Jason
Junior Member
Posts: 29
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Post by Jason on Jul 15, 2020 14:18:50 GMT
My kids have just got through watching three seasons of The Deep and one character kept jumping out at me. Devil Daniels is basically a mercenary YouTuber (or Twitch streamer, given that much of it is live?) who provokes creatures and antagonises people to get dramatic recordings to bump his subscriber numbers. He is constantly followed around by drones recording his activities. Given that the original setting was written in the mid-1990s, this sort of thing doesn't really appear in the setting so far but it seems to me like it might be a perfect fit. The internet is omnipresent in the more settled areas, but further out to sea there's likely to be more connection issues and yet more novel things to encounter and interest people. I would suspect that those stuck back on ruined Earth might be particularly avid subscribers. Is this sort of thing likely to be updated in the write-up of the setting? I quite like the idea of a Bear Grylls type character followed by drones showing all the viewers back home both the wonders and dangers that Poseidon has.
At the same time, we've seen such rapid change in the place and the use of the internet in day to day life in the last 10-15 years that I can't help wondering if it might be tricky to handle well enough not to make the game seem more dated in years to come.
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Post by Pawel on Jul 15, 2020 18:11:46 GMT
That sounds like an interesting concept for a character. The Deep - is this some sort of TV show? I should probably Google it.  Ah, a kiddie 3D thing. Would you say that is watchable for adults? I'm sure Jeff is working on all kinds of things to keep Blue Planet from becoming retro-futuristic.  Having said that, I personally think that it holds very well after those 20 years - certainly better than most dystopian cyberpunk games. Having said that, I'm sure we'd all love to hear your and everybody else's ideas and suggestions for what could be taken into consideration. Regardless of whether this would help in reshaping or updating certain aspects of Blue Planet from 20 years ago, and whether it would be useful to Jeff or not, it would definitely be relevant to this forum and to the games we all run. I've personally always considered Blue Planet to be on the "optimistic" side of the near-future genre. Less cyberpunk and more transhumanist sort of direction. More than anything, I wonder if Blue Planet Recontact will manage to retain its progressive/bright spirit (despite the Blight killing half the world, of course) - that's at least how I often feel about it. At the very least, Blue Planet is a very scientific science fiction - I do wonder how will that post-truth anti-scientific sentiment that seems to be rotting our societies at the moment feature in Blue Planet's future history. |
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Post by grinnenbaeritt on Jul 16, 2020 8:21:52 GMT
TBH I'm of the age where I only remember "The Deep" as being a film only barely made watchable because of Jacqueline Bisset in a clingy-wet T-shirt... Ahem, however.... The advent of you-tubers and the such is much akin to the presence of pirate radio-DJ's and indie-film makers, in that, because they are generally only as good, effective and successful is that they are able to project in a meaningful way to the masses... and have a following.. or sponsor capable of supporting the tech required to do so. A bit like a a 'which comes first chicken or egg' scenario. I can however, imagine a situation where a "modern-day" survival expert (or troupe of minor celebrities), gets perhaps GEO or Corporate sponsorship/backing to provide "Informational films" either as a primer for newbie colonists... or slightly darker, being set-up as a fall-guy to discourage such activities.. in effect becoming a "Blair witch project on Posiedon". Of course that might only be good for a one-shot scenario... As far as "too much tech makes it too easy", yes connection or coverage issues is,literally, a game-changer in most Sci-fi genre games. It can make them exceedingly difficult for new players and GMs alike. Since the characters WILL know or have access to, a huge wealth of information, that, quite frankly, can easily over-whelm a game and scenarios in those settings. I'm currently running a game of Roll20. I'm not using the Blue Planet rules, but am using Posiedon as the base setting. I've mashed up the backgrounds (and some of the information) from several different rpg's (Blue Planet, Mutant Chronicles, Eclipse Phase and finally, and somewhat confusingly, the Posiedon RPG). I'm using the 2d20 system because it's actually quite easy adapt for online players and more importantly easier for ME. The basic premise is that Humankind is beset by a number of disasters... the most recent of which is an A.I. Plague. This has created a state of rampant paranoia, resulting in Com-Core effectively being "shut-down" and quarantined. Other forms of A.I. especially those with access to networks are dismantled, destroyed or de-activated. This for the most part puts the technological base, or rather the characters access to that base, back far enough that whilst all-encompassing information is still conceivably accessible, it's not easy nor automatic to do so. Basically, it's a sort of being thrown back into the Dark Ages.  |
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Post by doublea on Jul 16, 2020 17:14:58 GMT
One of my players in a one-off played an ambush reporter, who had cybernetic sensory recorders (cyber eyes and ears) as well as like, a camera/lighting drone which followed him around. He was actually a really fun character to have in a game. Though in our game the reporter was the 'lone wolf' type the idea of a 'famous YouTuber' who always has fans around like a little entourage is funny as well, and would be a fun twist!
