epicenter00
SOC-13
...for doing this.
For almost a year now, I've been running a MegaTraveller game based around the GURPS Traveller timeline (ie; no assassination, Strephon's still in charge, Dulinor is dead, etc.) mostly because I thought the TNE setting had too many factors I didn't like about it and spending time forever in the Rebellion and Hard Times seemed pretty dull and pointless.
Finally, my conversion of TNE is ready - I've worked out the kinks of the background and tweaked it to my liking, and I'm ready to run this. Now, like any GM, I'm faced with a few choices:
Have everyone generate new characters and just start afresh, easy but lacking in continuity and I feel vaguely like it's a cop-out. I pride myself on being a reasonably creative fellow, and this solution seems to lack any imagination whatsoever.
OR
Transition my current game and players to the new campaign. Of course, since I skipped the Assassination and Rebellion in the game, the Civil War and the Virus that's the finishing blow aren't going to happen, easily at least. I've wracked by brain over this for a bit and can't think of a solution that feels creative or would impress the players.
Until tonight, that is.
I'm thinking I'll totally mindf**k my players.
For a while, I've been dropping hints that the world isn't quite what it seems to the players. So far, the players haven't really gotten enough clues to put two and two together (mostly because I was just inserting the things in Chris Carter-style - I didn't have any particular plot in mind, I was just inserting stuff to develop later). But it'll actually dovetail nicely into this new idea.
So here's my new idea:
It isn't the year 1122 as the players think. It's actually the year 1240. Strephon is dead. Dulinor met his end at the whirling blades of a grain thresher. The Virus was released and finished off what we humans didn't finish off the old fashioned way. The Imperium is dead.
The players are actually on a world hit particularly hard by the Hard Times. Like many, it was a reasonably high tech (TL15 maybe?) world without an A or B class starport and an inhospitable environment. Like suggested in Survival Margin, the world opted to put a large part of its population into low berths to reduce the strain on resources. The population in low berths would be monitored by the global computer system which would monitor the low berths and wake people at the appointed times and so forth. Data hookups to those inside would allow them to be kept abreast on critical events via dream-transmission (at least in theory - nobody really ever had time to make updates for them in reality since the demands of survival were to pressing).
Of course, the world's general life support fails at some point (or is infected by the Virus, or both) and the non-berth population dies off. Due to the simple redundant nature of the low berths, the Virus doesn't manage to kill those in them.
Meanwhile, the global computer network is simply too large (and infection started from too many points) for it to become a single Virus entity at first. With different Virus strains trying (and succeeding) in overwriting each other, the Virus in the network mutates rapidly. Eventually, the network comes to be dominated by a take off on the "God" or "Mother" strain with the other Virus intelligences in the network becoming its vassals.
This Virus begins to poke around the "dreams" and "memories" of the hundreds of thousands (or perhaps millions?) of sleepers in low berths. It learns of the human view of the Rebellion and the Hard Times.
But instead of being typically homicidal, it becomes curious. Then it decides to give the humans what they wanted the most...a world where the Rebellion never happened.
So, in essence, through a combination of induced biochemistry, dream manipulation, and direct neural stimulation, the players have literally been living in a Matrix-like simulated world generated by the global computer network (which simply uses human memories to fill in the blanks and improvises from there). The Virus sees itself as giving its "pets" what they want. Oh, there's still wars and other kinds of intrigue (because the computer sees such events as a kind of sociology experiment - what will the humans do if I introduce this? Or this? Or this?).
Obviously, this simulation is very nearly perfect, but it's not actually perfect. There's small glitches in the simulation and the memory suppression via hypnosis and biochemicals isn't perfect. The computer tries its best to eliminate such humans, but it doesn't always catch them because it has difficult figuring out the difference between those freely accepting the simulation and those questioning it (despite having tried all this stuff, humans are as alien to the AIs as they are to us - this whole simulation is partially an effort to better understand us).
Eventually, the players are going to figure this out and get free and out of the simulation (I have plans on how to handle this). However, that isn't the concern here. It's more of a player concern. If I was your GM and I tried this, would you guys enjoy it? Or would you chase me out of town with torches and pitchforks?
In other words, should I try this, or should I go with some more prosaic solution?
