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Original post by Anonymous Poster... errr... Nathan Baum [grin] The only explanation I could buy is that the ghost takes an 'imprint' of its previous host's brain's higher functions. Memories and intellectual talent are at its ethereal fingertips, but physical talents are not. Only if the ghost was reintegrated with a recent clone of its previous host would the physical skills be able to be carried over: hence why you lose your skills when you transfer to an entirely new body.

Okay, your persistence here makes me take a second look at my premise. The major question at the heart of this is "who or what are you?"

Whatever answer the answer, it has to satisfy these conditions:
1) Make you want to play across lifetimes (what thing in myth or reality spans lifetimes, but is individual?)
2) Give you an optional incentive for those inclined to pursue creating a "virtual family." (i.e., pursue some of the storylines that lead to this result)
3) Optionally restart in random locations after death, losing wealth and status but keeping character abilities
4) Optionally restart in the same area after death, retaining wealth and status, but losing character abilities
5) Give you the ability to witness epic storyline changes (think of all the Dune books)

Saying "you're an AI in a human skull" won't, I think, cut it because it strips most people of the ability to identify. But people can identify with ghosts / spirits, even in a science fiction context. But is there something else besides these two?

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This also means that whilst you can't develop physical skills when you're a ghost, because you don't have a body to learn them with, there is no inherent reason why you can't develop purely intellectual skills. Indeed, if I were implementing a system like yours, I would consider having it be easier to develop intellectual skills when in ghost form, because you are free from the distractions of the body.

Actually, let's up the ante a bit. An individual would learn intellectually out of curiosity or some motivating factor. Now think of what the Star Child of 2001 implies. What is that thing (which inhabited the Monolith, I think). That's probably the level of consciousness I'm shooting for, which is divorced from physical wants as well as personal aspirations.

I imagine that when you die, you don't go walking around like a ghost or even have a humanoid form. In fact, I see more of a god's eye view as being more appropriate as you move around a map. Not sure what this would look like, but you're to be divorced from the notion of physicality in order to exhibit the idea that you can directly impact the world.

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But is this the only option? Is 'possession' involuntary, or does the child have to assent? If it's involuntary, then surely it's an act of violence, even if the resultant intellect considers itself to partly be the child. It would certainly be considered an act of violence in the present day if you interferred with somebody's brain without their consent to change their personality, even though the victim could think they were still the same person.

Okay, here's a monkey wrench: What if bloodlines are all the same entity, with different expressions along the timeline? Notions of "violence" and "possession" don't really apply, then, anymore (especially since they're far too negative to be palatable). Now the entity that you are is simply manifesting into a different expression.

Of course, I again doubt most people will even care. Unless I can create some interesting gameplay from this, I'm very much inclined to agree with them. I'll bet that they won't even question why it is that your child suddenly starts pursuing all of your old goals, or acts with hidden information that only the parent could have had. (Please, convince me that this is a big deal, because I'm missing the point otherwise.)

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You seem to working on the basis that no AI could show emotion, or be suffiently human to past the Turing test. But science fiction is full of robots which are emotional.

Granted, that's true, but there are advantages to keeping them separate except in special cases. One major advantage is a gameplay tradeoff between androids and humans (docile but unimaginative in danger versus possibly but extremely creative).

That was me - thought I was logged in...

^ Me

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Original post by rmsgrey That was me - thought I was logged in...

This is just stupid. Does it have something against people from the UK, or something?

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Original post by Nathan Baum However, neither option can directly satisfy your conditions.

Just wanted to clarify: What I listed where the gameplay requirements. They're not supposed to logically flow from anything. They're supposed to solidify major features, chief among them the aesthetic of a "future life," and negating death as an ending.

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1. The only thing that would make me want to play across multiple lifetimes would be what happens in each lifetime, not the mechanism by which you jump from one life to another.

Granted, but #1 is about the fiction element, not the mechanism. What fictional / semi-realistic entity would satisfy these requirements and still be acceptable (as rmsgrey said, technovirus, whatever)?

