Picture a cyberpunk / nanopunk future where the soul can be digitized, cities sport "soulcatcher" networks in case of death, and a new body is just a masoleum away... What are the gameplay implications of not only your character and major allies not being able to die, but your major enemies as well? How would you end up playng your character? Would it be interesting to have to figure out alternatives to just killing major foes? Background Imagine a world where the soul can be relayed by an implant to a network and downloaded into another body. The tech is so advanced that, depending on the (massively expensive) network, sometimes you don't travel between planets or stars, but rather die and resurrect because it's faster. In some societies, everyone has an implant. In others, only those rich / important enough do. People are reborn either in cloned bodies or cyborg frames. Corporations, syndicates, agencies and other major factions each have their own masoleum for resurrection, but every city with this tech has at least one public masoleum as well.

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Delimma Would it be interesting to have to figure out creative means of trapping / thwarting / delaying your enemies because death was pointless? Or should there be means to always kill an enemy? If the latter, what should they be? If the former, what options should you have? Also, how to keep players from stupidly dying just because they can (like jumping off a cliff just to restart closer to some place)?

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Some possibilities: Poltergeist Virii Make Death Risky Poltergeist virii are fragments of human will encoded in digital form. The rest of the human is gone, but the remainder haunts the datanets. When you die, poltergeist virii have a chance of imbedding in your soul and later hijacking your behavior. This results in occassional blackouts, some benign and some malevolent ("Uh, why the hell am I standing in a room full of dead people with a smoking machine-gun...?"). The faction you belong to determines how secure / hackable your "packet" is. Just a joe blow? Too bad, you could wake up a split personality! Sidequests or expensive purges would be required to rid. Dying Delevels You Your brain / cyborg body acts as a plus modifier to your stats. When you die, you may not be able to recover your body, and therefore your character investment. New bodies could also be expensive, on a sliding scale. Incomplete Coverage = True Death Just like cell phone networks, the soulcatcher network may not cover certain areas. In really bad ghettos, anti-tech factions may have pulled down the "towers" (or whatever they are). Where powerful factions fight, both may have carved out territory by using signal warfare. This means that some areas WOULD hold the possibility of final death. (Does this defeat the whole potential of the idea?) Implant Destructable Maybe the intensity of the death matters? Get hit with a rocket or fall into a raging inferno and you're not coming back without a reload.

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For the player against NPCs: I Know Your Respawn Loc, Punk! Your NPC enemy's faction has only so many masoleums. Destroy / infiltrate them to get to your target and finalize their death. Soulcatcher Upload Delay This could apply to you, too, but you're supposed to be able to optionally assimilate your foes. The quality of their network could determine how long it takes them to escape. As they're trying to upload, you can stand next to them and drain their soul stats. Diplomacy, Rank, Rejection Maybe you can somehow cause your enemy's faction to reject him? Then he is doomed to wander the nets (out of the game for awhile) or disintegrate into a poltergeist. Thoughts? Improvements?

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Original post by Wavinator Poltergeist Virii Make Death Risky Poltergeist virii are fragments of human will encoded in digital form. The rest of the human is gone, but the remainder haunts the datanets.

This is a great idea. It provides a solid incentive not to die, but also a hope that you'll get away scot free.

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Original post by Wavinator Dying Delevels You Your brain / cyborg body acts as a plus modifier to your stats. When you die, you may not be able to recover your body, and therefore your character investment.

This is ok. Cyborg body-parts and equipment should definitely be stolen if the body's in an area where that's likely (e.g. a city), but in more remote areas you should be able to go fetch your body and get any equipment/cyborg parts back (if they weren't destroyed/damaged by whatever killed you...). I'm not sure about the brain part though. If you're going to bring that into it then surely after the first death you'd be foobar'd.

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Original post by Wavinator Incomplete Coverage = True Death Just like cell phone networks, the soulcatcher network may not cover certain areas. In really bad ghettos, anti-tech factions may have pulled down the "towers" (or whatever they are). Where powerful factions fight, both may have carved out territory by using signal warfare.

This is an ok idea, but maybe the really powerful factions have satellite soulcatchers?

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Original post by Wavinator Implant Destructable Maybe the intensity of the death matters? Get hit with a rocket or fall into a raging inferno and you're not coming back without a reload.

Isn't death death? I mean, if you're reincarnated by having your soul 'caught' then surely only something that destroys your soul (e.g. going to a Britney Spears concert...), or prevents it being caught, will kill you permanently...

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Original post by Wavinator I Know Your Respawn Loc, Punk! Your NPC enemy's faction has only so many masoleums. Destroy / infiltrate them to get to your target and finalize their death.

So these mausoleums are going to be the main target in inter-faction warfare...

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Original post by Wavinator Soulcatcher Upload Delay This could apply to you, too, but you're supposed to be able to optionally assimilate your foes. The quality of their network could determine how long it takes them to escape. As they're trying to upload, you can stand next to them and drain their soul stats.

So this assimilation stops them from being uploaded? This might be the most effective means to kill enemies permanently at your disposal. Does this mean that an enemy Corekeepers can do this to you (and thus permanantly kill you...). This might be the best way to introduce permanent player death, as it probably furthers the 'hunted' feeling if the only thing that can actually kill you is a bunch of people who are hunting you down.

