Masked Virituals

[Astromancer]

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.

[Astromancer]

You guys are free to comment or spin your own variations.

In fact I'd like you to do so.

[Anthony]

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'.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Anthony

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'.

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))

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

It would be similar to fighting back against God.

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.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Anthony

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.

Indeed, you'd want to present the key to piercing the virtuality veil as soon as possible, so that there could indeed be discovered a way or at least a reason for fighting back

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Indeed, you'd want to present the key to piercing the virtuality veil as soon as possible.

Why would such a key exist? Virtuality isn't a veil, it's the universe.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Why would such a key exist? Virtuality isn't a veil, it's the universe.

There should be a key because if there is no observable plot, the potential for an entertaining game is greatly curtailed.

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.

[ericthered]

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).

[vicky_molokh]

Slinky sweatshops, Eric.