It seems that we lack normal characters. I mean, shouldn't there be at least one Techno who actually associates with Technos to a normal degree, and at least one Magical who gets along just fine as a Magical?

Most good stories, especially in fantasy, are based around abnormal people, at least in my opinion. Take Inu-Yasha for example. The main characters are Inu-Yasha, a demon half-breed; Kagome, the reincarnation of a priestess who was Inu-Yasha's former lover; Shippo, a fox demon; Sango, a demon slayer whose clan was wiped out; and Miroku, who has a black hole in his hand.
And it was their abnormalities that brung them all together.

Sure. But we at least need to flesh out some normal people just so the player has some idea of what normal *is* for Magicals and Technos.

True. It's best to get both sides of the spectrum.

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Original post by Avatar God It seems that we lack normal characters. I mean, shouldn't there be at least one Techno who actually associates with Technos to a normal degree, and at least one Magical who gets along just fine as a Magical?

We already have those characters. Lion, the villain behind Skew, Bunny, Kitten, Mana, Case (arguable), Hero, Blanche, Versalis, M4Boy, Blanked.

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Original post by sunandshadow Here's a random idea for how techno shops and items might work. since technos don't have a capitalist economy or money, and instead have the ability to synthesize any desired object, we can't use scarcity to keep the PC from immediately acquiring all objects, and it would't make any sense to have lots of shops with different selections of items. Instead, let's have a standard item synthesizing machine, and the PC will have to find the code/program for any item he/she wants to synthesize and enter it into the machine. These codes will be scattered around the techno city (in logical places, not random ones, for example a painter techno would have codes for making paint) and the PC will collect them as he/she explores the city and interacts with the NPCs. There may even be some old codes that have wandered into the spirituals' museam...

Do they sell such information? Are they like magic scrolls? In a nutshell instead of gathering materials, the PC is now gathering information. There are many threads on how the player synthesize 'new' items. Should the actual synthesis process be graphically code based? A related question is, can the PC succeed by just trail and error, without actually going out to gather the info?

Code based = The player gather different bits and pieces of codes from all over to piece together his own code to create an item. The code itself is text, and the player has to type them up.

Graphically Code based = The same concept except the player does not actually type any code, Different proceses are symbols that the player finds and can be stringed together to make things. (Similar to ideas on how mages create summons by putting ingredients and mediums on a magic seal.) In this case, since the info are represented by symbols (key items) that the pc has to collect, the pc can't just use someone's code he finds on the internet and make the same item.

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we can't use scarcity to keep the PC from immediately acquiring all objects, and it would't make any sense to have lots of shops with different selections of items.

We are in fact still using scarcity, not in the material level but in the information level. The basic codes should be free, the PC probably just have to browse through a database to find them. But the pieces of code required to synthesize new 'goodies' or 'rare items' are scattered all over.


I have an objection to this system, which is, after the PC got the code, there is no 'up keep' to create new items. There is no cost to the actual synthesis and nothing is consumed. There is no tradeoff or decision making involved in resource management, which is usually a fun thing to have in a game: "Should I spend my resource on this or should I get this other thing first? Which one is better for me right now? Oh man this game makes me think."

If the Techno society is based on capitalism, the system would give patents to 'new' codes. Everytime a citizen uses the system try to create something, the citizen has to pay the price for each patent the synthesis involves.

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Original post by 5MinuteGaming So the Technos would have reached a point where their technology could manipulate energy back into matter. Cause in all forms that we have discovered once matter is converted into energy. Really its just the energy from bonds within the Nucleus of an atom not the protons, netrons, or electrons that get converted into energy. So it would still take matter to work. The machine would have to break down matter into protons, nuetrons, and electrons and then use a massive and when I say massive I mean massive amount of energy to put the nucleus together to form the desired element. And then the machine would have to know how to form the chemical bonds and put those together which could take much more energy. It is possible that they have found a way to do this but what would it say about the Technos as a race if they were able to. It would definitely suggest that the Technos have had a ton of scientific geniuses or through the use of cybernetic implants and nano tehcnologies were able to comprehend and imagine more thus offering more discoveries. But then wouldn't the Technos be discovering new technologies all the time during the game or wouldn't they have already killed themselves with war. If they can create enough energy to put together an atom and of course keep that energy centralized possibly using a blackhole type of theorey which would further imply that they could manipulate gravity which could be pretty cool for a city. Like say particular parts of the city you actually walk on the ceiling within a building and rooms and elevators go off in any direction. Of course only within the building. They could also have anti-gravity transportation. But what would that say about their space travel. Is it possible that you could target the center of gravity for a planet and somehow pull yourself to it. For instance we all feel the pull of gravity from the sun but aren't up rooted from where we are and drawn toward it because of the earths gravity and our proximity to such a large force. Now if you could control that hm. Anyway could the Technos leave earth and if so why haven't they. What do you guys think?

