What is the Core of the Game?

Summary:

Ideas for a possible revision

What is the Core of the Game?

Colin_Fredericks 26 Dec 2009 06:12

Be forewarned: I don't have the time to really do a lot of work on the game. However, the idea of a revision or second edition has been floating around my head ever since I started poking the conflict resolution system with a stick earlier this year.

What forms the core of the game for you? Specifically, the world itself - what technologies or facts are the minimum you could tell someone to get them the idea of SA?

Here's my own personal list:

• Humanity is spread across the universe.
• We are advanced, but not terminally.
• Information transfer to the past is possible.
• Human/computer interface is everywhere. (specifically, Meshes)
• Some people love tradition, others move beyond it.
• Devotion to your principles makes you powerful and, eventually, incomprehensible… which is not necessarily a bad thing.
• Those who fail to plan, fail. (Cargo Cults)

I want to hear your list too. I know I'm missing some. The idea is not only to come up with existing ideas, but what you consider good possibilities for future bases. For instance, if you like immortality, put it on your list.

Re: What is the Core of the Game?

QHudspeth 26 Dec 2009 19:08

When describing it to someone else, I usually just start with the title. If they don't get the reference, I explain. Either way they usually say, "ok. cool" and i move on to your list from there. So, I suppose that's core for me, the ubertech.

Re: What is the Core of the Game?

TauCeti 02 Jan 2010 01:39

My list, without reading yours:

• Humanity created AIs that could see the future.
• Those AIs traded cures for cancer and wormhole technology in exchange for more hardware.
• Millennia passed.
• Survival is cheap, so humanity has diverged into many very different civilizations.
• Most sci-fi tropes are represented in at least one civilization.
• You work for the AIs, who control the patent office and fight for a bright future.
• The game is mission centric, but mission objectives are vague and often wrong.
• PCs can do almost anything; level mountains or convince someone that they are a Chihuahua.
• The game is about belief and difficult choices.
• The game’s tone is half deadly serious, quarter humor, and quarter philosophical.