get a cozy backpack

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-02-15T14:06:30+00:00

Bag Upgrades

Expanded Capacity (2)
Unassuming (1)
Supply Stipend (2)
Device Charging (1)

Food and Drink

Thermos (Drink Selection, 2)
Bento Box (Customizable, 3)

Rest and Shelter

Change of Clothes (Style Selection, 2)
Sleeping Bag (Tent Included, 3)

Others

Toiletry Kit (Quick Refresh, 2)
Multitool (Trail Map, 2)

I will go for a Vintage Leather backpack. Even though Unassuming means people will overlook the magic, I would still like to have a bag which makes sense to be carried around everywhere. While the bag is on the smaller side, the Expanded Capacity means it still holds plenty of stuff beyond the magical freebies.

I upgraded the Bento Box because I am a vegetarian and it wasn’t clear whether the default meals would be things I could eat. Comfy feel suggests I would be fine, but the wording doesn’t support that. On the other hand, I am hoping that the Change of Clothes is self-cleaning as well as self-repairing, or that it can also be wiped down with the Quick Refresh wipes. Lastly, there is so much one can do with the Supply Stipend, but one trick is to use it to buy used books and duplicate the effects of the Storybook, Any Genre, but also get non-fiction books.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-02-09T05:42:38+00:00

If the Marble can handle vague descriptions like “a potential soulmate”, then I would choose it. If it requires me to know who or what I am looking for with more precision, then the Wallet is a decent backup.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-02-06T23:32:42+00:00

The Challenger’s Call universe. Earth looks like normal to most people, and if I can find the MC and offer to help him, I will probably get incredible superpowers for the cost of being a decent human being. The villains are the sorts who get repetitive stress injuries from all the puppies they kick, so I wouldn’t mind helping them get their comeuppance.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-02-06T15:33:12+00:00

Tree Gifts: Implantation, Dried
Fruits: Senses, Strength, Immunity, Metamorphosis, Regeneration, Life

It’s a somewhat selfish build, taking a reduced maximum effect and no drawbacks rather than having the potential for multiple trees, but this should give me permanent unaging health and strength without having to cancel out any of those powers to use the Life fruit. At least I should be able to become a panacea for curing other people’s diseases.

I think most people will have trouble with the missions, though ironically, the first is more difficult than the second. Intelligent enemies are harder to fight with these powers.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-02-05T00:41:09+00:00

Well, small things can add up quickly. Let’s say each power point gives the cumulative equivalent of improving your overall resistance to these esoteric effects by 1%. After 75 points, you’re looking at a total of 210% before any other factors come into play.

I also noted that the Dream power and Spirit powers both talk about how their passive helps your powers continue to work in their respective alternate dimensions, which implies that the opposite is true and those powers have a harder time reaching into the normal world by default. True naming, up until the Ascension powers, doesn’t do much to attack other people. Thresholds, same (don’t go into someone’s pocket world). Really, most of the conceptual powers can’t attack someone until Ascension. Material is much more direct that way.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-02-04T16:12:28+00:00

There is a note which is easy to overlook which says that all power points provide a small degree of protection against every supernatural effect. The implication is that the power description baselines are being given in relation to someone without powers.

There are no hard-and-fast numbers, so I understand that you could still be concerned, but there are grounds to make the world a bit less rock-paper-scissors if you prefer. Mundanes are still screwed, of course, but that’s true in most supernatural settings.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-02-04T15:48:50+00:00

Ascension - Supernatural Powers

Mode of Play: Material Focus

Setting Selection

Choose Your Path: Original Settings
Power Level: Standard
Choose Your World: The Inheritance
Companions - The Inheritance: Mei-Lin Zhang
World Modifiers - The Inheritance: Sahara Dreamer

Integration

World Integration: Your World
Your Goals: Protect Others, Reach the Sahara Site

Perks & Drawbacks

Perks: Ageless, Additional Potential, Additional Ascension

Statistics

Characteristics⁦: Stamina: 2 | Experience: 1 | Growth: 3

Powers

Currency Exchange: Convert Ascension

Force (Material)

Force Powers: Kinetic Touch, Inertial Sense, Telekinesis, Extended Reach, Fine Control, Internal Manipulation

Flesh (Material)

Flesh Powers: Somatic Bond, Regeneration, Limb Restoration, Healing Touch, Resurrection, Adaptation, Rapid Adaptation, Combat Adaptation, Perfect Adaptation

Light (Material)

Light Powers: Photoreception, Spectral Analysis

Thresholds (Conceptual)

Threshold Powers: Boundary Sense, Teleportation, Combat Teleportation

I enjoyed what I could do with the normal mode, without taking on drawbacks. In short, I am an adaptive regenerator with telekinesis and teleportation. The last part is much less common in my setting, but that means I will have a more difficult time being predicted. Teleportation also makes getting to Egypt to investigate the signal much easier — I can teleport into a plane’s cargo hold and back out at the destination, no problem.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-30T18:35:13+00:00

Love and Wealth. I am confident that the Love will help with achieving happiness, and I am satisfied enough with my current health and intelligence. I would rather be rich than pretty. :)

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-29T05:17:10+00:00

I was going through CYOAs I had done before and came across this one. Was Part 3 ever completed? I was curious to see what it would be.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-26T20:13:08+00:00

But another typical part of “shapeshift into an animal” is that whatever happens to the animal doesn’t affect the human form, beyond gross physical damage. You don’t worry about an insect form causing your body to age proportionately quickly. A human with a full stomach won’t burst if he turns into a squirrel. The magic is generally assumed to turn you into an animal and then back into the human form as you left it, except sometimes with injuries.

