Afterword
First of all, I would like to give a quick word of thanks to my grandmother, whom I still think of when I put things away and take them out as the seasons change. There are still so many things of hers that I can’t bring myself to throw away, and every time I pick one up the memories come flooding back.
Next, a word of thanks to my editor, who is ever patient with me despite my flagrant and repeated defiance of my deadline. Thanks to Lansane, who provided beautiful illustrations which surpassed my every expectation, despite how annoying I was during the design phase. Thanks to Uchida Temo, who has given my work a new life in manga form, repackaging it in a beautiful and easier to read format (especially considering how I get constant feedback that my work wears people out).
And finally, thanks to all of my readers, who have somehow stuck with this series to its eighth volume. It is thanks to you all that I have managed to complete volume eight without issue! Well, maybe not (flashbacks to the deadline...), but the book’s out, so there’s no issue there, right? Status ailments don’t carry over to a resurrected unit, after all!
Huh? What’s that? Continuing like this might lead to a breakdown of my Bonds? My Bad Author stat will start to get stupidly high and I’ll distance those around me?
...Okay, I’ll try to be more careful in the future. Truly. After all, what unfurls in the next volume is particularly troublesome, and I’m currently scratching my head trying to work out how best to deal with it.
Whatever the case, I didn’t have much room in the last volume, so I had to cut out the Western-style list of acknowledgments, but this time I got a whole seven pages to jabber on as I wish, so I’m going to.
This might be the eighth volume, but it is actually the ninth book. It’s been quite the shock to me that a difficult TRPG-obsessed guy like me has managed to keep writing for long. Moreover, this volume’s coming out at the same time as the first volume of the manga. The world is really a strange place.
In a further surprising twist, from the end of 2022 to now in 2023, I’ve managed to work in a whole damn lot of game sessions!
This series was born from all my mid-lockdown gaming whims—I wanna get back to the table, I wanna scribble out a ream of character sheets, I wanna be an overpowered munchkin to make my GM hate me. Thinking back, I’d just got a new job offer when I’d begun work on the web novel, so I’m overwhelmed with emotion that this has been possible again.
To top it off, thanks to a bunch of software, I have been able to enjoy online sessions while using my own pieces and dice. Actually playing TRPGs again has really helped me keep the form fresh in my mind, so thank you modern world for allowing me to continue to both play and get ideas.
Fortunately, the sessions haven’t gone so overboard as to replenish my stock of possible Henderson Scale escapades, and I intend to keep them pretty ordered. Don’t worry though, that doesn’t mean my stock is running dry—not at all.
I also have no plans to get so overcome with joy over being back at the table that I shed this mortal coil, so don’t you worry about that. Instead, as I rack up more sessions and my pile of new rulebooks accumulates once again, the text file of ideas on my computer grows in kind.
However, I can’t suppress that nagging uncertainty of whether I’m worthy of gracing the same table as my fellow PCs. I was invited due to writerly connections, but if certain people heard who I was playing with, then they might want to kill me and take my primo spot at the table.
Back in the days in our old haunt, I was often third or fifth most important or at other times GM to a bunch of weirdos. Just how long ago was that now? Let’s do the math... I graduated from university back in the Heisei period, so that means... Yup, yup, enough of those kinds of thoughts! If I keep mumbling this stuff to myself, the Keeper’s going to catch on and throw a bunch of Sanity checks my way! Although, I won’t stop anyone else wanting to make their own Sanity check if they realize they’ve suffered a similar fate.
Anyway, it’s a pretty damn big challenge taking the lead at the table. You need to pull the story along, but if you have too much agency, then you take away the spotlight from other PCs, so I need to put my absolute care into making sure my role or anything I do is carefully thought out. That includes avoiding the other extreme too, where the GM who wrote the campaign says, “Actually, do we really need someone in a lead position?”
A first among equals among the players needs to be a walking reference library for the game. They need to have an emotional stake in the other PCs. Most importantly, they need to discuss things and help coordinate the group!
Because I didn’t manage to do that, I ended up giving my PC reams of dialogue and developed supremely complex relationships with the other PCs around the table. A session that was meant to last until one o’clock ended up finishing past three o’clock—yes, I do mean in the morning. It was completely my fault, and it’s going down on my performance review in bright red ink...
It was really lucky that we were doing an online session without fear of missing the last train home. Back in my university days, there would often be someone who’d shut down the session by saying “Sorry, I’ve got class first period, so I’m gonna head to the public bath and then sleep.” Because of that, we actually made a rule to not keep our little cave too clean, because it would be too easy for any of us to never leave. Ahh, the old days.
Right then, enough of me, let’s talk about Erich. It’s a bit late in the game, but I started to wonder if he’s really our story’s leading PC. Without spoiling what’s to come and simply looking at past events, I’ve noticed that he can be a really passive guy. Because he’s still far from his ideal adventures, he has a tendency not to throw himself into the spotlight.
