Hey Everyone!
I am opening up my world: Assent, to play-testers! It’s a linear story line right now, following a protagonist named Subject 39, a man with no past and an open future. It’s set in a sci-fi-ish world.
It is VERY short right now but I would like some feedback on the story. So please, take a look and let me know what you think!
I included a RESET card that destroys your current game so you can go back and re-read.
Thanks!
If you have any questions or comments, let me know! :)
I don’t appear to have any pinned cards. Could you look into this?
I just ran into an issue with that, do you have the Key of Dreams? If not I’ll send you one, just give me your player name. I can’t remove the requirement for that :/
Try again in a few minutes. I found a way to edit the requirement.
All requirements have been set to Zero for the Key of Dreams, let me know if that helps.
It took me a while to figure this out, but to remove a requirement, all you have to do is set the amount of it required to nothing, meaning you wouldn’t have a number entered into the minimum or maximum. I hope this helps!
Is it working for you?
Up to “Blood, it’s everywhere.” Is that as far as you’ve gotten?
Here are my initial thoughts: honestly, I’m not that into it. I’m sure part of it is my bias against things that involve divine intervention (it can be done well, but not often), but there’s also a formatting issue. You bunch all the information up into giant paragraphs when it could probably be separated into smaller ones which could be more easily read by the player. It also seems to move a bit fast, and I’m slightly confused as to what’s going on, but I’m sure it will get clearer later on. I’m rather intrigued by the world, and I think I’ll keep going.
Yeah, that’s as far as I have gone.
SPOILER
They’re not “Gods” They turn out to be Aliens that are exploiting human natures pre-disposition to follow the “Divine”.
Do you mean that I should add more Cards and break up the data that way? Or, should I just simply format the lettering differently?
I think you should at least format the letters into smaller paragraphs sections where you can. Generally, whenever someone starts talking or where the subject changes is a good place to change a paragraph.
The spoiler very much changed my opinion on what’s going on. While I’ve seen stories like that before, I very much enjoy seeing the different takes on it.
caveat that I am in a strange mood so this may be overly negative, my apologies
The use of third-person and past-tense were jarring to me - I found it a strange choice, as Storynexus games work best, I think, when there is some element of choice. Yours is more of a linear story, with no choices to be made whatsoever. Ah, I don’t know… I’m not so fond of ‘The Chosen One’ stories that somehow always involve being a drama queen, killing a lot of people, and a lot of pondering on the nature of ‘evil’. Also, the protagonist was grown, rather than growing up, and yet somehow knows how to speak, move, identify guns as being guns and humans as being humans? Such an individual would most likely have the mind of an infant, or less, though that certainly explains the whole religion thing. With no capacity for reason, uncontrolled emotion, and countless other unknowns - how have the synapses in his brain developed? by what sort of process was he ‘made’? - how could he function at all? Hell, a story about these factors I would find fascinating, but to me this story appears to be more focused on the religion/evil/bloodshed angle, and as such Subject 39 seems like an overly dramatic white-boy fantasy, and does nothing for me, sorry :/
/purely a personal and heavily biased opinion/
I though so.
Also, I’m glad it changed your opinion.
SPOILER #2
The story goes, these Aliens are in rough shape. They’re the last of their species, torn apart by an immense civil war. They are in possession of technology that can grant them to control matter on a sub-atomic level, virtually allowing them the power to “create” anything they need or to bend existing matter to their will.
However, it requires a power source that the Aliens no longer have access to, Negative (Evil) Energy. They would search the galaxy wiping out planets and absorbing the Energy they required. After a while, they ran out of Energy Sources and began to use their own species as a source eventually driving them into a civil war and near extinction.
They made an agreement with the current Government of Earth to give them this technology if the Earth agreed to let them have access to their “natural” resources. At this point in time, the Earth is in bad shape as well, the planet is polluted. In some areas the air is so toxic that people can no longer survive without the help of filtration devices.
A wide gap between rich and poor has developed, most of the wealthy live above the toxic clouds in floating cities, some even went as far as to build space stations. The poor are left to rot below the clouds, fighting among themselves doing anything it takes to stay alive. Forming militant groups that run local areas and “police” themselves.
The Earth’s Government has become so disillusioned with the Poor and their needs that instead of following the agreement with the Aliens to first regenerate the Earth to it’s former glory, they instead use it to create an army of Genetically Engineered super soldiers that will “farm” the energy from the poor populace and takeover other planets for the wealthy to live on.
