Parallel World Characters

This is a basic idea for antagonists that could work in most forms of media. While the entire cast has not been conceptualised, there is a very clear setting for two or four, depending on how you classify the characters.

As the title suggests, the story would take place in two worlds. The first is the standard world we all know and love, where nothing all that extravagant happens to the most common average Joe. We shall call this the mundane world.

The second is basically what would happen if it was created by the god of the geeks, and can be seen as a world of wish fulfilment for the mundane world. Everyone is made amazing, with superheroes and villains extremely common and every aspect of a person's character is stretched to make the character less emotionally deep, but more entertaining. This shall be called the awesome world.

And in the awesome world, every woman is, at the very minimum, Karen Gillan level hot, while the average highschool hottie would be about the level of Katy Perry with the chest of Christina Hendricks, since it's basically a comic book world come true.

Your ego would shatter upon seeing your awesome!counterpart. This makes me sad. Don't do this bit.

...Anyway! Two characters in the mundane world are an engineering student, who's a fairly nice guy when he's not busy working on his tech, and a soul-crushed office worker, who's slowly dying inside every day he has to work with most people and a bit of a dick regardless. I shall dub them Techguy and Officeguy.

Awesome!Techguy is a mad scientist, who is completely wrapped up in his latest inventions to near the point of madness, but still finds ways of controlling himself. He makes loads of awesome gadgets, including a device to jump between the dimensions. This is why we have a plot.

The advantage to the Mundane!Techguy being a nicer guy is it allows the hero to access Awesome!Techguy's systems using Mundane!Techguy's password, to which Mundane!Techguy responds by changing it. But that's only a minor antagonist.

Awesome!Officeguy is a bigger antagonist, in the fact that he is now a supervillain who despises pretty much most people on a small insight. He plans to conquer all he sees before him, and even make an impact on the Mundane world, since they have less irksome superheroes. Naturally, he gets Mundane!Officeguy to help him out, in the vain of "two heads are better than one, especially when it's another head of your own".

Except this gives Mundane!Officeguy power, which he has felt far too deprived of. At first, he invokes his power on petty office stuff, such as forcing his underlings to clean the toilet instead of taking their break or berating them for making the number of photocopies you told them to make when you changed your mind without telling them. Mwa ha ha.

But then, he gets slowly more and more malicious and mad on his new power, to the point where he freaks out, and then usurps, Awesome!Officeguy. Suddenly, the main villain has changed to the originally laughable version of the same character.

Cliffhanger

This is a fun one! And a literary one, as well!

You're writing a popular book series, loads of action and adventure. You want to keep the action going, so you set up a cliffhanger ending to carry you to what you'd assume to be another book. This can also apply when someone wants the book series to end, but then gets another brilliant idea and wants to pick it up.

The following is merely an example, and the basic premise can be used in most any setting.

The hero has defeated the villain, foiling his plans to conquer Japan with his explosive Tamagotchi. The hero, happy he has put the villain to rest once and for all, decides to drive off into the sunset. Sure, there are a few loose bits of BAD GUYS Inc. lying around, but they're harmless.

Suddenly, the car's steering locks, and the car drives without and accelleration. Someone has remotely taken control of the car, and is headed to drive the hero off a cliff! The hero tries to escape, but the door is locked and the cliff is fast approaching!

He plunges off the edge, hurtling towards the water below! The book ends.

The next book the writer produces, while hundreds of fans rage at the author for ambiguously killing off the hero with no explanation, is something completely different. It's a story about the mole people.

A nice mole person slowly discovers his entire life has been manipulated by the evil mole people emperor, and starts up a rebellion! The battle is fierce, but the good guys triumph in a large, dramatic climax, and the emperor, along with his palace, are blown out of what is revealed to be a cliff. The good guys win!

Epilogue. The palace smashes into the side of a car, sending the door flying off in pieces. The car momentum is reduced, and plunges to a deeper part of the ocean. The driver, injured, is able to climb out of the newly formed hole, and jumps into the ocean freely, surviving what would have otherwise been a fatal accident.

