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[Dean_the_Young]

This topic is intended for brief setting concepts I liked, but never developed as a Project.

 

 

 

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Dreamscape

 

An idea that could be a standalone, or be used to unify many of my other various ideas.

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Imagine 'you', the RPG protagonist, were a figment in a dream. Not the dreamer himself, trapped in his/her own sub-conscience: not some outsider plunged in it. Not even real: just a character in a dream... and the 'real' people are the antagonists who place no value on you or the world in their quest to destroy the dreamscape, ie, destroy the world in order to 'wake up' the individual.


This would pose some interesting moral delimmas/contexts, as well as a basis for an interesting morality system besides 'good and evil'.

In morality, the role of the player could determine whether this dream is a 'pleasant dream' (needs a single word: fantasy?) or 'nightmare': it's not the morality of the character, but the morality as interpreted as the dreamer who is always present but never identified.

In the antagonists, we can have a more-or-less valid reason for antagonists who are effectively sociopathic or worse, but who retain morality of their own. They do whatever they do in order to wake up the dreamer... who, as a 'real' person, has infinitely more value over the 'not real' persons of the dreamscape who provide the cast of characters and groups. This could be especially true if the Outsiders believe that they could wake up the dreamer either by giving him such a nightmare that he'd be shocked awake, or that if they 'kill' the dreamer inside his dream he would wake up (the 'pinch in a dream' solution). Hence a justification leading to effective dream-people-genocide, and an antagonist faction dedicated to destroying the world and other Bad Things.

Of course, things could be a bit different from that, such that the Dreamer could be trapped in the dream even if it turns into a nightmare, who can only be woken if certain conditions are met, but... hey. Nightmare fuel. And RPG effect: would you, the PC, help wake the Dreamer? Or would you foil the antagonists, keep him asleep, and become the master of a slumbering god's dreams?


A dream would also provide some interesting contexts of mixing genres and impossibilities, because a dream doesn't need to be perfectly ordered... meaning sci-fi, fantasy, and other elements could be borrowed from freely in various contexts. Heck, you could have the dreamscape be a sort of 'infinite planes' idea, to justify lots of different worlds existing in parallel and thus re-use ideas in similar world-format.


A potentially cool thing about a dreamscape, though, is the idea that becoming aware of the dreamscape's existence could cause it to collapse... sort of like how when you recognize you're dreaming, you generally wake up or carry to a waking dream. This Dreamer/dreamscape, though, is trapped in his dream... and so when a Dreamscape collapses as the inhabitants become aware of it, it's basically an apocolypse that destroys the world and 'resets' with the survivors who've lost the knowledge. This could lead to a setting-culture of opposing the growth of knowledge and self-awareness, a sort of stability-before-advancement culture that embraces the 'there are things no (dream-)man is supposed to know' that isn't complete crock because, hey, if you recognize that you're in a dream the apocolypse begins.



That realization could make a good end-game impetus, while the trapped Dreamer and collapsing Dreamscape could tie in with the PC's decisions to whether the Dreamer 'wakes up', or if the Dreamscape rebuilds but the PC-dream is in a position to survive the collapse and lord over the next Dreamscape. A seize-the-world sort of ascension and becoming known as Morpheus, Lord of Dreams, or Hastur, Lord of Knightmares depending on morality alignment.


Definitely need to build this idea more.

[Dean_the_Young]

The Maestro and a World Needing Saving

 

 

Sort of like, well, Spec Ops, The Line. Only instead of being hard on military shooters as western militarist power fantasies, this would be hard on the RPG genre for making worlds for you to feel good saving (or damning).

 

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I've had musings on a setting in which the 4th Wall blends with the lore such that there's believed ('known') to be a race of nigh-omniscient beings who observe the workings of the world and from time to time take on the form of an Avatar so that they can do Great Things on the world. The Avatars, not at all to be confused with player characters of course, are naturally totally schizophrenic as a group and have no apparent common agenda or similarity. Some are pure evil, some are great heroes, they always come at a time of great importance, etc. etc. etc.

Basically, this world is the video game for the gods, who act like people. Totally played straight.


In the setting/scenario I've imagined, the big opponent for the Avatar to face is the Evil Empire, which knows the truth of their creation is that their world exists to amuse the gods. They take it a bit further, though, with a belief system that more or less equates Fiction with Creation: just as they know that the gods created them, they believe that when people create works of fiction that the fiction takes new life and existence.. They have no distinction between fiction and reality. Therefore, when people write a book in which the world is in peril, the creator is complicit with endangering an entire world for petty reasons. When characters are forced to undergo trials and misery, that's authorial sadism. When an innocent NPC is killed, that's murder.

Naturally, fiction is considered generally a Bad Thing, and the Evil Empire has established an oppressive aparatus to clamp down on creative arts that harm people, ie most forms of free expression. This all done in the name of the greater good, of course, because every murder mystery you keep from being written is a murder prevented.


