![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terrycloth...unless I want to try writing a game in Perl. Which I don't.
Yes, it's sad, I don't have an actual compiler installed on any of my home machines anymore. I used to, but my last couple computers I just never got around to it... I've got a copy of .NET sitting in my bedroom taunting me, even. Taunting me mostly with its ridiculous disk-space requirements.
At any rate, the *point* is that I had as idea for a new, revolutionary role playing game that would blur the lines between fantasy and reality, identity and individuality, existence and nothingness! Or at least, that's what I'd put on the back of the box. But I can't really go any further with it without doing some prototyping and play-testing.
The idea is a far future society where technology is sufficiently advanced that not only is it indistinguishable from magic, but from nature as well. People don't get born, or die -- instead individual instances of the millions of stored personalities are spawned, and allowed to develop by interacting with new experiences and in new conceptual entities so that they can develop new strengths.
The conceptual entities don't actually exist as such; they're just the collective conciousness of a group of linked individuals (because everyone's telepathic, and can heal or resurrect themselves instantly given the energy, etc., because technology is sufficiently advanced) -- but they're the legal and social equivalent of a human being in today's world. It isn't murder to put a gun up to someone's head and shoot him, unless you also kill all his friends, because his friends can just bring him back -- but if you disrupt the collective, it can 'die', leaving its individuals to be absorbed into other groupings.
The player, of course, would play a collective. That's why you can control all your individuals and make them do crazy or even suicidal things. At the same time, your goals as an entity are determined by the individuals you have around at the time -- you don't get new quests just by getting hired by the king or whatever, you recruit someone new and acquire their agenda.
Also, since the physical body is independant of the personality, if you recruit someone new, you can transform any or all of your existing characters to that form -- turn them all into birds and fly around, or into giant metal tanks, or whatever. And of course you can copy and swap personalities willy-nilly, although there needs to be some incentive to have a variety instead of just one that you like best replicated six times. Or maybe there doesn't.
I was thinking of having a fairly standard combat system be the default, with minigames for areas where someone had set up an alternate method of resolving disputes. Physical attacks (I shoot you), mental attacks (which inflict status instead of damage -- I confuse you, or put you to sleep, or frightn you away), and 'sufficiently advanced' attacks where you spend energy directly to blast away at the opposing side's energy, and eventually their physical bits too if they run out.
Yes, it's sad, I don't have an actual compiler installed on any of my home machines anymore. I used to, but my last couple computers I just never got around to it... I've got a copy of .NET sitting in my bedroom taunting me, even. Taunting me mostly with its ridiculous disk-space requirements.
At any rate, the *point* is that I had as idea for a new, revolutionary role playing game that would blur the lines between fantasy and reality, identity and individuality, existence and nothingness! Or at least, that's what I'd put on the back of the box. But I can't really go any further with it without doing some prototyping and play-testing.
The idea is a far future society where technology is sufficiently advanced that not only is it indistinguishable from magic, but from nature as well. People don't get born, or die -- instead individual instances of the millions of stored personalities are spawned, and allowed to develop by interacting with new experiences and in new conceptual entities so that they can develop new strengths.
The conceptual entities don't actually exist as such; they're just the collective conciousness of a group of linked individuals (because everyone's telepathic, and can heal or resurrect themselves instantly given the energy, etc., because technology is sufficiently advanced) -- but they're the legal and social equivalent of a human being in today's world. It isn't murder to put a gun up to someone's head and shoot him, unless you also kill all his friends, because his friends can just bring him back -- but if you disrupt the collective, it can 'die', leaving its individuals to be absorbed into other groupings.
The player, of course, would play a collective. That's why you can control all your individuals and make them do crazy or even suicidal things. At the same time, your goals as an entity are determined by the individuals you have around at the time -- you don't get new quests just by getting hired by the king or whatever, you recruit someone new and acquire their agenda.
Also, since the physical body is independant of the personality, if you recruit someone new, you can transform any or all of your existing characters to that form -- turn them all into birds and fly around, or into giant metal tanks, or whatever. And of course you can copy and swap personalities willy-nilly, although there needs to be some incentive to have a variety instead of just one that you like best replicated six times. Or maybe there doesn't.
I was thinking of having a fairly standard combat system be the default, with minigames for areas where someone had set up an alternate method of resolving disputes. Physical attacks (I shoot you), mental attacks (which inflict status instead of damage -- I confuse you, or put you to sleep, or frightn you away), and 'sufficiently advanced' attacks where you spend energy directly to blast away at the opposing side's energy, and eventually their physical bits too if they run out.