I think it’s probably an influence from his TRPG sessions in his previous life. In those, the tavern barkeep would never hesitate to throw a convoluted request to a bunch of adventurers who look like they had some time on their hands. Basically, at the table adventures generally kicked off after you received your handouts—he was probably the sort of player who got a bit stuck without the GM luring him along with a big shiny goal to fulfill.
And so I decided to sprinkle in a character who just can’t not jump on the adventure hook, no matter how dubiously it’s baited. With a long-running campaign, sometimes you feel obliged to shift the focus and let another player drive things forward. After all, there’s no rule that says one person gets center stage from start to finish. I think it’s really interesting when you have sessions when someone says, “Let’s put a hold on our next major quest and sort out this other PC’s storyline,” and you stray from the beaten path.
Of course, it can get a bit out of hand and result in something even more divergent than what we see in the Henderson Scale stories—I mean, it’s happened to me plenty before—so clearly we need some temperance. And so, Siegfried and Kaya—allies to our leading PC who appear for the first time in this volume—help to provide this balance. If this was an actual TRPG session, I’m sure someone would comment that the party was short on support and shout at Kaya or Erich to rethink their builds. However, thanks to them, the group’s survival rate has shot up.
With their addition, we’ve reached a long-awaited four-person party. TRPGs usually stick to parties of three to five, after all—it’s finally starting to look like a proper campaign.
I wonder why it took nine whole books for this first party to form. If I were writing a manga, I would’ve been chewed out by my editor ages ago for dragging my heels getting the main cast lined up in one place.
Now then, with our party all together, what comes next? You guessed it—we have our traditional bandit culling and some hack and slash action! Unfortunately, we can’t complete the TRPG trifecta with goblin hunting, as goblins are friends in this world.
It feels a little like the GM got a bit screwy with the deep cut supplements when he got around to developing the quest line and populating the random encounter tables, but I feel this volume encompassed the general adventures of a Level 1 party. Well, the general outline at least!
Once we’ve finished laying down the foundations, they might save a country or even the world, but this is just the beginning, so my plot ideas only concern this region for now. Their world isn’t like the ones you see on Saturday morning TV which face a worldwide threat every week, after all.
I really wanted to have a scene where a song about our protagonists reaches somewhere far away, so personally this was a fun volume to work on. Endings test a GM’s mettle, after all. No matter how delicious a meal might be, if it isn’t served up well, even photos can’t make it look good. If the ending isn’t done well and feels kind of meh, you won’t want to come back for repeat sessions.
I tried to come up with an interesting journey that suited our PCs’ goals. I thought that everyone would be happy with the kind of sleek story that allowed the PCs to shine—the kind that you see in official ready-to-play adventures—so when I read all the enthusiastic comments on the web novel, I felt satisfied enough as “GM” to strike a quick victory pose.
Originally the next volume would follow the web novel with a storyline that some people might criticize as being a bit long, but I just couldn’t help but include a certain someone in it.
Yep, it’s Nanna, who debuted in volume seven. Lansane’s character design was just too good. Ever since she showed up in Erich’s list of Enemy Connections, she’s held a special place in my heart. The five-hundred-word character sheet I’d written up got bigger and bigger and I just want to include her more in the main story.
It’s a real reminder of how much mileage you can get just out of seeing your character illustrated. Once they’ve got a fixed design you can reference and rotate in your mind, you start to think, Yeah, I bet they had this kind of past, and you develop them without helping it.
It makes me think of the “shared world” campaign held on a certain image sharing website called pix-something. On it, writers and artists would work together to create characters, environments, and a whole new world. I keep to myself, so I didn’t take part, but working with Lansane helps me to understand how some friends who were really into it felt.
As I blab on, it seems like we’ve reached the end of my allotted word count. So long as I’m here, though, I should add that they’ve finally made the special D10 I’ve been craving for so long. I mean, it’s a D10! It’s a must-have item alongside a D6. I’ve got a long history of playing as Explorers and Overeds, so I’m hugely grateful. It’s rare to always get such high-quality and well-designed merch, and I know the product design team worked really hard as well, so I want to give a big thank you to everyone involved.
It looks really good, so I hope that it will lead to future merch too.
On top of that, with the honor of being allowed another volume, it looks like we’ll be reaching the tenth book. They say that the third book is the most difficult with light novels, so it is truly down to you readers that I’ve managed to make it this far. Thanks to you, I can always presume upon you all and ask you not to forget to bring me your record sheets to sign.
I’ll do my absolute best so that I can continue writing and create more record sheets to give to you all for me to sign should you so wish, so please look forward to Erich’s future adventures.
While a certain virus still lingers in the world, I hope delving into TRPGs can bring a little bit of joy and solace during these times. With that, I’ll be closing up this afterword.
Now, if this author has managed to pass a successful Conviction check, I shall be seeing you in the next volume.
[Tips] The author uploads side stories and world-building details to @Schuld3157 on Twitter as “extra replays” and “rulebook fragments.”
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