Alpha Source-ery

This is where I am going to jot down, keep, and refurbish all of my campaign ideas. Some may be a few short notes, others may be full descriptions of what I plan to do for the entire story arc. However, these are not going to be story ideas (they could be, but I am going to devote another section to those)- this is the section I am making for all of the ones I actually Intend and Want people to play.
Like in the Contemplative topic that preceded this, feel free to comment and ask questions, make suggestions, etc etc. I just ask that you keep it constructive.
That being said, let's begin.

yeah, that kinda sucks, but I just had this idea pop into my head- seriously, about 15 minutes ago. This is going to be a futuristic, sci-fi thriller based on the TV show Almost Human. I saw one episode and decided it was really cool, but I also got to thinking what would that be like? To live as synthetically grafted or fully synthetic humans?
So that is the basis of it: You, as the players, are people living in a future world with highly advanced robotics and biotech. I know I want at least some of the players to be androids of one breed or another, but I am also dabbling with the idea of having regular humans with bio-synthetic grafts. Eh, idk.
Plot-wise, I got nothing so far. I know there is going to be time-distortion, like one of you living as a human would 'die', and wake up in malfunctioning freezer in a derelict lab, crawl out and find that in fact 20 years had passed, during which time some other android went rampant or some big event happened (that one of the other players was involved in). As you wander, you either find the next plot piece and run with it on your own, or you run into another player somewhere (maybe even the person involved in the last event; you Are synthetics after all).
Time distortion, rights of sentient beings, human morality, coping, the quest for self-discovery- yeah, I can see all of these elements coming into play.
I also intended this to be my first major attempt at a mind-fuck roleplay.
*sighs*
Guess I need to go have a chat with TS, then...

*strums fingers together*

Here's one:

You are one of two groups trapped in an insane asylum run by condescending doctors and vicious orderlies. The thing is, you know you aren't insane; you know you shouldn't be here. Most of all, you know that magic is real- you have seen it with your own eyes. That's what got you into this place, but nobody believes you- or at least, they won't say it out loud.
A little background:

You have a medieval world of magic, and you have a modern world just like the world you live in, full of science and technology. Neither of the two interact, because they are completely unaware of their parallel existence. However, portals exist connecting the two: tiny, man-sized rifts in time and space. Stories have been told in your modern world for years about wild men and women coming out of the woods to the northeast of your hometown, remnants of some primitive tribe, but you always thought they were just stories.
So one day you go into those forbidden woods to explore, and as you walk you hear a scream. You run to find the source, to see if you can do anything to help. You are joined, perhaps by friends and associates, perhaps by complete strangers.
And you witness magic.
    Not sure how yet, but you see it, right in front of you.
And then you were captured, and thrown into this massive madhouse.
Now you must find a way to escape this place, discover and stop whatever it is the doctors have planned for you, and hopefully prove that you aren't crazy. If only it were that simple...

You are joined by the flip side, the second group of players, once inside the asylum. These are warriors, sneaks, and mages from the other side of the portal, kidnapped and imprisoned for some unexplained purpose. All of you will have to work together if you intend to navigate the complex and get home with your minds still intact.



Oookay, with the intro out of the way, let's get to some info you might actually find useful as a player:
You can choose for yourself or be chosen by random lot to be either a person from the world of here and now or from the world of magic
If you choose magic, you come from a place that is like your classic d&d setting: feudal lords, kings and queens, adventurers and villains, dragons, orcs, elves, dwarves, wizards and sorcerers, blah blah blah. Since you were stupid enough to be wandering in the wilderness and just happen to stumble through a magic portal to another dimension, you are probably going to be an adventurer, a barbarian or a ranger, something along those lines. You don't know what you are doing here, or what this place is, or why these things are being done to you and why you are completely unable to stop them. These strange individuals fill you full of strange liquids, watch you with weird mechanical insects, and tell you over and over that the world you were born and raised in was a lie, a fantasy that you made up.
If you choose today, you can be pretty much anybody you want- you just have to be within the boundaries of regular humanity. No superpowers, no secret government experiments, no magic- you are a regular person. Sure, you can be a hacker, or a soldier, or a musician, or a politician (though if you do this, I will kill you), you just have to be able to come up with an excuse as to why you are wandering around a national park when pretty much no one else is around. For your part, you have no idea what's going on, so you will have to handle the reality of magic and monsters and all that jazz being real in your own way, whether 'your way' is a simple 'kk' or involves you running around screaming. You also have no idea who these people are, what they want, or even where you are. You understand that you are underground, in some kind of institution, where no one questions your stories, only that they tell you you are wrong in that condescending fashion a lot of psychologists seem to have. It's like something out of a movie, only you don't think you are going to like the ending...
Oh yeah, all of you can also tell that a few of the doctors hang back to the shadows, and they look like they might know what's up. Whenever you try and speak to one, however, they just smile and walk away. Kind of annoying, honestly.
Character interactions and character relationships will of course be up to you, so choose your words carefully

