Dungeon Meshi: The Westil Chronicles | 100% Async Play-by-Post

Creating your character

Characters are built before you join the table, not during your first week of play. Come in ready to write. Your Tools: Build and maintain your character at Chronicles of Aether (chroniclesofaether.com). All dice rolling and mechanical resolution runs through the Abyssal Engine Discord bot. We will periodically do check-ins to see how inventory tracking is going and so on, since this game will be a bit heavy on the item front. Starting Level: All characters begin at Level 5 with five levels to distribute across two or three Classes from the Fabula Ultima Core Rulebook. For Attributes, choose a profile and assign your dice across DEX, INS, MIG, and WLP. Think carefully, cooking checks always run on [INS + WLP] and harvesting on [DEX + INS], no matter your build. Free Campaign Skills: Every character receives two free skills at creation. One level of Cooking (Gourmet class) and one level of Gadgets/Alchemy (Tinkerer class). These represent the baseline competency every hunter in Westil carries. You do not get the parent class free benefits unless you actually take those classes. Restrictions: Core Rulebook is your primary reference. Atlas supplements are welcome. However, Westil has no modern electricity, steam power, magitek, airships, or any industrial technology. Techno Fantasy, Cyberpunk, and Space content are not used. Anything from Core that leans heavily on technology will be reskinned to fit the world. Ask the GM first, and it will be worked out. Starting Gear: 500 Zenit budget plus 2d6 x 10 in savings. Your best equipment will come from what you hunt and craft, not what you buy.

Preparing for the session

Before your first week of play, you will need a few things in order. Discord is the table. All roleplay, narration, and story happen here. A server link will be provided once you are accepted into the game. If you do not have a Discord account, make one at discord.com. It is free. Chronicles of Aether (chroniclesofaether.com) is where your character lives. Create an account, build your character there, and keep it updated. The Abyssal Engine is the Discord bot that handles all dice rolls and mechanical resolution at the table. No additional download is needed. It lives in the server, and you will interact with it through slash commands. Familiarity with it will come naturally once you are in. Tupper Box is a Discord bot that lets you post as your character, complete with a custom name and avatar. It keeps the roleplay clean and easy to read, separating your character's voice from your player voice. Setup is straightforward, and instructions will be provided on the server once you are accepted. Owlbear Rodeo may occasionally be used to provide a visual map layer for hunts and combat. It runs in a browser, no account or installation required. It is there to give the table a shared picture, not to govern movement or enforce grid rules. If it works, great. If it becomes more trouble than it is worth, we drop it and narrate through it. A note on conduct: This is a cooperative game. Monster Hunter is not a solo sport, and neither is this. Characters who refuse to work with the party, exist to antagonize other players, or treat the story as background noise are not a fit for this table. By applying to join, you are agreeing to participate actively in the plot and to engage with your fellow players in good faith. Inactive or disruptive players may be removed to keep the game moving for everyone who is showing up.

What Steven brings to the table

The priority at this table is story, atmosphere, and characters worth remembering. NPCs in Westil are not quest dispensers. They have opinions about the party, relationships with each other, and their own reasons for doing what they do. The world will feel lived in because it is, and the things you do in it will leave marks. All GM rolls are public. What the dice say is what happens, full stop. There is no fudging in either direction. Because of that, I will do my best to build encounters that are challenging without being punishing. Fabula Ultima already protects you from permanent death unless you choose it, but getting knocked down over and over is not fun for anyone, and a monster the size of a Semi-Truck has a way of making things unpredictable. Come with realistic expectations. These are apex predators. They hit hard. The system gives you tools to survive that, and the game is better when you use them. Combat is tactical but not rigid. The Rule of Cool always has a seat at this table as long as it makes sense in the fiction; RoC has "realistic" limits and expectations. If you want to do something bold or unconventional, describe it, and we will figure out the check together. Theater of the mind is the foundation, with visual aids from Owlbear Rodeo when the hunt calls for it. The Hunt-Harvest-Synthesis loop is the heartbeat of every week of play. Come ready to scout, fight smart, butcher clean, and eat well. The story wraps around that loop, not the other way around.

Homebrew rules

Monster Meshi runs on Fabula Ultima Core with a campaign-specific layer built on top of it. The full details live in the Player's Guide I have created (which will be shared with accepted players) and my custom Framework document. Here is the short version of what is different. Every character receives two free skills at creation, regardless of class, one for cooking and one for basic alchemy. These represent the baseline every hunter in Westil is expected to have just to survive out there. They come with their own checks and rules, and they feed directly into the Hunt-Harvest-Synthesis loop that drives the campaign. That loop itself is the main homebrew addition. Hunting, harvesting, and cooking are not flavor; they are mechanics with real stakes and real rewards. How you kill something determines what you get from it. What you get from it determines what you can cook and craft. What you cook and craft determines how the next hunt goes. It is a cycle, and every week of play is meant to touch at least one phase of it. The Monster Meshi Framework and Player Guide expand on the standard Fabula Ultima rules to support all of this, covering everything from regional ecology and creature biology to harvest checks, ingredient grades, and culinary synthesis. None of it replaces the core system; it sits on top of it and gives the world its teeth. If you are coming in expecting standard Fabula Ultima, expect to find something that feels familiar but plays with a tighter focus and a few more moving parts. It is not complicated once you are in it. It just rewards players who pay attention to how the world works and keep notes.

How Steven creates a safe table

Player comfort and safety matter at this table. Before play begins, every accepted player will receive a Lines and Veils document to fill out privately. This covers what content is completely off the table and what needs to be handled with care. Responses are kept between you and the GM, and the document shapes how the story is built from the start. During play, the table uses the X, N, and O system. If something comes up in the narrative that you need to stop, step back from, or push forward on, you can send an X, N, or O to the GM via Discord DM at any time, no in-game explanation required. Just let me know a brief reason for it; you don't need to go into any details, just an idea for me to be able to handle it quietly, and we will do it without interruption to the other players at the table or yourself. This is a story about hunting dangerous creatures in a wild and sometimes brutal world. There will be intensity, consequence, and moments that carry weight. The goal is for that tension to feel earned and exciting, not uncomfortable or harmful. If something ever goes wrong, the door is always open.