Ya know, all of the worlds that we verse to have something in common. They all share a single historical event. In all of them, Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Is there a world where that never happened? Everyone running around naked in a garden playing with lions and tigers and bears (oh my!!). I thought something like that could be interesting.
We need a conflict. It could be internal.
It could be that this could be a horror scenario as MJ has just been discussing where we find out that the verser is the agent of man's downfall. I'm not sure how to do that. I touched on it in one of my WAW's where Tad got dropkicked out of the universe he was in because while sin had already occurred, still everyone was much better than Tad.
I'm not sure..actually I do have an idea. We don't tell the verser the situation. Not out right. We just present it in such a way that the pretty girl maybe should disobey...someone...her husband to be is what Lewis did in the following example.
CS Lewis wrote The Space Trilogy which had the hero, Ransom, having to face Satan to defend the Eve of Venus.
We could have a girl born of robots on a planet and she's been told by Teacher Bot to wait for her Man to come and pick her up in the spaceship he's going to find. Meanwhile, she's real nice looking, and the verser might try to convince her to go somewhere else...and thus disobedience is brought into the world....
The conflict is that the serpent is still trying to tempt people. The serpent can take any shape. Perhaps a buxom, naked blond.... How well does the verser resist temptation?
Maybe I'm not doing things right here....who is where?
- Graeme is in Roma of Triverse; it could be argued that that world originated from Adam and Eve. However, it should be noted that the rules say that some universes were created in a six-day creation event, some were formed over eons through random forces, and there were many other variants. Just because the history of that world parallels ours at some point in the past does not mean it does so from the beginning.
- Shawn is in Prisoner of Zenda, which is another alternate history, this one only very slightly alternate.
- I am on the Planet Joisey with a bunch of rednecks exiled from Earth. I would wager that it's got a similar history at some point.
- Adam is in a world where the creation myth is very much true--but so is a variant of the Lilith myth and a variant of the Cain myth. (I should mention that my use of the word "myth" here does not mean fiction; it means a particular kind of story usually having legendary and magical qualities.)
- John 2 is in a universe in which there is no record of there ever having been a planet Earth; it seems unlikely that it has the same history. Scott is in a parallel Earth, but probably not a creation myth world.
- Nikolaj is in a fantasy world which has absolutely no connection to Earth, Adam, Eden, or the Creation myth.
- John 3 is in what is probably a creation myth world, maybe an evolution world.
- Harry's world is definitely not creation myth, definitely not earth, and probably not this universe. John 4 is in an Earth variant, unknown history.
- Kurt is in an Earth variant.
- First Book of Worlds
- NagaWorld: Not Earth
- Tristan's Labyrinth: Probably Not Earth
- The Dancing Princess: Maybe/Maybe Not Earth
- Mary Piper Alpha: Not Earth
- Mary Piper Beta: Not Earth
- Sherwood Forest: Definitely Earth
- Most Dangerous Game: Definitely Earth
- Zygote Experience: Probably Earth, but up to the referee.
- Second Book of Worlds:
- Bah Ke'gehn: Not Earth
- Prisoner of Zenda: Earth
- Farmland Alpha: Not Earth
- Farmland Beta: Not Earth
- New Ice Age: Earth
- Post-Sympathetic Man: Earth
- Industrial Complex: Probably Earth
- Perpetual Barbecue: Earth
- Third Book of Worlds:
- Playground: Maybe/Maybe Not Earth
- Why Spy: Earth
- Orc Rising: Definitely Not Earth
- Vorgo: Not Earth
- Dark Honor Empire Alpha: Not Earth
- Dark Honor Empire Beta: Not Earth
- The Web: Definitely Not Earth
- Lilith's World: Not Earth
- Triple Play Horror
- Haunted House: Probably Earth
- Slasher Summer Camp: Probably Earth
- Cask of Amontilado: Earth
- Triple Play Space
- Starship Destiny: Earth
- Terranova Habitat: Probably Not Earth
- Wanderer: Maybe/Maybe Not Earth
I should probably do more alien settings, but truly alien aliens are very challenging to create and equally challenging to run.
John, I think that your perception is off partly because of the current crop of worlds in play and partly because of your assumption that human equals Son of Adam.
Eric, Perelandra was what I was going to recommend for that. I know that E. R. Jones dropped someone in that world who immediately started making exactly the sort of trouble a tempter would make.