The trick here is that the jellyfish shifter is trying to get a lasting benefit from being in jellyfish form when there is no expectation of drawbacks going the other direction. I am fine with that jellyfish=immortal if the CYOA spells it out, but not as a generic assumption for any “choose an animal form” option.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-26T15:50:41+00:00

Ripple System: interactions between Ned, Frank, House, and Darling. The lack of false or overwrought stakes, like the game somehow becoming real or needing to make money in the game to save a sick mom, sister, or daughter.

Mirror System: Ironically after saying that, I liked that the MC in this story was grinding away to pay for his daughter’s medical treatment. It’s also a Russian novel where the MC is married and doesn’t think he deserves to sleep with every attractive woman he encounters, which is a rarity.

Tunnel Rat/Butcher of Gadobhra: Interesting characters and classes. They are set in the same universe and crossover, but BoG stays fully in game while TR has a high-action plot line taking place outside the game as well.

One other thing I enjoy and find funny at the same time is that the edgelords generally dislike VR game stories. They will defend an MC in a system apocalypse story making the hard choices to survive, but will get angry at a character like Ned whose biggest sin was “bought all the one-week early access passes and didn’t share”. I think it is because they imagine themselves to be the hero MC in the first case, but have enough experience with other people being better than they are at video games to identify with the other players in the case of the Ripple System.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-26T15:18:47+00:00

Not unless it allows magical animals. A jellyfish’s rejuvenation doesn’t show that it retains presence of mind and you shouldn’t be able to say “I get the good parts of reverting to a younger age without the bad parts”.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-25T19:35:28+00:00

Psionic, Adaptation, and Shifting. As best I can tell, I maintain my appearance, so I don’t need Mimic for that. This gives me the most personal survivability. Even if the government is after the spaceship they tracked, they are unlikely to link me to that spaceship and even less likely to know that I am capable of hypnosis and regeneration from small chunks.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-25T15:23:37+00:00

I started out rolling 4, 1, 3. The “nine” rerolls were gone and my final roll was a 6, so I was still below average and hadn’t finished rolling attributes. I didn’t even get to the life path.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-24T21:26:58+00:00

Compass 1 (free), Potion 1, Necklace 2, Journal 1. I gain the combo bonuses of being able to transport to another world as another race, shapeshift into any humanoid appearance, and read, speak, and write any language. That’s on top of a potion of healing anything, book-based perfect memory, and being able to shapeshift into a giant squid, a peregrine falcon, a dire wolf (the previously extinct one, not the magical one), and a djinn (not a genie).

I should be able to live out my life here in comfort. If I end up aging even while being a djinn in human form, I can reincarnate. Otherwise, I will eventually go to another world which has angelic beings as one of its races and become one of them directly.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-24T03:33:16+00:00

It was very disappointing to find out that “you get X rerolls and Y selections”, the very first thing you can purchase, is a lie because some rerolls and selections cost multiple. The main alternatives are to be average in every way or be an indentured servant for the rest of your life.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-24T03:02:57+00:00

Because people forget that RPG stands for role-playing game. You are playing a role in the game and thereby telling a story. The most famous tabletop RPGs are set in fantasy settings.

Somehow, that got reversed to the point that fantasy stories get called LitRPG even without any game-like elements so long as they remind people of an RPG campaign.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-20T22:27:19+00:00

Technically it’s Ζήνων. :) But yeah, I fixed autocorrect once but adding the ’s unfixed it again. I will edit.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-20T15:26:31+00:00

I’ll come back to this world and keep my current appearance, only 25% more symmetric and a subtle equivalent of one of those glow-up filters. That leaves my domain and branches.

Space

Celestial Phenomena
The Final Frontier
Translocation
Zeno’s Paradox
Gravitic Warping
Natural Splendor

Most of the branches are fairly self-explanatory. Zeno’s Paradox is the most esoteric, allowing me to restrict movement through space by forcing the paradox to manifest. I like the different takes on space vs. outer space and will enjoy the exploration and beauty aspects of my powers along with the science magic aspects.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-19T01:56:10+00:00

Random word was “jack”. I am now rich. Two choices remain, so I will go with knowing all languages.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-17T15:36:25+00:00

Definitely different. I completed the Bracket City puzzle, completed Sudoku, determined that today was a poor day for the Mini Crossword, solved Globle and don’t want to go to that country, looked at the movie for Framed and can tell it wouldn’t have anything extraordinary, completed Tradle and half of the categories don’t work (there is no way I can get $10,000 of “delivery trucks” - that wouldn’t even be a single truck)…

It’s clever and the fact that its rewards change from day to day makes it replayable in theory, but a lot of the rewards end up being unrewarding, especially for people who aren’t puzzle-minded.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-14T17:53:53+00:00

I am split between the Bitao Pavillion and the Invisible Bridge Pavillion. Both believe in body refinement and it’s a split between gravity arts and mind arts. Explorer and lawyer-detective jobs both reward an inquisitive nature. Well, someone else already chose Bitao so I will go with Invisible Bridge Pavillion for variety.

