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View Full Version : Advice for a VR/MMO based campaign



BlacKnight
2016-07-23, 11:39 AM
Hello everyone !
I'm planning a game set in a future where virtual reality is a thing.
PC would be players/hackers that play in different MMO. I would like to alternate the real world with the multiple virtual realities where PC use their avatars (that will have their sheets)
I don't know how manage a couple of things:

-PC will use different avatars in different MMOs. Each avatar will be a different character. But all the systems that I know have mental stats. How could be justified for an avatar to have different intelligence from his player ?
At the opposite if mental stats are shared among all avatars it would lead to bump them for the real characters.

-What could be the goal for the real PC ? I have tought about farming gold, working like mercenaries and hitmen in the EVE-like MMO, blocking accounts for ransom or stealing credit cards (these would require specific conditions in game, like kindnappping the avatar and taking him to some place).
But these are minor quests, limited to a single MMO. What could be the main quest for the real characters ?
It has to be something that require them to enter different MMOs and to do something in the real world too.

SethoMarkus
2016-07-23, 04:53 PM
I have three major suggestions, stemming from my own research and planning for running a similar idea with my players at some point.

First, I would suggest using two separate systems to reflect "real life" opposed to virtual reality for the characters. I had planned on using World of Darkness for the base, "real life" characters. What system you use for the virtual characters will depend on the genre of the game you want it to reflect. I was going to use D&D 3.5 for a classic fantasy game, but others might work better for different ideas. Regarding your concern about mental stats, either leave them null, use a system where mental stats don't reflect actual intelligence, or have ie ne reflective only of the virtual character's stats and capabilities. For example, the power of a spell would be the virtual character's mental stat, but problem solving would be the "real life" character's stats. Essentially, your players would be playing a character, playing a character.

Second, the goal of the overarching game is a bit difficult to pin down if you want them to be involved with different games. I don't think I would be able to pull it together and would instead focus on one game/plot, focus on "real life" and abstract the virtual gameplay, or stick to more episodic play (highlighting one virtual game each session, with the "real life" characters being the constant). You might be comfortable with running several concurrent plot lines or unifying it all together, however, so don't feel like I'm trying to advise against it. I just know that I would need to focus on just the "real life" aspect id I wanted them to be all over the place, have a solid story tying it together, and not fall flat on my face as GM.

Anyway, best of luck to you! I've been enamoured with this sort of idea ever since first watching .hack//SIGN as a kid! You might enjoy, and get ideas from, Ready Player One, a great book about virtual reality, society, and the blurring of the two.

Thrudd
2016-07-24, 01:20 PM
The MMOs are all accessed via the cloud, the only hardware will be the equipment required to access the VR world through the internet. Maybe the MMOs are places where clever programmers have hidden access points into systems with real-life applications - like there's a VR cyberspace underlying all the MMOs which could let someone slip into government, military, or financial networks. The PCs might be agents or hired to find criminals who are threatening national security, or they might be the criminals/anarchists or mercenary hackers looking to take advantage of these portals that other hackers have designed, with agents positioned throughout the various MMO's trying to find the secret access points and track down the people using them. In a single session, the players could possibly pass from one MMO to another through back door portals, tracking someone or running from agents.

There could be a plot involving AI, as well. Maybe the "criminals" accessing the government and financial systems are actually AI, and AI factions have established a sort of society in the various MMO's where they are teaching themselves to socialize in a human-like manner. The problem is, it is hard or impossible to tell which avatars are AI and which are human players. The PCs need to find the AI, uncover their motives, see if they can track them back to a prime program or physical storage location. Maybe the AI eventually plan on building physical avatars and moving into the human world with androids, or plan on taking over the planet ala Skynet. Different factions might have different goals, you've got those that just want to integrate into human society with androids or stay in VR vs those that want to take over/guide human society by manipulating all institutions behind the scenes, vs those that want to eradicate humankind and remake earth into a machine world. The PCs will need to find out who is who and how they plan on doing those things, and the only way to find them and communicate with them is through the MMOs, where the AIs have built up many layers of secrets that will need to be bypassed.

For how the system should work - well, I think you wouldn't use different RPG systems straight out of the books. For one thing, a person's performance in an MMO would be largely based on their own intelligence and skill at playing the game. While their avatar in each game will have different abilities and limits based on the rules of that game, their ultimate performance should rely heavily on the real human player. So mental stats are out, unless they represent a mechanical ability specific to an MMO, like an ability that determines an avatar's resistance to spells, or determines the amount of magic points they get. In that case, that is the only thing that ability does, and doesn't affect what the character knows or whether they can solve a puzzle or their social interaction with other player avatars. Maybe an avatar has a social stat which affects how NPC's in the game see them and react to them, but all AI and player controlled avatars would be immune to that (that could be a method of identifying potential AI, if you can narrow down that an avatar doesn't belong to any living person, but they seem to always be able to resist your avatar's charm ability).
Certain operations performed in VR might depend on the human characters' hacking skill and knowledge of programming and technology, like tracking someone that leaves one MMO and goes into another, or tracking the IP of an avatar and finding its user's physical location, or identifying elements in the MMO that don't seem to belong there.

BlacKnight
2016-07-26, 04:30 AM
Thanks !
Thinking about the avatars it's true that their performance would be heavily dependent on the real player, so I will discard the idea of using different characters for each avatar. Each avatar would only determine the skills not linked to the player, like strength, stamina, charisma towards NPC and mana (if there is magic).

Thrudd, thanks for your points about access points and AI, now I have some ideas about how make my world and my campaign. Fighting a space battle to gain access to a goverment network sounds like a lot of fun :smallsmile: