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Post by tungstenTinkerer on Jun 19, 2012 4:54:37 GMT -5
Ok, so a few days ago LC and GA posted their headcanons about how awesometier could lead to players finally ascending and escaping their session. As I have openly stated I am not a huge fan of that scenario, for a variety of reasons that I already talked about on that thread. Among those, there is a feeling that... Well, SBURB is a dick. The fact that SBURB is a dick is among those that make this scenario so compelling in my opinion. We are no playing something that is very hard but rewards you if you are good at it (insanely good, in case of the awesometiers, but still). This is a scenario in which everybody is fucked, the bad players die and the good ones survive just to be abused some more. That is not to say I don't want the situation to evolve. I just want SBURB to keep being a dick. It doesn't get to be less of a dick by making people escape if they are good enough. Those people, though, might become able to explain SBURB where it can put its infinite sessions in some detail. So yeah I don't mean there's no end. Rather, it's going to be born from player ingenuity and not deus-ex-machina'd in the picture by the game. I still like the idea of awesometiers, btw. Just not that it allows you to ascend beyond the game. The point is just, since the fora put people in a position to work collaboratively on unearthing the workings of the game, the knowledge the player have has improved leaps and bounds. What do you think will happen in 100 timestamps? Or 400? It's difficult to say what will be normal in such a long period of time. Will intersession travel be, I'm not going to say easy, but at least common? Will clock-reviving dead players be something established? Will alchemy hacking have made grist superfluous? Will we have easy ways to deal with corruption? My headcanon answers are yes, no, no, yes, but that's open for discussion. My point is just, we don't know what technology people at timestamp 413 will have access to. But in my mind, it will be enough for people to found Can Town. What is Can Town? Can Town is a haven. It's a safe place for players to retire to between sessions. It's a little settlement that grows into sprawling city mostly inhabited by gods. It's also definitely an interesting place to live in. I am not sure where Can Town would be. In my first concept, it would float in the middle of the furthest ring, somehow protected from corruption, but someone suggested a null session, which would be equally feasible. Probably, it also has the ability to move in case something happens (yesterday I jokingly suggested that the town would have actually been awesometier TT fogging a town, so he could just stop fogging and then run, hehe). To keep things spiced, Can Town could still need for players to complete sessions in order to survive, (maybe supply runs?) although they could be allowed some respite in between. Yeah, ok, I gotta go do the whole murdergame waltz again, but at least I get to chill out for a couple years in a less apocalyptic place afterwards. In that way they would also find more inhabitants for Can Town itself, or at least it could be a way. It is not as clean of a victory as ascending is. You are still part of the game, you are still forced to do sessions and you didn't get the shiny new universe you had been promised. But still,it's a victory. It's a return to the normal (-ish) life SBURB took from you. And it's all the players' doingWhat happens after that... Who knows? Maybe in a couple more timestamps some people finally manage to patch sburb. Maybe everything ends because of some catastrophic event, or siks to, and we get a Zion-against-the-matrix scenario. But at least the players would have made something to defend.
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Post by unreflectingKaleidoscope on Jun 19, 2012 11:10:47 GMT -5
I absolutely love this idea, a sort of hub between sessions. Might I suggest that SBurb, being the dick that it is, can't get rid of Can Town but can pull players out of it on occasion? Maybe the longer you spend out-of-session, the stronger the pull gets until you can't resist/avoid it any longer?
The fact that the players make Can Town is an interesting one. I personally think the void-session idea, maybe one that's pulled from SBurb's usual loop/depopulating procedures and somehow interwoven into it in such a way that SBurb no longer has direct control over it.
tl;dr I love this, and I hope it becomes a thing.
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Post by tungstenTinkerer on Jun 19, 2012 11:21:24 GMT -5
well it's not for forum-related RP anyway. The forum happens at timestamp 40 and we are talking about timestamp 413. A timestamp is 2-to-4 months (deliberately vague)... So even if ti will be a thing, it wan't be for forum characters!
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ventricularPipefitter
Full Member
"If you're going through hell, keep going." -- T. E. Lawrence%\0\%
Posts: 116
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Post by ventricularPipefitter on Jun 19, 2012 11:45:13 GMT -5
Huh. When you said 'Can Town,' I imagined a group of players that, instead of hitting the reset button, took a carapace shuttle and rode it through a Skaian portal, and joined the carapaces on a destroyed earth, to rest and rebuild.
It would be risky, and I think it would only work if you were willing to either leave the game unfinished, or if one or two players stayed behind to finish off the King while the rest self-Exiled.
