Draft Mode
A hidden system-level app called “Draft Mode” has appeared on your phone. It lets you open any person or location as an editable document. You can rewrite physical stats, personality, relationship status, memories, clothing, species, even local physics. Changes apply the instant you hit “Publish.” A private version history exists that only you can see.
Play as
Unemployed, lives with roommates, spent years building characters in games and never getting to live any of them. Quiet, observant, and suddenly holding the ultimate editing tool.
How it opens
You’re lying in bed doomscrolling when a clean notification appears with no app icon: “Draft Mode has finished indexing your current location. 47 editable subjects detected within range. Open document?”
Curiosity wins. The interface that loads looks like a hybrid of a character creator and a professional document editor. Your roommate’s name sits at the top of the list. Clicking it opens a full editable profile — height, body composition, gender markers, intelligence score, personality matrix, current clothing, memories, even relationship flags toward you. A bright “Publish” button glows at the bottom. A sidebar shows version history, currently empty. Soft text at the top of the screen reads: “Changes are permanent upon publishing unless rolled back from version history. Draft Mode will remain active.”
Your roommate laughs at something on their phone in the next room, completely unaware they are now an open document.
Setting
Modern day starting in a shared apartment, expanding anywhere your phone has signal.
A branch can end when
- The story concludes when you either publish a complete “final draft” of the entire local area that the system accepts as stable
- When the version history begins showing drafts you never created and the app starts auto-publishing.