Post by 23c0n in Jam Ideas!

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I have this idea but I think it might be too intense to implement, what do y'all think?

There's this novel I read a couple of years ago called 'A Canticle for Leibowitz', that I've been thinking a lot about lately, and I'm thinking about using it as inspiration for my contribution to the jam. The novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that was brought about by nuclear war, and the remainder of humanity was so abhorred and scarred from the exchange that they regressed technology willfully, basically making all engineering and science forbidden. Much later, as humanity begins to rediscover these topics, any surviving technical manuals and academic texts are studied by religious orders and regarded as sacred relics.

I find that idea fascinating and I'm thinking about doing something related to this. That setting is very interesting to me, and perhaps the object can be a technical manual, passed down through generations and different monastic orders of proto-engineers and scientists as they delve deeper into it, figuring out how to apply it chapter by chapter. Maybe the agents represent different disciplines, who see value in the manual from their own perspectives and fields.

MaartenR2 years ago

Neat concept! Very different from anything I've read so far. Questions that popped up after reading your example:

- Is the manual complete? Is it ancient, containing old languages or archaic text?

- is it a manual in the technical sense, containing schematics? More like an encyclopedia, or a creed?

- Can Agents add, change or remove sections in/from the manual?

If you go down the route of the religious aspects you mentioned in your inspiration example:

- Does such a manual leave its contents open to interpretation?

- Can the content be misinterpreted, in any way, and if so, to what extent ?

- Can it be spawn a religious offshoot or sect? Can it unify people? End wars? Start crusades?

Not trying to push you into going down a certain path or anything, I'm merely pondering the ramifications of your specific example!

23c0n2 years ago(+1)

Ooooooh, those are some really good questions that I want to address!

- Whether the manual is complete or not, I'm not sure. I think that it could start complete, but then it could get altered, either with additions or redactions. I think it would be really interesting to add an element of knowledge being censored and outright removed by the Agents, and then this has an effect on consecutive loops. Sort of like how concrete use was widespread until the fall of the Roman empire and then was very rarely used until the technology was redeveloped in the industrial revolution.

- The question if the manual has schematics is a good one. I'm struggling to imagine how to incorporate an element of drawing into the game, to be honest. Straight-up drawing schematics might be too daunting, and making a drawing of just the cover of the manual sounds trivial. Thoughts? My thinking goes along the lines of a manual for car repair, for instance, or a manual for electronics soldering, things like this with practical applications that can be used in a myriad of scenarios (not to limit the players).

- The idea of the contents of the manual being misinterpreted is also intriguing, although I think that instead of misinterpretation I would be more inclined towards misuse. What if they figure out that a particular technology that could be used for good is instead used for bad? Could this also feed into consecutive loops, meaning that a previous iteration has an impact on the attitude of the next Agents, actually becoming the inspiration or motivation to add or redact content?

- I think the last point is one that could be further developed into an ending. I think I've got a tenuous idea for the start and the loop, but I haven't given a lot of thought to the end. I like the idea of the Object having an ultimate consequence. Maybe the start of the game establishes a conflict that may be solved (either positively or negatively) by the Object's travel through the loop.

MaartenR2 years ago

Cool cool cool! Very curious to see this develop!

Re: the schematics. If you want to pursue this , I'd say make it into a very basic subsystem, nothing too fancy. Provide players with some very basic shapes and symbols that communicate different interpretations of a schematic that can be combined or altered. Agents add their own layer of symbols/shapes through some kind of oracle system or table generation? Like you said, it's not about simulating real schematics, but emulating change over time. Given that this is a 3 week jam though, there is a danger of it succumbing to feature creep.

Not sure if this helps, but I did come across this thing: Sigil Generator by watabou (itch.io)

Greg Soper2 years ago(+1)

I love the Canticle! I like your idea - I think you could make it even broader and have it focus on a wide variety of people / orgs rediscovering technology or culture from the old world, seeing how they use and interpret it. While the monastic focus is cool, you could also include luddites, kings, warriors, monsters, regular people, etc.

Depends on what you're going for, of course.

23c0n2 years ago(+1)

Oh yeah! I only used the monastic example because that's the one I remember from the novel, however I think that indeed, there can be a multitude of factions that could interact with the manual. I think this could open it up to having specific factions that would be either positive or negative towards its content, too!