Afterword
Though I usually begin by offering thanks to my grandmother, I would like to head this afterword with an apology to my editor for my massive failure to meet deadlines for this volume. The snail’s pace of my pen was compounded by a slew of extraneous factors in my life, and I’m terribly sorry for the stress I inflicted upon you.
As for the Western sci-fi-novel-inspired list of thanks that has become my norm, I will be skipping over it as I only have two pages of afterword this time around.
Getting to the story, the character creation process has truly been a long one—so long that I can imagine some readers will accuse me of playing GURPS on my lonesome to have filled out literal books’ worth just in a character’s personal history.
The main plot of volume seven is that Erich has finally become an adventurer, but a certain someone gets in the way of his enjoying his long-sought days of beginner questing. I’d outlined the general plot back during the web publication of this arc, and now I finally have a chance to shine the spotlight on some characters I never had the chance to introduce.
At the time, I’d wanted to use this section of the story to say, “Not all sessions have a climax!” but seeing that bound to a single book is rather unexciting. It is only now that I realize how easy it had been to write campaigns for my old meathead friends—er, I mean to say, my friends who were so well acquainted with classic story beats. Rarely, and I mean rarely, did I ever see the bosses I spent sleepless nights crafting go to waste due to an important connection or a well-timed verbal beatdown. Frankly, it was more common for my bosses to be laughed out of the room by their unethical munchkin builds; but hey, no hard feelings. Not. At. All.
I’ve been told brevity is the soul of wit, and that by extension I’m predisposed to witless sarcasm, so I will leave it at that. On a more earnest note, I’m happy to say that the seventh volume’s special edition has once again come with dice—and even character tokens! Now we can put the statistically anomalous gold-and-blue dice aside and roll 2D6 with characters that seem like they’d have higher expected values!
Furthermore, the manga adaptation has also begun publication under the wonderful Uchida Temo, sure to preach the good word of proclivities yet unknown to us. At the time of writing, three chapters have been released. I’d love if you would take a look at the world given form—it’s a wonderful supplement to the core books.
2022 has been a good year for me. I achieved both the production of physical dice and the serialization of a manga; on top of that, I managed to spend another year as a Real Author as opposed to a self-proclaimed one. It’s a little early yet, but I want to offer my year’s greetings, because its end will be fast approaching by the time this afterword is published.
If I am given the honor of another volume, I suspect it will follow a poor countryside boy being badgered by some blond weirdo; I hope that you will continue to support me through it. Perhaps in part as a reaction to the lack of action in this volume, I plan to flesh out the climax until all my readers are once again confused at the amount of new material.
Well, then. Please hold on to your record sheets until next time—be sure not to lose them!
[Tips] The author uploads side stories and world-building details to @Schuld3157 on Twitter as “extra replays” and “rulebook fragments.”
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