chirivulpes

Rift of Souls (The Permadeath VRMMO) Episode 1 — Bugged

Added 2023-03-21 17:17:59 +0000 UTC

6900 words.

A transfem egg starts playing a new full-dive VRMMO in a cyberpunk setting. It's a weird one, because it's permadeath, which is pretty counter to the way MMOs are generally structured, and there's no character creator, you're just at mercy of what you roll. The egg ends up rolling a lumberjack bod that they hate, but there is zero chance that'll last long term.

NOTE: Future chapters of this story on Patreon will be posted at the $3 tier or higher.

This story is AI-assisted — I came up with the concept and have outlined every thing that's happened, and I've prompted the AI to write it all. In most cases I've had to go over what it's given me and rewrite it, though. I'd wager about 1/3 of the final text is AI-generated, but even that is still edited by me to make it sound less stilted. I'm curious to know how well people can tell. There might be some spots that I missed.

Why is this AI-assisted? Well, mostly because I was curious how it would go to write a story like this at first, but now that I've done a bunch of writing this way, I'm honestly considering making this my main method of writing. It's kind of incredible how much more writing stamina I have when I don't need to worry about getting myself through extremely complex or logistical sections alone, especially for a story where I also have to do really complex worldbuilding like this one, since it's set in a game with a lot of mechanical depth. I've always wanted to write a story like this so that I can do it right and honestly my ability to do it kind of feels unlocked now.

And now, for all of us to find out how long my writing stamina lasts while I have ChatGPT helping me. My hope is that it's endless...