Until you understand the Evil Empire's ideology, though, it really would just come across as 'police state which unreasonably hates fiction.' And even when you do, it still doesn't change that they're evil: they just see themselves as attempting to revolt against the gods by, well, revolting the gods. The Evil Emperor's Evil Plan is that if they make the setting so horrible and unpleasant that the gods will turn away in distaste, the Gods will stop making bad things happen to amuse themselves. When the Gods leave, or just stop creating new bad things, nothing bad will happen... hopefully.

Naturally, though, they know that they're being set up as the Bad Guys to justify an Avatar Intervention. They're genre savy like that. They're just racing to (a) consolidate their Empire before the Avatar comes, and ( subvert your expectations of Good vs. Evil.

The Evil Emperor, more than being Evil, is actually a giant buzz-kill. The more you try and frame it in terms of 'Good vs. Evil', the more you end up validating their views that you, the gods, are forcing them into this just to justify your role as the Hero. So all the bad things they do are really your fault, as you are complicit in the cycle of the Gods.



Ramping this up to the eleven (and I apologize for rambling, but I'm tired) is the 'god-servant' who exists in the game, the Maestro. The Maestro is a character who twists the fourth wall a bit, but is more or less the Game Master for the Avatar who's setting up the adventure. He speaks to the Avatar (the player) directly, acts in-universe to manipulate events for maximum 'drama', and otherwise represents the role of the Creators in making bad things happen for the player to fix.

To put it in other words: he's the guy who brings about a plague of monsters to destroy the harvest, just so that the villagers appear appropriately starved and desperate when they beg you for help. All so you can feel like the good guy.

The Maestro is nominally what the Evil Empire is opposing, and is the character the self-righteous players could look to 'blame' for all the bad things occurring. Increasingly played up as time goes on (sabotaging any hopes for peace, initiating developments for maximum suffering and maximum drama, openly scoffing at the world's cast as nothings who deserve to suffer to further our amusement), the Maestro acts as if everything he does, evil as it gets for a fictional character, is nothing but a game for the amusement of you, the god. The Maestro is simply your loyal servant, advancing your interests even if you choose to oppose him.



Ultimately, though, it's really the player's implicit condoning of all this, the complicity in continuing to play the game, that is the real vilain though. The Maestro, the Evil Empire... they're just the means used to construct the setting. The Evil Empire exists for you to oppose it, even as it opposes you. The Maestro gives you the target to hate, whether it's the Evil Empire or himself, and further your interest with the delusion of how it would all get better if you stopped him. Because, at the end of the day, indulging your Hero Complex is what they really do.



There are some other parts in my mind: the Maestro has a great role in my head where he basically destroys the idea of a Heroic Victory by more or less offering a Perfect Victory while laughing in the credits, while the Evil Empire has a strong case of tragic anti-hero the more you develop them.

But I'm a bit tired now, and rambling. Hope any of that made sense.

[Dean_the_Young]

A colonization/superhero idea actually inspired by the second season of Young Justice (one of those surprisingly good superhero cartoons with a well handled antagonist faction).

 

It really dabbles in what I am amazed is not already the next step in the Marvel/DC universes, where the setting is already made for it: the beginning of interstellar human colonization, and of course how superheroes could fit into that. Where Young Justice gets me is that the rogues gallery pulling the strings, the so-called 'enlightened' villains who make up the Light, as of now have arguably been a greater good for the world than not since they united in a grand conspiracy: they play with fire, yes, and directly threaten the world in doing so, but due to their machinations they've solved huge world issues such as the not-Korean War, ending world-hunger by conning alien invaders-by-peace who wanted to use it for brain washing, advancing meta-human research, and possibly establishing and stealing a galactic deterrant to interstellar invasion. Dangerous, and highly prone to abuse advances... but advances all the same.

This would be more of a comic/cartoon series than a game, but you could probably make a good RPG out of the concept of the idea of a conspiracy/cabal of good and evil being the driving forces behind the first interstellar colonization program(s) of Earth. A combination of resources, and motives, mixing idealism and self-interest and greed. One colony, an ideal for justice and progress. Another, a exploitative resource colony for profit. Both fueled by the same collaboration.

[Dean_the_Young]

o, musing on some alternate history and alternate cold war scenarios...

Did you know that, after WW2, the USA had contingency plans to annex some strategic areas of interest in case things turned out differently? Islands, mostly: a lot of British possessions were turned over/shared in the course of the war, but some pretty significant places were at least sketched out as outright ownership. Sicily, as a contingency if the Italians Civil War had given the Reds a foot hold in the Mediterranean. Okinawa was up in the air for awhile, before it was returned to Japan.

This is also compared to some of those other what-ifs: if Japan had been invaded rather than nuked, if Suez had been supported, if the Korean War had escalated, if- if- if-


Some of these came to mind in that Transformers AU I've mentioned. Some of these were in the context of a more Bioware-style story of occupation. But one-

I'm an anime geek. My tastse have... matured? Evolved? over time, but one of the big themes of Japanese young adult fiction is the setting of school. It's trite and cliche, but it's a cornerstone of their anime, sort of like how suburbia homes are a cornerstone of American cartoons (Tom and Jerry, KND, etc.).