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Original post by Wavinator Diplomacy, Rank, Rejection Maybe you can somehow cause your enemy's faction to reject him? Then he is doomed to wander the nets (out of the game for awhile) or disintegrate into a poltergeist.

Yeah, this could work. Since it's two-phased (convince the enemy's faction that he's a traitor (or something) and then kill him) it is a little more involved, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Hmm, this is kind of system just begging to be obused by players, and npc.

You seem to have missed a major aspect in terms of game play, and that is copies. How do you know you're the only you out there? A couple of ways you could work this into the game.

1)Some times the implant makes mistakes - There is a chance that injury that triggers the upload wasn't fatal and the old you survives.

2)Illegal Ego Cloning - Some factions like to gather egos with certain traits, they use these egos for various nefiarous purposes including, blending, experimnation, framing the original for crimes, etc..

There could be alot of interesting gameplay and story surrounding copies and trying to determine which one is the true ego.


I think the best way to prevent the player from constantly killing themselves is to seperate ego stats and skills from body stats and skills. Body stats and skills are all body specific and so if your body is lossed, then the body stats and skills of your new body are based on eith the quality of the cloning process and the body stats at the last time you left a dna sample. OR in the case of Cyborg bodies stats are based on price, cheap generic bodies are mostly random. So the player will have to regain any body stats and skills that may have been lossed, not to mention all their gear and implants. You could even include a fragility aspect to the ego implanting processes, meaning that perhaps it takes several weeks for the ego align to the new body and the soul sender can't transmit an ego until the ego has aligned to its current body.

For how to stop enemies, what about containment? You could imprision their ego in one of a varity of containers from a data storage module to a paralized body.

How does crime and punishment fit into a universe that has this system? How do you track criminals who can swap bodies at will? Or how do you prove your innocence if your ego is transfered into the body of a wanted fugitive?

Ooh, fun, lots of questions:

It seems that hacking should be a major concern. Not only could this network possibly be hacked to slow down or re-route a soul, but maybe to just delete the file entirely.

I really like the idea that viruses could alter your soul - what if you killed your enemey, altered his digital soul to be more helpful to you, and then let him get re-born, now on your side?

However, assuming that the system is secure and that damaging or destroying the digital soul is difficult if not impossible, wouldn't physical battles become more or less pointless? Or just viewed as little more than a street brawl with no real consquences?

How would the society react at large to the idea that no one could die? Would murder be a crime more akin to grafitti? It's now acceptable (though not terribly polite) to shoot someone in the head that's a slight annoyance to you?

Conflicts wouldn't be fought with heavy weaponry any more than we fight battles with nerf guns. It offers no real resolution, and both sides are alive and well after all is said and done. If physical battles are no longer important, would "battles" be fought through technological, political, and media control? Would the people become more tolerant, knowing that disputes can no longer be settled through war, but must now actually negotiate with each other? Or, maybe more likely, battles are just fought away from the networks so that souls cannot be caught and the fight is meaningful once again...

If the implant can upload your soul, could it also be used to download a soul?
Would there be weapons specifically designed to counteract the implant? What if weapons generate an EMP as well as their normal damage so that the implant is disabled or destroyed the moment the victim dies?

LOL, sorry, I didn't actually offer any suggestions or help, just a lot of questions... :)

- Resourceses needed to create the new body?
- Max rate of new bodys produced.
- how fast can the net grab souls. Does each tower have a reset time between captures?

Could still make war possible.

Fast recoupe of bodys with little resources and very fast net - weapons of mass destruction are the only viable options. But assuming most factions are in heavly populated areas and/or close to each other, you may piss off other factions.

Slow recoupe of bodys with a lot of resrouceses needed and long reset time - Kill off the five body guards before you hit your main target in the hopes that you have over loaded the net. It might be safer to peddle down the empty street on your tricycle with no armor than get cought with a large group of body guards.

Seems to me, either way the best way to take out someone is to attack their resrouces rather then them directly, which would make equipment much more valuable than the normal person.

Hmm... I don't have the time to do an in-depth discussion, but I do have a suggestion. Read a series of books by John C. Wright, starting with "The Golden Age". This series has a culture somewhat like the one you're describing, one where death is obselete. And a whole lot of other trippy stuff, but still. It's the kind of book where you read it and think "That's so weird... but it could really work".

Just think of all the money people would save on bungee cords and skydiving apparel.

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Original post by Jager22 Just think of all the money people would save on bungee cords and skydiving apparel.

and spend on body parts and bandwidth fees instead [wink]
man it would be cool to go skydiving with no parachute (and no dying to get in the way of your fun)...

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Original post by Anonymous Poster Quote: and no dying to get in the way of your fun I don't think he said that there would be no pain with dying, just that it's not permanent.

Going that speed you'd die so fast that it probably wouldn't matter too much...

Glitch. Your download worked, but not completly. Missing arm, leg, eye, etc or possibly a mental defect if you can work it into your game.

Stasis. Temporarly (or permanetly) re-route your foe to a <insert storage device here> where he will sit until found.

Some other potentials
What about saving yourself off. If you die permanetly, you are restored from a save but you would lose any powers, experiance, or what ever since your last save.

Big brother. You have to report every year on your birthday to a govermant office to have your "soul print" taken. Used by the goverment to track your activities and also used to tax you base on your mental capasity.

You could also introduce a copy problem. The more times you die and get restored, the greater the chance for mistakes or even the possibility that you can't be restored. Kind of like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, etc.