Charles Cheese
Qualified Cheese Consumer
More Worldbuilding
The MMORPG and alternatives
SomnumThis is the name of the MMORPG our characters are playing, and it's backed by the charity called Our Coma World.
It's existed for 5 years. COMA stands for Care, Overcome, Mend, Accomplish. Care for those dealing with grief or mental trouble, overcoming their predicaments, mending past traumas, and accomplishing new goals, to learning languages, skills that can be applied and much more.
The devs wouldn't intentionally implement a feature that'd negatively effect player's psyche, but there are workarounds. These can be glitches to unintentional features.
The world is very large and constantly expanding with new updates or to accommodate players. Everyone in this RP can contribute to the world as long as you don't have your additions be an end all be all. For example, players will be able to add their own civilizations but they can't say that those are the only ones, or design a god that some npcs worship according to lore and say that is the only mythological god.
Private Policy: To enter any of Coma's games or servers, you'll need to accept the terms and conditions and private policy. Your POV at any time could be used or reviewed by a moderator or trusted third party. This is for research and to better support players. If players cause too much mental harm, a mod may eventually notice. Sometimes random events or small aspects of the world may be tailored to improve your mental wellbeing directly, and you may be invited more and more to therapy and support groups.
Imagination grove: A sister product of Somnum. This server has existed for 3 years and it took extra development to make everything child friendly and educational. Not only can Comatose minors join, but injured, disabled, or troubled minors as well. There are many teachers, psychologists and therapists available. Children are essentially invincible in this MMORPG, incapable of death or being harmed or having things stolen.
When children travel to Somnum, they are incapable of harming and stealing to prevent gamebreaking. They can also only enter moderator approved areas, like criminal safe hubs.
Every child's headset is filtered to replace scary or non-rated e imagery. When something dies, to them they've exploded into rainbows and glitter. When there's a scary monster, it looks like a cute and huggable teddy bear. Here are a few more examples, but you can be creative.
Blood- Rainbow glitter glue
Swears- PG alternatives. Example: "You piece of shit!" is replaced with "You piece of pie!"
Dead bodies- Sleeping unicorns
Adult Players also have the option to turn on this filter for themselves, but that does not effect their mortality.
Important note: You can only play a minor as a secondary character and they can't have romance.
Daydream OdysseyThe game has an alternative called Daydream Odyssey that's available to the broader public. It's riddled with microtransactions and almost impossible to have an immersive, genuine experience, but most of the funds directly to Our Coma world. It has existed for four years more than Somnum. It used to be extremely buggy and barebones but thanks to lootboxes and microtransactions, it has become a polished game that many other games have used as inspiration.
Our characters might have experience with Daydream Odyssey or the many other VR MMORPGs that have spawned from it.
Silver DistrictThe RP is set in an English speaking beginner's hub run by a 1k player guild called the Level 10's. These players are all here fulfilling different town duties, normal town rp roles like cook, blacksmith, etc.. To stay in the guild they must give their experience points away to the town guards to stay at a level 10 or less. They will be pretty weak, and this includes NPC companions, gear, pets or monster tames they may have too. We live in a multi-biome town intended to be a tutorial zone or a place for experienced players/tourists to test their builds(not our characters). This will give us the excuse to have things like a desert dwelling tortle next to a deep ocean crabperson.
The level 10's have a rank system based on various factors like how hard someone has worked or how well they're trusted by the community. We are Silver Rank. This means our characters have been in the town for a while and may even be running a business. They will have their own personal dedicated location called the Silver District, which includes things like Inns, Parks, etc. You can add to this street as you please if your character owns a business there. Silver district has the designated gathering zones for our characters.
Even though I wrote this to help, it's important for everyone to still give their characters reason to interact with others, even if you have to suspend disbelief a little.
The Hub: The hub is called Trade of Jacks, for its diverse terrain and literal thousands of shops. Multibiome. If there isn't something in Silver District like a biome, it's most likely somewhere else in TOJ. If you took the size of new york city, made an ingame replica, that's the size of this hub.
Vague so everyone can fill in the blanks, as long as you leave plenty of room for other players to worldbuild as well.