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Post by Pawel on Jul 17, 2020 10:22:08 GMT
Though there will be a lot of exceptions to this, I try to remember the character concept limiters in Blue Planet setting: population size and ticket price or skill set privilege. Game Moderator is often also an immigration officer sifting through prospective candidates wanting to refrigerate themselves and sail to Poseidon. What we have there is a single dynamic boomtown + a handful of tightly regulated company towns + a handful of frontier slightly redneckish settlements + (to quote Frank Herbert) native Fish Speakers in their coastal communities. Depending on character concept, you'll need either a lot of money and some good contacts or a lot of luck and some good resume, to get to Poseidon. And in both cases you'll also need a good enough reason to leave your previous life behind and brave the unknown.
Going back to Devil Daniels, I imagine there would be a big demand on Earth for something like this. I've never watched a single Twitch/Youtube whatever person playing video games - because I can play video games myself - and I fail to understand why people watch other people play RPGs in front of cameras if they can play RPGs themselves (I believe there's a reality show in the UK about people lying on their sofas watching TV - my brain just doesn't computer this type of entertainment), but obviously huge numbers of audience enjoy this sort of content. But being able to watch (or semi-fully experience through neural interface) an alien planet and all its wonders whilst being stuck in a dead-end job on a dying world must be the sweetest/saddest drug ever. So yeah, plenty of room for character concepts like this, I imagine!
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Post by doublea on Jul 17, 2020 20:33:13 GMT
>Game Moderator is often also an immigration officer sifting through prospective candidates...
Damn but I love that analogy. Top notch. It really expresses the role of the GM really well on character/group design!
>...you'll also need a good enough reason to leave your previous life behind and brave the unknown.
Whenever I would start a new game or group in BP for any actual campaign game, I'd always start with that setup during the character-creation session. 'Okay, so first up you need to figure out why and how that your character is leaving everything and spending what for most is their life's savings to fling yourself out to a frontier world, give up a great deal of recognizable life/comfort and possibly die as aliens on another planet from which the chances are very good that you will never be able to leave.
>But being able to watch (or semi-fully experience through neural interface) an alien planet and all its wonders whilst being stuck in a dead-end job on a dying world must be the sweetest/saddest drug ever.
Truely!! Living vicariously through YouTube is absolutely, definitely a thing! I am guilty of it myself for sure, I've watched travel documentaries about places I will, in all likelihood, never see in person. I mean, imagine in our world now just how difficult it would be to pick up everything and move overseas for a job. Even if everything went smoothly, what a task! I'm sure in the BP world there would be plenty of people who would actually -prefer- to watch other people deal with the waterworld, considering just how dangerous it is to be there. 'Oh yeah like I'm gonna fall for all this new-age-eco-propaganda and ship my ass off to a soggy prison planet for the low cost of everything. Pffh.' I imagine the future vblog equivalent of 'Posideon: EXPOSED! The TRUTH and why I would NEVER advise leaving the SOL system!' being shared everywhere by disaffected, angry colonists who left on false pretenses and found oh shit, life is crazy hard here.
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Ah, a kiddie 3D thing. Would you say that is watchable for adults?
Having said that, I personally think that it holds very well after those 20 years - certainly better than most dystopian cyberpunk games. Having said that, I'm sure we'd all love to hear your and everybody else's ideas and suggestions for what could be taken into consideration. Regardless of whether this would help in reshaping or updating certain aspects of Blue Planet from 20 years ago, and whether it would be useful to Jeff or not, it would definitely be relevant to this forum and to the games we all run.
