Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 1 - Chapter Pr

Preface

Tabletop Roleplaying Game (TRPG)

An analog version of the RPG format utilizing paper rulebooks and dice.

A form of performance art where the GM (Game Master) and players carve out the details of a story from an initial outline.

The PCs (Player Characters) are born from the details on their character sheets. Each player lives through their PC as they overcome the GM’s trials to reach the final ending.

Nowadays, there are countless types of TRPGs, spanning genres that include fantasy, sci-fi, horror, modern chuanqi, shooters, postapocalyptic, and even niche settings such as those based on idols or maids.

When I realized the first thought that came to my budding ego questioned my own sanity, I began to wonder if I had incurred some sort of karmic debt.

My name is Erich. I have no family name, as I was born the fourth son to an independent farming family on the outskirts of the Trialist Empire of Rhine. Simple farmers are not permitted to hold last names, so the best I could do was to identify myself as Erich of Konigstuhl canton. Elsewhere, it would suffice to introduce myself as the last-born son of Johannes.

My mother had her hands full tending to the newborn girl she’d delivered over winter. As a result, I was left to my own devices in the spring of my fifth year, when my psyche began to twist in a peculiar fashion. I’m unsure if I should attribute it solely to a past life, but the underlying cause was certain: another self dwelled within me, altogether separate from my personal experiences.

For better or for worse, a typical five-year-old child is an innocent and stupid animal. It dribbles with snot and toys with the lives of lesser creatures as it frolics around in the mud. This should be all the more common in a rural village, where every semblance of convenience is replaced with nature as far as the eye can see.

Yet I was curiously enlightened, endowed with insight as soon as my frayed strand of consciousness grew aware of itself. And this insight was accompanied by experiences both wholly unrelated to me and at once unmistakably my own. These experiences formed memories—memories of a man named Fukemachi Saku.

I could find no better way to describe these memories than to label them as a past life. My previous experiences detailed the unremarkable story of a bachelor in his thirties. I had been born to an average household and was blessed with similarly average happiness, until I’d reached an abrupt, unfortunate end due to an early case of cancer.

I had become a manager at the trading firm at which I worked, and wholeheartedly enjoyed my hobbies in my spare time. I thought it had been a life free of regrets. Although my single status had prevented me from giving my parents any grandchildren, my older sister thankfully managed to, so I didn’t have to bear some horrible regret over that.

The question was why I was now alive in an unfamiliar land, perceiving myself as a five-year-old boy. A single memory came to mind: my early onset cancer had developed rapidly, and I’d quickly abandoned hopes of treatment. In the terminal care wing, I had frequently lost myself in deep thought as I meditated to calm my soul. As I had sat in the lotus position and sunk into the depths of my mind, I could feel the mounting fear dissipate from my sick, creaking body.

In the midst of my meditation, I met the Buddha.

To be frank, I myself could only imagine it to have been some form of hallucination, but there was simply no other way to describe what had occurred. After all, upon my chance encounter with this man sitting on a lotus flower, he himself claimed to be a Bodhisattva-in-training on the path to becoming a future Buddha.

According to this future Buddha (if he was training to be a Bodhisattva, did that make him Maitreya?), among all of existence there were many worlds that were ultimately fated to collapse. The gods who oversaw these worlds would come to him for help. Instead of intervening directly, the sage opted to toss in souls that would eventually resolve their assigned issues or otherwise prevent them.

At any rate, his training was to manage and maintain all of existence until every life was saved and he became a Bodhisattva.

I then thought that, instead of calling upon an ordinary person on his deathbed, it would be best to use some sort of godly power to solve these problems, but there were apparently factors barring him from doing so, chiefly that excessive intervention from the gods often led mortals to become idle and decay as beings. As a result, the gods dealt with matters by indirectly nudging things along so that the fundamental corrective force would come from the people of the world themselves.

What was more, he told me that the prophets who laid out the moral groundwork seen in religious mythos were given similar offers to the one I was now receiving. As a result, they became sons of god, enlightened ones, and the like.