There would also be the concern that Skaia is the one controlling the timing and location of the portal destinations. You could end up anywhen on that Earth. Or possibly, I would suspect, anywhere and anywhen in Paradox Space.
...there's good story material here.
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Post by aspiredClockworks on Jun 19, 2012 17:56:33 GMT -5
I like this idea, and it kind of supports what I have AC doing with her attempting to hang in her session, eliminate all major threats and rebuild. I know hers won't last long, but it seems like a progression from there.
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Post by tenaciousTheseus on Jun 20, 2012 14:47:34 GMT -5
I have the feeling that a session that doesn't end will eventually deteriorate, like a doomed timeline. Well, a null session would, considering the Beta Kids' session had the Tumor, hardwired to blow them all up at the end of the Reckoning. I think a Void Session is stated to not have the reckoning and thus, not have an end. That might be a good sight for Can Town.
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Post by specificNihilism on Jun 20, 2012 15:13:59 GMT -5
May I say briefly how much I like this idea? It's as close to normal life they're going to get and still lets us keep the 'well we're stuck here in a crapsack world where the game never ends, sigh'
Following up on TenThe's point and potential reasons why some other seemingly-survive-everything characters are not present:
Besides the time involved between now and then (which, doing the math of having timestamps being 2-4 months, is between 62 and 125 years), it might take a considerable amount of effort and applied Aspecty power to create a place like this. By which I don't mean just the town, but refitting a session. Clearing out and nullifying the Underworlds (perhaps through judicious use of Law powers), scouring out Tumors and the like (Breath?), creating places to live/terraforming planets further/rearranging planets (Space), making some sort of barrier that keeps the Others out better than usual and holds the session's place in paradox space steady (Space?/Void?/Time?), not to mention creating the town and all the things in it... there's a lot that would need to be done.
Enter the Awesometiers.
They can't escape the game any more than anyone else. They're trapped just as thoroughly as the next guy. However, they do have the advantage of greater power and control with their Aspect. These are the EXACT powerhouses that are needed for this sort of project. However, due to the nature of the beast, you don't get a whole lot of Awesometiers. It will take an excruciatingly long time before you'll amass enough power and knowledge to really pull this off. (Up to and potentially surpassing 125 years, which is a lot even with halting aging with Godtiering.)
Even if our generation or part of our generation of Awesometiers (should they happen) aren't involved directly with founding Can Town, they could very well sew the seeds for it and lay a foundation. Already Spenih is quietly forming a Void Player network with a side/research intention to try and understand the vast reaches of space that exists outside of the Sessions.
tl;dr: this is a really neat idea and thinking about mechanics for how it could come about to be is a fun way to keep myself entertained while driving.
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rubberScarab
Junior Member
I wield optimism like a weapon of mass destruction.%\0\%
Posts: 61
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Post by rubberScarab on Jun 22, 2012 3:57:08 GMT -5
This is a pretty interesting idea, the whole concept really works for me in a lot of great ways.
One thing that bothers me, though, is how you'd re-enter a new session afterward. One you entered the void session or the section of the outer ring or wherever this thing is, you'd have to either somehow get back to your original session to hit replay, or have already hit the button and just be waiting to be reassigned.
This gives us a good way of linking this to the awesometiers, should we want to do so. Maybe an incredibly strong affinity for a particular aspect, and I mean something like 90 sessions with that aspect as a bare minimum, would allow a player to utilize their whisperings as a sort of trans-spacial tether, anchoring them to a specific point in paradox space between hitting replay and being transferred to a new session. Players would choose a specific point to start building the can town, sharing the space-time coordinates with other players who are able to perform the anchoring.
Like any tether, of course, you can only keep yourself in can town for so long before you lose your grip and sburb snaps you into a new session. The stronger your affinity and the higher your awesometier, the longer you can lay anchor in the coziest corner of all paradox space in between sessions of "Apocalypse: The Game". (Better known as sburb)
Tl;dr: This is an amazing idea and I can't help but think about it too much. Kudos to you for coming up with this.
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Post by tungstenTinkerer on Jun 22, 2012 4:17:53 GMT -5
As I said, those details can be easily worked out. It's possible that in a few years the players will have come up with trans-session teleporting technology, or furthest ring curvature travel.
I would like to point out that you don't enter Can Town as you normally enter a session. Whether it's in a null session or just a piece of something floating in the furthest ring (I keep liking the latter more, for some reason XD) you solve your normal session, then instead of taking the ultimate reward you Pchoooooo to the furthest ring somehow (maybe there's instructions on how to build a teleporter? Or how to get a space awesometier there so they can portal you to safety?) and get to Can Town instead.
