Where will the Gateway take you?
"If you've found yourself here, then we probably saved you from a fate that's a lot worse. The universe has gotten all loopy 'n stuff recently with dimensional portals getting ripped here and there, and we're part of an organization that works to patch things up!"
X-DREAMERS is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover Play-by-Post Game hosted on Dragon Cave forums.
Something has happened to The Multiverse: Worlds are crashing into each other and heroes are getting tossed out of time and into different places. In the resulting chaos, enter the eXtra-Dimensional Restoration Squad (XDRS for short). As a group founded by Twilight Sparkle and housed on the Gateway to the Starry Skies, the XDRS' main objective is to collect what are known as World Anchors — important artifacts that are absolutely vital to each world's sustainability — and putting them back into their right places to put a stop to the ongoing decay of the multiverse.
Of course, this is all easier said than done. Hilarity Ensues.
The roleplay is run by TehUltimateMage and can be found here
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X-DREAMERS provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: Most of the information for each character is on their respective wikis, or in the case of Original Characters, scattered across the Discord chat. Headcanons also get used liberally, without specific mentioning of what they are.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: While there is theoretically no limit to how many characters can go on a specific mission, all players are limited to four characters; however, the four-slot restriction is open for Loophole Abuse.
- Ascended Extra: Any NPC that the players get attached enough to make into permanent PCs.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: With the high turnover of characters, disappearing players, and four-slot limit, many characters simply vanish and are never mentioned again. Tentatively justified in-universe by the instabilities in the worlds, but the other characters end up never mentioning the missing people ever again.
- Comm Links: A communicator is distributed to every (Veteran) agent thanks to Pascal and her Applied Phlebotinum. They are cube-shaped and easily fit into the palm. Unfortunately, she didn't manage to deliver Yusei's in time before he left...
- Guest-Star Party Member: Everyone piling into the fight VS Kyurem, or, more broadly, the concept of the NPC loophole.
- Healer Signs On Early: Averted! The dedicated healer for XDRS was conspicuously missing for the entire 'tutorial' segment as well as the first mission.
- Hub World: The Gateway is where all the agents come back to rest and recover.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: Unfortunately, a natural result of throwing in so many different characters and media together. Unwritten rule is that if someone else is taking in the same media that relates to a person, then spoilers are kept to as low as you possibly could.
- Loads and Loads of Sidequests: Not even counting the overarching missions and personal quests, the characters could ((and in some cases already had)): Join a rebellion, collect empathic weapons, go shopping, acquire new powers, the list goes on.
- Loophole Abuse: The aforementioned "NPC loophole," which is demoting characters to NPCs when not needed, is a way of technically owning more than four characters without going above the Arbitrary Headcount Limit.
- Magitek: All of Pascal's engineering feats seem to have a certain magical flair to them.
- Mundane Utility: Everyone asks Xander to use his dragon vein to terraform things for their convenience. While he hasn't made a pool for the gang yet, it's only a matter of time.
- Random Number God: Sometimes, the only way to make a decision is to ask a bot to choose from a list of options. Sometimes played straight when doing battle rolls.
- Symbol Swearing: Forum restrictions means that most writers need to get creative, or rely on the automatic "censorkips".
- Title Drop: One of the names for the XDRS. This similarity is lampshaded during Twilight's tea party.“Let me formally welcome you to the home of the XDRS, or Cross-Dimensional Restoration Squad — or X-Dreamers, since the acronym kind of looks like that."
- Warp Whistle: Pascal's communicators have a function that sends the holder (and whoever they're touching) back to base after 7 seconds.
- What's Up, King Dude?: People forget that Xander is royalty, but it doesn't seem to mind the casual tone. Cistina might be even more egregious—All There in the Manual states that she's part of the clergy, but apart from her haughtier tone of voice, she acts like any other agent would to the point of needing to remind herself how to act like nobility for a ruse.
- World of Badass: Scadrial and any other dangerous and magically charged worlds. The Gateway counts too, being populated by heroes from across the multiverse. Listing them out individually would take too long.
Mission arcs provide examples of:
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Prologue: "Tutorial"
- Exposition Dump: The Tea Party, when Twilight gives an overview of the problem concerning the multiverses crashing into each other, how to prevent that from happening, and what the XDRS's goals are. More condensed versions are given in-character to anyone that appears at the gateway.
- Mini-Boss: Duke tries to be one just to "test out the capabilities of the newcomers". He generates a maze with invisible walls and challenges them to solve it, but only Twilight and Light actually attempt to solve it while everyone else is too busy thinking how stupid the whole situation is.
Mission 01: Ash and Sand
Set in the city of Luthadel, from Mistborn: The Final Empire, the agents are tasked to secure an anchor that generates dangerous sand all while navigating a dangerous world of downtrodden people, deceitful nobles, and an oppressive tyrant.
- Mood Whiplash: Kelsier tries to rally Cistina to his cause, citing the brutal torture and suffering of the people back on his world. Then it suddenly starts raining happy slimes.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: In the beginning of the mission, Duke and Cistina take the time to debate about inciting rebellion among the Skaa because of the terrible conditions they see around them. Amusingly, both of are wide eyed idealists, but with different ideas of what constitutes as right.
Mission 02: The Otherworldly Bazaar
Pascal needed to get some spare parts from Cid and get some food for all the exciting new people, and she thought it would be a good idea to bring everyone along for a shopping trip.
- Accidental Public Confession: During the Kyurem fight, Illidan is pressured - by one of his Illidari, no less - to reveal what is distracting him so badly, and he confesses out of anger and the adrenaline rush. It doesn't help that it is a declaration of his love for Xander on top of that.
- The Cameo: Many, many characters from all different media show up, if only briefly, in the many creatures mingling in the market.
- Forced Transformation: One effect of the Cat Box is that it turns everyone who touches it into a cat or a cat person. Anders is stuck in Shapeshifter Mode Lock.
- Global Currency: Conveniently, all the vendors at the market accept Galactic Pixels, the unified currency originating from Starbound. They also are open to bartering other items.
- Mood Whiplash: The characters get scattered throughout the Black Market with little to no idea of what anyone not in their group is doing. As a result, you could see tense fighting juxtaposed to silly fluff, sometimes within the same post.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Aeolus runs off after hearing a Kyurem's telepathic roar, figuring that it's a dangerous idea to stick around.