It was quite the grand tale. For a humble man whose greatest form of luxury was buying a new rulebook or supplement, this lofty talk was utterly incomprehensible. I had my doubts about his method of selection. There were more virtuous souls out there—people of outstanding character, brimming with philanthropic intent. Why not choose a saint, or someone who had already attained enlightenment?

And yet his will evidently did not waver, as I was now here solemnly recounting what had happened...as Erich, fourth son to a farmer in Konigstuhl canton.

Despite his grand speech, he had failed to give me any concrete mission. I hadn’t been given any teachings to spread, nor a prophecy to exhort. All that he had preached was the familiar gospel of a certain deity I’d encountered along my many adventures in my previous life: “Do what thou wilt.”

A god of evil, are we?

All jokes aside, I was sure the will of the gods foresaw some profound, complex strategy indecipherable to me. There was no doubt in my mind that there was a plan in place so that I could do as I pleased and it would somehow work in favor of the divine...for better or for worse. My presence here likely had meaning in and of itself—in which case, there was nothing more for me to do than live.

With my purpose established, I had a single piece of evidence that sufficed to prove the existence of such gods. At the end of our encounter, the venerable being offered me a blessing alongside his gospel—the power to mold myself as I pleased.

Although I hadn’t understood at the time, now that my sense of self was firmly anchored in this world, I finally knew. I could develop my skills “as I pleased.” I looked up and focused to see a design document that outlined all the details that made up me. What I could do, what I was good at, and what I could will into being were all clearly listed. What was more, I could fiddle with them to my heart’s content.

Each element influenced another, and in turn was influenced by others to create the complex web of systems offered by the games that I had loved so dearly in my previous life. The time I’d spent scribbling up characters and exploring other worlds in the most beautiful form of entertainment known to man was unfurling itself before my eyes.

I instantly fell in love with the simple, yet captivating system. An extending cylinder represented my physical growth, with an array of other cylinders surrounding it, each embodying a job, skill, or trait that served to build up an avatar.

When my mind finally recognized what my eyes were showing me, I thought, This is a tabletop RPG. The interface was closer to that of a console game, but the underlying makeup was the spitting image of the contents of the thick, pricey rulebooks I had often indulged in. It was the very same as the character sheets on which I had drawn up the history of many a character. I fondly remembered the slips of paper I had used to act out a story with my friends as we played through our analog campaigns.

Oh, what joy! I thought. After all, that meant an infinite number of possibilities now lay before me.

Generally, all creatures gain experience in relation to the actions they brought about. If you did daily chores like pulling weeds, then you’d become more proficient at weeding. If you swung a sword, you’d accumulate experience with the sword. This went without saying: you couldn’t uncover the secrets of the blade regardless of how many weeds you pulled.

But I could. By stocking up all of my experience points, I could spend them on anything I wished, just like how an adventurer in a TRPG could hack and slash their way to sagehood. If I put my mind to it, I could master the art of swordsmanship simply by weeding the lawn.

What could I call this if not fun? The system was designed just like a TRPG: so long as I saved up experience on my adventures, I could attain skills completely separate from the exploits that fueled them, just as I had in my beloved pastime.

With such unbelievably perfect conditions, it was no mystery that my awakened ego couldn’t help but doubt its own sanity. This world was like a pleasant fantasy that I might see in bed before drifting off to the land of dreams.

However, unlike a dream, I truly existed, and my power worked just as I’d expected. All the proof I needed to confirm that fact was the simple wooden idol in my hands.

I hate to admit this, but I had been clumsy in my past life. Following the original instructions was as far as I’d ever gotten with plastic models, and even then, they would turn out a mess as I’d frequently broken them by using the wrong pieces.

But look at me now! By putting experience points into Dexterity, I’d unlocked a Wood Whittling skill. After acquiring the first level, Fledgling, I was able to carve a figure with just a knife and a chunk of wood.

I am Erich of Konigstuhl canton, the boy who does as he wills.

[Tips] Experience points are used to improve base stats, traits, and skills.