The Tome of Neverworld (1996) is yet another big rulebook from the big rulebook era, complete with surprisingly professional art, impossible rules and a world that seems silly at best. I bought it primarily for the…stone golem?…on the cover. The cover is emblematic of the game — none of the characters seem to know what they are meant to be doing and environment is impossible to parse. Is the blue sky a portal? How is that the walls also seem to be the floor without bending? We’ll never know because, uh, this is, “A world where science never reigns.” You think that’s special, pal? Lemme tell you a little bit about life in America circa 2025…

Anywho. I refuse to spend much time on the ROC system (Rolling Outcome Chart). That’s right, they somehow took a chart resolution system and made it baffling. Results range from 1 (failure) to 700+ (a result so good it literally bestows godhood). This is because d100 system explodes on a result of 100 (roll again, add the two totals, if the result is another 100, keep going). There’s no practical reward for this besides experience point bonuses. It gets worse from here, but you don’t need to know how, because you’re just going to avoid this thing if you see in on a shelf, right? Right.

You would think a game called NeverWorld would really focus on the World part, but, nope. Basically, the myriad races live among themselves in isolation from the others. There is plenty of information on each race and their cultural practices and their weird fantasy names, but the world itself is largely undefined. The last chapter of the book is partly devoted to generating it. This is dismaying.

As I said at the start, the art is shockingly competent. No clear credits, and I don’t recognize any of the names so I can’t figure out who is who. But one artist is doing a pretty passable Elmore impersonation. Another is…well, if there was LLM-generated art in 1996 I would maybe accuse them of using it. Their work is good, but very still and faces tend to repeat in an unnerving fashion. One other artist is maybe worth a note, because they deliver painting after painting of what I can only describe as Furry art. Humanoid animal people have been a part of fantasy practically forever (see: the Minotaur) but there’s just something about these paintings that screams “Furry” to me. To my knowledge, it’s the first, but certainly not the last, instance of Furry art in an RPG.

Earlier I’d mentioned that I’m currently adapting Neverworld to be an original story. This was a story where everyone from every season was locked in the Digital World together, focused more on their interactions than their struggle for survival. So the challenge is taking a story so reliant on familiar characters and so entrenched in Digital World logic (and its creatures) and making it work on its own.

Neverworld had 36 kids by the end of the first book, and one of its best features is the way it bounced between all of them at some point, with a dozen-ish subplots that wove their way around everybody. So yeah… that’s buttload of OCs. Not 36, that would be insane, plus I suppose I have to keep an eye on word count. But 24, plus the two beloved missing dudes, is plenty when we get all of their perspectives, and required some creativity to diversity a little beyond all Japanese and 69% male. We’re looking at a proportional cross-section of the English speaking world, and even if many of the storylines hit familiar notes, the new characters bring a whole new life to them. So the new story might turn Tai into a woman, Takato into a Canadian, and Zoe into a goth, but I swear you’ll barely notice. The idea of a timeless world where the characters neither age nor have anything particular to strive for still offers so much story potential, with the goal to narrow in the focus to dwell on its impact to the drama everyone gets themselves into.

Every so often I remember to offer updates on Neverworld!

When I started this project, I didn’t think much about tense. The fic was third-person omniscient-ish, usually focusing on one character. But it was a little loose, so something a little more geared towards getting each character’s perspective was warranted. So third-person limited, right? Seemed like a good idea, especially as it was clear whose perspective we’re in early in each segment. I’m still doing that thing where I start every scene with a character’s full name. I loved that. Even if I stole it from Desperate Housewives of all places.

But now that I’m a few scenes in, I’m finding it’s still not personal enough. Funny thing about Neverworld is it feels like things are happening right away. No matter how light and breezy an individual moment might be (there’s a lot more going on in the new D&D scene!), it still starts with people getting thrown into a foreign world and that’s a big deal. And since these are new characters, you need to get to know them fast. I’m realizing that means each character has to use their own voice to narrate their scene. Plus I’ve always been praised for my dialogue making characters sound like themselves. So I’m taking full advantage of that and broadening it out to the narration as well.

The current idea is a short introductory paragraph in third person omniscient to define who’s narrating and set the scene a little bit, maybe a sly comment here and there:

Derek Camden, Arrival Team Epsilon, tore down the dirt path toward the rhetter nest with Tyrell and Owen alongside him. Would it have been faster with Bonnie, the usual driver, the true master of the UTV? Yes. Would it also have been faster if Derek focused entirely on working the bumpy road and less on chatting up Tyrell? Also yes: Don’t get me wrong: heading out to hunt Norvic’s always a good time, especially with Hannah on Comms. Not that I ever missed an opening day back home, but we never got to say the deer deserved it. Still, everyone upstairs made this one out to be personal, like raiding a rhetter nest wasn’t past them. It didn’t happen often: rhetters were tricky buggers and a Norvic had easier ways to get food. But it wasn’t unheard of, I wasn’t about to pretend this was anything more than a routine deployment, and I sure as hell wasn’t doing it to avenge Little Miss Evelyn.

See, you’re already making some judgements about Derek’s character based on how he’s telling the story.

I… swear he’s cool. Mostly.

Maybe. I'm waiting until the end of Ghost Game to begin fantasizing on what I'd throw into a Nexusworld sequel I have no intention of writing. And as far as a "partner losing control of their suddenly murder-happy Digimon," Ryouma was already in the picture and I never felt the need to write a scene of him and Meiko talking about it. Not that there wasn't an oblique reference in chapter 2:

Ren snickered. “Who, Ryouma? Idiot’s Digimon turned out to be the big monster trying to destroy the world. We all teamed up to kill him.” With a smug grin, he added. “It was pretty funny.”