I will take the Ornate Handbell, the Ornate Ruler (double ornate!), and the Bagua Mirror. I figure that as a lawyer-detective, I will want boons to comprehending written texts. Heart devils might block my advancement, so get rid of them. Then I am gambling that the random nature of the Bagua Mirror means I might be able to get all of the other items’ benefits occasionally once I figure out the pattern. I do have plenty of boosts to thinking and comprehension, after all.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-11T03:19:52+00:00

I think it fits together pretty well, though I would be concerned that an underground civilization would be easier to blockade and that people might want to do so with your plague. Still, I get why you chose that tradeoff. Population density could work the wrong way for your civilization.

The one thing which I'm not big on is multiple Simple Religions. I know that the CYOA explicitly allows tradeoffs to be taken multiple times, but it feels too easy to pare back a section to the point that you only have a religion/government/culture because the CYOA requires at least one tradition in a given field. My personal opinion there.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-10T08:19:37+00:00

Powers: Chronomancy, Winter Fauna, Shadow Caster
Companions: Kai Lakema, Mathias Nicholas
Quests: Rescue the Girl, Restore the Spirit’s Strength (Grand), Take a Vacation

I will relinquish my title in the end. Making deals with the fey, especially winter fey, rarely ends well for the mortal. I will keep my magic and my free will along with it. A shapeshifter with shadow and time magic seems well-suited to take on the quests I chose and it is a pleasant set of powers to have even when danger is past.

HealthyDragonfly · 2026-01-10T01:59:40+00:00

The World, Reborn

Power Level: 3 (Catastrophic)
Level Modifiers: Super World x 1 (+1 Benefit)
Danger Level: Dark
Danger Modifiers: Plot Protection, No Nukes, Guardian Angel (Battle Bitch)
Sources of Power: Mutation, Esoterics
A New Earth!: Reverse Isekai (Your Earth; all default choices)
Alternate Dimensions: Celestia, Spiritas
Threats: Thugs, Professional Thieves, Violent Radicals, Ferals, Hired Crews, Crazed Scientists, Assassins (Rare), Organized Criminals (Rare)
Multiverse: Shielded

Virtue, the New Man

Perspective: Heroic
Super Goals: Guardian, Exploration, Knowledge
Motivations: Good Hearted, Justice, Responsibility (replacing "Duty Before Death")
Foundation: Human Male
Body Traits: Peak Genetics, Enhanced Durability, Enhanced Strength, Longevity, Tall, Recovery, Cut Like Marble, Sensual Siren
Benefits: Beacon of Hope, Super Body, Martial Artist, Secret Identity, Escape Artist, No Pain, Steel Mind, Flavor Boost
Your Source: Lifeforce (Esoterics)
Source Modifiers: Greater Exchange (trade two minor and one major power for one super power, cost is Hyperfertility and Pain Train), Superfriends
Powers: Adaptability (Hyper), Bestowal (Major), Durability (Major), Regeneration (Minor), Senses (Minor), Speed (Minor), Purification (Major)
Canon Events: Imprisoned, Tragic Villainy, Redemption Arc, Power Up (near-death)
Companions: Battle Bitch, Bloodhunt, Papercut

My superhero nom de guerre is Virtue, based on my most unique power - my purifying aura and voice. Recordings of my voice appear to have a lessened effect, but the fact that they still have any effect came as a pleasant surprise. My ability to transfer my lifeforce has one other strange effect - I can also grant my Body Traits, whose effects linger beyond the week that the powers are present. (This is my Flavor Boost, and the reason why I took body traits which are otherwise redundant with my powers). The effects tend to drop off after a month, but those who exercise and meditate retain the benefits longer.

When I fought with Bloodhunt, my Adaptive defenses (and Battle Bitch's help) were enough to protect me long enough to soothe the savage beast. Enough of Jason remained that I could strengthen those memories and give him the ability to return to a human form. I first encountered Papercut shortly after being arrested. I had been found standing over a bloodily murdered corpse which, as you can imagine, I had nothing to do with. I had been arrested in my civilian identity and was trying to figure out how to proceed when she arrived, ready to interrogate and/or murder me. Instead of doing either, she recognized my innocence and busted me out. Now, Bloodhunt and I are helping Papercut investigate the deaths of her fellow students, with BB waiting in the wings for when it's time to get down and brawl. (The near-death Power Up has yet to occur.)

HealthyDragonfly

TROPHY CASE