I think that the pc should, instead of just providing a blue print, be required to pay for the synthesis as well as gathering uncommon materials. Common materials the system would have in stock, and the PC can sell back old stuffs to the system. Furthermore, the system should be in fact distributed so there are competitions (the PC might find it cheaper to do a certain process at a certain workshop)

In general I do not object having items created from pure energy. Such objection is similar to that centuries ago when people did not believe there is such a thing as synthetic fiber. However, I object to the idea that there is no cost, not in terms of technology but in terms of gameplay.

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Anyway could the Technos leave earth and if so why haven't they.

I asked the same question in oprl, and my solution is that the Technos on earth is a very small branch of Technos, and their technology is not as advanced as the main Techno soceity far far away. In a nutshell, the Technos got to earth and can't get out, because they haven't recovered space travel technologies or that they have no reason to leave.

Edit: Oh hell, is it going to do that bad post-order thing _again_?!? >.<

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Original post by Estok If the Techno society is based on capitalism, the system would give patents to 'new' codes. Everytime a citizen uses the system try to create something, the citizen has to pay the price for each patent the synthesis involves.

But we _don't_ want the techno society to be based on capitalism because we want it to contrast with the magicals' society, which _is_ capitalistic. There should be no intellectual property rights, no rare materials, and no paying for anything in techno society, because the layer will have already had enough of tht system from dealing with magicals. If you want certain items to be more difficult to get, the PC might have to convince a techno do design them, which might require anything from a dialogue puzzle to a favor trade or fetch quest.

So I agree with Estok that just gathering codes is too simple and not strategic, but we need to think of a distinctly non-capitalistic way to make it more strategic.

As for history and space travel, here is how I think it worked: at one point the technos did have a capitalistic economy, and this is when a lot of their tchnological innovation happened. Then someone invented this matter synthesis machine where you could put dirt or garbage in and get food and clothing out, and the economy collapsed because nobody needed to be a "wage slave" or "wage whore" (what the technos call working for pay) to meet their basic needs. Factories shut down for lack of workers, people synthesized themselves weapons and went around vandalizing and raping, some groups of people organized themselves into gated communities for protection (one of these grew into the techno city), while other people decided this was all technology's fault and banned all high-tech to go back to a capitalistic system (proto-magicals). This economic collapse meanwhile created lots of political unstability and that's how the apocalyptic war started - our island, with it's little proto-magical and roto-techno populations was fortunately unimportant enough to avoid direct nuclear strikes, and the first spirituals working in the background helped heal the island and people so that most of them survived the war. The technos survived despite genetic mutations that made them hermaphroditic by protecting their technology and clinging to it in their socialist arcology-like city, and the magicals survived by returning to a more argrarian form of society and unconsciously using magic to channel dangerous mutations into useful or at least pretty animal-like forms, and later learning how to do this consciously.

So who knows what kind of space exploration there was before the apocalypse, but there hasn't been a large enough population to support it since then, especially since the technos' rate of technological innovation has dramatically slowed because no one can pay anyone else to work on their ideas, so essentially all experimentation is done by hobbyists, there are no corporatons; a spaceship is a huge and difficult project, do you think a group of hobbyists would ever succede at putting one together? It might be funny to watch them try though. Also, once the war was over the technos were happy with their life of leisure, most wouldn't want to leave their city even to venture out to explore the island or the ruins of the rest of the planet, much less space.

There's my suggested timeline BTW: (My response to P.20)

- 2137 Matter Synthesis Technology is invented

- 2138-9 Global economy collapses and apocalyptic nuclear/biological war is faught; first spiritual transcends

- 2140-66 Intensely isolationist period where proto-magicals, proto-technos, and other smaller bands of survivors huddle together in ragged bands of mutants, all energies focused on survival and healing.

- 2143 Magical religion originates

- 2167 The last aggressive band of land-pirate survivors is broken up by magical warriors and all survivors have all been absorbed into either the magical or techno community.

- 2168-2173 There is still unrest within these communities arising from the techno population being part hermaphroditic and part or the regular genders, and the magical community trying to study and regulate magic use while their crops are battered by occasional bad weather.

- 2174 it is discovered that a small group of techno political vigilanties has been going around converting all children to hermaphrodites - some adult males and females are horrified by this and leave the community, the rest create the standardized kindergarten system where all children are biologically standardized as hermaphrodites at birth and raised mostly by computer programs and robots. This is the signal of the technos' culture's change from somewhat anarchic to strongly socialist.

- 2183 The Magicals' church has gotten organized enough to start rewriting history; they put out a book of dogma somewhat creatively describing and religiously interpreting the apocalyptic war. Some technos are disgusted with this and air-drop counter-literature about the war in magical villages - this is the start of the magicals habitually ignoring technos.

- 2184-4768 Staying fairly isolated from eath other, the two cultures continue developing their own traditions, populations growing slowly to their present size. After the 'pamphlet war' over history there is a counter-historical cultural movement in both cultures, and while most of the info survives in techno data banks somewhere, it isn't taught much in schools, so in both cultures the apocalypse has been reduced to an almost mythological story. Life goes on, and the cultures are adapting to their present conditions.

