CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
Your first year at Cap

Choose your point of origin (A or B):

A] The Path to Validation: (For business or science students)

Welcome to Capilano University! Chances are you’re either a real hard worker or someone smart enough to know what will get them a job (or will it?) once they leave this place. Your adventure begins here: a bright-eyed student, fresh from the summer heat and ready to meet new people, work hard and experience your early to mid 20s as predictably as possible. Fuck yeah! This year is going to be the best!

If you feel no doubt about your “path,” then Continue to 1
If you picked your major because you wanted to impress your father and therefore have doubts about your actions from the get-go, Continue to 2

B] The Quest for Legitimacy: (For arts or humanities students)

Why are you here?

No seriously, why are you here? Continue to 6
You’re “here to learn”...? Continue to 5


1 -- “Your first test will be on Monday,” the professor declares after your early morning lecture on Wednesday.

What? But that only gives us five days to study,” you retort, but your voice ends up simply adding to the collective uproar of the class. “You’re crazy if you think that can be done!”

Clearly, you still require some adjusting to the rush of university. Probably thought it was going to be easier because you chose Cap U, right? Well, guess again! This year is going to require a little more work than you previously thought.

You buckle down and study the shit out of that test. Continue to 8.
Fuck it!” You’re going clubbin’. Continue to 9


2 -- Your doubts about yourself grow worse as your first professor of the year informs the class that there will be a test at the end of the first week. But you don’t hold it against the woman; she is obviously better readying your mind for the world outside of the classroom.

Loose like a leaf, you don’t let it bother you and you go out to club. Continue to 9
Give-up and change your Major to Arts/Hum. Continue to 5

3 -- You huff, you grunt, and you curse whatever deity you pray to, but you finally make it up the stairs of the Fir building. You look down at the mountain you just scaled and feel a warming sense of accomplishment as well as the all too-foreign-to-you sensation of confidence.

“I have conquered the Steps of Fir. Next: this English paper.”

As you enter the Writing Center, anxious to begin your work, you're faced with your English Professor at a desk. “What are you doing here?” you question, still short of breath from the stairs.

“I’m here to help you,” the Professor answers.

“How did you get here so quickly?” you ask.

“Elevator.”

You stare at your professor in silence for what seems long enough to make the most oblivious creature feel uncomfortable. You do this both out of a need to control the rage brewing within you and the fact that you are still too tired from the stairs to express emotion. After what amounts to a solid five-minute stare down, you finally decide to use a computer.

“Well, I’ll use a computer,” you state your actions out loud as you do them. That’s a little weird.

As you stand in the threshold of the Writing Centre’s computer room, you notice that there are at least four computers free. The room isn’t packed full of people using computers like greedy little cretins addicted to Facebook and Hockey score updates. No, it’s lightly filled out by three students doing work (while intermittently checking Facebook and sports scores). Not only are these people working hard, they’re also, shocking as it is, all really attractive. Apparently, only beautiful people use the Writing Centre, as though it were the exact nexus-point for Cap’s already stunning collection of the hard-working and the hard-bodied.

“Hey,” a voice grabs your attention as you stand in the doorway. “Aren’t you in my English class?” Turning your head to the source of the voice, you see that the classmate in question was that one “hot one” from your class and – holy shit – they’re talking to you. But before you can open your mouth, you feel a vibrating sensation next to your leg. You grab your phone and quickly look at what the text message states. “Hey, I have my car outside, wanna come drinking?”

Go out and get drunk with friends. Continue to 9
Awkwardly ask the “cute person from English” out. Continue to 16


4 -- Suddenly, you feel shameful for your actions. You can either work your shit out and handle yourself better, or give up and accept that this is now the only way that you can have fun.

“Only way that I can ‘feel’ anything anymore.” Continue to 21
You accept that you messed up, but you buck up and ignore it completely. Continue to 15

5 -- Despite what others may think and openly say to your face about your choice in direction, you’re making the best of this. Maybe shit will stop flying your way, but you know that’s wishful thinking.

Your English 100 prof assigns a paper... with only three days to do it. It’s unclear whether or not she’s doing this out of a general sense of spite from years of crushing, soul-violence as an educator, or if she is just out to get you.

“Miss, I am unclear as to what the assignment is,” you bellow.
“It’s merely a 500 word paper,” her serpentine tongue lashes back at you, “I gave you a choice between three options.”
Fuck choice!” you say... in your head.
“If you have trouble writing it then you can seek assistance at the Writing Center.”

