Enjoy a build post!
Current BuildChronicle
Drawbacks: Lunchtime (600), Weird Quirk (100),
Budget: 1700 (1000 stipend + 700 in drawbacks)
Origin: Social Butterfly
Perks: Powers (Free), A Helpful Hand (400), The Game of Life (300), I just Do My Best At Everything (200), Chad 101 (Free), Supernatural Savant (600), Secrecy Insurance (200),
Item: Found Footage Film (Free)
GTNMK
Drawbacks: But is it mind control (200), do they love me or my perks (200), companion lockout (200), No Warehouse (Custom drawback, continuing the trend, 200)
Budget: 1800+4 tokens (2200 effective budget)
Perks: Ascension (Token), Possession-Be-Gone (Token), Telepathic Powers (Token), A Perfect 10 For Anyone (Token), Soul-Mate Ritual (100), Grant Free Will (100), Full Immunity (100), State Refresh (100), Love List Cupid (100), Empathy Powers (100), Passive Renewal (100), Advanced Danger Sense (100), Best Impression (100), Relationship Web (100), Easy Joint Ventures (100), Best Interest Sense (100), Betrayal Sense (100), Desires and Requirements (100), Intent Reader (100), Reading the Room (100), The Demographic (100)
Item: Free Will Bombs (100)
Past Build SummariesBuild #1
Magic essence Jump
Perks: Essence Entity, Multi Essenced, Supernatural Student, Mixer, Sage, Magically Universal, Death Sense, Jumper the Destroyer, Undead Sovereign, Jumper Reaper, Supernatural Impressions, Jumper the Builder, Leadership Material, Jumper's Legacy
Items: Wand, Local Spellbook, Spooky Ring, Book of the Dead, Royal Specter, Melting Pot
A Human Of Earth
Perks: Magic, Troyverse Physiology, Permeability, New In Town And It Gets… Better?, Well Traveled, Awakened Talent,
Items: Magical Focus, Citizenship, Exotic Transport, Grimoire, A Romantic Gift
Build #2
Generic Monster School
Perks: Butter Wouldn't Melt, Looker, Pants On Fire, He said She Said, Foul Weather Friend, Lots of Noblesse, Casanova, Leader of the Pack, Weird Science, Catch On In A Flash, Hunter, Just Give Me One Chance, Teachable Moment, Apple A Day, Team Player
Items: Hunters Kit, Small Friends, Student Handbook, Notes Notebook
Out of Context Beholder Supplement
Perks: Eye Rays, Experience, Alien Mentality, Magical Anatomy, Regional Effects, I Dream Of, Undeath, Negative Energy Master, Lord of Death, Necromancer, Anti Magic Expert, Paranoid, Eye Tyrant, Flurry of Rays
Buffed Perks: Life-Creating Dreams, Master of All You See, Control, Lord Of Your Lair, Necromantic Region, Restorative Killer, Harbinger of the End
Build #3
Adult Essences Jump
Perks: Essence Entity, Adult Conveniences, Multi Essence, Harem, Strength Build, Martial Master, Orcishness Shared, Jumper: Enemy of their preferred gender, That? Oh, That's Just Jumper, Envy & Shared Joy, Cooperation & Bliss, Jumper: Charisma Main
Items: Orc Kit, Orc Banner, Housing Fit For A Chad, Walking Around Money
Generic Bard
Perks: Chameleon, Theater of the Mind, Song of the Spheres, Hymn of the Ancients, Chorus, Lucky Bastard, Words of Power, Story Collector, Improvisation, Dabbler, Special Effects, Harmony, Fine Tuning, Accompaniment, Artisanal, Loremaster, Virtuoso, Born to the stage, Eye of the Beholder, Craftsman (Cooking), All eyes on me, Play the Part
Items: Traveling Stage, Muse, A Place in the World, Instrument
Build NotesI had actually started on chapter 24, wrote a nice chunk of it, and then decided to change things up by coming here. Thankfully I had this build locked and loaded a WHILE ago, it was one of my older builds, and I decided to go ahead and make this our first non-Troyverse non-generic. Yes, there's a generic here but the World Setting (the jump that more powerfully influences the world) is Chronicle, which is a movie.
Our first non-Troyverse non-generic and, unsurprisingly, it's Chronicle. I have a long history with this jump. My very first stab at Jumpchain Fiction was a story that began in Chronicle. A video I made as PART of a chain was on Chronicle/Generic Totally Not Mind Control. I've done a Luciano the Jumper story, a full self-insert, with Chronicle as the first jump. So I know this jump pretty intimately. And it's fitting that it's our first non-generic. This DOES mark the first time I've done a full-length (decade-long) story stab at this jump and the first time I've done it with a supplemented jump that has a normal build (and thus isn't part of some alt-chain). Let's talk about Chronicle first.
Chronicle is a found-footage superhero movie. It centers around a trio of teens: Matt, Andrew, and Steve. They go into a cave during a party, have an encounter, and get superpowers. The movie can be found online, and can be seen for free without being a swashbuckler if you don't mind it having the quality of something filmed on a potato. It is a VERY good movie, one of my favorite movies ever. If I discuss any other movie details here we'll get into spoilers. It should surprise no one that this jump is one of the ones that I've done extensive discussions of, so if you want to see GENERAL notes on this jump click here.