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2. Neither give an incentive to pursue a family.

You may still have the same answer, but consider not being able to save or undo mistakes. The world keeps going, and you can only back up your own personal state with gameplay mechanisms, if they exist (such as resurrection tech, cloning, insurance, etc.). At worst, if you die, you'll only have the option to reincorporate in some random location in the world (starting over in terms of plot and ascending in the world, but not in terms of personal character development).

The progeny option would allow you to "restart" with the same wealth and social rank (of the family). (This all assumes that I can work out a fun way for you to jump through vignettes and life decisions in order to develop your character and personal story.)

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3 & 4. These don't appear to make logical sense.

I'm not sure I understand your reply. These are gameplay requirements.

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4. It's unclear how starting in the same location would mean you lost abilities but kept wealth and status.

That's the progeny option. Your family has kept rank, holdings and whatever titles you've earned, and you're now one of the children (not sure which, maybe eldest, maybe you pick, maybe it's random).

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5. Another way to witness epic storyline changes is for your character to be exceptionally long-lived. Consider Babylon 5's Lorien, the first intelligent being in the universe.

Yes, Lorien's a great character. But he doesn't quite work here. Lorien wouldn't be fighting Siegers, boarding ships, or performing scut-work on a colony. (But I get your drift-- heck, maybe you're sort of a Lorien without knowing it).

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Quote: I imagine that when you die, you don't go walking around like a ghost or even have a humanoid form. In fact, I see more of a god's eye view as being more appropriate as you move around a map. Not sure what this would look like, but you're to be divorced from the notion of physicality in order to exhibit the idea that you can directly impact the world. Did you really mean 'exhibit'?

Yes, as in "convey."

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Without any physicality, it's unclear how you can directly impact the world. Having said that, without any physicality, it's unclear how you can even observe the world.

You're being far too literal for successful game design here. Consider Civilization: Who are you that you can scroll across continents, even in the Stone Age?

In fact, a disembodied RTS / Civ view would probably be necessary here. When you die, you get a jazzed up version of the game world's over-map. From there, you can make selections and changes based on your powers and the secret tech infrastructure in the neighborhood.

Imagine this scenario: You and your highlander rivals are sparring for control of a planet critical to the game's storyline. The whole galaxy, through disaster, has fallen to a pre-spacefaring level, and this one site holds the key to restoring things quickly. But it has become a land of balkanized, warring states (think Fallout on a Civ level here).

Now let's say you've joined the most enlightened, peaceful empire, and your strongest nemesis has joined it's rapacious, bloodthirsty rival. Your nemesis finds and activates a massive robotic manufacturing plant, giving his empire a sudden, huge military advantage. Now they're poised to wipe out your empire.

However, through playing things out in an RPG fashion, you find a hidden control site for a cloaked orbital barrage cannon. It can take out the production facility in one shot. Unfortunately, it's at the center of the rival empire, and while you know you can sneak in to trigger it, once you do so your rival will be able to pin you down. To keep the control site out of enemy hands, you'll have to use it and destroy it, likely sacrificing yourself in the process. So it's a suicide mission.

Assume that there's no cloning or resurrection tech, and you have no progeny. So your choice is something like this: If you sacrifice yourself, you'll save your society. If you don't, you'll live to see it destroyed and be driven into hiding or other lands.

Without progeny, if you sacrifice yourself, you'll be reborn in another age, in another place (likely on an entirely different planet). Your involvement in that particular world will end until you can make it back to the world. When you do, you'll find myths and legends from the decendants about your deed, maybe even a statue. Like a relativistic traveler who returns to his home, you'll find it much changed while you've been away, and I hope you may even have a sense of loss.

However, if you have progeny, you'll continue in the same world after the changes of your deceased character. You'll be able to keep up the investment, keep up whatever emotional ties you've built up, and carry your progress forward (which maybe was to restore the planet to space travel under a benevolent government or something). You'll also know if your sacrifice paid off, and get another shot at it if there's more left to do.

