My Ideas: My Dark, Dark Admission

This idea, like many of them, has origins in many places. We'll start with the easy one. It began with a new power I wanted to give one of the species I made, one that will get its own write-up later. The gimmick was a strange one. They would create a machine which I will simply call "The Randomizer" at this point. It will take a sample of their race and give them powers that were, as the name suggested, random. It wasn't normally a permanent change, unless they were willing to sacrifice incredible amounts of power per individual involved, but it could, with luck, turn the tide of crucial battles.


The gimmick took some effort to set up. I had to come up with a few hundred random terms, and in the end I even created programs that used the randomizer, both in my calculator (man, does anyone else remember those TI-80+ that match classes expected?,) and even a simple Java variant. By this point, it wasn't just an amusing concept for the species, though. I ruled that the race did make some permanent heroes using it, and thus full characters came from it. From there, it was inspiring. I would use it when I was bored or when I was in a creative slump, letting me create entire new character concepts in seconds, often in a way that defied normal archetypal clichés. Fire-breathing dragons were one thing, but umbrella wielding bubble dragons? That was new.


This game idea started, to a degree, from those humble origins. But it had others. It also came from my interested in Star Wars and other mandatory space operas and games like Master of Orion, which revolved around the simulation of galactic empires and, well, star wars. What bothered me was how different these things were. Most good space operas aren't just about how neat the setting is; they're about characters as they grow, become friends or enemies, betray each other, fight, form rivalries, and do all the good things that happen in stories. Most space simulation games, by contrast, are clinical things where you play "yourself" as manifested through an invisible avatar. If there are any characters, they only appear as doomed leaders of other empires, and thus who you eventually conquer, and "heroes" that serve as little but sets of bonuses.


The game in question, Ascension, tried to do away with this problem by being two games at once. On one level, it's a space simulation game where you form an empire, fight galactic wars, conquer planets, yadda yadda. On the other, it's a tactical RPG where the characters have to explore ancient ruins, raid enemy space stations, and meet their equals on the others sides on the battlefield.


The game took place in a typical future. Earth was part of a neutral if strict multi-stellar empire, and they were surrounded by planet-sized nations run by charismatic leaders or, more often than not, super-powered mutants. But the real enemies in the game, at least initially, were a race of conquering aliens who already ruled half of the known galaxy. They had a disturbing belief in the value of other alien races; they made excellent spare parts. That was in fact the secret of their success, for whenever they conquered a race, they found their most powerful biological traits, harvested them, and incorporated them into themselves.


From the perspective of the heroes, the plot begins with Bellidemir, a mutant herself and an outcast on her primitive world. She had the fairly impressive ability to control water, and after a surprisingly short series of adventures, she went from outcast to leader of a small colony world. This lets the player get started in the simulation aspects of the game early, as the player turned her colony into the capital of her own stellar empire.

The RPG plot, meanwhile, was intentionally traditional, and here I injected a bit of fantasy into my sci-fi. As she gains power, she learns that once their universe was more magical, to the point where it was run by gods. However, an ancient civilization (yes, one of those,) grew so powerful that they conquered the gods, imprisoning them in a pocket plane. Bellidemir learns that if she can collect some mystical artifacts (yes, some of those,) she could enter their prison plane, defeat their jail keeper, and thus earn their thanks as a reward. It's the greatest of all prizes, though ironically the evil aliens, known as the Converged, deliberately leaked its existence to the other races. They realized all the other nations combined could destroy them, but if they fought amongst themselves, the Converged could pick them off one by one. And if they should enter the pocket plane, the jail keeper should easily destroy any who try to free the gods anyway. It was a win/win for them. Guess how the plot resolved that one.

And then I took the fantasy and added the crazy. You see, except for seven cases (possibly eight; one of them is Bellidemir's mother,) all the main characters in the game were made using the Randomizer. Even Bellidemir herself. This led to some truly crazy characters, like a pyrokineticist who was in a coma, yet still served as a combatant. Or another psychic who was trapped on an unknown alien planet and "joins" the party through various projections made of crystals. Or the former party girl possessed by an ancient samurai spirit. Or the billions of microscopic people who lived on a planet the size and shape of a normal person. The list goes on, making one of my strangest and most favorite character sets to date. And save for Bellidemir, all were optional characters that could be friend or enemy based on her actions. As for the other seven, one was a classic character brought in as a cameo, and the other six were very familiar to me. Save for some modifications, they were the characters from the old coin game, which I discussed in an earlier writing. They served as another viewpoint to Bellidemir's actions, though in the end they joined her as well.

Despite not thinking about it in a while, this is one of my favorite ideas to fall back on. The concept was original, and the two genres mix better than some might expect (though, to be fair, the concept isn't completely unprecedented; the X-Com series is one popular series that tried this.) Bellidemir is not exactly my favorite characters, but many of the others have a long-time historical appeal, including the final boss, who is unfortunately classified. But it's the randomness of the cast that remains my favorite element. I even was tempted to use it for other games, or even to make an entire game concept out of nothing, but frankly that always struck me as cheating. Well, okay, there is one exception, but that's another story for another night.