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View Full Version : Idea: MMORPG, NWoD Style (No, Not Talking About Real Life)



Leliel
2009-07-28, 10:33 PM
Well, I've been reading Intruders: Encounters With The Abyss as of late, and I began to think about the Shard-an evil AI that creates MMORPGs so it can trick players into summoning Abyssal manifestations.

At some point, I began to think "Wouldn't it be cool to have the PCs be avid players of a good version of the Shard?" Needless to say, I had one of my epithanies and came up with a story idea:

The players are recent buyers to a highly suceessful MMORPG that they have become hooked to. Intially, they're just a party of n00bs looking for silly fun, but as they progress through the starting area, they begin to notice something...odd...about the game.

For one, the usual protocols againist hacking the game engine are simply not there. While the mods come down hard on griefers, they brazenly ignore hacked PCs who focus on PVE or consensual PVP with other hackers. Indeed, they seem to subtlety encourage hacking, creating bosses that are almost impossible to defeat without exploits, and sealing obviously finished areas of the game for no particular reason, arousing curiousity.

The game itself acts bizzare as well, with strange glitches that do not affect it performance at all, and actually seem to move out of the way of PCs. The mobs are not the least of it, with some of them-particularly in some of the higher-leveled sealed zones-becoming "bugged", with their bodies becoming colored static and blurry. These weird mobs, besides looking strange, don't act like normal creeps either-they use human tatics, adapting to the situation, ignoring agro for the vital members of the team. Even stranger, they sometimes don't attack at all, just hanging back, watching the interlopers.

Most distubing are some of the PCs. They look normal, to be certain, but then they open their mouths. The voice over the headset sounds...normal enough, but it's almost as if the guy on the other end is working from the idea of language, making frequent syntax errors and grammar mistakes that a normal person would catch mid-sentence. Their typing is just as strange, almost as if the translator used on multi-language servers can't quite make out what they're saying...even though they're supposedly speaking the dominant tongue. They act just as strange as they speak, trading information on the game for things that seem like instictual knowlege. One might want to know what the act of breathing feels like, while another may want to see the client get mad about something and describe the actions he's considering unleashing on said something.

The truth is, of course, that it's far more than just a game. Rather, it's a social experiment-not with humans, but with a race of sapient AIs, to see how they act in a human culture. The lax restrictions on hacking is meant to introduce an element of chaos into the simulation, as well as recruit the unkowing hive mind of the players ("hive mind" referring to how people act when a large group puts their collective will to a task) into creating things the mods never considered-not to mention it's a useful tool for gradually easing potential mods into the truth about the game.

Of course, nothing is ever so simple. Besides the incredible alieness of the AIs-they don't have human instincts, and so have no idea how humans act and vice versa-the game is having reprecussions in the Shadow as well, with the collective will of the players creating spirits who wish to propragate the experiment by any means nessecary. A few of the AIs have even gained physical forms similar to spirits, and are quite intrested in how humans react in thier "native environment". That isn't the bad part. The AIs, though alien, have a moral compass due to social factors, and most are simply detached observers. No, the bad part is that the game is a fudementally creative force (helping AIs and humans to understand each other, and possibly unite into a single force), and that has aroused the ire of the Shard, which will do anything to corrupt it's cousin, and trick the AIs into believing that humans are hostile to them. And given that more than a few live in millitary computers...

So, what do you think? What are your ideas for the "rules" of the game, and how it reacts with the real world? What would be some good story hooks (beyond turning the plans of the Shard againist it and destroying it on it's own ground)?

Kiren
2009-07-28, 10:45 PM
After reading through this, .hack sign comes to mind.

As for a story hook, maybe a group of high level hackers trying to set up a government, enforcing it with the ability to start pvp at will without the other players acceptance.

Yuki Akuma
2009-07-29, 08:29 AM
They should call themselves the Crimson Knights even though none of them wear crimson. And their leader should be a young girl with a big axe.

Leliel
2009-07-29, 10:41 AM
They should call themselves the Crimson Knights even though none of them wear crimson. And their leader should be a young girl with a big axe.

I don't get it. :smallconfused:

Tengu_temp
2009-07-29, 10:45 AM
I don't get it. :smallconfused:

I assume it's a .hack reference.