Yep. That's right. Solving a cliff hanger at the end of an otherwise irrelevant book.

Super Skirmish

Take a game like Saints Row. I'd recommend this for reasons I will explain later. Split the players into two teams which can be of varying sizes, anywhere from 1 to 10. Each team gets a leader (the captain and da boss) and a designation, one being the good guys and one being the bad guys.

The bad guys can choose whatever crime they wish to, and get points based on how much crime they can do. There can be public terror (10 points for every minute the terror is sustained, automatic 20 if the police set up a perimeter), bank heist (a grab bag with a maximum of 100 points, 1 every 3 seconds and valid for pay off when the bag is returned to the hideout) or straight up murder (5 points a head). Whatever suits them most.

Every time a crime is committed, the good guys map (mini and regular) start to ping at the crime's location. The good guys must then traverse the city landscape they're in and stop the bad guys, subduing by any means necessary. Once the bad guys are subdued, they become spectators. Once all bad guys are subdued, the round ends. The next round, each team swaps designations and this is the final found. Most points wins.

The characters have to be enhanced from standard humans somehow, but only in a standard human element. They can't fly, but they can leap really high. They can survive immense falls and melee their opponents with great might. And they all have standard FPS guns and the weird ability to survive multiple bullets and regen health in a calm.

I want customisable characters to really add to the comic book element that this will create. The good guys will be distinguished using a cape of their choice of colour, but the bad guys could wind up looking like an average Joe. Thus, character customisations to make them look like a 60's batman character or whatever villainous persona you want. Personally, I'd be half Joker and half Moriarty.

The villains, to aid their evil scheme, can use certain tools from a large menu like how you pick aid in CoD. However, there is a set number the villains can use based on how many heroes there are, and overlap in what they choose can occur in unorganised villain squads. I'd say about 3 goodies per hero, divided evenly amongst the group. If the villains are twice as frequent as the heroes, only one per hero. Their numbers are their goodies.

To average things out, I'll give the heroes one additional super power each, with each one made balanced (read: nerfed). Flight is a no go, but double jump is fine. There can be lazer vision, but with a decreasing damage over long range. Ice breath would act like a shotgun, in how it's dead useless over a certain range. Super hearing would give a free ping to the closest villain with a minute recharge time. You know, that stuff.

It would have to be a sandbox, but the area would be limited. I say the city is divided into 5 sections, so you only have to work with one fifth of the total game map, which makes it much simpler. The villains are placed randomly in the city, but within a certain range from the leader and a greater range from the heroes. The villains will have it marked on the map where their hide out is, but there will be at least 2 doors per block (excluding banks) that can work as an entrance.

This will, hopefully, lead to one heck of a super hero action sequence.

I feel I will need another post to mention the menus. Maybe I'll do that, maybe not.

Pause Screen Mechanics

A number of games I have played like to be clever and play around with the user interface. One game had a puzzle that could only be solved by pausing the game while you jumped through a lazer area and waited for it to deactivate. Achievement Unlocked has achievements involving opening a second version of the game or opening the tutorial.

I decided to go one further. I want to have a game with a pause screen that, while showing the menu to you, does not stop you from controlling your character. I would explain it as while you still move normally, you can create a field that gives everything around you zero momentum. This includes enemies, traps, objects and everything else.

It would be a puzzle game which requires you to be moving in certain parts and still in others. You would have a weapon (preferably a gun) to dispatch enemies, but cannot attack them with it or activate buttons with it. You also can't open doors or hit switches, since you need to change their velocity to activate them, but the field gives them zero velocity regardless of input.

You, however, can take damage normally. Spikes and saws will hurt you, as will bullets already fired. Damage will invalidate the field, causing enemies to return to motion and traps to begin again.

Then come other obstacles. Slowly extending bridges cause the player to either delay the descent while defeating the enemies or quicken it but lack the field effects. A certain material might move regardless, challenging the usual "pause and take all the time I like" effect. A gap would still need a jump to cross, while a launch pad wouldn't work to help you reach places at all with the field on.