- 4769 Present day: A techno and a magical, curious about history and power, get together and accidentally summon some pre-apocalypse humans, and the game begins.

[Edited by - sunandshadow on November 17, 2004 11:12:47 AM]

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Original post by Avatar God It seems that we lack normal characters. I mean, shouldn't there be at least one Techno who actually associates with Technos to a normal degree, and at least one Magical who gets along just fine as a Magical?

There are the 4 Trouble makers Hero, Blanche, Varsalis, and M4Boy. And also Blanked...but then I didn't know exactly how these Technos would fit in to become RNPCs. Perhaps their more developed NPCs its a possibility that Hero can be romanced by the player.

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I think that the pc should, instead of just providing a blue print, be required to pay for the synthesis as well as gathering uncommon materials. Common materials the system would have in stock, and the PC can sell back old stuffs to the system. Furthermore, the system should be in fact distributed so there are competitions (the PC might find it cheaper to do a certain process at a certain workshop) In general I do not object having items created from pure energy. Such objection is similar to that centuries ago when people did not believe there is such a thing as synthetic fiber. However, I object to the idea that there is no cost, not in terms of technology but in terms of gameplay. Quote:Anyway could the Technos leave earth and if so why haven't they. I asked the same question in oprl, and my solution is that the Technos on earth is a very small branch of Technos, and their technology is not as advanced as the main Techno soceity far far away. In a nutshell, the Technos got to earth and can't get out, because they haven't recovered space travel technologies or that they have no reason to leave.

I agree with your reasoning that we should have some way of trade. Whether there be currency or just simply an exchange or a credit of some kind. Although this system would be completely different in a Magical town. And I like your explaination for the reason Technos don't space travel. I thought it would be a cool idea though if the PC at one point in the game ventured outside the populated areas and encountered a Techno ship perhaps a possible ending where the PC can choose to go with them. And then dun dun dun...sequal game :D

Oh and as far as a global economy collapse it is highly unlikely that capitalism would fall because of a matter snythesis. First of all you must realize by now that Capitalism changes to new Technology no matter how shattering or powerful that Technology. The information industry would not be hampered by a matter snythesizing machine because software and information technology are services that aren't able to be mechanized except possibly by AI which could be a possible cause for an apacolpse and then the Technos decided to us machines that could be controlled and making themselves equal in strength to those machines namely by creating nano technology and mechanical implants. Which was also to help them survive the radiation. The tehcnology could have been developed by the AI machines as an experiment to make the humans more obidient and useful. Thats also where the hermaphrodites could have been created. The Machines could have seen it as the most productive dynamic rather than breeding both males and females they would only have to produce one to gain an increase in population productivity. A second war would break out when the nano technology within the Proto-Technos reached a formidable point and then they would be come independant and destroy the machines.

Perhaps, for the Magicals they were say a few islands somewhere that where on or near techtonic plates. They were in a window where the radiation was minimal. But yet the people were affected by the amount of radiation and their brains and parts of their bodies where altered. Perhaps it was some omish community or something that rejected technology and then over the years developed ways of using their minds and new body mutations. Many died and strong and large families were encouraged attempting to keep the population level high enough to survive. The life span dwindled for the first hundred or so years. By this time the Technos had defeated the AI machines and most had been killed in the wars and spread out over a large area but soon managed to come together and form a restructured society and cities fairly near the islands taht had less radiation than the rest of the planet. The techtonis plates were inbetween land and the island that the proto-magicals something over that hundred year period moved them and a land bridge was formed between one of the islands and the main land where the technos new Cities where forming. Over the years the two cultures adapted to their changes. The Magicals developing magic and a form of a religion around it giving praise to nature for sparing them from its raith (radiation posioning)

Then perhaps there were two individuals one magical and one techno who found each other intriguing and decided to combine the magical and techno tools and accidentally summoned, created a human being from the past. The spirituals during this time would either be a seperate sect of beings who escaped the nucleur holocaust after transcending into a different form which allowed them to survive. The new mutations of the two races now allowed them to live for longer periods of time say a couple hundred years. The Technos could live longer than the Magicals due to their nano technological parts. Spirituals are the immortal.

And just another idea which I had proposed before is that we create a bunch of different theories about what happened in the past but at the end and after all the game+'s the player doesn't have a completely factual idea of what exactly happened in the past and therefore the player is left to make his/her own past events which would be logical to him/her. So we can present it so that it would be believable that the races left earth and went to other planets or that Technos have spaceships and possibly they have some and that would be a possible ending. Or that the Spirituals actually come from a real alien race that lives on another planet or the background history that Sunandshadow suggested. But whichever the case I object to telling the PC ok this is exactly what happened it would be as if he was the creators of the world and not a person trying to get characters to love him or to love each other. So this way the player might ask something like, "How did these races come about if they seem to be both evolved from humanity." The idea that the history that is presented by books and historians and what we even now believe happened back then is something of a mystery that can never be solved. But we should definitely make sure that the player searches for clues to what happened in the past.