Brimstone roleplay
This role-playing campaign was inspired by the plot of the original Bloodrayne video game. Basically, millennia ago there was a powerful demon/devil who made a play to rule the world. His opponents, being unable to destroy him completely, ripped him into pieces and scattered them throughout the world, in the hopes that they would never be reunited, for then the demon would awaken.
In the game, this action was in vain, for by the start of the game, many cults had been established around the demon and were dedicated to finding his remains. The foremost among these cabals was, ironically, the Nazis. The members of the GGG (geggen geist grupp) under the direction of Jurgen Wulf, were dedicated to assembling these artifacts to give Hitler an edge in the war.
You the player stopped both Wulf and the reborn demon, thus saving the world.

I thought it would be a cool idea to run a game based on this concept, except with a broader range. The deposed demon with his scattered parts would still be the crux of the game, probably with even greater prominence. Your heritage as a player (the protagonist of the game is a half-vampire) may or may not change. Biggest difference would probably be that it would be at least a bit more modern, and would be focused on a group (hopefully) rather than a single individual. I’m not saying it Has to be a large group in order to play; it could very likely be run solo, it would just make more sense for it to be more.

To elaborate a bit more, who or what you are specifically, either in terms of occupation or species, is yet to be determined. You might be vampire, you might be mage, you might be vanilla human. You might be a professional occult hunter, or you might be Joe/Jane Schmoe
Also, if whatever demon lord in this game really was ripped into a thousand pieces, you wouldn’t likely find entire sections of his body. Eyes, sure, I can give you that. A couple teeth that happened to stick together- I guess that’s fine. But multiple ribs? Entire hands? Sorry, but that just doesn’t make sense. That being said, there will be more parts of him, and they will probably be smaller. This also allows for more of an open world for you to explore, that you are almost forced by necessity to explore, as these pieces could literally be anywhere.
Your job would be, of course, to gather these relics. The more you gather, the more powers you will have access to, and/or the stronger those powers will become. This will be especially evident in the case of the hands or the ribs- if you can somehow manage to assemble the entire set, or close to it, the power that it gives you will be virtually unmatched.

If anyone has an idea of powers that the bones of a demon lord might give you, feel free to speak up.


Now here's one that a few of you might get a kick out of:
I have an idea for a pseudo-Starcraft roleplay.

Basically, you start off as something like Sarah Kerrigan in chapter 2 of the first game. You are born from biomass into a force much like the Zerg Swarm- a collective hive-mind comprised of billions of organisms spread across thousands of planets, constantly seeking improvement, adaptation, perfection.

You and your comrades are the latest developments of the Hivemind- special units, given something passing for free will and free thought. You were born from something that was not the dross animals that are normally assimilated; you are- different.
Therefore you have been given a small expedition colony to test what you are capable of. The Hivemind wants to see what you can do, how effective you are, how you can help expand and improve, aid and abet the Swarm. Just keep in mind, while special, you are no Cerebrate. You have been given some small forces that you can manipulate as you see fit, but you still have a Brood Mother overseeing things, and you still have the Hivemind to answer to for whatever actions you take. Even if the psychic presence were taken out of the equation, all you have are several thousand organisms that may or may not remain loyal to you if you decide to rebel, against the hundreds of millions held in sway by the Cerebrates.

Other than that , you can do anything. You can decide what to build, what the make-up of your army will be, what upgrades to make, what creatures you decide to experiment on and why. If you decide to invade a human hospital in order to genetically reverse-engineer bio-weapons from their illnesses to use against them, hey, you can have organisms dedicated directly towards that purpose. The only thing you need to worry about is the conflict you may have between your fellow specials
...and of course all the varied factions who want to wipe the Swarm from the map of the universe.

DISCUSSION:

given that the 'chosen hero' trope is ridiculously overused, what would be a better plot for an epic story?
Wrong/Right Place at Right/Wrong Time?
Tragic Happenstance?
Pure Accident?

Come in
Speak your peace
We're all Dying to know your opinion...