--M. J. Young
OK MJ, I see where you got confused. I didn't mean that every world is a variant of humanity. What I meant is that the effect of eating from the Tree of Knowledge is everywhere. People wear clothes. There are laws in effect. Police exist. If there was no knowledge of evil, none of those would exist. I have yet to be to, or hear about a world in which everyone is running naked in a garden controlled by a benevolent creator.
I have yet to be to, or hear about a world in which everyone is running naked in a garden controlled by a benevolent creator.
That description suits Bah Ke'gehn, arguably, but I admit that's not what you mean.
Scott is correct: Bah Ke'gehn is very much an unfallen "world" in which the indigs run around naked, worship and serve their benevolent creator, and have nothing like police. It was rather difficult to to create conflict in such a world, and much of it comes not from the indigs but from the outsiders (the several NPC versers huddled there). There are also a relatively few fallen individuals and a few flaws in creation that mar life from time to time.
I suppose I could answer you thus, John: sure, that Eden exists, but I believe that there is an angel with a flaming sword standing guard at the gate, so none of the human versers can enter it.
--M. J. Young
To go with MJ's list...
1. Starsong (hard science extrapolation. Definitely Earth.)
2. Tall Tales of Mythica (Paul Bunyan's Earth.)
3. Northgate City of Superheroes (Variant Earth)
4. Symbiont Academy (21st century Earth)
5. Doom of the Mech Empire (30th Century plus Earth)
6. Heartwar (Variant Earth)
7. Hadrian was in Red Shirt Terror World (V. Earth)
8. Valiant was in a world with Streetfighters, Chinese monsters, Islamofascists confronting Chicoms, and a giant city straddling Taiwan and the Mainland. (Future V. Earth.)
9. Lucas was in my archeology 'let's find Earth, we lost it ten thousand years ago' sublight starship story.
10. Amanda is currently visiting Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood so (Not Earth).
11. Amanda was in The Valley (my variant).
12. Our current gather is in The Temple of the Dying Sun (d20 fantasy world), but the previous gather was in Radix, Nevada although I didn't create it.
I've got a metric ton of other ones, but I guess Earth does play a larger role than I would have thought. Now some of those like 1,4, and 5 Earth exists but its not the major focus of events in the story which probably confused me a bit.
And I was kinda reflecting the other week on how few alien races I've made in any depth. The Blikten, the Kringsta, the Threet (who are just a variant of MJ's Avians), and one tri-gendered amphibian race, and a bit here and there...well, the People in Doom are pretty neat as well. At one point I tried to make a toolkit for creating alien races. It had some very bizarre choices in it.
I could easily see how you create conflict in a world like that.
1: No knowledge of good and evil does not mean perfect agreement. Animals are considered 'innocent' in terms of morality, and they engage in conflict, with their own species and others.
2: "Everyone running around naked worshipping their benevolent creator" does not inherently mean all of them worshipping him the same way.
3: We've all seen the problems disagreement over religion can cause, especially combined with the pressure of overpopulation...
So I propose a relatively physically tiny world in which people are innocent, run around naked worshipping their benevolent creator, and if the Verser pops up somewhere deep inside the reaches of one faction or another, it seems like Eden itself... but if he wanders toward the border, it's a war-zone (in a primitive, bows-and-arrows-and-fire sort of way).
Verser is like "dude, wtf?"
And someone explains, in a very innocent, naive sort of way, that it's perfectly natural for 'us' to fight 'them'. No one is quite certain why - they don't have concepts like 'holy war' or 'competition for resources' or 'territoriality' - but they do it because they believe they're supposed to, on a very instinctive level. Thus they are perfectly cooperative and peaceful within their groups, and conflict exists where the groups compete for space. What you wind up with is a very fractured Eden that is more like many Edenic pockets.
The capacity for the knowledge of danger without the capacity for the knowledge of evil goes against the philosophy MJ expounded in his recent book, but I say it's not that far-fetched an idea - just look at the aliens in the movie "Galaxy Quest" for an example. They developed a ship capable of war, but are on a personal level almost childlike in their innocence. They understand what danger and harm are, but they don't really understand malevolence except as demonstrated by the movie's monolithic villain, and they certainly don't practice it themselves. Even relating to him, they fear him, but they do not seem to hate him.
