Conversation started Jan 9, 2022 at 8:50.
BESW
BESW
Jan 9, 2022 08:50
I was thinking about "fast travel" sort of mechanics in video games and wanted to to make something that was super powerful and freely available but always A Significant Choice without making it either NOT fast travel (by forcing it to take scenes of fighting stuff or whatever) or just a boring resource drain.
And there's something super creepy but also really cool about "you can go anywhere but you're different when you get there."
(Vaguely inspired by the alternative travel methods in Jordan's "Wheel of Time," Clines' "The Fold," Nolfi's "The Adjustment Bureau" and Remedy Entertainment's "Control")
I like the idea that something in the game can be very important without being "on screen."
 
2 hours later…
Glazius
Glazius
Jan 9, 2022 10:42
The Oceanview Motel is pretty great, in part because IIRC the last two times you actually use it are subversions.
 
1 hour later…
AncientSwordRage
AncientSwordRage
Jan 9, 2022 11:55
@BESW "no one never"?
But I love the consequence
AncientSwordRage
AncientSwordRage
Jan 9, 2022 12:10
It reminds me of the 'The Ocean of Fragments' from what was then, the New World of Darkness. Anybody entering loses memories and identities, in one of the books it's suggested a vampire might be able to cure itself by losing that identifier.
 
1 hour later…
BESW
BESW
Jan 9, 2022 13:11
@AncientSwordRage Oh, hush.
@Glazius I feel like the Oceanview has a lot of unmet potential.
AncientSwordRage
AncientSwordRage
@BESW wink
BESW
BESW
@AncientSwordRage One of my inspirations is Clines' "The Fold," in which a teleportation device turns out to be replacing the user with their double from a random parallel universe every time they go through it. At first the parallel universes are so similar that nobody, even the doubles, notices (at least not very quickly), but the book kicks into gear when the teleporter starts spitting out doubles who are very obviously NOT the same person.
(It's an interesting idea but Clines has a very poor sense of what makes characters sympathetic or relatable, not enough style to compensate, and struggles to stick the landing on his novels' existential horror even when it's conceptually sound.)
AncientSwordRage
AncientSwordRage
Jan 9, 2022 13:27
@BESW sound alike good idea, subpar execution?
BESW
BESW
Yeah.
Same thing with the other book of his I read, "14," about an apartment building with Strange Geometries which turns out to have been built as a mouseover for spoiler.
He's got this thing for trying to write 'everyman' protagonists who are just selfish slimeballs with less personality and depth than the cardboard carrying box for a four-pack of store-brand beer.
BESW
BESW
Jan 9, 2022 13:42
Anyway, I like the idea of adding fast travel to a campaign and as much as it saddens me to say it, not every campaign can accommodate a supersonic dirigible.
The cool thing about slow travel is that it provides opportunities for character moments, like how the recent Wheel of Time series used The Ways to amplify characters' fears and goad them into extreme action that wouldn't have made sense otherwise.
I've been noodling on different ways travel can be shortened at the table without losing its character-driving potential.
 
Conversation ended Jan 9, 2022 at 13:45.