Also, a room with a normally pausable obstacle, but the floor is covered in lego, which creates small enough damage that you're not in a time limit, but still prevents the field. It's kind of a requirement. Or a small section with damaging materials, but contained in a chomper you paused open and will crush you if the field goes off.

And there would have to be a small delay on the disabled side when manually entering or leaving the field, since the game is very exploitable in this regard. Enemies will have about 3 seconds while you're immobile.

I've even thought up an achievement where a train is coming, and you have to lure a guard into its path without it noticing the train. You draw the guards attention, then duck behind the walls of the train tunnel and pause time. You head out of the way and behind the guard, who heads over to your cover and is swiftly off'd.

I think this is my first central gameplay mechanic I've suggested.

Decision

I'm kinda proud of this one.

So, here's the story. You are just a bystander equipped with a database compiler, capable of recounting ALL events relevant to the situation you ask it about, and a Once Gun, which will fire once because that's all it needs. The database can correct corrupted files 20 times in one session before it forces a shut down, but has the additional feature of sharing an archive of documents and recordings between two different sources and can process everything in a way you can interpret in half a second.

There is an Empire with its regime designed to protect its citizens against any bandits or barbarians, and it's having a very hard time of handling the rebellion, which is founded to shake off the tyrannical heel of the Empire. Obviously, the two factions are mortal enemies.

You are in the palace grand hall, when suddenly the Rebel leader and the Emperor walk in, both in an absolute rage towards the other ad both ready to let loose all hell. You have a few friends, and there's several palace staff (chef, advisor, whatnot) with you, but you are the first to act. You unholster your gun, dash in the middle, and run the database.

The ending happens whenever you decide who to shoot. If you use up all your data corrections (read: lives) while reviewing your footage, you're forced to make a choice, but you can choose at any occasion when you're in the archive.

You have two sources, each with their own mission based campaign. Chaos follows the rebellion's leader, defending themselves while sabotaging the enemy weapons. Order follows the emperor, defending the citizens of his empire while hunting down the rebels.

At varying points, you will be inclined to shoot one person more than another, especially if you clear one campaign with the other untouched. If the story is handled well enough, you know exactly who the clear enemy is only after finishing both.

Of course, the game has multiple endings, some siding one organisation, some just being a totally swell ending for everyone, and some potentially being weird, all depending on who is shot.

Seriously, I'm impressed by myself. More-so.

Telling Sleeping Beauty

My first non-video game post on this blog, and I feel this is what will cement how incredibly sad I am as a human being. One thing to note is that this is partially based off a previous blog of mine, which can be found here: How to Make Maleficent Sympathetic(-ish).

The idea goes off of the storyteller trying to influence the story into one the character finds more interesting being the main influence of the characters. The tale of Sleeping Beauty, as told by four people who are constantly at odds about how to tell it.

You have four characters: Gilbert, who wants to tell a story of the politics of a kingdom after a GoT marathon; Mary, who wants to tell a romance tale because of her falling for a guy she knows; Phoebe, who wants to tell a story of fairies and magic because she thinks it's really cool; and Conner, who wants to tell a story about evil and darkness as he doesn't want a boring happy ending.

Each one is a storyteller, who has agreed to work together to tell an interesting story, and can take over the narration by saying "change". Naturally, none of them can agree on what the story is supposed to be, and use their characters (Flora, Fauna, Merryweather and Maleficent respectively) as a direct way to none too subtly nudge the story in their direction.

Gilbert introduces a fair, 14th century kingdom with a princess being born and celebrated. Mary introduces a prince who is to be married to her, which Gilbert then elaborates as a joining of the two kingdoms. Phoebe then introduces three fairies, which everyone thinks of as silly, but eventually have to go along with.

Sick of where the story is headed and how slow it's going, Conner interrupts before Merryweather's gift by introducing an evil fairy and sentencing the child to death at 16. Naturally, everyone is angry about this, but can't simply overwrite what he has said, and have to write further in to prevent her death.

