non lore-Sci-fi, gamma world, fantasy-ish mashup

[greenknightfury]

 

Sounds good. I'm doing some experimental testing on some new ghost people models for The Legend Of The Sierra Madre (co-author and general maker of weird cr*p, official title), and I'll see what I can whip up while I have blender open.

 

What do you think about a dual brain model? It's new/novel, but also has the advantage that it could explain the "I just wanna be loved" or "I'm frightened" one minute whith teh "I'm gonna rip your face off", attitude shift, the next minute. One could be a child's brain, neither has to be aware of the other, think of them more as a multiple personality disorder than two concurrent brains conscious at the same time.

 

 

Actually, if possible, a palette swap on the brain to make it look positronic would be good( say blue and gunmetal grey); perhaps some components sticking out of it (bent antenna, wires, things like that).

 

With the damaged components out of the robotic looking brain we get instant "oh it's damaged" recognition, which makes any eccentricities pretty easy to accept. Which brings to mind a backstory explanation for the killbot that just wants to be loved:

 

Severely damaged, this bot was restored to functional, but some crucial code was lost and it would soon enter a mindless rampage. However the ones that restored it were a tribe of AI toys that's leader linked up with the poor killbot and copied parts of his own code over to the killbot to save him from this horrible fate, leaving it with much of the personality of a child's toy, though it's "Protect with violence!" directive still kicks in if anyone it feels friendly with is in danger.

[devinpatterson]

Well, we're already planning a dual-brain bot for Mars..

Yeah the 2 brain robobrains (mark III & IV) and 3 brain ones (Mark V & if there is a VI) are already in the most recent beta of the OWB expansion mod, and by default the mars mod since BigMT is the contractor for most of the bots. They produce much tougher bots than Robco (for instance the BigMT Mk VI protectron has 675 health) or General Atomics International (makers of the Robobrain) of the same models. I'm not sure how they get away with it, without a huge legal sh*tstorm from Robco or General Atomics, but whatever. So the dual brainbots aren't unique to just that one character, his/their uniqueness will come from your input on how you write the sarge and the scientists interactions.

 

And it's still a different model than the standard robobrain with a good explanation of the two facets of it's cute and cuddly, yet deadly personality. But it doesn't have to be a two brain model, it can be a single brain with two very differnt aspects to it's personality.

 

There's also already a robot player race mod available.

Yep, we're on the same page brother. I got permission from SmileyTops to use this back in Aug of 2012. Originally it was for when we thought of going with a less cannon version of SSWWW and having westworld type androids.

 

<tangent>

Actually a little tangent here; the only thing I really regret loosing as far as ideas in SSWWW is the western androids. But I did and do want to stick to lore and FO3 androids from the institute are far more advanced and too secretive to be in an amusement park. Plus I'm not sure if the institute developed them before the war, long after or what the timeline is/was. However recently I was researching the calculator and it's humanoid robots again, and I was thinking they would make a good candidate for a lore friendly version of westworld type droids.

 

The wiki says "According to Bethesda's Emil Pagliarulo, high-level events of the Fallout Tactics plot are considered canon for Bethesda Softworks" so I think the humanoid robots are in our fallout universe. I know Tactics is a tough sale, as a surprising number of people really seem to hate it, but if it's canon and serves our purpose, we should use it. I'm going to hate calling the contractor ACME since it evokes memories of road runner cartoons, but it's a small price to pay.

</tangent>

 

Anyway, back to the point. Yeah those are our planned humanoid robots (as differentiated from blade runner like synthetics). However I still think there might be room for non-humanoid bots for PC's as variety. Although I don't know if that is feasible yet.

[devinpatterson]

The poor AI had no idea how to rebuild living things, so had to store their patterns for long periods of time until managing to contact another AI that knew how to produce living creatures; it was the center of a project to recreate extinct lifeforms and to maintain the environment of the domed-city attached to the dome in which a park full of the extinct creatures was supposed to be created (the city emptied because of radiation).

 

We could even use the part I ignored in that description for those that aren't fully human, they were altered to try to make them better able to survive the new environment (and correct some of the glaring flaws of biological design as the AIs saw it). Those that are robots are easily explained as damaged (i.e. memorywiped) or newly constructed "soultech"(fully intelligent and emotional AI).