Terrain in Silver District: Beach, plains, forest, hills, docks, rocky shores and ocean. Little areas can be added on player request.
Gameplay MechanicsNPCSAI- Sophisticated enough to develop emotions. NPCs of all kinds can have a decent memory system.
The primary rule is that Npcs cannot acknowledge they're in a game. They will either be in denial about it, or they will know but bring it up at all as they are incapable of doing so. Only glitched npcs can acknowledge this.
Updated and Outdated- Only NPCs made in the last 2 years can make their own sentences without having to pick apart preset voice lines to convey what they want. Most NPCs without the latest technology have been removed, but some may have been able to evade deletion by having a human friend or pretending like they do. Many developers don't go through the trouble of updating npcs and just delete then replace them with newer, identical versions.
Companions- NPCs. Mounts, to followers, pets or tames, these are entities that can follow you. When you die, they will use their memories to go to where they'll think they would see you again, to a home, reading spot, etc. If they die, it's likely they will be 'reincarnated' via spawning as another npc of that type. They may even be eerily similar. Some NPCs have minds of their own and refuse to be a follower.
Adoption- It's no secret that many players find the love(s) of their life here and may want the experience of starting a family. These players will have the option to either adopt an npc child or adopt a real child from Imagination Grove. If you adopt a real child, there is a long adoption process and a heavily involved ingame CPS. You can expect your pov to be monitored and reviewed by mods. NPC children are protected as well but not as heavily as real ones.
Inventory- Realistic. Your traveler character will need storage options like pockets, backpacks or a npc to store items you can't hold with your hands. Those options are realistic as well, there is no void in your pocket you can use to store things. There might be abilities some species have that'll let them hold additional items, but they'll have to be limited. This is to provide more immersion and give more job opportunities to players like haulers.
Messaging/How to Access Menu- When you close your eyes in this virtual reality, you will appear to be brought to a dark abyss just like normal. However if you turn around, you’ll see a settings menu that you can use like a touchscreen. If you face down, you will be able to see a bright white bird right by your legs. These are called spirit pigeons and they serve a very specific purpose. If you have food or seeds on you, you may ask them to send deliveries or letters to people. Once sent, they will exit out into the overworld and start making the delivery, flying fast and phasing through everything to make the process even faster. They’re so quick they cannot be used to track down someone’s location. Once they deliver the item directly to the person (or on their doorstep if specified), they’ll head back to you, perch on your shoulder, and disappear back into the abyss(optionally). Players can see each other’s pigeons when they’re making their delivery but cannot interact with them in any way.
Other players can tell when you're in a main menu when you turn around with your eyes closed.
More on Spirit pigeons: The Pigeon's form changes into a fish in liquid and a rabbit underground. The spirit pigeon can take different forms based on what the player wants and you can even make them little accessories. A lot of players customize their spirit pigeon to look like a pet they have in the real world.
You can even bring this companion out from the abyss and into the overworld with you!
Developers are working on ways to bring real pets to Somnum to comfort their owners.
Pain Toggle- In the settings, your character can choose to experience numbed pain or realistic pain. There is no option to avoid pain altogether, because if you wake up you may go insane from your lack of pain tolerance.
Accessibility- I won't be very detailed about this because I am not very knowledgeable in this subject, but a few examples of settings would be like subtitles, audio control, color blindness support and more. As long as it doesn't make your character OP like a money cheat, etc.
Offline or Napping Players- Comatose players have the option to choose if they want to rest and how long for. They can nap, waking back up after a certain time or shut off their game forever. Their avatar will become ai, defend themselves if needed and run to where they last slept and fall asleep. When the player dies in real life, the avatar will be asleep forever, snoring and looking like they're having a good dream.
Usernames- There are two ways to see someone’s username: if you shake their hand or closest-to-hand limb, or if you close your eyes. In the settings menu (which you can open by using the menu button), you can access a history log that documents the last 100 players you’ve interacted with. This refreshes every 2 hours, so if you come across a shapeshifting player, you wouldn’t be able to tell until then.