All of them are overused, namely in anime, but if I had to choose, I'd say that in my opinion right/wrong place at the right/wrong time or tragic happenstance would make for a better plot. They're a lot more believable than a chosen hero awakening some hidden power or other crap. Plus, if you want to go "that" route, people can relate to it more, as more than likely everyone has been in a situation where they've been caught in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time, or (less often) have had something tragic happen to them that led to something else.

But relating to the reader/viewer is dumb.

Case and point; it's just more realistic and believable.

If you think they are overused, how about something original?


Kind of the point: what is something YOU would like to see done?
If you could have a group of animators, actors, producers, etc. that would make anything you could script, what is something You would want them to make? What is a story You would like to brought to life?

Abstain:

Anything I can think of has already been done or thought of, therefore, I would be unable to answer the question accurately

lol


It's true.

Here's a quick thing while I am thinking about it:

You (the players) are the senior students at a magic school of some sort.
As one of your final trials before you can graduate, you not only have to do field work (i sense the presence of adventure hooks...) but you also have to take on one of the new class of freshman as an apprentice, to show them the ropes and give them a feel for what they should expect through their next several years in magic school.

So the game will literally start out with you meandering through throngs of wide eyes and fretful faces, trying to pick out which person you want as your 'partner' from among the rest of the wild and fascinating crowd. You have your standard variations of mages (enchanter, illusionist, evoker, etc), but you also have a far more diverse variety: elementals, part-dragons, part-demons, part-angels, faeries; hell, there are even some non-arcane types up in here.

And once you get your partner, the rest of the game will revolve around your interactions with that individual. There will be quests and missions, of course, but these only serve as a means for you to handle a plethora of extremes with this individual, to see how you, your abilities, your teaching style, and your personality shape this young mage.

Will they be heroes?
Villains?
Monsters?
Maniacs?
Or will they just be regular wizards?

.
..
...
Nah, not possible with this crew.

But yeah, that is the premise of the game. little bit of dungeons and dragons meets harry potter plus something i'm sure i'm forgetting

Later

Here's a thing I thought of in Personality today:
A number of years ago, there was a psychological researcher by the name of Harlow. This man believed that there was a science to love
that you could put love in a laboratory, under a microscope, and study it.

This researcher was also responsible for an experiment some of you may have heard of, where he took rhesus monkeys, and separated them from their mothers directly after birth. He have them a choice between two surrogate mothers, one that was made out of cold wire, and dispensed food, and one that was warm and cuddly, but provided no sustenance.
without exception, the monkeys chose the mother that provided them comfort over the cold mother that offered them food. In times of simulated danger, this behavior became even more distinct and visible. Harlow concluded that there is something intrinsically important about comfort, nurturing, bonding, and relationships, something coded into our very genetics, something that makes us regard love as more important even than food.
My thought on this was two-fold:
First, it strikes me as interesting that actual protection was never tested as a variable. It might have been beyond the scope of the experiment, and beyond the mental capacity of the subjects to recognize a mother’s protection when they saw it. Still, I wonder what results may have been yielded had the wire mother offered protection from danger as well as food…
Second, it made me think up a short roleplay- not so much of an action or sci-fi necessarily, though it may have elements of it, but more of a dramatic rp, where the players are abductees of an underground lab furthering Harlow’s work and attempting to formulate love, trust, stability, etc. Inter-character relationships and emotional reactions would be the mainstays of the game, where the players have to learn to lean on one another to find a way out of the lab, either by giving the scientists what they want (whatever that may be) or by going through them.

In all honesty, it would probably make a better story than a roleplay, but I thought it might amuse a few of you

Two things!

1) Hero Lawyers- an anime about a group of lawyers, a small part of a larger faction, all of whom work for a big company CEO. This group finds out that their boss has recently, done a batman, as it were, and become a vigilante by night. The thing is, the man is either a complete idiot, or has such blatant disregard for even vigilante rules that he is going to get himself caught. This group of lawyers tries their level best to keep that from happening, and the anime is really us as the audience following them around trying to deal with their boss’ crazy shenanigans

2) Cure for stupidity- roleplay idea. It is said that there is no cure for stupidity, but what if a pharmaceutical company managed to finagle a way to increase the brain’s capabilities, thereby rendering stupid people normally, reasonably intelligent. That is all well and good, until a swarm of people, from students to businessmen, snatch them up and start taking them in an attempt to become smarter. Only then do the side effects start to become known- the drug increases processing capacity and overall brain function, but any preexisting mental conditions are amplified in their effects also. Not only that, but it also becomes evident that a small percentage of the users are developing psychic abilities, and that number starts to grow at an alarming rate.
Where will this end, no idea
But would it not at the very least be entertaining?