I realize I'm parsing my language rather fine here, but then, we're looking to develop conflict in Eden. Isn't the whole point of Eden that there is no conflict there?
How this ties in mythologically - if we are to stick to Judeo-Christian mythos - is that, in their innocence and wanting to be closer to their benevolent creator, these perfectly innocent people cooperated quite perfectly to create the Tower of Babel. They built themselves a tower to Heaven, and their creator was like "um, no, not yours" and we all know how that went. Technically he never told them they couldn't built a tower to Heaven before they attempted to do so, so there is no Fall there, as they never disobeyed any divine edict, but it IS a mythologically sound source of conflict in a world that does not entirely understand malevolence.
How this relates to the Verser depends on the Verser.
A Verser who wanted to be a leader could throw in with one side or another, and lead them to victory.
A Verser who didn't want to get involved with the conflict could flit from one faction to another, learning what he might from each one but committing himself to none, or just curl up under a tree and find a genetically suitable female to mate with.
A Verser who just wanted to be a malevolent bastard could introduce them to the concept of outright malevolence, and thus bring about the Fall.
A Verser who wanted to be ... proactive? paternal? a bit excessive? way too much time on his hands?... could theoretically attempt to reunify the factions and undo the punishment of their creator.
A Verser who just wanted to be a malevolent bastard could introduce them to the concept of outright malevolence, and thus bring about the Fall.
Yeah, I could imagine that. My character would be capable of building muskets. One side is using slings and arrows, I introduce them to gunpowder and lead. Things get a little bit nasty from there....
Tower of Babel came AFTER the Fall. It was the first? or second recorded attempt by Mankind to get back to God by using Man's methods. "If I just (fill in the blank--go to church everyday, walk on my knees on broken glass, build a really huge tower) then God will let me back.
As to conflict between animals....before the Fall, the lion lay down with the lamb.
However, I have to say its a very creative idea, and I can see it working. I'd add that there is no death, so people get injured, and then they recover....You're actually describing Valhalla, I think.
And as a side note, one theory is that degeneration occurred and that is why certain animals became carnivores with sharp teeth which would mean that at one time, the lion was perfectly happy to munch grass.
Tad - As for the Tower, I realize that in-continuity it came after the Fall, but if you change the reasoning behind its construction, there's no reason why it had to. It becomes one of those 'it seemed like a good idea at the time' sort of things.
As for Valhalla... well... I do take a lot of my influence from Asatru.
And you could have conflict between animals there or not - the point of trying to find perfectly innocent people who are still capable of conflict would remain.
Ya know what? I was watching a movie called Little Big Man the other day. According to this movie, the reason the American Indians lost so easily to the white man, especially at first, was that their two cultures had completely different concepts of warfare. The Indian's concept of warfare was to ride by on a horse and smack your opponent with a stick. You had just dishonored and humiliated your opponent, and he would leave the fight. According to that movie, wars between Indian tribes were won like that, with no blood spilled. The white man didn't follow their rules, though. Perhaps this is the kind of warfare these people do. (And the Indians were supposed to be the savages....)
And as a side note, one theory is that degeneration occurred and that is why certain animals became carnivores with sharp teeth which would mean that at one time, the lion was perfectly happy to munch grass.
There's some speculation that the T-rex wasn't a carnivore at all. Its teeth supposedly weren't strong enough to rip apart animal flesh. Some scientists believe that the T-rex used those monster teeth to shred coconuts and the like, and were actually herbivores. So, who knows?
Two Posts
Perhaps the conflict is that the verser introduces them to violent warfare. If I felt threatened, and someone rode by on a horse and smacked me with a stick, and I didn't know what it meant, I would probably have the same reaction as the white settlers, which would be to open fire.
O7,
Interesant.
A1,
Could do a Laws of War kinda story where the fatal disobedience (its not malevolence that triggers things, its simple disobedience) is the verser teaching one side to make war instead of fighting with champions and with coup sticks.
If the verser doesn't take the bait we could have another verser??? (perhaps Satan pretending to be a verser with that verser sense) to give 'helpful' advice to one side on how to break the Laws of War and introduce death with spears.
This might catch a lot of versers. Heh, Tad tends to think the solution for a problem is a bigger sledgehammer. It might catch him.