Profile Pictures- When you access the menu, a picture will be on the right of their username. You cannot change this picture; it will be of your current avatar facing front to the camera. These are taken after your character creation.
Change Species- While most species are easily accessible at 9,000G(a price of a carriage or small boat), some may need to be unlocked and others come with items and so are more expensive.
Character Creation- Your first time is free, but afterwards it costs 25,000G. (The price of a pegasus)
This is only for features you couldn't realistically change without plastic surgery. This does not let you change your species.
Can change: Gender, Face, Body (that fits with the species you picked), voice (can be modified to sound more like a gender you identify as)
Can't Change: Temporary features like makeup, accessories, and clothes because you can all do this in the game yourself. If it's visible on the species you picked, you also can't change your ethnicity.
Spawn Points & Fast Travel- There are 3 taverns for each hub that every player can spawn at upon death. These taverns are approved by community to be trustworthy. You can choose to fast travel to these points by hiring a coachman and logging off (or taking a 'nap') until the estimated time they give you.
You can unlock more spawn points by successfully renting and paying for a room at other taverns. These may be run by NPCs or players, and may have requirements to complete first before you're able to get a room.
You also may spawn in the latest residential bed you've slept in.
Death and Respawning When every player dies, unless there's features in their species this is how every player's death is handled:
Your body will stay until you pick respawn, after which it'll disappear and your loot will be in a chest near your body(can be flavored). This chest is locked and requires lockpicking, strength, or creative ingenuity to open. When you respawn, you will have a key in your hand to easily unlock that chest with. You can respawn at any of the taverns you have registered.
Appraisal- Items and gear of all kinds can be appraised by a priest so you can keep it upon 15 deaths, but the money will inflate greatly based on how powerful or valuable the item is. This is expensive, but worth it if you travel with important items. These appraised items cannot be pickpocketed because you are bound to them.
This does not apply to multiple items at once, you cannot appraise lots of gold coins at once, you'd have to praise each and every one of them. This has led players to carry an item or two with high sale value and appraise it.
More to be added, included player worldbuilding of Somnum and the many races.
The MMORPG and alternatives
SomnumThis is the name of the MMORPG our characters are playing, and it's backed by the charity called Our Coma World.
It's existed for 5 years. COMA stands for Care, Overcome, Mend, Accomplish. Care for those dealing with grief or mental trouble, overcoming their predicaments, mending past traumas, and accomplishing new goals, to learning languages, skills that can be applied and much more.
The devs wouldn't intentionally implement a feature that'd negatively effect player's psyche, but there are workarounds. These can be glitches to unintentional features.
The world is very large and constantly expanding with new updates or to accommodate players. Everyone in this RP can contribute to the world as long as you don't have your additions be an end all be all. For example, players will be able to add their own civilizations but they can't say that those are the only ones, or design a god that some npcs worship according to lore and say that is the only mythological god.
Private Policy: To enter any of Coma's games or servers, you'll need to accept the terms and conditions and private policy. Your POV at any time could be used or reviewed by a moderator or trusted third party. This is for research and to better support players. If players cause too much mental harm, a mod may eventually notice. Sometimes random events or small aspects of the world may be tailored to improve your mental wellbeing directly, and you may be invited more and more to therapy and support groups.
Imagination grove: A sister product of Somnum. This server has existed for 3 years and it took extra development to make everything child friendly and educational. Not only can Comatose minors join, but injured, disabled, or troubled minors as well. There are many teachers, psychologists and therapists available. Children are essentially invincible in this MMORPG, incapable of death or being harmed or having things stolen.
When children travel to Somnum, they are incapable of harming and stealing to prevent gamebreaking. They can also only enter moderator approved areas, like criminal safe hubs.
Every child's headset is filtered to replace scary or non-rated e imagery. When something dies, to them they've exploded into rainbows and glitter. When there's a scary monster, it looks like a cute and huggable teddy bear. Here are a few more examples, but you can be creative.
Blood- Rainbow glitter glue
Swears- PG alternatives. Example: "You piece of shit!" is replaced with "You piece of pie!"