I like several key points as plot devices, particularly the idea of a AI assigned to recreate and (I assume) preserve extinct creatures. It makes sense for a park or zoo central mainframe. It also brings into the forefront the idea of arcologies (the domed cities) which are a staple of retro-ish sci-fi like gamma world, but also cyberpunk (although cyberpunk mixes them with a sort of gated community type slant, focusing heavily on the social class division-rather than only for protection from pollution & a wasted environment).

 

It also touches obliquely on an Jurassic park theme. I made a similar thread based on the idea that in the fallout world a Jurassic park type setup would be just the sort of "clueless playing with fire irresponsibility for loads of cash" that fallouts hyper-capitalism world would produce.

 

But *any* excuse to have dinosaurs in any setting is win in my book. And honestly a Jurassic park scenario would fit pretty well into a cyberpunk type tech that is heavily focused on genetics. Last year (well actually now it was the previous year 2012) they scientists discovered that DNA can last up to 400 times longer than was originally thought. It's still completely nullified by 6.8 million years, but it's a *lot* longer than previously thought.

 

There's a skyrim mod with Dino's maybe I can get permission and I'd suspect they wouldn't be a problem in fallout. Alternately if I ever lean to animate or can rig some existing skeletons, there are a lot of public domain, copyright free dino models on google warehouse.

 

OK back to the topic at hand. An aspect that kind of bugs me about the theme regards the Tport tech. I know plenty of crazy, physics bending tech is available in gamma world, and is even mundane in that universe, but I was hoping we might be able to align our multiverse closer to a cyberpunk genre that has it's roots in hard science. Tport, FTL and other physics breaking concepts are cool, but just soooooo many decades or centuries beyond the near future.

 

I know it's tempting to have some of the game mechanics that come along with Tport (like portals across the world), and some games even portray it in a almost believable manner (like half-life), but I feel like it would break our cyberpunk based genre immersion. I feel "the net" is where tport along with any physics mangling concepts/effects can happen without consequence. Anti-gravity, FTL travel, fantasy worlds of dragons, alien planets, the astral plane, super hero powers etc etc are all fair game on the net. Anything anybody can conceive of and program is possible in a virtual world. But dividing that from the real world makes for some great differentiation between the games "realities" and reflects a more accurate representation of the science.

 

My guess is that tport on a macro scale won't be invented for a very, very long time and when it does arrive sometime, in our far future, it won't be a quantum shortcut or a einstein rosen bridge type wormhole. Rather it will something like a insanely fast atomic level fabricator (and a insanely high storage data system) that destroys you and rebuilds an exact model (down to as accurate as the uncertainty principal allows) at your destination point. *And* it will still be limited to the speed of light (data transmission), which kinda puts a downer on hopping about the milky way.

[devinpatterson]

Actually, if possible, a palette swap on the brain to make it look positronic would be good( say blue and gunmetal grey); perhaps some components sticking out of it (bent antenna, wires, things like that).

I don't think that's going to be a problem. Did I ever post a pic of the irradiated brain bot. It has a green brain that glows green as well. A little mucking around with the glow map and some emittance changes should get us a blue glow, plus we can stick all kinds of junk in the brain. Everything from cables to machinery.

 

However the ones that restored it were a tribe of AI toys

I like the visual that evokes, I imagine teddy bears with steak knife spears, maybe the novac dinosaur shrunk to a foot tall and rigged to a gecko skeleton, etc.

 

linked up with the poor killbot and copied parts of his own code over to the killbot to save him from this horrible fate, leaving it with much of the personality of a child's toy,

I was reading a story by one of my favorite authors PKD (in his later years he was crazy as a loon, something about his ideas and style really call to me. Also the orginal author of the stories total recall, blade runner and others were based on), called second variety. And part of the plot in that story reminded me of things I had read about AI industrial complexes/factories in gamma world. You'v probably already read the story, but long story short these factories made military killing machines to repel a russian invasion and as the models became increasingly complex the factories began to produce human simulacrums that would infiltrate hardened russian bunkers by pretending to be children or a wounded soldier. And as is always the case the factories eventually decided to eliminate all humans, not just the russian invaders. And in a twist (one that I think is also a plot element in a few other of PKD's stories), the factories even begin to battle among themselves in a Darwinian battle to the death of the fittest.