This kind of came from a hodgepodge thought involving shadows, the Legend of Zelda, and Neverwinter Nights 2

You are a humble laborer, maybe a herder or a lumberjack, when one day you are assaulted by a group of brutal humanoid monsters (orcs or somesuch). Before they can butcher your prone form, the sky turns red, and it starts raining a viscous black goo.

Stuff and such

You become the puppet, servant, and 'pet' of some otherworldly shadow-being, and are directed to go save a princess who has been kidnapped by a powerful warlock from the same world as your new master
You do so, finding out all sorts of new things about your improved and imprisoned self, only to find out after you have gotten the princess back home that the princess was left with a curse that will drain her of her life, and the shadow warlock, much like you, can't normally die, and is still walking about, so you get to continue your quest to free the princess of her curse

A couple of interesting mechanics: you can't really die. your master says so. It will hurt, and the process of coming back is terrifying, but you are not allowed to leave the mortal coil. However, death will be punished; after all, energy has to be expended to bring you back. So, you will suffer pains and restrictions, and any gifts given to you by your master can be taken back until your master is satisfied enough with you to return them.
However, death is also a necessity, as it is the only way you can 'level up'. If you die regularly or without accomplishing anything, you will be punished, but if you take your toll before dying, if you accomplish enough goals, etc. your master will give you new abilities and bring you back at full strength.

Oh, also, the more you die, the less 'human' you become, the less of 'you' is actually left. Die too many times, and you will eventually not be worth bringing back anymore. Choose your deaths wisely.

Finally, your master is always with you, in one fashion or another. He can speak to you, he can touch you , manipulate you, strangle you, shackle you, whatever he wants. He may be a malicious, condescending asshole, but it would be wise of you to learn how to please him, however much you may dislike it.

I am reminded of a campaign idea I had a couple of years ago when I was in high school. I originally scrapped it because it was character creation is a bit railroaded, but I have since heard of a lot worse, and I think it would still be interesting

This idea centers around a group of five (possibly six) tribes that gather every year for a series of festivals and spiritual rites. these tribes were based around talents and skills that they were well-versed in and well-known for. These included:
A tribe of hospitality, which stayed on the festival and sacred grounds year-round, and made sure that the place was ready for visitors. during festival they tend to the needs of all the others.
A tribe of fearlessness, who were whalers, stern and hard-nosed individuals who lived by skill rather than strength
A tribe of strength, boisterous and amiable warriors, whom the above tribe are rivals with
A tribe of merchants, who travel the world carrying goods and information, and bring news to their northern cousins
and a tribe of secrets, a mysterious bunch, the smallest tribe, who oversee the rites themselves, and are the spiritual leaders of the tribes

the reason i say it was a bit railroaded is because every player would be from a different tribe, and you had to take certain characteristics into account for each. Then again, I guess characters kind of already do that.

Campaign starts off in the Northern circle, with all the tribes gathering and preparing for the festivities. At the height of celebration, one of the members of the secret keepers (probably the PC from the tribe) has a vision calling for a quest. Through decision and through volunteering and competition, the individuals are chosen for the quest (the PCs, of course) and they depart the next morning.

The quest takes them around the world, testing their bodies, their minds, their spirits, and their relationships, both the good (friendships tested) and the bad (rivalries come to a head, and decisions must be made or all will die), and eventually it is revealed that a great power challenges both their homes and families, and the world


Still not sure completely how it would work, but I still like the idea.

Update for Kingdom's Fate:

I have known that the king, whoever and whatever he is, has powers, over the land and the people. He is after all the king, he who protects and rules over his people, and keeps them safe. That is why he is loved, because he has done so much for his people.

But that was a sticking point for me, because if he was so powerful, then why couldn't he save his family and other loved ones from dying off?

And then it hit me, three critical reasons

First and foremost, while you will hear stories about the kings of old shaping the landscape and crushing the minds of the most powerful archmages, the kings much like normal people are all different, so it makes sense that they would have different powers from one another. The current king should be no exception

Secondly, whatever powers the king has are linked to his moods. He may be mighty, but when he for whatever reason cannot save his loved ones from untimely and sometimes gruesome deaths, that takes its toll. He feels helpless, he gets depressed, and his powers become next to nothing. When he gets a ray of hope however, his powers return stronger than ever. But be wary, moods can shift on a dime, and hope is a perilous precipice if there ever was one.