Dead bodies- Sleeping unicorns
Adult Players also have the option to turn on this filter for themselves, but that does not effect their mortality.
Important note: You can only play a minor as a secondary character and they can't have romance.
Daydream OdysseyThe game has an alternative called Daydream Odyssey that's available to the broader public. It's riddled with microtransactions and almost impossible to have an immersive, genuine experience, but most of the funds directly to Our Coma world. It has existed for four years more than Somnum. It used to be extremely buggy and barebones but thanks to lootboxes and microtransactions, it has become a polished game that many other games have used as inspiration.
Our characters might have experience with Daydream Odyssey or the many other VR MMORPGs that have spawned from it.
Silver DistrictThe RP is set in an English speaking beginner's hub run by a 1k player guild called the Level 10's. These players are all here fulfilling different town duties, normal town rp roles like cook, blacksmith, etc.. To stay in the guild they must give their experience points away to the town guards to stay at a level 10 or less. They will be pretty weak, and this includes NPC companions, gear, pets or monster tames they may have too. We live in a multi-biome town intended to be a tutorial zone or a place for experienced players/tourists to test their builds(not our characters). This will give us the excuse to have things like a desert dwelling tortle next to a deep ocean crabperson.
The level 10's have a rank system based on various factors like how hard someone has worked or how well they're trusted by the community. We are Silver Rank. This means our characters have been in the town for a while and may even be running a business. They will have their own personal dedicated location called the Silver District, which includes things like Inns, Parks, etc. You can add to this street as you please if your character owns a business there. Silver district has the designated gathering zones for our characters.
Even though I wrote this to help, it's important for everyone to still give their characters reason to interact with others, even if you have to suspend disbelief a little.
The Hub: The hub is called Trade of Jacks, for its diverse terrain and literal thousands of shops. Multibiome. If there isn't something in Silver District like a biome, it's most likely somewhere else in TOJ. If you took the size of new york city, made an ingame replica, that's the size of this hub.
Vague so everyone can fill in the blanks, as long as you leave plenty of room for other players to worldbuild as well.
Terrain in Silver District: Beach, plains, forest, hills, docks, rocky shores and ocean. Little areas can be added on player request.
Gameplay MechanicsNPCSAI- Sophisticated enough to develop emotions. NPCs of all kinds can have a decent memory system.
The primary rule is that Npcs cannot acknowledge they're in a game. They will either be in denial about it, or they will know but bring it up at all as they are incapable of doing so. Only glitched npcs can acknowledge this.
Updated and Outdated- Only NPCs made in the last 2 years can make their own sentences without having to pick apart preset voice lines to convey what they want. Most NPCs without the latest technology have been removed, but some may have been able to evade deletion by having a human friend or pretending like they do. Many developers don't go through the trouble of updating npcs and just delete then replace them with newer, identical versions.
Companions- NPCs. Mounts, to followers, pets or tames, these are entities that can follow you. When you die, they will use their memories to go to where they'll think they would see you again, to a home, reading spot, etc. If they die, it's likely they will be 'reincarnated' via spawning as another npc of that type. They may even be eerily similar. Some NPCs have minds of their own and refuse to be a follower.
Adoption- It's no secret that many players find the love(s) of their life here and may want the experience of starting a family. These players will have the option to either adopt an npc child or adopt a real child from Imagination Grove. If you adopt a real child, there is a long adoption process and a heavily involved ingame CPS. You can expect your pov to be monitored and reviewed by mods. NPC children are protected as well but not as heavily as real ones.
Inventory- Realistic. Your traveler character will need storage options like pockets, backpacks or a npc to store items you can't hold with your hands. Those options are realistic as well, there is no void in your pocket you can use to store things. There might be abilities some species have that'll let them hold additional items, but they'll have to be limited. This is to provide more immersion and give more job opportunities to players like haulers.