In terms of what LTJ (Lalo the Jumper) has attained here, from THIS jump… Beyond doubling down, hard, on charisma with Chad 101 and The Game of Life, Lalo has attained telekinesis (Powers), a perk that causes people to TRY and rationalize his goofier shit (Secrecy Insurance), the ability to just generally be the goodest boy even passively so long as he's talking to people (A Helpful Hand), and a perk that makes it much MUCH easier for abilities to branch out (Supernatural Savant). We also nabbed a camera that we can use to just passively record stuff. I actually skipped the Setting Priorities perk because we already have goofy good sexy skills, and setting priorities would require another drawback and it's just not worth it because that perk doesn't offer anything new or enough of an enhancement to existing stuff to merit tacking on a drawback just for it. For someone else, without goofy fiat-backed sexy skills, Setting Priorities COULD be worth it, but for LTJ it's not.
I was able to grab… essentially everything I REALLY wanted to grab. I will almost always choose charisma, and in this jump in particular the two best origins are the drop-in and the charisma origin (the non-drop-in origins are all character origins, though I won't say which is keyed to which character, as that's a spoiler… for a movie that is free and over a decade old, lmao, but the drop-in origin is just generally handy stuff for a jumper who comes to this world). I snagged the best perks from the drop-in origin and I grabbed the secret best perk in this jump for like… 90% of all non-evil jumpers: A Helpful Hand. This perk is phenomenal, particularly at both helping people GENERALLY and intervening and stopping would-be villains whose descent into villany could be stopped. A Helpful Hand is good even if your jumper is lazy as it explicitly says that platitudes and just TALKING to people are enough for the effects to kick in. IMO A Helpful Hand is a better perk then the actual capstone of the origin; I Get Knocked Down, though IGKD is also pretty good. And we have Chronicle-scale telekinesis: a telekinesis that gets solidly strong and can branch out into a bunch of different abilities.
Now let's talk about our first older supermarket jump for this chain: Generic Totally Not Mind Control. LTJ's build here is pretty stacked haha. There's also a fair deal of doubling down in this, I took a lot of linked things in different flavors, while still managing to grab almost every single true superpower here. I think the ONE true superpower I didn't get was the ghost/soul thing; Soul Gazer.
The sole item from this jump that we snagged is pretty beefy as it's a set of grenades that don't harm people and instead grant things free-will. There's a lot of stuff that these grenades can do, but one of the big things here is that it's a ranged way of breaking mind-control. Very good ability for a multitude of reasons.
LTJ gained telepathy, which is almost always a really good power. The ability to end mind-control and even possession, a ton of different ways, and the power to (mostly) awaken beings, as per the D&D spell (this doesn't grant stuff that can't move the ability to move). Beyond these sorts of straight superpowers, and a few others like enhanced healing stuff, LTJ has now gained enhanced charisma and sharpened intuition in a number of small ways, with stuff like Best Impression, Betrayal Sense, Desires and Requirements, and Intent Reader.
Some of the big stuff in this jump is a bit surprising. Soul-Mate Ritual is, for a harem jumper, an INCREDIBLY strong ability. Love List Cupid, also surprisingly based both for people who like people, and for folks who are harem jumpers. Desires and Requirements and Knowing Their Standards are both fun perks for making friends and for romantic stuff.
SynergiesHaving attained telekinesis AND telepathy in the same jump, LTJ is now just generally a full-blown psychic. We already had SOME psychic stuff in the forms of psychometry and a baby danger-sense, but this jump really solidifies LTJ's psychic abilities. Some perks from these jumps blend together pretty well; Secrecy Insurance and All Eyes On Me are very fun to mix, Play My Part and A Perfect 10 For Anyone allow for very fun acting shenanigans.
Telekinesis (especially the non-physical telekinesis of Chronicle, a nice upgrade to Lalo's beholder telekinesis that requires either he be looking at something or that he gestures at it) and ranged weapons, particularly the Free Will Bombs, are very nice mixes. Free Will Bombs and Lalo's INTENSE charisma are naturally quite potent, especially when that is mixed with Best Interest Sense and Lalo's overall power as Lalo can make it quite clear that fighting him, when he's giving you an out, is not a smart choice. Desires and Requirements and Best Impression blend together extremely well, and honestly quite scarily supplement LTJ's charisma, especially given the sharp buff it has gained in general with Chad 101 and with The Game of Life.
Lalo's nicely diverse slate of powers is a surprise tool that'll help us later, but even here some of these perks, from Ascension to the ability to take in other people's pain and injuries and heal them, there are some nice gems in this jump. One of the pleasant synergies that LTJ attained here are some of their first non-magical powers, with all of their generic totally not mind control abilities and their psychic powers from Chronicle being expressly non-magical. That said, Mixer is a fun toy and I want to try and mix all of the stuff into something fun.