Blessed Sins by Joseph Anthony

[Gromet]

You can view the story here on the plaza:

http://www.boundstories.net/storiesad/blessedsins.html
Solo-F; game; vr; fantasy; character; tutorial; FM; guards; FFM; fight; mannequin; heal; lessons; shackles; bond; cons; X

Please feel free to leave your kind comments and feedback about this story here.

Thanks 

[Zephyr]

Loved the story. I'll take you up on the "thoughts about the story" but ask that you keep in mind that this is one reader's opinion and insignificant compared to your own thoutghts. There was a time when I gave actual constructive criticism but it didn't go over well with a few people so that was that. But anyways...

First, loved the story. I didn't see any holes in the logic underlying the story. I did horribly cringe when I saw some of the abilities: Ouch -willpower set to 1? I sure hope the luck set high overcomes that, but it would sure make for interesting adventures.

If she has a strength of 12 (max) shouldn't she look like a female Arnold Schwartzenneger (in his good old days). But this would just get in the way. You'd sort of think with a 12 strength she'd hit the training bot and in one massive strike smash it to pieces. And with a 3 agility take moderate damage from the flying splinters.

It's a little confusing, her avatar has a 1 for willpower. So someone comes up to her and says "Let's go jump off a cliff!" and since she has such a low willpower, her avatar would say sure and go plummet. But Malinda's willpower, which as a human is much higher that a 1 (she didn't give up after a few non-reinforcing tries with the practice dummy) would have her say "No, but I can recommend YOU go take a big flying leap!" in response. Beyond the physical attributes how do the attributes like willpower and Analyze come into play? Does the game override certain choices since the settings are as they are (for instance, does the game take her to go jump off a cliff in the earlier scenario?) Or do those attributes only have effect when the game is running without her (so she comes back and finds the interesting places that while she was living her real life the settings and the game took her avatar)?

Can the game lock you in for certain periods of time? Can you be stuck in a situation or can you always pull off the helmet any time you want to? (Ever seen "Sword Art Online" anime series?)

Does she experience things in the AI environment or physically? On the second healing did it affect her in the real world or was it just an AI-induced thing that would cut off like a knife if in the middle of it she pulled off the helmet?

Interesting twist at the end. I am glad to see that this doesn't look like a two-parter, more like a twelve-parter or more. I look forward to seeing where you go with it. Thank you and I definitely hope there's more!

Just one reader's thoughts. Thank you for listening!

[mlod]

This seemed really interesting, and it was well written too, looking forward to reading future chapters.
And yeah, willpower 1 seems like a recipe for being conned/pressured into things (unsure how it works while she's online, but surely while she's offline, should make for some interesting memories to re-integrate when she logs on).
Speaking of memories, that seems kinda risky, if she's playing and something starts she doesn't want, she can quit the game, but if it happens while offline she'll remember all of it without a chance of aborting (and by risky, I mean potentially fun scenarios for the reader, hehe)

[Tarbal]

Thanks for the feedback.  The following chapters will hopefully make much more sense.  About the willpower questions, the game doesn't force the user to do anything, low willpower means some spells she can't learn until that skill goes up.  Also, she can't resist certain spell effects.  So if someone tried to magically blind her, or stun her, or, ya know, RESTRAIN her, she has little chance to resist.  During character creation, it didn't seem important, but she isn't a gamer.  Also, she has high strength, but zero martial arts experience.  Even with a good strength advantage, a straightforward attack usually fails against a reasonably skilled opponent.  I wanted to start my protagonist knowing little about fighting so she can get better (slowly) over time.