 

I wonder if the tribal toys could also be expanded (or a separate plot alongside the toy tribals) to include a AI toy factory overlord that produces these toys as soldiers. It seems like it would follow along the same twisted absurdity theme your suggesting, with toys as enemy threats. The toy factory could be at war with any number of entities from biological life forms to other industrial complexes for survival or conquest of the area. And of course there would be things a PC could accomplish (sabotage, leading an assault etc) much more effectively against the toy factories foes than any of it's toys.

[greenknightfury]

That would dovetail nicely with the "Valley of the Dolls" gamma world campaign setting found in the D20 books:

 

Before the war someone had what they thought was a brilliant idea; fill a smart (AI) building with smart (AI)appliances (and all those AI devices that everyone had, but they kind of forgot them) that was designed so that the things that got the most use and attention out of the inhabitants got the most resources (electricity, raw materials, fuel, whatever it needed). This caused a kind of "resource war", covert at first, where the AI devices would destroy or incorporate less able to resist devices and appliances into themselves (purging their AIs) becoming multifunctional; gaining more attention and resources. Eventually this incorporation resulted in them losing their "human safe" programming, and merging themselves into a hive intelligence (still individuals but all connected, and all the lesser subservient to the buildings AI mainframe), attacking the humans and attempting to enslave or destroy all that lived inside it. This happened just as the first moves of the war began.

 

They had forgotten only one thing, the toys. The AI toys had seen what was happening (they were ignored by the rest of the AIs because the program that controlled their resources only counted adult attention or attention of a child AND adult), and had made plans. They had prepared the children with stories of adventure and escape from danger and quickly led them (and the grown-ups smart enough to listen to the children and toys) to safety outside the building. Fleeing to the hills as they saw the panic and madness in the streets, they found a safe valley and worked together to survive and form a society of human and AI that lived at peace with eachother there in the "Valley of the Dolls" named such in honor of the brave toys.

 

Now they live in the valley watching always the city for it has become the land of the horrors that have come from the building, which have twisted the city into an eerie landscape of twisted ruins covered in strange black plastic and metal growths, treelike and vinelike structures; and crawling with horrible twisted things, nanite infected zombie-esque cyborg things covered in the same growths as the city they lumber through, along with twisted machines built by the machines themselves from anything they can scavenge.

 

Now it could be left just like that, or using your idea we get twists where things like this work:

 

Two AIs (one mainframe of a toy factory, one of a weapons factory) have become locked in combat over resources (raw materials and salvageable tech) in the city they sit at the edges of. Living beings shun the place due to how deadly and destructive the traps and combatants throughout this city(industrial park if we want to shrink the size and not have people go, "A three block city? Really?") are.

 

Two rival two companies had factories nearby each other, this rivalry had reached a very dark place, and their toys had as core coding to destroy any of the rivals toys they discovered (Small Soldiers and/or Simpsons reference joke there). After deciding to explore the outside long after the fireworks of the war and a long (probably months) stretch alone the toys of each factory spread out looking for humans or other AIs, and found each other. The war has been raging since, both sides using the machines of the factory to build more soldiers as they manage to gather the material to do so(often the remains of the fallen of both sides make good material), fighting a war that may never end unless something changes. Do you help one side or the other destroy their "enemies"? Find a way to use the company mainframes to reprogram them? Lead them to separate settlements and hope they never run into each other again?

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and about the teleport device, if we don't want to go with that, it could be the medical systems AI that had to take every persons complete medical scan as they entered, it would know every detail of how they work, but not have the knowledge and/or peripherals necessary to recreate them.

[devinpatterson]

That would dovetail nicely with the "Valley of the Dolls" gamma world campaign setting found in the D20 books:

I like the "Valley of the Dolls" setting, it makes for an interesting story. I'v actually liked most of what I'v read for the gamma world settings, I think they had some great ideas. For the toys it's tough to choose between creepy little killers and tiny saviors. They'r both attractive plot lines.

