I had meant to write this as a blog entry comment, but it's still not letting me do that. You were talking about your novels. I think some of the characters succeeded a little too often. Lauren Hastings in particular. There were several scenes where she was using psionic levitation to run across buildings. She never botched or failed once. I think it might have made an interesting scene if she failed to levitate, then had to try to fight someone off with her new-found 1@3 Kau Sin Kee skills. (I don't think she really used that outside practice either) Just a suggestion for future books.
She did use her kau sin ke more than once.
That world is strange because a lot of the things that are reported as happening there actually did happen in a live game, but it was what we call a game world game--there were rules imported from a different game that impacted the probability of success on a lot of the things she did.
You're not alone in your thoughts. I had one guy read the book who said he absolutely hated Lauren Hastings because everything always worked, right up until she flash-froze her kitchen trying to use pyrogenesis to cook something.
You also have to remember that Lauren came into this world with several psionic and quite a few body skills under her belt from the previous world she mentions but you never really see. She is supposed to be more competent because of that.
Thanks for the thought, though. For what it's worth, the next novel is finished and the one after that is only awaiting editing, so you can see whether you think I was already thinking along those lines or not when they come out.
--M. J. Young
MJ, I just had an idea. What about a prequel novel to Verse Three Chapter One? I'm dying to know how Lauren Hastings, a middle aged housewife with no weapons survived Nagaworld longer than Joe Kondor, a trained soldier with an M-16 and a pistol.
I don't recall what happened to Robert Slade at all on Nagaworld, or if it was even mentioned. I bet you could make a whole other book out of that. Just a suggestion.
Luck? It's possible Joe encountered somthing against which bullets were ineffective that outran him, or was surrounded by bushes at dawn with an incoming clam and a vine on him.
I believe it was the bulletproof creature. I recall something about him emptying half a clip from an M-16 into something. Still though, if that thing got Joe Kondor, how did Lauren avoid it?
She didn't go where it lived, would be my guess. There are ways and ways to die in Nagaworld, and some strike sooner and more reliably than others.
Come on guys!!! You sound like you're trying to talk it out of being written!!! I'd still like to read about it.
I won't write about NagaWorld for the same reason I won't use it on the forums: I don't want new players to know anything about the place before they play in it, and I still use that world as my starting world for all my personal games (not Internet, public, or demo) and recommend to all referees that they do the same. Thus the few scraps of information in the novels is all you're going to get.
Yet those scraps are enough that anyone who pays attention to them and knows about NagaWorld can figure out what happened to each of them.
Joe Kondor started near the glass city and entered it at a time when the spiders were active.
Lauren Hastings started near enough Umak Tek that she went there, found all the support she needed to built those skills and her equipment, and learned the details about her condition she later shares with the others.
Bob Slade's first stop was the "Industrial Complex", where he was stripping parts off a disabled vehicle when one of the automated weapons systems targeted him.
For what it's worth, Derek Brown awoke on orange grass in the middle of the night, thought it had to be a dream, and sat there until day came, a coral bush awoke and became aware of his presence, and he was killed before he decided it wasn't a dream.
Only the last of those is in the second novel; everything else is in the first. So you know if you know NagaWorld, but if you didn't know NagaWorld you couldn't spoil your discovery of the place by reading of their adventures.
--M. J. Young
MJ, I just had a thought. Instead of writing gamer oriented novels, write Multiverser-themed children's adventure stories. I bet this could also make a really cool comic book too.
"The Adventures of the Architect." A children's adventure story about the friendly Architect, taking them on a tour of the Multiverse.
I just had a thought. In the thread labeled Biases, I describe a Bias-Defying skill. This would make a great NPC world for The Architect. Half the population is versers. They arrive at a steady rate, comparable to the birth and death rates of the indigs. The screwy biases of the world put the versers at a disadvantage. The verser's scriff sense still works, but with so many scriff senses, most new arrivals are lucky to find their equipment. It's an underground war, since versers can arrive at any time, and versers can only tell each other apart at very close range.
