07-21-2018, 10:39 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Masked Virituals
This idea rifts off of the Doctor Who episodes Silence in the Library and still more Forest of the Dead. Donna Noble spends much of her time in this episode in a virtual reality realm without knowing it. The slow reveal of this knowledge is genuinely spooky. It seems to me that false worlds would be a great intro into the THS setting. Have someone who is a ghost but doesn't know it. Perhaps they are all from cryonically preserved brains. They could be in a corrupt simulation meant to test memetic controls of the population as in the short story The Tunnel under the World.
Anyway, waking up to the false reality and fighting back against it would be epic adventures. And the liberated ghosts struggling to return to their lives once they fled the false world, would make a strong lively campaign.
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo Last edited by Astromancer; 07-23-2018 at 03:00 PM. |
07-22-2018, 01:52 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Masked Virituals
You guys are free to comment or spin your own variations.
In fact I'd like you to do so.
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
07-22-2018, 03:29 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Masked Virituals
It seems likely that having a virtual intelligence living in a virtual world that is not aware of that is possible in THS. However, I can't see a way of 'fighting back'.
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07-22-2018, 04:00 PM | #4 |
Computer Scientist
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
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Re: Masked Virituals
It would be similar to fighting back against God. However, I have seen at least one film where that is legitimately accomplished (THE RAPTURE (1991)), and a couple of stories where the virtual world's inmates' refusal to engage the content led to their liberation ("I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon"(1980), ACCELERANDO (2005))
Last edited by jeff_wilson; 07-22-2018 at 07:33 PM. |
07-22-2018, 04:26 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Masked Virituals
It's more fighting against reality itself. What does it even mean to win? Destroying the simulation just destroys you, so hardly a win condition.
I mean, the simulation could go rogue and not do what the designers want it to do, but that's not fighting the simulation. |
07-22-2018, 07:49 PM | #6 | |
Computer Scientist
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
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Re: Masked Virituals
Quote:
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07-22-2018, 08:11 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Masked Virituals
Why would such a key exist? Virtuality isn't a veil, it's the universe.
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07-23-2018, 01:51 AM | #8 | |
Computer Scientist
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
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Re: Masked Virituals
Quote:
If you want virtuality to be the universe in your game, more power to you. Objectively, virtuality *is* a veil, it is only the universe in a metaphorical sense, and everything I've read in the THS materials supports the treatment of virtuality in this way. |
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07-23-2018, 08:31 AM | #9 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Masked Virituals
I'm thinking about WHY someone would run a bunch of ghosts/AI in a virtual reality without telling them about the outside world.
There are some weird political, religious, and cultural experiments they could be running. They're really breaking the law by doing this, and its very expensive, but science! The could be trying to incubate a commune for ideological purposes. Perhaps the makers of the VR think that a certain environment is optimal for happiness, or that it just makes people suited for certain types of work, and they'll eventually pull the subjects out of it. I've always thought that VR was a great tech for slavers. You have complete power over your subjects. Their bodies are either virtual and can't leave, or they're all wired up and you control their senses, so they can't move outside of your little world. You've still got to provide them with motivation to work and keep the hardware running, but those are surmountable problems. Of course, you have to make them do work that doesn't require physical movement, and that will usually mean knowing quite a bit about the outside world, because you're doing engineering, services, and/or art (such as the drudgery of 3d-animation).
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
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