hi all. in writing this, i am in essence going against most things i believe in when posting a story in this forum. I don''t really have an idea about characters, where the plot will twist, even how it will end for that matter. ignoring that fact, this forum has grown quite stale, and i am hoping that by adding this post i can "stir the embers" as it were. there is great writing talent here, and i am hoping that those people will start posting again.. *ahem* with that said, i have here an unusual game, one that in itself defies what most stories are about. In all videogames, in every written quest, there seems to be one objective. "Save the World." Not this time. In this world, in this time, one man has been charged with the quest of ending the world. And he''s the good guy. Enter Roy, a skeptical, free spirited individual, created by the powers that be to destroy the world. -- another rule of mine will be broken. against by better judgement, i am not going to lay out the whole story for everyone to enjoy.. at least not at the moment. at this point in my post, i would just like feedback as far as an "end the world" concept of this game. rest assured, i do have more to this story, but lets take this one step at a time. i will post the rest once i get some feedback. thanks, and happy story writing! ~Chokki

quote: Original post by Chokki
Enter Roy, a skeptical, free spirited individual, created by the powers that be to destroy the world.

[Initial Disclaimer: I''m not much of a writer, but I''ll see what I can do to help this thread along.]

Does this statement imply that Roy is unknowingly a puppet to the powers that be, or was this simply metaphorical language? ''Cause if he is a puppet, then I could imagine that his free spirited nature could cause some interesting conflict as the story developed, and he learned how he was being manipulated.

I''m also curious as to what the purpose is regarding destroying the world. Does destroying the world mean destroying all of humanity, destroying all sentient beings everywhere (assuming sci-fi/fantasy, where humans aren''t the only sentient beings), or just destroying Earth? Who is to benefit by this? Are the entities that are benefiting from this not sentient (such as "Nature", Earth itself, the plants and animals, etc.)? Or are there sentient entities that won''t be destroyed, that will benefit from this? Or is it considered best for those being destroyed to be destroyed, not for the good of anything else, but for their own good? Sort of similar to some suicidal thoughts ("I''d rather die than continue living").

It does sound intruiging, though. I''ll be looking forward to find out more.

wow. i didn''t realize that in my effort to hide various parts of the story, i turned it into a one-liner. my bad.

here is some more story goodness, if but to answer some questions. this is the initial intro to the game.

Roy is being transported to the planet (yes, he is letirally created by the powers that be in this case) with the purpose of destroying the world.

The extent of said destruction will be left to the players imagination for the purposes of the game, but to clarify for you at this forum, destroying the world will be in effect "rebooting" it.

on his way toward the world, an accident occurs, and Roy forgets his purpose. this sets into play the point of the game. The player, along with Roy, during the game will be trying to figure out why they are trying to destroy the world, and what that exactly means.

just to forwarn everybody, i am trying to put this game in a ''computer'' context. Even the player won''t directly know it, the world in which Roy lives is a computer. i hope that this doesn''t affect anyone''s oppinion of the game. i am NOT making this out like the matrix. just so you people know that much in advance.

that clear the smoke a bit?

The entire world has fallen under a terrible virus that causes them to die but still be animated, you, a being of great power must kill them all to restart the human race... sorta a resident evil/trigun

[edited by - no one on June 8, 2004 1:40:23 PM]

IMO: Thats better if its a computer world in which he lives, it would be unethical for him to expose to be killing inicent human beings. (sorry for the spelling )

I''m thinking, if he''s a good guy but has to destroy the world, it may be in a sense of "the world", rather than THE WORLD -- perhaps the excesses of the society, creating offspring too quickly and expanding across the globe too much, are pushing the limits of the resources of the machine, and if the main character fails to "reboot" the world into a land of balance, where people reproduce as the world has the means to support and live in simple ways, rather than having a supercomputer at every desk, in every home, the system could crash, killing everyone inside. The plot twist would be that the guy, as he slowly begins to understand his purpose, starts to realize that rather than destroy the world the humans have created, the "program" holding the people could be optimized in a couple critical ways that could ensure that such "reinitilizations of the race" wouldn''t have to happen any more (as it stands to reason that if such "reboots" have to happen once, they would have to have happened before, which amounts to genocide on a scale we can''t even imagine). Obviously, the strictly rule based powers that be could not be reasoned with (no fuzzy logic), so he''d have to start to deal with dangerous rogue factions who know of the truth of their existance, and have access to means to change the code, but may not be trustworthy in the first place, so he has to convince one of these groups that he alone has the means to accomplish their ends, while fiendishly accomplishing his own ends, despite an elabourate masquerade which is to lead his co-conspirators to believe that he is actually doing what they want. At the same time, he''d have to figure out how to decieve the powers that be into believing that dealing with these dangerous factions will help their ends of "rebooting" the system.