Go to the Writing Center. Continue to 10
Mouth off to your professor. Continue to 11

6 -- Chances are, you’re not going to get a lot of out this.

As you walk alone in the library, the constant noise of the ever-present cycle of keyboards clicking and students' whisperings wrap around your mind like an awkward hug. Surrounded by an expanding cluster of students, you realize that the only reason you are here is to up the chances of you getting laid.

In all honesty: it's probably best to take your chances with the first thing to come your way.

“Dude, enough of that, I’m gonna grab a smoke.” Continue To 11
Give in to your hormones (and possible extreme chemical imbalance) and ask out the first person you see. Continue to 16


7 -- Yes, it was. Get over it.

END.


8 -- You pass the test with a personal best of 92 per cent, being outranked only by that one asshole, who got 99 per cent.

You use this opportunity of a rivalry to better yourself in every way possible. Continue to 15
Plot to murder your new rival. Continue to 4


9 -- Loud music, louder people and even louder colours - the club is a radiant typhoon of hormones and overpriced substance abuse. This world is yours. That school is nothing to you, right? It’s all about how you live the experience (whatever that means). You’re only twenty-something once.
Drink in hand and shades on inside, “To make ‘em stop and stare as I zone out. The club can't even handle me right now. Watching you, I'm watching you, we go all out.”

The club can’t even handle you right now. Continue to 12
The club is sufficiently stable to contain you and, frankly, you’re making a scene. Continue to 4


10 -- If Hell where real, not even Hell would contain this many stairs. And at an incline? What are they trying to do, kill you?

The path to the Writing Center is paved in hollowed grunts and everlasting groans as you must ascend flight after flight of what amounts to a mountain contained within a concrete fortress that constantly hums with the rampant, discordant squeals of Jazz students practicing.

Ascend the steps! Continue to 3
Stricken by apathy, you get distracted by the various colours that the air is producing. Continue to 13
Fuck this, let’s check out that Equestrian Centre! That’s down hill. Continue to 23


11 -- Clearly something is wrong with you. You’re probably the kind of person who smokes just so they can ignore people at parties.

The world is a cruel place, just ready to mess with you and get in your way. All those around you are just sacks of noisy meat with as little interest in you as you have of them. No one knows what you’ve been through, all they need to know is that you’re stronger for having lived through it. That’s more than they can say, right?

As you sit and smoke clove cigarettes outside the Birch building, you notice a vibrant force beginning to surround and consume you. You emanate such a pompous nature and uptight annoyance that you’ll come to realize that this aura of paradoxical nihilistic self-worth will leave you with little less than a big head filled with thoughts only you will hear.

You then go into a mighty rage. You aimlessly thrash about until you’ve found yourself at what appears to be a horse village.  

You enter the horse village. Continue to 23
“Wait, what’s this about a ‘vibrant force’?” Continue to 13


12 -- You awake to find yourself in the bed of another person, and said person is asleep next to your confused ass. Good job.

After some brief pleasantries, the two of you confirm what you were thinking, despite the fact that neither of you are certain it even happened.

Take them to breakfast. Continue to 19
Awkwardly leave before they can get fully dressed. Continue to 20


13 -- You experience a feeling so deep you can see the colour of it as it envelops you. Soothing you to your very core, you are further enticed by the ever-constant myriad of street noises. Cars, steam, and shouts give way to a crescendo of gusts of leaves through the graceful tree branches.

Walking downhill through the valley, the heat starts to wrap itself around you with the sensation of a sweater of suns. You see a large white fence in the distance with what can only, at this point, be described as a massive beast on the other end. “There must be water,” you ponder aloud, “if they’re keeping such a behemoth alive and healthy.”

That logic seems legit. Why consider anything else? Continue to 17

14 -- You received a 100 per cent on your mid-term. Congratulations! You’re only one-quarter of the way through the year. Have fun with that...

END.


15 -- You quickly learn that school doesn’t have time to stop for any of your bullshit as your professor reveals the date of the mid-term to be in early October!  
“Will there be an available study guide for the mid-term?,” one keener questions.
“No,” shoots the Prof.
“Will there be in-class review for it?,” another lost soul beckons.
“No,” the Professor’s throat dries with bitterness.

Panicked, you seek answers to your troubles from a decision between two outcomes, for some arbitrary reason...