The rest of the story goes on in a similar manner, with each person trying to stress their particular element over all the others, with the three writers eventually ganging up on Maleficent to kill off the character and bring the story to a good close. Conner, while annoyed that his character is killed off, knows he would ruin the story too much by simply resurrecting her, and walks away in a huff.

This works in a sort of Mystery Science Theatre fashion to the Disney telling of the story, each person criticising the other's elements while defending their own. The words would have to change significantly, but the basic structure would remain and the focus will remain on the storytellers most of, if not all, of the time. And this would make it cheap.

This ties into the blog I linked to by way of Maleficent not only being a storyteller trying to influence a story, but being the storyteller's deus ex machina used to change the story. She is someone else's bid for control in a self-made world, and who can argue that's not a believable character?

Player Based Stories

There are a lot of differences between games and movies, which I feel most of the public would know through an analogy about Mass Effect. Through this, you make certain choices and hold separate actions which make sure that the freedom is large enough for this to be “your story” which only fits the design of the developers by them deciding what happens when you make those choices.

Essentially, although you are only choosing one of several stories they have created, you feel as if it is your story, and you enjoy it more for that.

This is a typical D&D style of design where you have an idea of what sort of game you’d like to play and what aspects of the world interest you, and the DM is left to let you fly away from his story, however well crafted, to make something truly unique with the players in mind.

I myself played Fallout 3 with no intention of finding my father. Instead, I decided to lead my player on a trail of redemption for killing his first love’s father, finding some peace of mind for his crimes and starting a new relationship with someone who doesn’t hate him now. And given some of the random events that can occur, and the moral choices I picked as a result, being the good guy was a lot harder to me than to the game world.

This leads me to my suggestion. Pure player based stories. Let’s use my last suggestion in tandem with this one, so your character and quests are chosen based on your initial dialogue options.

When you’re finally released into the world, you are given no initial endgame goal. Instead, you have a vague, hand drawn map to a local town and maybe a note from a friend.

Around the world are several little plot pointers, such as wanted posters depicting powerful monsters or a town crier discussing the new and despised king’s newest policies or even just a peasant dressing up her daughter.

You are then given the ability to investigate the world however you wish to.

If you want to ask this young woman what her mother’s problem is, she can tell you about a boy a town over that she’s arranged to meet with, and the main storyline will follow this girl’s relationship with the boy and what their arrangement will mean to the world as large.

If you wish to ask about this king, you will be given hints towards either helping or sabotaging a resistance movement against him.

If you wish to ask about the monsters, you will be trained for a slowly strengthening monster threat in the world, which may lead to one powerful beastie who wishes to destroy everything.

You could head to a small town and run as an advisor to make the town more successful and fatten your own pockets. You could head to a temple and start a holy crusade to help the land and atone for your own sins. You could find a small town, and investigate mysterious goings on around there. You could meet someone writing an explorers guide and asking you for your help to learn as many of the little nooks and crannies undiscovered as of yet.

And whenever you beat that storyline, you are given an ending. A small resolution to your little journey that doesn’t restrict you, but brings you closure. A small bit of credits plays that shows you everyone who worked on that section, so the people who worked on the regions you have no business in don’t fill up your gameplay time.

After that, you can continue with your character to follow another storyline. Obviously, your previous exploits in destroying the godslayer abomination would be mentioned by the resistance as a neat little upper hand, or your internal relations with the nobleman wedding would be noted by your travel writer.

When you beat that storyline, another set of credits pops up and you can repeat this cycle all you want. 

And nothing against starting one storyline, but finding the threads of another story and investigating from another starting point.

This probably won’t exist for a while due to sheer scale of the intention, but every person will feel like the story they’re playing through is seriously their own. And every story the player ends up following originally will be one they're genuinely interested in finding out about, without the player having to get caught up in a boring section, giving up and feeling the game is unfinished.