Messaging/How to Access Menu- When you close your eyes in this virtual reality, you will appear to be brought to a dark abyss just like normal. However if you turn around, you’ll see a settings menu that you can use like a touchscreen. If you face down, you will be able to see a bright white bird right by your legs. These are called spirit pigeons and they serve a very specific purpose. If you have food or seeds on you, you may ask them to send deliveries or letters to people. Once sent, they will exit out into the overworld and start making the delivery, flying fast and phasing through everything to make the process even faster. They’re so quick they cannot be used to track down someone’s location. Once they deliver the item directly to the person (or on their doorstep if specified), they’ll head back to you, perch on your shoulder, and disappear back into the abyss(optionally). Players can see each other’s pigeons when they’re making their delivery but cannot interact with them in any way.
Other players can tell when you're in a main menu when you turn around with your eyes closed.
More on Spirit pigeons: The Pigeon's form changes into a fish in liquid and a rabbit underground. The spirit pigeon can take different forms based on what the player wants and you can even make them little accessories. A lot of players customize their spirit pigeon to look like a pet they have in the real world.
You can even bring this companion out from the abyss and into the overworld with you!
Developers are working on ways to bring real pets to Somnum to comfort their owners.
Pain Toggle- In the settings, your character can choose to experience numbed pain or realistic pain. There is no option to avoid pain altogether, because if you wake up you may go insane from your lack of pain tolerance.
Accessibility- I won't be very detailed about this because I am not very knowledgeable in this subject, but a few examples of settings would be like subtitles, audio control, color blindness support and more. As long as it doesn't make your character OP like a money cheat, etc.
Offline or Napping Players- Comatose players have the option to choose if they want to rest and how long for. They can nap, waking back up after a certain time or shut off their game forever. Their avatar will become ai, defend themselves if needed and run to where they last slept and fall asleep. When the player dies in real life, the avatar will be asleep forever, snoring and looking like they're having a good dream.
Usernames- There are two ways to see someone’s username: if you shake their hand or closest-to-hand limb, or if you close your eyes. In the settings menu (which you can open by using the menu button), you can access a history log that documents the last 100 players you’ve interacted with. This refreshes every 2 hours, so if you come across a shapeshifting player, you wouldn’t be able to tell until then.
Profile Pictures- When you access the menu, a picture will be on the right of their username. You cannot change this picture; it will be of your current avatar facing front to the camera. These are taken after your character creation.
Change Species- While most species are easily accessible at 9,000G(a price of a carriage or small boat), some may need to be unlocked and others come with items and so are more expensive.
Character Creation- Your first time is free, but afterwards it costs 25,000G. (The price of a pegasus)
This is only for features you couldn't realistically change without plastic surgery. This does not let you change your species.
Can change: Gender, Face, Body (that fits with the species you picked), voice (can be modified to sound more like a gender you identify as)
Can't Change: Temporary features like makeup, accessories, and clothes because you can all do this in the game yourself. If it's visible on the species you picked, you also can't change your ethnicity.
Spawn Points & Fast Travel- There are 3 taverns for each hub that every player can spawn at upon death. These taverns are approved by community to be trustworthy. You can choose to fast travel to these points by hiring a coachman and logging off (or taking a 'nap') until the estimated time they give you.
You can unlock more spawn points by successfully renting and paying for a room at other taverns. These may be run by NPCs or players, and may have requirements to complete first before you're able to get a room.
You also may spawn in the latest residential bed you've slept in.
Death and Respawning When every player dies, unless there's features in their species this is how every player's death is handled:
Your body will stay until you pick respawn, after which it'll disappear and your loot will be in a chest near your body(can be flavored). This chest is locked and requires lockpicking, strength, or creative ingenuity to open. When you respawn, you will have a key in your hand to easily unlock that chest with. You can respawn at any of the taverns you have registered.
Appraisal- Items and gear of all kinds can be appraised by a priest so you can keep it upon 15 deaths, but the money will inflate greatly based on how powerful or valuable the item is. This is expensive, but worth it if you travel with important items. These appraised items cannot be pickpocketed because you are bound to them.
This does not apply to multiple items at once, you cannot appraise lots of gold coins at once, you'd have to praise each and every one of them. This has led players to carry an item or two with high sale value and appraise it.
More to be added, included player worldbuilding of Somnum and the many races.
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