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[piecewise]

So ORO seems to be the game of the future. I'll be working on it from now on, working towards that future.  This is a thread for me to talk about what I'm working on, and for you guys to post stuff that you think is neat, or ideas you have. As you know, I tend to take inspiration from everywhere, picking and choosing bits and ideas I like and adapting them. So anything you think is neat might inspire something with me.

[Egan_BW]

PTW :D

[TinFoilTopHat]

PTW

[Empiricist]

Perhaps ways to make it harm itself? Like cancers and autoimmune disorders, which while impairing it also pose their own risks? Also, parasites that will help out initially in exchange for favours but which become hostile when they realise you're killing their host?

[Moopli]

All sorts of things in it should be bigger on the inside. For example, going through a door along the wall of a service hallway only to find yourself stepping out of a porta-potty by the side of a road carving down into a quarry, or you crack open the side of a crate sitting alone on a warehouse floor and out roars a freight train, which crashes through the wall behind you, tearing open a hole, which, if you enter, leads you out of a train tunnel.

Perhaps the reality-warping brain behind the whole mess constructs things by analogy, using the memories of absorbed people to create juxtapositions of small bits of universes that work well enough for its purposes. So, say, the door leading out to a quarry could be because the quarry is mining something (not necessarily rock, could even be food, for example) and the service hallway is a useful way to reach the quarry. I'm not suggesting everything be like this - certain areas would be stranger in different ways, certain areas would seem all normal, etc.

And on that line of thought, it would be nice if the world isn't just a simple progression towards more and more lethal the deeper we get in. There could be places that are completely placid, just little spots where the convergent processes of construction make a place legitimately safe for building a base (at least, until you alert the immune system :p), and other places would be danger zones that we would avoid even long after we've tamed the surrounding area.

Edit: one more idea - if you decide that oroboropolis designs new parts of itself using analogy based on memories of absorbed souls, you could even use dead players by asking them for a few vague memories that you could decide to make a grotesque mockery of later. Then people can be like "holy mother of shit, is that smothering monster supposed to be my last character's memory of his mom?" and you can be like "no comment hue hue hue".

[Empiricist]

Everyone's soul is just a big, angry spider. Preferably the same, big angry spider

More seriously, maybe an emphasis on targeting systems? Basically, the City's defences need to identify threats first, meaning each of the doubtlessly many defefense mechanism can be partially evaded or tricked once players figure out how they function, or just through plain dumb luck.

[O.Wilde]

PTW

[syvarris]

Perhaps ways to make it harm itself? Like cancers and autoimmune disorders, which while impairing it also pose their own risks? Also, parasites that will help out initially in exchange for favours but which become hostile when they realise you're killing their host?

I cannot +1 this hard enough.  I really really love the idea of killing the city with an autoimmune disorder.


As for a suggestion from me... I got nothing, actually.  I'd like it if you could talk about the NPC denizens of the city.  What's it like?  Utopian society with all of life's needs met, but with an underlying fear of the walls breaking and the outer city crashing in?  A dystopic society that is merely a large group of people settled in the least dangerous portion of the larger city, where people struggle to live day-to-day?  Where are we in the social hierarchy--are we outcasts, downtrodden and dangerous dunces who are destined to die or degenerate into demons?  Heroes, who are praised and loved, but who invariably disappear mysteriously, because their demonic fates are covered up?

[AbstractTraitorHero]

Ptw.

[Whisperling]

PTW, for now. I'll contribute stuff when it isn't 12 AM.

[piecewise]

Step one is is to set up the history and background.

Oro, the city, had to come from somewhere. It had to travel a world to get here. There are other people out there beyond the walls too, and surely they know of oro.  Before boots can hit stone, the stone has to be mined, cut, and laid.

Step two is Oro itself. Once I have a history for it, I can build on that.  This is probably where crafting will come in too, since this is where all the items used in it would get made. Lot of demon guts to scoop out and tape together.

Step three is the system.  Combat is a major point, and also a major difficulty. It's easy...well semi-easy to create a combat system of some complexity, the difficulty comes from the fact that we are running on a "play by mail" style thing here. Combat the resolves in 5 interactions between gm and player would be pretty good. Great even. For us, thats a week.  And for a game with a lot of combat, that is not viable. So we come to a dilemma between depth and accessibility, between control and efficiency. Do I do a complex system and have you set up several actions in one turn? Do I do a system where many aspects are automated? Something simple, even if thats not as good?

Step four, the player town and NPCs. By then I should know the amenities players need, the types of people around, that sorta thing. And I'll need to work out the way to do town migration, setting up new settlements, supply lines, that sort of thing. In a way that doesn't make me hate life. Minutiae is the bane of my existence, hand tracking a million little numbers.

[Empiricist]

Ooh, what about pseudo-biological weapons? Develop and deploy horrible abominations based off of samples taken from Oroboropolis and its denizens! So not just the usual flesh horrors, but also creatures the resemble urban areas and infrastructure, basically the option to create and weaponize living environments like the hostile City itself! Ride into battle upon a bus station that breaths corrosive bees! Establish create an artificial village or suburb that leeches electricity, gas and water from Orobopolis like a parasite and use it like a mobile base!

[MidnightJaguar]

Ooh, what about pseudo-biological weapons? Develop and deploy horrible abominations based off of samples taken from Oroboropolis and its denizens! So not just the usual flesh horrors, but also creatures the resemble urban areas and infrastructure, basically the option to create and weaponize living environments like the hostile City itself! Ride into battle upon a bus station that breaths corrosive bees! Establish create an artificial village or suburb that leeches electricity, gas and water from Orobopolis like a parasite and use it like a mobile base!

We shall kill the city of the damned with the vilest parasite of all. The mall.

[Corsair]

I like the idea of taping demon bits onto a rusty sword to create a giant sword of endless fire and murder or something, perhaps have each part of a creature generate some random effect which you just generate once someone actually loots it. Then you just write it down and now all of that item have that effect. That sort of experiment-ey crafting system appeals to me. You could even limit the generation of effects to a combination rather than each individual thing so it doesn't get as unwieldy as perplexicon. Also the idea of letting non-questing players do group resource gathering "zoomed-out" stuff definitely appeals to me. Lore wise

[Nunzillor]

Zoomed out resource gathering for waitlisters would indeed be neat.  Even turning it into a mini group strategy game might be interesting, if it wouldn't be too much of a burden.