanfics in Spacebattles and RR, you see a lot of backseat writers who are like "no, the guy should have done this and he would have been so powerful." So… what would happen if the story's protagonists could hear those people and actually follow their advice? Originally the story was going to be much more like a traditional isekai.

There still would have been a Zeke and he would have been stuck in the Fracture-verse, but the story was going to alternate between his perspective and everyone on the forum. One chapter of Zeke, one chapter of the forum, one chapter of Zeke, and then one chapter of the forum. Music wasn't going to be a part of the story. He was instead going to be much more of a gadgeteer-type of a fighter with the forum feeding him all sorts of strategies and tips to outfight everything.

He would have been like a crowd-sourced Batman. Over time though, the story evolved into Live at the Forum. I realized that a chatfic would be a lot more interesting than a traditional isekai story and that the community should be playing a much bigger role in shaping everything. There was a part of me that actually didn't even want to write the first chapter with Sera "rescuing" Zeke.

That wouldn't have been shown to anyone, and instead it would have just had Zeke waking up on the train and wondering what the hell was going on. He would have met Riley on the train and then been dumped off in The MIZ to eventually meet up with Patch. My main thought with that was I wanted a sort of ambiguity in the story. I wanted you all to wonder: did Zeke really get isekai'd? I mean, we haven't seen the story from someone else's point of view.

It might be that he's actually just holed away in a cabin somewhere writing up everything without actually getting stuck in the games. You all know that Zeke has been isekai'd because you read the first chapter. But what would you all be thinking if I hadn't written that chapter? Would you all believe him or would that have introduced a quiet, nagging question in the back of your minds? Q: There was another question and I can't remember if it was on Spacebattles or if it was on Patreon.

I might fill it in later if I can find it. But it was about the dimensional storage space and how that worked. A: So, the dimensional storage space ISN'T used like a weapon in the games. There are a few stories out there where a storage space is used in combat. The first one that comes to mind is the Divine Apostasy series by A. F. Kay. The main character has a void band which is a storage space and he can launch things out of it and he can catch objects thrown at him. I really like that aspect of the story.

The way Zeke's dimensional storage works is that it's a little like sleight of hand. He can hold his hand out, think about what's in his storage, and it'll pop out into his hand. He doesn't get to open up giant holes into the void and stuff things into it. He's got to be able to at least hold whatever he stores, and he can take it out whenever he wants.