More Year Zero thoughts
Apr. 24th, 2007 12:27 pmI'm still tinkering away at game ideas for Arc. Lots of them, actually. I'd really like to run about half a dozen different scenarios set in real-time, so the setting at the end of the convention has been laid down by the teams that have already played through the game. That may be a bit difficult to do, though.
The most persistent idea at the moment takes a group of characters inside a large Western city - underground activists, conspiracy nuts, guerilla artists. They're all reasonably well educated - they finished school, they watch the news sometimes, they use the internet or read newspapers. Most of them have never travelled overseas, but they like to think that they know a reasonable amount about the world outside their country of origin...
...except that they don't, becauses most of it no longer exists.
The television news still shows convincing interludes about elections, riots and sporting matches in foreign countries, but none of it's real any more. Over the past two years, war has scoured human life from the land. Ancient cities in the middle east are now radioactive wastelands, oceans of glass where the sand dunes lay. Families read emails "from" loved ones abroad, never realising that the messages are written by computers. Travellers do not return home. The authorities continue to blanket the nation with calming misinformation, praying that the facade holds long enough to get away with genocide.
It's an impossible dream, but it almost worked. Until a few people stumbled across clues about What happened, and started asking Who and Why...
The most persistent idea at the moment takes a group of characters inside a large Western city - underground activists, conspiracy nuts, guerilla artists. They're all reasonably well educated - they finished school, they watch the news sometimes, they use the internet or read newspapers. Most of them have never travelled overseas, but they like to think that they know a reasonable amount about the world outside their country of origin...
...except that they don't, becauses most of it no longer exists.
The television news still shows convincing interludes about elections, riots and sporting matches in foreign countries, but none of it's real any more. Over the past two years, war has scoured human life from the land. Ancient cities in the middle east are now radioactive wastelands, oceans of glass where the sand dunes lay. Families read emails "from" loved ones abroad, never realising that the messages are written by computers. Travellers do not return home. The authorities continue to blanket the nation with calming misinformation, praying that the facade holds long enough to get away with genocide.
It's an impossible dream, but it almost worked. Until a few people stumbled across clues about What happened, and started asking Who and Why...
Never did I see a second sun
Never did my skin touch a land of glass
Never did my rifle point but true
But in a land empty of enemies
Waiting for the tick-tick-tick of the want
A uranium angel
Crying “behold,”
This land that knew fire is yours
Taken from Corruption
To begin anew
Never did my skin touch a land of glass
Never did my rifle point but true
But in a land empty of enemies
Waiting for the tick-tick-tick of the want
A uranium angel
Crying “behold,”
This land that knew fire is yours
Taken from Corruption
To begin anew