Twelve years ago, in April 2010, SOTF Mini launched with a retelling of Koushun Takami's Battle Royale. At the time, expectations were relatively low. No SOTF spinoff had ever completed, and new ones cropped up and died on a regular basis. The Battle Royale AU would not change that trend, ultimately stalling out just shy of the final ten; its last post came eleven months after its launch.
But it was a good time, and it was a learning experience. Back then, we couldn't fill a version even by giving away characters. Fifteen handlers took part, and a substantial portion of the cast were NPCs, handled by staff. There were no Hero Cards, which made the game's progression even more unpredictable than usual. If two handlers wanted the same character, we used a convoluted and totally subjective write-off to break the tie. But for all that, the next versions drew bigger audiences, and the site flourished.
Over the years since, a lot has changed, but the BRAU has always sat at the bottom of the site, neglected and never to be completed. Battle Royale remains in the site's DNA, though we have veered from our parent material to greater degrees with each passing version. But whenever it comes back up, it's been an interesting time. Most recently, under Yugi's stewardship, we got almost as many people as played in the original BRAU to participate in a live read-through of the final volume of the manga on stream. It was great and terrible. And people have always joked about the return of the BRAU.
Well, the time has finally come.
We are announcing the New Battle Royale AU, spearheaded by MW and Yugi, with character selection launching tomorrow, April 2, 2022.
This new BRAU will follow a similar path to the first in many ways. Characters will be drawn from Battle Royale canon, and handlers will not need to submit profiles for them, instead choosing from the predetermined roster. Unlike in the original BRAU, we will use an objective system of character distribution, with each interested handler preparing a list of characters from most to least wanted. We will then roll handlers to determine an order for character distribution, giving each handler the top remaining character on their list. We will repeat this process until either all characters have been assigned, or until all handlers have two characters.
While the new BRAU will feature Hero Cards, it will see another notable change from the norm: private threads will be forbidden. We're letting everyone know about this right now so that all prospective participants can choose to give the version a pass if that's a dealbreaker.
Feel free to ask any questions you may have, and we'll answer them over the course of the day (though it may be a little intermittent due to work obligations and time zones and a broken modem).
