There was a popular teen movie recently called Last Destination or Final Destination or something, about people cheating death. Death in that case wasn''t the Grim Reaper per se, but was a cosmic force. There was a "list" that people were on, and when their number was up they died. Since some weird psionic event prevented a group of attractive, wealthy young models from dying at the "right" time, "death" pursued them through their lives and finally managed to pick them off, one by one. They died in freak accidents and bizarre circumstances.

Maybe it would be best if you were responsible for the tracking and executing in such circumstances. A sort of metaphysical X-Files, where you, as an agent of cosmic order, seek out anomalous lives and terminate them. You might have to deal with all sorts of crazy spiritual things. People could sell their souls to demons for more life, and you''d have to fight the demons to get their souls back for Death, or they would otherwise "death-proof" themselves, and you''d have to find a loophole in their contract or else just muscle the spirit out of them. All kinds of magic spells, supernatural creatures, and ancient wonders could be tied in.

Could be a cool idea to develop... As far as competition for the souls goes... I watched the movie "Ghostship" on video recently, and it has an idea you could utilize: there is basically this guy that kills all the people on the ship in different kinds of ways. He isn''t really human any more, because he has already died a while back, so he has some supernatural powers. But the idea is that he lead a life of sin and was sent back to the world to collect souls. He is a kind of salvager and has to collect a quota of souls in time, or his "boss would get angry". Some nasty character along those lines could be introduced into the game. If you make the Grim Reaper a "good" character, then the player could try to collect souls and send them to heaven, say. But this collector guy would interfere and try to snatch the souls from the player, and take them to hell instead, even though the owners may have led a righteous life.

Just another idea...

It may be me, and I don''t know why, but games like these, and games about making suicides as grewsome as possible (^_^), don''t seem to do it for me. I really don''t know why this is, because games where you are an actual person killing people seems more interesting, i.e. GTA:VC. Then again, in those games, there''s a variety of ways you can pick people off; a ton of weapons and cars and drive-bys. Someone needs to explain to me why.

I think it''s probably the notion of living a fantasy Vs. living vicariously(sp?). You prefer to experience things that may actually be possible to do. I bet you enjoy First Person Shooters a lot more than RTS''s or RPG''s. It''s the thrill of being imersed in things that you know enough about to fill in the gaps and make that world more real to experience.

Others prefer the fantasy. I get very bored with games that are set in the RL or any world similar enough. I prefer to flesh out the world with my imagination. As such, I get into other modes of game play.

Nothing wrong with that though. Some folks like to play footbal, others like to get drunk and eat hotdogs.

My sig used to be, "God was my co-pilot but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him..."
But folks whinned and I had to change it.

setting up ways for people to die......siiiick

The type of game would depend on what you think the grim reaper actully is. Some people see it as an evil spector killing people and harvesting there souls. But what if you think about it like this. The grim reaper doesn''t kill anyone its mearly the entity that guides you after your death. Helps you come to terms with the fact that your dead and guides you to your choosen afterlife.

The game could consist of varius secernio invloing diffrent people. First you have to locate them, then convice them that there day, as well as unravel any unresolved issues binding them to mortal realm. Lastly you send them off to one of several diffrent afterlife that best suits the person.

-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

quote: Original post by Landsknecht
I think it''s probably the notion of living a fantasy Vs. living vicariously(sp?). You prefer to experience things that may actually be possible to do. I bet you enjoy First Person Shooters a lot more than RTS''s or RPG''s. It''s the thrill of being imersed in things that you know enough about to fill in the gaps and make that world more real to experience.

Actually, my dream is to create RPG''s, due to how much fun they are. Does StarCraft count as an RTS? I loved it while I played it...

Sorry, left out my password and sent it. ^_^ My bad.

and now for something completely different

maybe you could do something along the lines of lemmings where your task is to guide the dead souls to their final destination.

Joel Martinez
http://www.codecube.net/

quote: Original post by joelmartinez
maybe you could do something along the lines of lemmings where your task is to guide the dead souls to their final destination.

LOL!!!!!!!! Of course, they would already be dead, so the fun of watching the lemmings fall into various pitfalls would be gone, but of course, there are still many spiritual pitfalls...

____________________________________________________________

official Necromancer of GameDev forums Game Writing section