SO sorry for just dropping off the face of the planet. Turns out I couldn't motivate myself to start writing and balance my university life and work at once.

My hope is that now that I'm home, with little to get in the way but (hopefully) a part-time job for the next few months and a few household chores, I want to finally do this story as I meant to. There are a few main issues with this-

One: I think planning out a lot of characters' immediate removals from the very beginning is going to drive me nuts. Who's going to stick it to the end and have tons of content and development and plot? Who's going to be gone chapter two and have an angry creator behind them who waited for this for months? If I were in their shoes how would that make me feel?

Two: Choosing the murderer is going to drive me nuts.

Three: Continuing to drag this out and make you guys wait for any content whatsoever forever as I try to draft out the whole thing novel style and redraft and edit is going to drive me nuts, especially with my other projects in my brain.

Basically, I'm as tired of waiting for this as you guys are, and I'm tired of making you guys wait. I'm also a bit antsy about how to fairly represent everyone's characters.

My proposition: recently I've wanted to start writing some hobby fics and stories I'm not sure how I want to end and yada yada, with the assistance of a gaming system I've come to know and love in the recent year. Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, with a lot of homebrew and modification as I feel the need, I think could really help me in my writing and brainstorming in general; saying "how might this fight go if I leave it up to the dice? If I run through the battle 9 times, who won at least 5 of those times, if I want a really solid representation of who's stronger? Is it really reasonable for this character to be able to do this? Is this character way too strong the way I'm presenting them, or is this challenge just favoring them?"

So I was thinking I could start with this series. Take the candidates for murderer and use a dice roll to pick them, then assign everyone the human race, varied classes from in and out of homebrew, and assign them stats, speeds, feats, items, and skill proficiencies. I'll roll in small level ranges based loosely on age and the time I assume they'd have had available to build their proficiency in their class, but the character levels could be 2-5 and will be leveled throughout based on successful rolls, wins in the challenges, and generally cool moves they pull off relevant to their class. ACTUAL death is unlikely, but hitpoints will be rolled regardless, and considering the contestants we have, some might be violent enough for them to come into play. I'll mainly roll the dice through the planning process of each chapter, to see if the character makes that jump, if the contestant sees through their ally's lies, to see if they somehow manage to screw up that last easy step in the race, then I'll go back with that as my outline and draft out the chapter. The outline will not be set in stone, but for the sake of fairness I won't be pulling many big punches either. If someone dies, is voted off, or generally screws up at a really maddening time, I'll have to decide if it's maddening for the right reasons or a fluke of the dice that would rob the story of something important. Eliminations will be at the mercy of three judges unbeknownst to them- the "murderer," Chris, and the guest host introducing the day's challenge in the roll of evil minion to the murderer. By general perceived performance that day(secretly estimated by me based on success rolls during challenge, success at stealthily breaking a rule, etcetera), a bottom two will be chosen, and the judges will vote someone off from those bottom two based on their personal preferences of the contestants, judgments of what's important in the challenge, and so on.

I feel like this would make the playing field a lot more fair than just me choosing based on which characters I want to keep around, or who I have the best initial ideas for. I would use the dice rolls to plan out the initial plot outline, plan and draft like normal, maybe rolling dice and doing a bit of math along the way when I change things or add scenes, and then ultimately hopefully a true reality show plot emerges- insightful people trusting the wrong people or seeing through more than might be safe for them, weak people having a small shot at pulling off skills they haven't tried before, highly talented people usually coming out on top in some areas but getting kicked off their high horse when they least expect it because they roll a natural 1 at the final throw, or their weaker opponent throws a natural 20, or they happen to have a weakness or disadvantage against their seemingly weaker opponent. It leaves me not knowing who'll win and free to ship and fantasize and love all that I want, while still keeping myself grounded in what's fair and who would have won.

So what do you guys think? I'll never get started if I wait for all of you to respond before I start, but I'd really like to hear your opinions as I work on Chapter 1. Regardless of if I do this dice roll system or not for the series overall, I'd like to hear your opinions on the idea.

Hopefully I can buckle down and get something out in a week's time, but I'm trying to get a summer job so just in case they decide to spend a heavy week of training I'm not accustomed to, I'm not going to promise that. We've already seen just how reliable I am under pressure for this part of my life, sadly- plus I've lost more notes in the transition from school to home than I'd like to admit.

So sorry you've all had to wait so long, and flattered you're still around to hear my explanation.

Hope some of the excitement is still there!

Ari