The Aliens respond by gaining access to Subject 39, the 39th prototype for the super soldier project. They encode his DNA with the ability to control matter so he can exact their revenge upon the humans. They use the guise of being “Divine” to exploit human tendency to believe in a power greater than ourselves. They charge him with eliminating all Evil from the planet, slowly feeding the excess energy from him into their equipment.
This is just some background on the world, think of it as Pre-The Earth that was from firefly. Just before the Human race took off to colonize other planets.
This is only a small part of the story line. He meets other Subjects, allies with militia groups and in the end helps the Earth return to it’s former glory. All the meanwhile forming an identity, learning about humanity and ultimately what free will truly is and whether or not his presence denies humanity of that free will.
Oh, added that before seeing your reply to Charlotte plus spoiler, so hmm… - [quote=]They’re not “Gods” They turn out to be Aliens that are exploiting human nature’s pre-disposition to follow the “Divine”. [/quote] that does sound interesting, I look forward to seeing what you do with it! :)
Only I can’t find the card to wipe out my current character and start over?
EDIT: and WHOAH spoiler #2 has very much made me reconsider…
edited by Corentin Os on 10/23/2012
[quote=Corentin Os]caveat that I am in a strange mood so this may be overly negative, my apologies
The use of third-person and past-tense were jarring to me - I found it a strange choice, as Storynexus games work best, I think, when there is some element of choice. Yours is more of a linear story, with no choices to be made whatsoever. Ah, I don’t know… I’m not so fond of ‘The Chosen One’ stories that somehow always involve being a drama queen, killing a lot of people, and a lot of pondering on the nature of ‘evil’. Also, the protagonist was grown, rather than growing up, and yet somehow knows how to speak, move, identify guns as being guns and humans as being humans? Such an individual would most likely have the mind of an infant, or less, though that certainly explains the whole religion thing. With no capacity for reason, uncontrolled emotion, and countless other unknowns - how have the synapses in his brain developed? by what sort of process was he ‘made’? - how could he function at all? Hell, a story about these factors I would find fascinating, but to me this story appears to be more focused on the religion/evil/bloodshed angle, and as such Subject 39 seems like an overly dramatic white-boy fantasy, and does nothing for me, sorry :/
/purely a personal and heavily biased opinion/[/quote]
I see where you are coming from. Think of it this way (I will “fix” the story line to reflect said issues) he is intended to be a super soldier so he has had certain information input into his mind such as speech, knowledge of weaponry and combat maneuvers.
The “Divine” (Aliens) that have encoded his DNA have also had a part in this, they gave him a sense of compassion of humanity. All of this you find out just after the “Blood, it’s everywhere” section. You get to meet a few of the other Subjects and see how devoid of Humanity they are. You learn about his background and the way he was created as he finds out about it.
I’ll finish more of the story soon so it will all make sense.
Reset card should be up now.
On the reset card: [quote=]Is free will an illusion?[/quote]
Consider me intrigued! I’ve gone through again and it’s certainly a different experience with the spoilers in mind, I’ll continue with the story to see where it goes as you write more - I think it will definitely benefit from having the bigger picture starting to be incorporated - and with the story on such a large scale, the third-person makes much more sense. That, the past tense, and the single-branch storylets also add to a sense of inevitability and claustrophobia, which seems very fitting. I think I had such a negative reaction initially because of the small and closed-in nature of these very first pieces of the story, and given a sense of scale by the bones of the backstory in the spoilers, it fits much better. Maybe a small intimation of the story to come could be included in the description, where the players enter character names?
[quote=CharlottePike]Up to “Blood, it’s everywhere.” Is that as far as you’ve gotten?
Here are my initial thoughts: honestly, I’m not that into it. I’m sure part of it is my bias against things that involve divine intervention (it can be done well, but not often), but there’s also a formatting issue. You bunch all the information up into giant paragraphs when it could probably be separated into smaller ones which could be more easily read by the player. It also seems to move a bit fast, and I’m slightly confused as to what’s going on, but I’m sure it will get clearer later on. I’m rather intrigued by the world, and I think I’ll keep going.[/quote]
I’ve only gotten as far as “Blood, it’s everywhere” myself, and no matter how many times I do that card it keeps coming back and I get no other choices. Is that a bug, or is that part of the author’s plan?
Its unfinished right now. So that’s where it ends. :) I’m not near my computer but I will be in a few hours. I’ll update the storyline with all of your suggestions as soon as I’m able. I really grateful for all of the input and support you guys have given me! Thank you, thank you!