A1,
Great minds think alike. :)
Yeah Eric, I figured you would like this idea. The Indians could fight wars without killing anyone, and THEY were the savages.... That pitiful.
Ya know, this thing has gotten me thinking about exactly who are the savages? I was just watching Mutiny on the Bounty. It's a true story about The Bounty, a British ship, captained by William Bligh. They land on Tahiti, and are warmly welcomed by the natives. The natives do a ceremonial dance involving a lot of nakedness to bless their harvest. The British call them "savages". How do you figure? Who is showing more devotion to their god? The "civilized" Britain who bows and says a brief prayer, or the "savage" native who performs hours of dancing and praying for a good harvest? I'd say the natives are showing far more devotion.
Later on in the movie, Captain Bligh and some others are set adrift in a lifeboat. (Hence, why it's called "Mutiny on the Bounty") One of their number is dying. He says, in a nutshell, that when he dies, the others are welcomed and even encouraged to eat his dead body to stay alive. Captain Bligh says "No, we're civilized men, not savages." Who is the savage? The cannibal who stays alive, or the "civilized" person who starves to death with 150 pounds of "fresh meat" available? I say the cannibal is the civilized person. Not to mention that the man making the offer is incredibly civilized to do that, in my humble opinion.
We're not nearly as civilized as we claim to be.
# Third Book of Worlds:
1. Playground: Maybe/Maybe Not Earth
2. Why Spy: Earth
3. Orc Rising: Definitely Not Earth
4. Vorgo: Not Earth
5. Dark Honor Empire Alpha: Not Earth
6. Dark Honor Empire Beta: Not Earth
7. The Web: Definitely Not Earth
8. Lilith's World: Not Earth
Third book of worlds came out? or are you listing what is going to come out?
Third book of worlds is in editing. Has been for far too long, I know, but there are so many things to do and so little time to do them.
In fact, we're a bit annoyed that we were supposed to have this new series of Multiverser Triple Play world booklets launched by now, and it's been delayed mostly by the guy who most wanted to see it happen not finishing his part of the project yet. But that's how these things go sometimes.
Yes, those are the titles of the worlds in the book that is working its way through the process now.
--M. J. Young
The funny thing is, I always forget Dark Honor Empire is an Alpha/Beta world. I always run my version of it when I run people in "ancient Japan." The ninja/samurai thing is there, but I decided it would be fun to ramp up the Magic bias. From 0@3 to 2@18. =^_^= So far nobody I have run there has lived long enough to figure out why. One guy at AnimeNext came within one combat move of figuring out one of the two big secrets of my version of that world. If only he had succeeded on grappling that Samurai...
I'm pretty sure I can deduce why just from the bias - but then, unlike your players, I have the luxury of knowing the bias.
All you have to do is look at what that allows for outsiders, and what it allows for indigs, and it gives you a pretty good idea of what's really going on.
Well, you also have to make assumptions about the referee's intent (i.e., that an x@(>10) bias expresses an attempt at a minimal bias which still allows some specific skill or skills located at the top of the curve and/or level), but yeah, that gets you most of the way.
It (Mag bias 2@18) allows all curatives for indigs, but it's overkill for that--it allows all enchantments, as well, for outsiders. That doesn't seem likely to be the reason, though--it's more likely to be because there is one specific skill right on the curve of 20 (10@10, 11@9, 12@8, 13@7, 14@6, 15@5) that you want to make possible. It could be possession, high-end summonings with control (off-world non-sentient fighter or local sentient informer), levitation, pre-programmed teleportation, magical blindness, creation of solids, or temporary shape change--and I would bet, given the point that this would have been discovered by someone about to grapple a samurai, that it's that last one, that there are some off-world creatures wandering around who have magical shape-change abilities. Interesting.
--M. J. Young
Nope. Not shapechange.
You did list it on there though.
If you want me to tell you, you'll just have to play there and see if you find out. =^_^=
The combination of the right side of the curve with the permission of curatives for the indigs struck me as significant; I dismissed the grappling data, settling on possession by an off-world spirit. Don't tell me, though; I'd prefer to be smug in the suspicion that I am correct than be confirmed or contradicted.
Little note on Babel's tower. The people didn't build it to come closer to God, but "to make a name for themselves" (Gn 11:4), which is a different motivation and thus not an 'unfallen' motivation. They wanted to exalt themselves instead of God.