For almost a year now, I've been running a MegaTraveller game based around the GURPS Traveller timeline (ie; no assassination, Strephon's still in charge, Dulinor is dead, etc.) mostly because I thought the TNE setting had too many factors I didn't like about it and spending time forever in the Rebellion and Hard Times seemed pretty dull and pointless.
Finally, my conversion of TNE is ready - I've worked out the kinks of the background and tweaked it to my liking, and I'm ready to run this. Now, like any GM, I'm faced with a few choices:
Have everyone generate new characters and just start afresh, easy but lacking in continuity and I feel vaguely like it's a cop-out. I pride myself on being a reasonably creative fellow, and this solution seems to lack any imagination whatsoever.
OR
Transition my current game and players to the new campaign. Of course, since I skipped the Assassination and Rebellion in the game, the Civil War and the Virus that's the finishing blow aren't going to happen, easily at least. I've wracked by brain over this for a bit and can't think of a solution that feels creative or would impress the players.
Until tonight, that is.
I'm thinking I'll totally mindf**k my players.
For a while, I've been dropping hints that the world isn't quite what it seems to the players. So far, the players haven't really gotten enough clues to put two and two together (mostly because I was just inserting the things in Chris Carter-style - I didn't have any particular plot in mind, I was just inserting stuff to develop later). But it'll actually dovetail nicely into this new idea.
So here's my new idea:
It isn't the year 1122 as the players think. It's actually the year 1240. Strephon is dead. Dulinor met his end at the whirling blades of a grain thresher. The Virus was released and finished off what we humans didn't finish off the old fashioned way. The Imperium is dead.
The players are actually on a world hit particularly hard by the Hard Times. Like many, it was a reasonably high tech (TL15 maybe?) world without an A or B class starport and an inhospitable environment. Like suggested in Survival Margin, the world opted to put a large part of its population into low berths to reduce the strain on resources. The population in low berths would be monitored by the global computer system which would monitor the low berths and wake people at the appointed times and so forth. Data hookups to those inside would allow them to be kept abreast on critical events via dream-transmission (at least in theory - nobody really ever had time to make updates for them in reality since the demands of survival were to pressing).
Of course, the world's general life support fails at some point (or is infected by the Virus, or both) and the non-berth population dies off. Due to the simple redundant nature of the low berths, the Virus doesn't manage to kill those in them.
Meanwhile, the global computer network is simply too large (and infection started from too many points) for it to become a single Virus entity at first. With different Virus strains trying (and succeeding) in overwriting each other, the Virus in the network mutates rapidly. Eventually, the network comes to be dominated by a take off on the "God" or "Mother" strain with the other Virus intelligences in the network becoming its vassals.
This Virus begins to poke around the "dreams" and "memories" of the hundreds of thousands (or perhaps millions?) of sleepers in low berths. It learns of the human view of the Rebellion and the Hard Times.
But instead of being typically homicidal, it becomes curious. Then it decides to give the humans what they wanted the most...a world where the Rebellion never happened.
So, in essence, through a combination of induced biochemistry, dream manipulation, and direct neural stimulation, the players have literally been living in a Matrix-like simulated world generated by the global computer network (which simply uses human memories to fill in the blanks and improvises from there). The Virus sees itself as giving its "pets" what they want. Oh, there's still wars and other kinds of intrigue (because the computer sees such events as a kind of sociology experiment - what will the humans do if I introduce this? Or this? Or this?).
Obviously, this simulation is very nearly perfect, but it's not actually perfect. There's small glitches in the simulation and the memory suppression via hypnosis and biochemicals isn't perfect. The computer tries its best to eliminate such humans, but it doesn't always catch them because it has difficult figuring out the difference between those freely accepting the simulation and those questioning it (despite having tried all this stuff, humans are as alien to the AIs as they are to us - this whole simulation is partially an effort to better understand us).
Eventually, the players are going to figure this out and get free and out of the simulation (I have plans on how to handle this). However, that isn't the concern here. It's more of a player concern. If I was your GM and I tried this, would you guys enjoy it? Or would you chase me out of town with torches and pitchforks?
In other words, should I try this, or should I go with some more prosaic solution?