Finally, kind of spoiler-y but there is a reason that the king cannot find and stop what is causing his family's deaths, and it is basically and simply that power users of this type cannot affect one another


Just had to throw these out there. I'm out

Idea for ‘superpowers’
Kind of like Bioshock, with some differences
Substance that allows you to rewrite your genetic code, giving you enhanced abilities
Thing is, unlike in Bioshock, you have to sacrifice something, change something about yourself, in order to make ‘room’ for the incoming material. These sacrifices will (often) have consequences, some of which will be acutely serious (immediately serious) while others will be chronic (minor at first, but building to be even more severe late-game).
An example of a chronic sacrifice would be melanin. Immediate consequences, especially for minor abilities and changes, would just be a change in skin coloration. You would start burning easier and be sensitive to certain kinds of light. Late game, however, you would be sallow and sickly, and would be vulnerable to all kinds of illnesses and infections, including early-onset, rapid-development cancer. Your skin would develop growths, grow tight or loose, begin sloughing off, etc.

Also, another change would be that each player would have a random affinity for such changes. Some people can change very easily, and don’t need to sacrifice or change much to get what they want. Some people are very hard to change, and trying to push too hard either won’t work or will make them sick and kill them. Some people even have affinities for certain kinds of changes.
Not only that, but each time they try changing their genetic code, roll for success. Some people will get very lucky, gaining godlike abilities, but may fail every other attempt to change it thereafter, or is simply unable to change it again, period. Some people will get very minor changes, small abilities, but will be able to get very many of them. And everything in between those extremes is also possible.

Final note, though: The players, barring a certain shall we say ‘plasmid’ will never know what type they are. All rolls and determinations are done by the dm, and kept secret.
Maybe using all three, or even just the top two, would be a bit much. The bottom one might give the dm too much power, or at least the illusion of it, destroying the trust of the players.
Still, I think it would be cool

The Bone Library- besides normal tomes and scrolls, it contains dozens, hundreds of unique volumes written on rolls of bones, carefully matched and carved to align in different ways to roll, lock, and be read

believe it or not, 'dancing mania' is a thing, not just a wii game

the dancing plague of 1518 in what is now eastern france is the most notable example of a form of mass hysteria in which people literally danced for days until they simply died.

There is now agreed-upon medical explanation

This will be a thing in some campaign.


Also, don't know if anyone will be on, but if you happen to be passing through, would you mind giving me a gentle reminder to post the Achilles' Vector nonsense?

In the past the PCs helped a noble. The noble died recently, and the PCs are delivered a message that he left something for them in his will. Upon arriving, they find that he left them his desk and everything in it, and for some reason his family is suing them to get it.


You are at the gym, working out, getting ready for your martial arts class. Suddenly a group walks in. they look around furtively, and then they all turn and focus on you. They stalk over, introduce themselves, and then pull you to the sparring mats.
They are not gentle. They take turns beating the crap out of you. Only when you are collapsed on the floor do they tell you that they are adventurers from another world, and that they just decided they were recruiting you.

Here is a fucked up way to start a video game:

You are an individual who was captured, gene-modified, and upgraded as part of an on-site transformation to make you into a virtually unstoppable killing machine.
If you have ever seen the Quake 4 stroggification sequence, it would be something like that, except a lot more detailed, and a lot more hardcore.

Anyway, you are part of a group of gene-soldiers created in this fashion, but somehow the controlling device in your head malfunctions, and you regain free will.

You were part of an initiative to create a pack of the most dangerous killing machines on the planet
And now, your very first mission (of the entire game, mind you) is to kill all the others who are there with you (all of whom possess the same upgrades and capabilities that you do, of course)

Diablo II challenge: you are only allowed to keep/use the first magic item you find in a given area, the first time (barring of course the fact that you can’t use it, either due to ability or class restrictions).
Make it even more fun by only allowing one set of potions and disallowing scrolls


(PS: should I making a gaming in general topic? I should make a gaming in general topic. After all, this section is meant to be for actually designing games of my own, not commenting on other games)

Advanced nerve-gear, involving direct connection of system control and nervous system, allows for hyper-realistic gameplay.
Group of ‘nerve-junkies’ jump the nerve net and directly into the main web.
A new war, a cyber war, starts between these free runners and government agencies.