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This, I think, raises another question. If your descendants are all 'you', then what's this ghost, anyway?

A single instance of a multivarious entity? Threads of conscious energy fragmented along the timeline? Pick the "Big Idea" that works best (but no hellish possession, thank you very much [smile])

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The player should be able to leave a body and enter a descendant's body at will, if each body is actually just a 'limb' of a single intellect.

Now why should this be true? The only way you could postulate a "should" is if you either had a real, functioning example for comparison, or a logically integral system whose very rules implied (mandated, really) that this be so.

I haven't described the "trigger" mechanism for awareness. I'm thinking of many applications running, but only one having user focus. Think then of dying as "tasking" between applications.

But really, we're beating the hell out of a fossilized equine carcass here-- no one stops to worry about what they are in Civilization, despite the fact that you guide a civ from 4000BC to 2020AD and beyond.

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Now imagine that you have a child of eighteen years. One day, he spontaneously starts acting like a different person. He speaks English (or whatever) like it was spoken a thousand years ago. He suddenly wants to visit obscure planets and dig at obscure points and turns up caches of money or expensive goods. You'd notice that.

Hopefully I've made it clear that this wouldn't ever be an issue. You restart immediately in the same world if you have progeny.

(btw, I do appreciate the focus you're giving this, and don't want to appear to be ignoring your points; I just think that you must first have gameplay in place before you worry about the fictional sinew that will connect it together.[smile])

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Original post by Nathan Baum This is just stupid. Does it have something against people from the UK, or something?

No, unfortunately it just did this to me TWICE, even after I logged in. It's a gremlin that I'm sure is being worked on.

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Original post by rmsgrey The ability to witness storyline changes is a corollary of the immortality - any immortal is going to live through large amounts of "routine" life as well as the occasional "interesting times" - typically, you'd also epect the immortal to be in a position to influence things from behind the scenes - those that aren't tend to be caught by events and face the same chance as ordinary citizens of coming to an unfortunate end (or being forced into their next incarnation prematurely).

This is the gist of the idea. You are a "fill in the blank" which has a personal presence, gets involved with a changing game world, but for whom death is just a beginning, not an end.

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Skiping the "routine" in gameplay is then a courtesy to the player - who is probably not immortal.

The player's character is also supposed to be immortal (or were you joking?)

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I don't think it matters mechanically what flavour you choose for your immortals - and it's usually mechanics that encourage players to adopt certain play-styles rather than flavour.

Agreed. It'll matter for consistency and suspension of disbelief, but that's secondary to making it playable (i.e., I'd sacrifice the former for the sake of the latter).

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For the record, the book 2010 makes it clear that the Star Child is actually David Bowman - or at least a perfect copy of his memories, experience and personality, divorced from the flesh and given great potential.

Oh, yeah, that's right! I forgot. Forget the Star Child, I meant just the monolith. In 3001, wasn't this explained to be some kind of great conscious machine that was the servant of godlike aliens? That actually fits the bill better here, because the backstory I'm using now is of you and the other immortals being the pawns of gods.

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I think the point here touches an important choice about the game world - how public are the immortals? If they're totally secret, then game entities are liable to write off any apparent personality shifts as something else entirely

Bingo! No one knows about them, and the game world is a big enough place that if your doppleganger turned up on the other side of the galaxy 70 years later, nobody would bat an eye.

You and your rivals also don't know about each other until you make a move, either displaying powers or accessing the secret technology infrastructure. This design element is needed so that you can choose to keep your head down and do your own thing, or get into the whole diplomacy / deathmatch element with the rival highlanders.

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On the other hand, you're already introducing an artificial distinction between two classes of near-humans - the normals and the immortals. Having the immortals actually be some form of AI gives you a point of entry for your explanation of the distinction. In the Matrix universe you have the humans, who age and die, and the AIs, who are generally immmortal. Within that universe, Agent Smith is very close to the sort of entity you're after - if his possession ability had different limitations, you would have a match.