It's also a trading post world, where versers exchange skills and equipment.
It is an acceptable practice to help yourself to a new arrival's equipment, if you find it before he does. However, know that the new arrival doesn't know that, and may not like it. Also, if the new arrival manages to let you know that you have something of his, it is customary to return it.
The most popular shopping mall in the place is called "Verser's Lost and Found." Stray equipment is often taken there for sale or trade to other versers. If the original owner can prove it is his, it must be returned.
The mall, "Verser's Lost and Found" is considered neutral ground. The stores that get the most business are the versers that specialize in @1 equipment. The "Always Works" stores. Indigs are free to sell equipment that they manufacture, and indigs are free to purchase or trade for anything of a verser's. It is understood though that when the original owner verses out, they may get their equipment back from you.
Or maybe versers are required to disown all equipment that they either don't have on person, or cannot prove that they own, in exchange for learning the Defy Biases skill.
In the 'Worldwalker' thread 'Krillis Kollege?' I have him attending Menlo Park College for the Arts which is taught and run by versers in the 1920's. About fifteen versers attend.
Now, I don't know the math, MJ, but I'm pretty sure that if you take say a set of ten million, and drop into it a set of say a million, and introduce any sort of attractive factor, and shuffle things around, you're going to get pooling of the million.
I don't think its going to end up totally randomly distributed. And thus worlds like Naja World, DMZ Hunting Lodge, and Menlo Park College are going to happen. They're going to be quite rare, naturally, but some versers are going to try to build waystations for their kind.
I even think if you subtract an attractive factor, random chance will create some pools on occassion (although some will empty out...and that would be a neat idea...a castle in the woods with wonderful evidences of versers, but its overgrown with vines, and the fusion generator in the basement has leaked out all of its fuel...there was a thriving verser community, a century ago.)
I sorta thought you over focused on how individual versers are in the verse, but that there were good arguements for finding evidences of them in greater number....Of course, Naja World tends to argue against that perception.
Yeah, I totally agree with Eric. We only know of a handful of versers. That doesn't mean that there aren't millions of them. The Multiverse is so big, there would have to be. I mean even if only worlds that rolled a 100 on a GE roll of 100 10 sided dice could produce scriff, put that against a nearly infinite number of worlds. I don't think this game goes anywhere near its potential, in the respect to the infiniteness of the Multiverse.
And Eric, I really like that notion of the thriving former verser community. Everyone else was taken out by a psionic botch, and the only person who survived it was the guy that made the botch. Therefore, there is an insane, guilt ridden verser who has been alone for 200 years living there.
We abandoned the comic book idea because our artists told us we needed too many additional artists to do it right. The first six chapters of Verse Three, Chapter One were originally conceived as the first three volumes of a series comic book, reconfigured into text (which is why the cliffhanger endings are so prominent in the early chapters and less so later).
I'm not at all sure about tackling the children's book world otherwise.
--M. J. Young
A lot of surviving in Naga World is luck. I remember I did pretty well there--made friends with a couple nagas, got picked up by a Dar Koni ship and taken to Umak Tek, picked up a number of psi skills.
I also remember coming dangerously and cluelessly close to a lot of things that could've killed me and only realizing the danger I'd been in when I met up with other versers who explained to me what was what.
If I recall correctly, I managed to nuke myself while trying to learn new psi skills. Actually, I think that's how I've versed out of most worlds I've been in, with the exception that it was a holy magic botch that did me in in the spy world.
Yeah, that's what happens to the Architect, too. Put me in dangerous situations and I focus on stuff I know will work, organize my resources, and come out on top nearly every time. Give me a month of quiet, and I will try some experiment that blasts me out of the universe. First one was trying to build a psionically sensitive kau sin ke; thing blew up, and I didn't make it behind the blast shield I'd prepared.
--M. J. Young