Isolate yourself in your room an entire 48 hours prior to the mid-term armed with five text books, your notes,100 caffeine pills and a pile of Adderall crushed into a fine, snortable dust. Continue to 14
Make a study buddy date with the person in class you have a crush on. Continue to 19


16 -- “So, you’re doing research for your paper on The Picture of Dorian Gray?”

“Yes, but this is more a labour of love, because I do adore Oscar Wilde.”

Tell them your “Dorian Gay” joke. Continue to 20
Attempt to converse about Oscar Wilde, despite your personal distaste for his work. Continue to 18
Steer conversation towards something written within this decade. Continue to 19


17 -- At the speed of a molasses spill you enter the fenced-in circle. You now find yourself face to face with the mighty beast, the mystic Water Hoarder of yore. The feeling of a thousand burning stars brings you to your knees. “I come seeking water, your mighty Hoarder-ness.”

The beast tilts its head downward, its eyes ominously staring in opposite directions, darker than shadows in the deepest of night. “You seek not what you need,” its voice punctures your eye drums, “but what you want.”

You raise your head upward, raise your hand to the monolithic God-Creature that stands before you, “My heart is pure, but my body is cursed!” you yell to its face, “Cursed a thousand ways. Cursed by the sting of a thousand fires cutting me deeper than a thousand cuts. I need water!”

“To reach what you seek you must reach what I seek,” it booms, “find for me the Goblet of Aloc Acoc, up on the Hills of Desolation. It is beneath the Dark Obelisk, go and get it for me.”

Wager the terms of your agreement. Continue to 23
Go to the Hills of Desolation. Continue to “What the fuck is going on?”


18 -- After you finally admit that you haven’t even seen the film adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest, and failing to recover with use of the pun in relation to yourself, you’ve managed to walk away with a new Facebook friend and a possible “goal” to be reached another time during the year.

For the time being, you have to get to class. Remember, you’re paying to go to school here, you might as well take the classes you signed up for. However, on your way to class, a new obstacle presents itself: your best friend texted with the proposition of getting drunk and going to the Horse Center across the street from the school.

Ignore the message and continue to class. Continue to 15
Accept your friend’s invitation to get drunk and yell at horses. Continue to 23


19 -- After a mild bit of awkwardness working out how you got into the situation, you really hit it off with this beautiful person. Furthermore, you begin to feel a great weight has been lifted from your shoulders.

Whoa. Turns out you’ve achieved happiness. Good on you. Who cares about the exam, those essays, or research papers, right? You’re happy.

END.


20 -- Well, you fucked that chance over.

END.


21 -- Despite radical change in your social behaviour, you manage to keep sane by making a regulated routine of doing the thing that makes you “feel the best” every weekend night. Some might think poorly of you, but fuck them. They’re not you.

END.

“What the fuck is going on?” -- You sloth over to the Hills of Desolation with the persistence of a death march. The sun burns and the air coils itself around you, tighter with every step. At the point where you feel as though you can take it no more, you reach the horizon and find yourself facing an entwined system of metal gates surrounding giant stone structures. The closeness of the giant stone monstrosities suggests they’re huddled together for warmth, which seems counteractive at this point in your mind. But you set aside your disagreement with the things and your sights land on a structure skeletal in nature, made from a frame of metal, towering over the area like the arm of a master puppeteer. This is no doubt the Dark Obelisk that the God-Creature spoke of. “Where is the Goblet of Aloc Acoc?” you question aloud. “Where is the thing I want the most?”

Within seconds, you start to feel an airy sensation spring forth from you. Your body goes light as the force of gravity struggles to hold on to your every step. As you sail above the unturned earth and rock-piles, you look upwards and begin to see spirits within the winds, wafting through the air like the weightless transcendental beings they are. You wish to bind with the spirits in eternal ecstasy, but they are too high. Determined, you start to climb the Dark Obelisk...

Jump off the Dark Obelisk in attempt to bind with the spirits. Continue to 22
The LSD wears off, and you wander back to the school. Continue to 6

22 – Oh damn! Reality pulled an Inception on your ass. You found the proper “kick” and managed to wake yourself up. Turns out this was all a dream. Literally all of it.

“No way was that all a dream!” Continue to 7
“So that was all a dream!?” Continue to 1


23 -- You are trampled to death by a horse. That must suck.

END. 



//Sam MacDonald
Dungeon Master

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