 

Then again having benevolent toy AI's doesn't preclude malevolent ones somewhere else in the region.

 

If the (benevolent) toys are only programmed to protect children, it could result in a little lamplight society, where once the kids reach 18 they have to leave the encampment. I think the plot would be even more powerful if the toys charges were only kids, and set a more fitting atmosphere. And it gives a much more plausible (well plausible in light of a fictional universe) reason for a child based society if they have guardians.

 

The ranks of the guardian toys would be a little thin though. I can think of only a few models of the top of my head; dinky dino, maybe some half foot sized human action figures and teddy bears. Maybe we could supplement the ranks by including child centric bots outside of the toy store. A robotic nanny (protectron or female android), a pediatrician med unit (re-textured mr handy), school teachers (modified think tank, remove the brain-make it a steel orb, but leave the 3 screens and have them displaying educational material), etc.

 

 

This caused a kind of "resource war", covert at first, where the AI devices would destroy or incorporate less able to resist devices and appliances into themselves (purging their AIs) becoming multifunctional; gaining more attention and resources. Eventually this incorporation resulted in them losing their "human safe" programming, and merging themselves into a hive intelligence (still individuals but all connected, and all the lesser subservient to the buildings AI mainframe), attacking the humans and attempting to enslave or destroy all that lived inside it. This happened just as the first moves of the war began.

I think a little variation of this plot (the AI's long before they merged) would be fun as a current setting in a separate scenario as well.

 

Going along the lines of a very large apartment building (sky scraper) or a small residential arcology (so we have a sizable sandbox to muck around in) inhabited by smart appliances within a smart building or buildings each with their own personalities, motivations etc. Sort of expanding on the OWB sink appliances exponentially. I think it would be fun to be drawn into a complicated war of these little AI's. Their functions, their military campaigns, their alliances, the idiosyncrasies, their leaders and followers, their lives and deaths etc. Especially as time progresses and resources become scarcer and scarcer, the player could be the pivotal factor in this war of transistors. This might just be me (because I got a kick out of the OWB sink personalities), but it seems like ample opportunity for quests, intrigue etc.

 

If we were to expand that to an even larger and grander theme than simply AI's on par with OWB's, we could create a whole campaign setting. I imagine a whole city (allthough the playable area will only be a large number of buildings on a block or two, separated from the rest of the city skyline by rubble), with each building having a mainframe, police department with bots, AI garbage trucks, etc. Everything you can imagine from a completely automated city where humans didn't have to lift a hand to do anything.

 

For the humans I think they could be dead (or left) because of the machines or they could have reverted to tribal level and worship some of the more advance AI's as gods in a very large and colorful pantheon. Major AI's like the arcology mainframe would be the head of the pantheon all the way down to very minor demi-gods (like the toaster of doom). Some have human worshipers which they provide for and try to protect (the "good" pantheons), some are only threats tot the humans and encountering them means certain death (the "evil" members of the pantheon). A rich and complex story has been woven from oral tradition explaining the "Gods" history, motivations etc by the tribal members in tales to rival The Odyssey, Gilgamesh and Beowulf.

 

Maybe different apartment buildings have their own tribes.

 

For the humans being absent from teh city, the machines don't even have to be homicidal. Hey if your low on power you may not want to synthesize food for annoying biologicals or waste juice on A/C, so they may have starved or left on their own accord. Or they were killed in a neutron bomb blast, viral attack etc. Or perhaps some of the AI's have broken their programming and did slaughter the people. The would have course be the combatants for the player in the story line.

 

Whether it's the small, one building, OWB style AI appliances or the larger, city sized mini campaign setting, the concept of the hive mind can also make a good threat.

 

For the smaller plot, one appliance may be really making inroads to dominate and destroy the other AI's. I'd suggest the toaster of doom, just for kicks, with quests leaning toward the somewhat humorous side. It rules by fear and is a ruthless advisory that has all it's opponents running scared. It relishes laying in a pile of it's opponents transistors and watching their dismantling.