In the context of a 'US invades Japan, annexes Okinawa as base for Japanese occuption with communist insurgency' scenario, I just had this idea of a school story. Or school story start.

It begins with the start of the year speech, in which all the students are assembled for a speach by the principle about learning and potential and blah blah blah.

Only instead of a principle, it's an American military officer. And instead of inspiring words, it's a cold dash of reality.

'You are not in a democracy: you are under occupation. Some of you in this room hate us: some of you may even try to fight us. Statistically, some of you will die in the attempt. Even so, we will attempt to teach you how to think, because you thinking well will make the difference for the rest of your life, however long that is.'

And so begins a story of an urban communist insurgency, race-traitors and half-blood infiltrators, and a cold war schism that I am in no way competent enough to actually write.

[Dean_the_Young]

Mandate of Heaven-
The <human-weapon monsters> aren't demons, but divine emissaries, sent to earth on a mission: to destroy ninja villages, and stop the suffering they spread with their very existence. I imagine the story as something of a deconstruction of a ninja lifestyle - in most of the darker fanfics on this site, the suffering inherent in the ninja system is taken for granted as something unchangeable and normal. What if the gods disagreed? How exactly did the world become dominated by ninjas and what are the consequences of their supremacy? The trick to writing this is to not make ninjas cardboard villains - the ninja villages system is definitely making the world a worse place than it should be in this story, but ninjas themselves aren't pure evil and don't do so deliberately; indeed, Konoha is fairly nice here, the kindest of the ninja villages. The nasty side-effects I was thinking of are things like villages inciting wars to get more employment and to sabotage any strong, competent government that might interfere with their autonomy and activities; sabotage of technologies that could lead to progress due to difficulty in maintaining tight control and secrecy over them (not to mention possible threat to ninja); clinging to a feudal system because any rebellion is immediately and ruthlessly crushed (no amount of ordinary people can take on a squad of Jounin, so peasant uprising are pretty much doomed from the start; of course, ninja are told these are simply 'bandits' and are not inclined to question this too much); absorption of talented people into ninja lifestyle where their genius is used for destructive purposes... subtle things that most ninja don't even know are happening and even those that do know about it don't know the sheer scale of it.

[Dean_the_Young]

As part of my 'never stop learning' philosophy of professional development, I've been studying up on Chinese history. I'm almost halfway through an 8 hour lecture series on the historical roots of Chinese dynastic culture as a paradigm through which to understand the Communist Party's narrative. I just got through the Opium Wars, and I've got to say...

Brits? Dude, you guys were dicks. (Not as insane as Mao's Great Leap Forward, but still.)

Well, we all were (thanks, Delanor family, and western imperialism), but the whole 'let's sell an incredibly destructive, addictive product that contributes to the breakdown of social order and crush attempts to resist it' is a downright nasty, if effective, way to solve a massive trade deficit for tea.


Now, that's not to say that China didn't face self-inflicted problems as well- the trade restrictions and monopolies, the equally culturally-centric arrogant viewpoints of the Middle Kingdom, the contempt for the merchant/modernization classes, the Taipeng and especially Boxer rebellions, the massacres they did on their own to their own- but the neighborhood (and the westerners in particular) definitely did the opposite of help.



That said, though- it could make an excellent setting for an RPG, if you toned it down and made it more relatable. Part of me wondered if you could even make a thought-provoking RPG the Communist Party would tolerate.

It'd have a pretty compelling narrative- the great kingdom, now behind the times, is now weak and vulnerable to foreigners who come bringing changes- some good, some bad, and all for their own interests and priorities. But, and here's the kicker... the foreigners are stronger and have better stuff than you. Any attempt to kill them generally only makes the situation worse.

Internally, you'd have a bloody struggle between the old ways and the new- modernizers who would adopt the foreigner ways ('those who would betray their culture and concede to the foreign devils') vs. conservative-reactionaries who resist social changes and appeal to going back to the good old ways ('those with their hands in the sand, looking backwards'). You could also have a third way of the Taipeng (however it's spelled) who take a bizaar, and extreme, blend of both.


Now, not sure you could really have a happy ending in a conventional RPG style. A 'modernization victory' would justify the survival of the state and give hope to a long-term survival, but concede a lot of the culture. The 'conservative victory', however... unless it relied on a deus ex machina of some sort like 'ancient magic really is powerful', I can only really see a temporary, implicitly doomed isolation into a hermit state. Or successfully turning foreign interests against each other, and so buying time for the culture to reassert and organize on a 'we have reserves' basis.'


To help kick it by the censors, I'd make both sides of the not-China broadly sympathetic, and draw from different eras. The conservatives would draw from the historic classics and be based on the historic grievances that the CCP draws upon, while the modernization movement would be based more upon 90's style reforms of the modern CCP leadership. Both sides would draw (selectively) from the quotes of CCP leadership and such.

The Foreign Devils (and, hey, why not make the drug traders and such actual devils?) would be far less sympathetic, though there would be some good (or not bad) apples among them. They'd be the outside antagonists, but not completely without points of their own.





Ah, Chinese propoganda RPG. I'd feel like I sold out if I wrote you.