A girl, former nerve junkie, has escaped the nerve net after a very traumatic experience
She got pulled from the system after her building lost power, finding her body a wasted wreck and her two best friends dead and rotting in the rigs next to her, obviously dead for days. Her other friends are long gone
Government agents corral her, and through several ways convince her to go back (likely to rescue someone she cares about)
She is terrified of going back in, but she does so
Unbeknownst to her, the agents have no intention of letting her return to meat-space. They hook her into a permanent nerve-gear rig, bit by bit as the game progresses. (hear monitor early, arm/hand jack as she gets weapon upgrades, finally a spinal tap as the plot twist is revealed)
She was only meant to be an expendable, a one-mission runner, but her talent, tenacity, and potential with connectivity made the agents change their minds and work her into a full-time nerve junkie again. This would include force-feeding her drugs and stimulants, the kinds that normally turn people into nerve junkies in the first place.
So, the goal becomes not saving the life of another, but saving her own, in a virtual world where her every move and thought can be monitored and manipulated. And in fighting back and saving herself, she becomes entangled in the depths of the war itself…
People use various drugs and simulations to heighten the experience on the nerve net
Generally, the less ‘jacked-in’ you are to the net, the more difficult it is to kill you, but the more jacked in you get, the more ‘space’ you have to work with to add abilities, items, weapons, and pretty much anything else you can dream and rig up.

“A nav-bar? Seriously? Just save us some time and disable that.”
“what? Why—“
“where I am going nav bars are either useless or an advertisement billboard to anyone around that you are easy code. I am Not going out of this room with that active”
While the stereotypical gamer is an overweight slob, the ‘average’ nerve-junkie is thin and sickly, malnourished, and has a dazed, empty kind of look, as if unused to seeing a world without stats, reticles, hubs, or other such clutter.
While most death in nerve gear is not ‘permanent’, it is very real to the brain and body, and can cause major physical and psychological trauma. And there are still ways to kill someone in nerve space, as well as an equal number of ways of making it permanent.
Video games train players to make important decisions faster (considering the setup of the nerve net, and the fact that the more experienced players are more jacked in, in general even without upgrades reflexes and reactions of those players will be higher than those of virtually anyone else
Nerve net usernames and appearances tend to run the gamut, from plain to ostentatious to ridiculous.
Users with Latin usernames are widely considered to be tryhards.
Someone, Anyone, Everyone- all of these are usernames
Anybody is also. Her story is pretty sad, much like the main character’s, except instead of it running her out of the nerve net, she sank even deeper into it. If you want to get an idea of how her character should sound and act, think of Simba in the Lion King, right after Mufasa is stampeded.


This was an idea I had for a video game that I just thought was cool.
An important mechanic would be that, similar to Portal and Half-Life, the entire game takes place in first-person perspective, even and especially when the character switches between the nerve net and the real world, to emphasize how realistic the experience feels, not just to the player but to the character, who is herself a player in a much larger game.
Actually, a better comparison would be Booker DeWitt from Bioshock Infinite, as this MC actually does speak, quite a lot actually

Random notes for Kingdom's Fate:

Mercenary Guild

Doppleganger detective


Cleaning House Chapter
either the advisers or the knights will be first
officials
the guards/watch
military?
court nobles or the king's own champion
came back from extended hiatus to take his place at the king's side once again. Will he be accepted, remade, or replaced?


Also, update for the nerve-gear adventure:

even the most basic nerve gear can fully immerse you in the virtual world, senses and all. Better rigs allow for effective hypersensitivity.

Some of the main companies developing and marketing nerve gear were targeted, and started fighting back, particularly in providing/building gear for nerve junkies in the war. some of the figureheads of those companies are major players on the net that the MC will be forced to encounter

Here is a bitch of a plot twist for the virtual war game:


Girl has finally gotten her allies the victory, the enemy has been beaten. She finally gets back into her own body
To find that her nightmare past has returned, and parts of her body are beginning to atrophy and necrose.

She begins having a panic attack, and desperately tries to tear herself out of the rig, hurting herself in the process. At that moment, one of her allies bursts through the door and stops her from further damaging her own body.
And they just sit there for a minute, letting the psychological and emotional stress vent.
Finally, her ally gets up to start releasing all of her restraints and implants

He gets shot in the back of the head

The girl can only stare in horror as a government man steps through the doorway thanks her for getting the rebels to reveal themselves. Now, he says, the real extermination can proceed.

She begins to plead, to beg, as the man approaches the controls on the wall. He throws a switch on the panel and the power to the room is cut off. The girl’s final scream is cut off as the screen cuts to black