 

 

If it's the bigger scenario I'd recommend the arcology/city mainframe as the great threat, adsorbing the very essence of the other AI's (their code) and it be the main villain of the whole setting. These AI's would be much, much more advanced. Holographic minds of deep intellect that have even become capable of human thoughts and emotions over the years. I picture some of them being something on the same level as Cortana from halo. Although most will be much, much simpler programs. They wouldn't be attached to a appliance per se, but rather the library computer, or the public defender AI, or a AI mayor (maybe tht's the arcology/city mainframe) etc. All projected as holograms and residing in advanced super computers.

 

I'd pitch this as a bit like a tron theme where the MCP enslaved or adsorbed (can't remember) other programs. I'd say it was originally an enemy virus to compromise the arcology/city mainframe and resulted in subverting it's programming drastically. Of course all of this in a flashy neon light show of the cyberpunk style.

 

 

I mean for the valley of the dolls, all we really need is a credible homicidal/genocidal threat to the children from AI's (or even biologicals), to trigger our "valley of the dolls" guardian scenario right? And we all know that robots will eventually overthrow and destroy humanity, it's pretty much a given. So I don't think it's going to be hard to have our mechanized threat from a different direction and keep the idea of the AI appliances or the advanced arcology/city AI's as a new plot.

 

EDIT, clean up a little bit of grammar there

Edited January 5, 2014 by devinpatterson

[greenknightfury]

Great! I'd played with similar ideas myself awhile designing some gamma world/Fallout mashup campaign settings for possible future pen and paper gaming.

 

As to some variety for the toys, a few things come to mind, such as the fact that a robot toy could conceivably look more human than a full sized one (simplified detail level); so we could do some fun nods, like a cowboy suited guy named Woody (or to better avoid possible trouble something like Rocky, Sandy or Wooly ["This is sheep country!"]) and/or a spacesuited Buzz. G.I. Joe esque soldiers are easy to do that way as well, and some mini-bots (heck they have toys of every type of bot either as unlootable flavor items and with some mods, I think it was mods anyway ones you can pick up). Throw in some correctly scaled dolls (Barbie-like adults and little girl type) which use the same method of just shrinking an NPC and we've got every type of mobile toy you'd expect to find with AI.

 

 

 

I definitely think that the idea of both the city area dominated by AIs (empty of humans or inhabited by tribal to semi tribal groups) AND the smaller area one are great! Mostly if we -have- to choose between them, I'd say it would be up to whether we wanted to throw a more intrigue/Speech based set of challenges or more create a new strange settlement (with some intrigue and/or combat included) at the players.

 

Also, the idea of making a Little Lamplight style area with the toys works very nicely...and with a more Gamma World tech situation is actually lore explainable! The place they choose to set up their settlement was a "designer baby" clinic, a place where the upper middle class and above had their children designed and grown to birthing age to avoid any possible problems from pregnancy and avoid any defects in their offspring. The AI that ran the facility quickly saw the advantage of having fully mobile boarders that would also care for it's creations till they became adults (it had heavy maternal programming itself, as befits such duties) and let them stay in exchange for maintenance of itself and the collection of new DNA whenever possible (mostly gained by attacking any slavers that wander too close or from orphans found and taken in by the group). In return the toys have a constant range of children to care for, teach and play with. I can see the Wastes being an even more horrible letdown than Big Town for the ones that leave...but I'd not be surprised to discover some of them making sure groups of orphans make it to the area surrounding the place and tricking small slaver patrols to travel through it (perhaps making sure some useful salvage is in the care of the orphans and found on the slaver's corpses).

[greenknightfury]

Not sure if you had heard...MoMod is gone. Removed from the Nexus and the author banned. This one however is supposed to be a replacement with the "problem" stuff removed.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/42136/

[devinpatterson]

Not sure if you had heard...MoMod is gone. Removed from the Nexus and the author banned. This one however is supposed to be a replacement with the "problem" stuff removed.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/42136/

No I didnd't know. I do remember a lot of trouble before hand with asset use though. I'll check out the new one.

 

Yogogamer linked me to this weapon pack, Eternal Silence Weapon Pack. I think it's pretty close to a cyberpunk level tech and style.

[greenknightfury]

 

Yogogamer linked me to this weapon pack, Eternal Silence Weapon Pack. I think it's pretty close to a cyberpunk level tech and style.

 

 

Very cool, would fit very nicely yeah.