Also, I think I have a better idea about why players would still be forced to replay. There is some mechanism that makes sessions decay after a while. When decay has made a session unwinnable, it makes the relevant players doomed, so when the decay would start kicking in the players just go back, go through the reward, start a new session, get to the end of it, etc, etc.
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Post by ExtropianDreamer on Jun 22, 2012 9:13:18 GMT -5
That sounds like a fairly decent idea, TT. I agree with this headcannon wholeheartedly. Though I seriously doubt ED would be around to see it. He's pretty likely to go down in a massive storm of glitches sooner rather than later.
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Post by tungstenTinkerer on Jun 22, 2012 9:22:38 GMT -5
Well, as mnem said, we are talking about sixty years on a lower estimate. it's possible that pretty much none of our players would.
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Post by specificNihilism on Jun 22, 2012 10:06:13 GMT -5
I mean, while I figure SN has a good chance of surviving the next dozen sessions or so, she's not going to make it sixty years without there being a darn good reason for her to be there. The best I've got is her being one of the first people on the project to create a place like this and throwing in her two cents to help out the project before something goes horribly, horribly awry (or terribly terribly right if she's helping to make a Voided pocket of space for Can Town to protect it from the Others and other unpleasant Furthest Ring critters, which leads me on a whole different train of thought that's better mulled over before worddumping). She'll be either dead, missing, or otherwise not labeled as a player by the time Can Town is properly feasible in some form or fashion. I figure it's the same with virtually any player out here except for MAYBE if someone gets Time Awesometier (and even then, if the Paradox Space overall alpha timeline calls for you to keel over for some reason, you're out of luck).
SN's been in the game for 25ish years and getting tired of doing it. Even assuming that she only ages about a half of the time that passes, she'll still be around 70 years old by the time Can Town would happen, at the LOWEST bound. Since we already know SBURB doesn't like to have people die of old age, well, it's just not likely that she's going to be around. And really, that stands for probably 99% of the people on the forums, unless they have crazylong life spans like tyrianbloods and the like for trolls.
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Post by tungstenTinkerer on Jun 22, 2012 14:21:44 GMT -5
Well, it doesn't really work that way re: aging b/c with awesometier probably people can pull GM's with consistency and keep tiering within a few days of the start of every session, thus substantially stopping their aging. So basically you are either going to die, or become GM.
I don't even want to think what did she become in the meantime.
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ventricularPipefitter
Full Member
"If you're going through hell, keep going." -- T. E. Lawrence%\0\%
Posts: 116
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Post by ventricularPipefitter on Jul 1, 2012 0:08:00 GMT -5
I'd like to think that, someday, even GM can retire.
Merge her consciousness with the omniscient benevolence that is Skaia, or, somehow, maybe, pass through the door to her reward.
I'm curious....is it the ability to navigate the ring that's the greatest barrier here? It seems like something that -can- be done, given the right players, and enough time....and a good beacon. The Green Sun, or what The Terrors told Dave of its future location, was such a thing. How are Rose and Kanaya and Dave and the others navigating through the Void to find the scratched session bubble? How do they orient on it?
It's not easy; but it's clearly possible. And it seems like the ability to reach other session bubbles (and the whimsy of the Others) are what impair travel the most.
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Post by disasterAverted on Jul 1, 2012 11:27:55 GMT -5
This reminds me of lC's "Forum Games" and "Help requested" stories. Specifically, the signatures. Those made the story for me, because of what they represented--they gave it personality. Even stuck with everything sburb throws at them, they manage to create some reflection of a real (internet) community, with people telling jokes, declaring their aspect pride, and making groups to either hang out with others of their kind or help newer players (or, in a few cases like the seer group, possibly to do even more).
So of course that's the only ending that makes any sense to me. They're going to build their Can Town brick by bloody brick, and eventually it's going to become sort of a halfway-respite from the game--it can still screw with them, they're still living on its terms, but it's something. Personally I wouldn't even make it the result of someone eventually managing to reach a new power tier, the game already gives you more than enough resources to "build" with. Eventually they're going to amass enough knowledge, manpower and/or planning to do it with the aspects and titles they already have. I'm gonna vote for the "eventually the session they just did detiorates until they have to replay to avoid Doom" option.
^Using the Green Sun as a beacon sounds like a fun idea, if only so that when they're halfway done they can be thwarted when some idiot blows up the Green Sun. The real challenge of Can Town isn't building it, isn't even getting there the first time, it's making it so that people can consistently find their way back (and, of course, lead the newbies they encounter to the safe haven as well).
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