...sorry...continue on without me. I have a bad habit of following a concept to fruition...

SJ Zero

i will add some more to what i''ve presented + a bit more. here goes''.

Roy is an entity. a Number. Nothing makes him any different from any other person in the world.

Except that he''s the one thats going to end it.

One day at work, a little message pops up on his screen. EXECUTE == 1 . Roy gets up, walks out the door, and crosses the street to his parked car. The day he was made for, his single life purpose. It was time. Then something happened, something that neither he or his superiors expected. Crossing the street, one small, indescriminate piece of plastic falls from the sky and knocks Roy unconcious. The fate of the world has been altered by a clumsy window washer who dropped his squeegee from the 30th floor of a nearby building.

A slightly off-kilter Roy gets to his feet. Somethign was odd.. there was something he was supposed to remember.. oh well. it will come to him in the morning. Off to home.

Roy makes his way home, brings in the trash can, and checks the mail. The same way he had done things day after day for 5 years. Only this time, there was something in the mailbox. This is puzzling, Roy thought. Now that he thought about it, he never got any mail.. But for some reason just kept checking his mail day after day, week upon month upon year upon lifetime.. but Why? And why was there a letter here now? Roy decided it would be better if he opened it..

Inside the envelope was a piece of paper. On that paper was a message. Written in that message... EXECUTE == 1 WHY HAVN''T YOU REPORTED? GO TO HQ IMMEDIATELY!! Roy stared at the paper for a moment. Hmm.. Now what was that all about? Roy would certainly have reported, if he was supposed to. This was probably just a letter from his office. Since the office was closed, he would see to it in the morning.

That night something strange happened. Roy was just one part of a greater plan, you see. A plan that went on, with or without him. Roy woke up that morning to an empty world. At least, almost empty.

--

Ok, there''s something to chew on for a while. I''m tired & going to bed, so toodles!

Hmmm... powers..

You ever read the "So, You Want to be a Wizard?" series?

part two, if but disorganized.

*getting back into story-teller voice*

Indeed, Roy is alone next morning as he wakes up. Something was out of place.. Something. Nevermind. Time for breakfast. Two eggs and a piece of toast later, Roy was heading out the door for work.

For the first time since Roy could remember, there was no sunrise that morning. No children on the streets. It was a cloudy sky, stared at by a cloudy face. Roy didn't know what to say. Or, for that matter, who to say it to. The menial life of before now seemed inviting, compared to the forsaken suburbs that lay before him. Roy went back inside, and took the time to read the paper.

An hour passed, finding Roy sitting there at the kitchen table, staring at something beyond the stove but not quite there, wondering why this day was different. He picked up the phone. The operator wasn't there. Roy tried the television. Far off cameras in far off television studios stared blankly at empty news desks and empty stage platforms. Empty bicycles littered the street outside.

"Whatever happened," Roy presumed, "happened in the space of an instant. Somehow, between the time I came home and the time I left this morning. Between now and then, everything ..." Roy crumpled the newspaper. "gone."

For some reason, one letter not expected came to mind. He was going to work, to report. Even if not immediately. If but for no other reason, it would give Roy something to do. Five minutes later would find Roy driving off to work.

And not a moment too soon.. Roy was not as alone as he had assumed..

"In the case of a malfunctioning person(s) the abnormalicy is considered intentional and thus malignant. Such individuals must be isolated and eliminated immediately."

Due to fate, one command was not executed. Due to protocal, another command would be.

A lone garbage truck rolled down Roy's street. The trash was not to be collected until the following Monday.

--

Thus ends part two. On a side note, I don't think I'll continue with a pert 3, as it were. I will follow later with a more summarized version of various parts of the story.

I hope that by writing this far I have given you a feel of what any such game would play like, and what sort of atmosphere said game would have.

[edited by - chokki on June 10, 2004 12:06:54 PM]

Oooh! I see the potential for a moral conflict! Is it right to delete millions of computer entities? After all, they aren''t real... but they think they are...

Well, actually, whether they think they are real is up to you. Are they being mislead, or do they know that they only exist in some computer?

--------------------------------------
I am the master of stories.....
If only I could just write them down...

I just saw this quote and had to put it here, "Just look at 99% of entertainment, it''s all in your face detritus."