Right. Energy Deficits and stealing from the past. And arguments about that. I knew that it was going to be a tricky action when I saw it, but now its become this massive question/argument/thing. So.
First of all, some general stuff about the game that's relevant to this discussion. One of the core concepts that's keeping this thing running is ☼, or the more common unit, the kilo☼. When I was trying to figure out how to do this (run a Ye Making of Ye Universe With God's Game that didn't grind along for two and a half turns before collapsing under its own weight, but that also allowed people to actually do fun stuff) I decided that a few, simple rules and a universal unit would be the thing that held it all together. The ☼ defines how much of anything there is, so we don't get into conflicts over how big/strong/powerful something is compared to something else. It let's me keep track of things, be they nebulous concepts, planets, multitailed dragons or whatever. The ☼ also forms the entire basis for the games economy, such as it is. Well, perhaps economy isn't the right phrase. Universal Meta Economy? Functioning Universe? The idea that ☼ is finite is as central to the way the game works as a finite supply of money is in the real world. As I stated way back somewhere in the first post, this game has end conditions. We're not anywhere near that yet, and much of the what, when and how will be down to the players, but this is an active, competitive game. When I was thinking about putting this together, I felt it couldn't be any other way. Otherwise it'd just end up a bunch of bay12ers
minecrafting(sorry, been playing too much Ace of Spades again recently, the insults are starting to seep into my subconscious) building loads of stuff so that other players can tell them it's cool while building even more stuff. And that's no fun, for me or, ultimately, for everyone. So, apart from allowing me to actually keep track of things and for people to quantify in a rational manner the scale of forces they're working with, ☼ also forms an integral part of the competitive element.
Some people have mentioned Diplomacy and related/similar games. Fun fact, every time someone thinks of Diplomacy an angel stabs five other angels in the back. Although it hasn't consciously shaped the game, you can safely bet the family silver that it's had a strong subconscious influence, along with giving the voices in my head that keeps asking when the Russia is going to betray everyone. And the voices that remind me that all fools know that it'll happen on the penultimate turn. Anyway, that whole make alliances/war/diplomacy vibe is very strong in the game.
So, bearing that in mind, it doesn't seem that likely that, at any point, I'm going to give away an everfull purse of ☼. The day I do that I may as well lock the thread and throw away my laptop. It's gamebreaking and obviously so. Also, the idea that being strongly aligned/the creator of something lets you arbitrarily decide it's attributes is false, and is no way supported by anything that has happened so far. All things that are created, whatever they are, kinda do what they name says. Anything else has to come through the consequences of actions, intentional or otherwise. So you can't just say "
Yellow, which I made, is...umm....really good for healing" or whathaveyou. You have to try for it through actions. That general mechanism is, like, a quarter of what's happened in the game so far.
Some people have suggested some sort of new, limited source of ☼. This ain't gonna happen. ☼ cannot be created or destroyed. It can be lost or locked away, or disordered, or overly ordered or whatever. But not created out of nothing. I know that people are feeling the pinch of the end of the Age of Creation, missing the easy ☼, the violence, the
fast cars sexywomenmenpartners of your choice and preference drugsgood times in the spirit of fellowship all the good old fun of going "pow! I make a giant sloth just like that". I feel that this giant avalanche of arguing is basically a result of that.
@GreatWyrmGold
I'm happy to go ahead with you "Using my power over time, open a temporal portal to the past and draw diffuse energy from Then to reinforce the new temporal prison" action. I'm going to tell you roughly how that would work out. I hate telling people how actions will work out because most of what I do within the framework of how the numbers fall is spontaneous. I try to make the results of any given roll fit with the spirit of what's come before it. That's particularly important in a game where the universe is so malleable and mercurial even between player actions in a given turn. Giving away the consequences of actions beforehand ruins it, but I really feel that it's the only way forward at this point. You'd get +2 to that action, and I'd tack on a -1 to that for difficulty like I sometimes do for particularly hard actions. 2-6 would be the fail range, with 5&6 probably giving some temporary debuff. 3&4 would get you some serious harm, either to your presence directly or one of your creations. 2 would see you in deep shit, something in the flavor of "trapped in a recursive paradox and stretched out". 1 would... I don't know. I'd be bad for everyone. Maybe even destroy the real world. 7, as ever, is neutral, a neither succeed or fail. It would depend on my mood, but it would likely result in other rolls for unintended consequences. 8-9 might get you a little power from the past, with rolls to determine how stable the paradox is. 10-14 would get you a lot of power, but I think I'd be more likely to be harsh on the stability of, say 120-140 kilo☼ of paradox cloned
raw power. I'm definitely not going to be spawning whole parallel multiple universes, the shards are bad enough. If and when the stability of the past drawn power fails, there will likely be rolls of doom to determine arbitrarily which things the power was used for in the past and are therefore also destabilized with the cloned material. That said, there are plenty of Fun things that you can with time apart from metaphysical ponzi scams.
-----------------------------------
At the end of the day, this aint the first time playing with dice and characters on the interwebz for anyone here, as far as I know (and we have some well known GMs/players here for certs). What odds do any of you give that I'd just give away gamebreaking power? Or large power without consequences?
Right, that giant rant aside, I don't mind arguments and discussion about any aspect of the game, but when it becomes pages of stacked quotes and he said/she said between two people that would make a crooked lawyer smile it gets bad. Shits up the OOC for real OOC. I wholeheartedly encourage discussion in all forms, but maybe next time there's a big burning question that everyone needs resolving wait a little bit for me to respond. I can only type so fast
.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go to bed as it is now 3 am. Sorry for any rambling/inconsistencies/spelling and grammar errors, I can't read all this back again again. At least I stopped myself from going on that tangent about how much ☼ would be needed for a Mosses level prophet.
Author
Topic: The Shaping of the Formless Void OOC (Read 23730 times)