NO EXITS

After the seventh day of the happiest place on Earth, at precisely 1:32 AM, the campus once more resets. Everyone trapped in the experiment falls unconscious (if not sleeping already) only to wake up sometime afterward in their assigned bed, in their assigned room, in their assigned dorm in the exact condition they arrived, wearing the precise clothing they arrived in. Once again, the campus sits in an unsettling but familiar white void.

Normally this is the part where Derleth University returns to its gentle void so all its guests may recuperate in absolute peace. The dining hall kitchens have been restocked, any damage to the campus from the previous week is undone. But not all is well.

This week’s bullshit?

Well someone had the brilliant idea to shrink down an entire IKEA and bring it to Derleth. (Cough, Eliot, cough.) And someone decided, sure, why not, what could possibly go wrong messing with the delicate balance of space within a semistable void bubble? (Cough, Scott and Rick, cough.)

Y’all just wanted your furniture and sweedish meatballs that badly, didn’t you?

Some of you may wake up closer to ten feet tall. Others of you may wake up closer to six inches tall. The good news is your room (or your half of the room) is proportional to you. The rest of the campus? Not so much.

It’s gunna take a bit to get this straightened out folks.

1. Comment below to random roll for their height, which will be somewhere between 6 inches and 120 inches (10 feet).

2. Choose the height/size you want your character to wake up as.

3. Opt out of your character personally changing size (though that doesn’t mean the rest of campus and their friends won’t be affected).

• The Green: super huge now, as are the squirrels and all the creatures in it. Will they attack you or will you have a furry rideable mount (assuming you’re somewhere between four and seven feet tall for squirrels) for the week to help you get around? There are smaller insects that are also larger for the smol folks, and other strange creatures detailed in the reference com as well. Enjoy!

• Dexter Hall (cafeteria and kitchen): also super huge. Reaching the food and getting access to the pantries are going to be a problem, even if you are ten feet tall. Some of you have powers and magic. Work together.

• Ellery Laboratory: Shit. Where did it go? It is technically somewhere, it’s just very, very tiny. What? Did you think I was going to give you science types easy access to your equipment to fix this easily?

• The Old Gym: Also super tiny and difficult to find. Sorry, Rick. Your secret lab is probably still somewhere. Same deal, we’re not making this easy on anyone.

• Wimarth Library: comfortable if you’re two to four feet tall.

• Peaslee Theater: comfortable if you’re eight feet or taller.

• The Waldron Clinic: fine if you’re two feet tall or shorter. Maybe try not to get hurt this week because all the drugs are smaller and the supplies probably won’t fit well.

• Everywhere else: unaffected, but that doesn’t help much if you are.

• Your room (or your half of the room if you’re in a double) is sized to you.

• However the shared spaces such as the living room and bathrooms are going to remain its normal size, which may end up being huge or cramped to your new size, depending on how you end up. Same with the hallways, elevator, stairs and other public spaces of Butler Hall.

• Optional: if you want to be extra mean, you can play with the sizes of your character’s clothing (including everything in their closet that they’ve been collecting). You can be nice and keep their clothing sized to them, however.

My character has powers or is super smart, can they solve this problem on day one!

Come on, people. I put some variation of this FAQ question in nearly all my plots, for years, and inevitably some player will be that person. Yes, I understand your character is cool. You need to understand this is a game with a lot of cool characters. It’s your responsibility as a player to manage any OP characters you picked up so they work in the context of game and plot. Don’t be that person.

Sure, if you want. But Derleth is unstable and unpredictable, so instead, I’d like to challenge you. Can your character make the situation worse? Play with the concept, people. Have fun with it. Fixing everything easily is not fun and won’t give you plot to last for the rest of the week.

Things can be more or less fixed by Day Five. It might be hard to RP the entire week, and that way you get to have a few IC days in game mostly back to normal. The effort to right the overall quantum stability of the campus so this doesn’t happen again will be Rick and Scott, but the buildings and individuals for the week can be righted by magic and others. Just don’t be the asshole who solves everything for everyone. Spread the plot love.

Your character could get stepped on, attacked by a squirrel, or maybe explode in a magical accident to try and right their size. That’s fine. Just make sure you have AC for that character if you’re going to kill them. They will not be a ghost this week. They will just be gone, and wake up the following week.

Accidental injury and death, claustrophobia, a large person getting stuck in a small space for the lolz, etc. Please try to use your best judgement and if I tell you to put something behind a cut tag with a content warning, that’s just so people can choose to engage or not, it’s not a “you’re in trouble” thing unless you’re being extremely careless.

If they’re your character’s pet or pokemon, you can choose their size or randomize it. It’s entirely up to you. You can also just leave them their regular size. However pets and pokemon do not reset so if you choose to injure them or kill them off, they’re not coming back, so be careful of what you do for the lolz and use those content warnings, people!

Because Pym Particles were used to shrink the IKEA, the thing that created this whole mess, we’re going with Ant Man rules. Small means you have the same punch as if you were normal sized, but bigger amplifies.

Yes. Once Rick and Scott figure out how to stabilize this mess so it doesn’t happen again, there will be a tiny IKEA people can go and pick out some things if they need them, and then inbiggen them for their rooms.

(JFC, me imagining someone actually asking this and not reading the FAQ first.) Did you read questions two and three? All they’re going to do is a general stabilization so this doesn’t happen again in future weeks. If you want to find a building and fix it, or fix the size of yourself or your line partners, that is on you.

I just ask if your character has a solution that it’s limited so that if anyone wants to be a weird size for the rest of the week, they can explain there just wasn’t enough resources to go around and they missed out, not that their character had to act OOCly for the lolz.

As with previous plots, you can decide if new characters are affected or not. The rest of the campus is, so there will still be plenty of shenanigans to respond to.

I was feeling salty when I wrote it. :B I hope you found my imagining the worst case scenario responses and aggravating myself amusing?