While this COULD work, it would muddy several plans I've got in mind for the concept of AI.

I also think, at a gut instinct level, that you can NEVER underestimate how vital it is for most people to have a flesh and blood avatar to relate to. Cerebral people can relate to being AI. In fact, in games like Phantasy Star which give you the choice between android or human, the first thing almost every new player I've seen picks is one of the various humans (especially more casual gamers). I pick the various androids because I think they look cool, but then I'm odd.[smile]

Have you ever read "The Boat of a Million Years" by Poul Anderson? The basic premise is that once every few billion births or so (exact statistics are never given, and may well vary over time anyway) a person is born naturally immortal - physiologically, they stop aging beyond 18-20 or so, their immune system is exceptional, injuries less severe than the loss of a hand tend to heal fully, a new set of teeth grow in every couple of generations... The structure of the book is a collection of self-contained incidents (at least one of which had been published previously as a short story) in chronological order, each revolving around one or more of the immortals - as the book moves towards the 20th century, those immortals who don't die through accident or murder tend to connect, keeping touch with each other through the centuries. The last third of the book is one self-contained narrative set in a future after the world has adapted to the impact ofthe immortals revealing themselves - a future where the natural immortals are the only people still adapted to living with mortality - living fossils of the earlier culture(s).

It's not exactly what you're trying to do, but it might offer some inspiration, and it's well worth reading anyway.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by rmsgrey Skiping the "routine" in gameplay is then a courtesy to the player - who is probably not immortal. The player's character is also supposed to be immortal (or were you joking?)

I was making a serious point in a non-serious way - the character is immortal, so can afford to devote 6 months to learning how to flick cards into a top hat (Groundhog Day reference) but, it seems safe to assume that the actual player is not immortal, and has better things to do with his (or her) time than spend some time every game day for 6 game months throwing cards at something. Since the player has only a finite amount of time to give to your game, letting them skip past routine events (or even non-routine events that aren't significant) is a simple matter of courtesy.

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Oh, yeah, that's right! I forgot. Forget the Star Child, I meant just the monolith. In 3001, wasn't this explained to be some kind of great conscious machine that was the servant of godlike aliens? That actually fits the bill better here, because the backstory I'm using now is of you and the other immortals being the pawns of gods.

I don't think I've read 3001 since just after it came out, so my memory's extremely hazy, but, from what I remember of the other books, the Monolith was frequently likened to a Cosmic Swiss Army Knife - a tool for doing whatever you happen to be doing at the time. From that perspective, giving it some form of awareness makes sense.

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I also think, at a gut instinct level, that you can NEVER underestimate how vital it is for most people to have a flesh and blood avatar to relate to. Cerebral people can relate to being AI. In fact, in games like Phantasy Star which give you the choice between android or human, the first thing almost every new player I've seen picks is one of the various humans (especially more casual gamers). I pick the various androids because I think they look cool, but then I'm odd.[smile]

On the other hand, Data is one of the more popular Star Trek characters, despite being an android. The Doctor in Voyager is merely a hologram, and people still relate to him. I think the key thing in the player avatar is not whether it's (simulated) flesh and blood, but whether it has a character the player can't empathise with. Having no character at all isn't bad - it means the avatar lets the player interact transparaently with the game world rather than being filtered through a set personality... Never really having encountered Phantasy Star as more than a name, I really can't comment on how significant player bias in that is.

The question I have is how drastically the world changes depending on your acts in these crucial times. I.E. Is it the same world with different faction scores...or is it vastly different such as the lack of a city, civilization etc.

this super-AI is it a chip that implants in you or something else entirely? i mean if you spawned in 2500 BC, then super-AI wouldn't exist would it?

also can your "ghost" influence who your progeny marries? another immortal perhaps? or how he obtains your past skills and allies? as a "ghost" i think it would be cool to guide but not directly control your descendants. if you get resurrected or cloned then you can control things directly and maybe make a clan of the others you guided.

just some suggestions.