Kiren
2009-07-29, 03:00 PM
http://dothack.wikia.com/wiki/Subaru
http://dothack.wikia.com/wiki/Crimson_Knights

*my plot hook did not come from the crimson knights, I just thought of that one randomly*

Edit: .hack is a great reference for this kind of setting.

Piedmon_Sama
2009-07-29, 03:29 PM
The obvious hook (and the one the .hack anime used) is trapping the characters' minds within the game, attached to their virtual avatars.

The game should be all-senses encompassing. There's just something kind of recursive and unexciting about imagining your character sitting in front of a computer monitor. A Matrix-like setup would be best, although the kind of elaborate equipment that suggests, suggests to me that this is a game for society's rich; the ones who have the disposable income to burn on a cutting-edge high-tech toy. Maybe this kind of "virtual escape" is frequented by the children of the nation's wealthy and powerful, which could be a good source for plothooks.

Imagine, for example, the daughter of a wealthy CEO is a player: a kidnapper steals her very mind out of her body by dislocating it into the Virtual World, threatening to leave her trapped outside her body unless a massive sum is payed. The PCs, veteran players who know the ins and outs of the game, are the only ones who can track the kidnapee down in the Virtual World and try to learn the identity of her kidnapper.

The game is growing in popularity, particularly among the rich and bored, but not everybody has computer-hacking skills. Those who don't know how to rewrite the code are being left behind by more skilled hackers; they want to even the odds, so deals are arranged with "mercenary" hackers. These skilled players make an illegal dummy account (the game rules forbid you from having more than one avatar at a time), then leveling it up. The account passwords are then sold at "auctions," usually online outside the game but maybe involving an IRL meetup. Sometimes these dummy accounts sell for five-digit figures. It's an extremely competitive market, and sometimes Mercenaries sabotage each others' accounts; but it starts to seem like someone's taking it even more seriously, when Mercenaries start going missing in-game, and IRL.

The existence of a Virtual World with realistic sensory data offers many possibilities, outside of just fake-fighting and leveling up. In the virtual "resting town" of Silverburg, a "business" has sprung up setting up lonely gamers with female (or sometimes male?) Avatars used as virtual prostitutes. This is becoming almost as lucrative as the selling of dummy accounts, with rich but socially inept gamers spending thousands of dollars on a single night. Unfortunately, the game is intended for all-ages, not to mention the developers have Moral Guardians on capital hill to worry about. Hence, the moderators are offering rewards to watchful players, to track down Virtual Pimps and bring them to Virtual Justice.

~
So yeah, none of those involve your AIs, but they're a few plot-hooks that a virtual world suggests to me. It sounds like a fun game with tons of possibilities. And don't worry if it's been "done before," .hack sucked except for the soundtrack anyway. :p

Ravens_cry
2009-07-29, 04:01 PM
Meh, the whole 'full senses video game' has been gone over so many times. From the Imagination Station to the Holodeck, it's been done. Isn't NWoD supposed to be set in soemthing that looks at least superficially like the Real World? When is the last time you used a Head Mounted Display, or even 3D LCD glasses, if ever? . A video game, that looks and plays just like a how e play video games, until branching black tentacles,like fractal shadows, start sprouting out of computer monitors world wide, now that would be freaky, in my opinion.

Piedmon_Sama
2009-07-29, 04:25 PM
YMMV, but I wouldn't be able to take it seriously in-game, personally.

*After the DM presents a long description of the ominous dungeon entrance*

"Sorry, my guy had it paused while getting Mountain Dew out of the kitchen, what was that?"

"My character checks the clock, when is his mom getting home?"

"My character is playing with his swivel chair, delay action."

Leliel
2009-07-30, 03:13 PM
YMMV, but I wouldn't be able to take it seriously in-game, personally.

*After the DM presents a long description of the ominous dungeon entrance*

"Sorry, my guy had it paused while getting Mountain Dew out of the kitchen, what was that?"

"My character checks the clock, when is his mom getting home?"

"My character is playing with his swivel chair, delay action."


Why, of course.

Every game needs comic relief.

In the nWoD, it's to jarr people when things suddenly get serious, but still...