play the full lifespan of a short-lived character

[David Berg]

You're created fully physically mature.  You open your eyes for the first time and have a ready-for-action body, but no knowledge or context.

Setting is undefined before play -- you could be a fungal servant of demons on Pluto, or an American soldier built for WWIII.

The sights, sounds, and smells that greet you are initially meaningless.  It is only through play that they are given meaning.

Your environment includes agents that will try to get you to do stuff.  They may be people, making claims that you can neither prove nor disprove.  You can follow, rebel, or try to forge your own path.

Whatever you do, you have one month.  At the end of the month, you die, and the game's over.

I'm imagining that encountered stimuli will be created by interpretation of random facts/color, a la Sign In Stranger.

Play group might be multiple setting-authors and one chracter-player.

I have no questions or requests yet, just throwing the idea out there so I'll remember it, and doing so here in case anyone's inspired to respond with twists and takes of their own.

[David Berg]

One implementation: you're an amnesiac who's been poisoned.

[Daniel B]

Can you say ... "Quantum Leap"? As in, David Bellisaro, Sam Beckett, Al & Ziggy, and that good old show-ending line of "Oh boy!"

Interesting idea for a game, Quantum Leap or otherwise.

[David C]

I don't know what your design goals for this are, but I could totally see buying the book *just* to read about all the different settings.  Like, you could have a paragraph on the soldiers of WWIII, another paragraph about the Slaves on Pluto, another paragraph about the mushroom people of kingdom...

[Callan S.]

Hi David,

If the agents are trying to get you to do stuff, they are speaking to you? The PC responds to language? I'd say language, even the basic stuff, involves alot of knowledge and context. I'd go so far as to say that how you understand language is actually part of your persona. So if the PC can understand language, he does have a persona, and with that, knowledge and context. Actually, come to think of it, walking is also a knowledge and context thing.

Not that this necessarily spoils the idea - I think instead it raises another interesting question of exactly how empty is the PC from the begining, or does he still have numerous biases/persona traits?

[David Berg]

Ooh, great point!  "What are these vocalizations of the beings around me?" is a nice addition to the list of stimuli in need of meaning.

As for controlling your own body, it's hard for me to envision that being a fun learning process to play through if you're human... but if you aren't, then, yeah, "How do I get from place to place," could be fun too!  I mean, as long as your body's responsive to directed effort.  A certain amount of initial uncoordination could be cool, as long as you could move beyond that without spending too much play time on it.

This game premise really could cover a range from "brainwashed secret agent on an urgent mission" to "complete blank slate of infinite disorientation".  My original inspiration is more toward the latter, but perhaps not quite all the way. 

Really, I think I'd like the answers to almost all questions to be generated during play.  Y'know, if, initially, it's possible that you could be something that's very familiar to the players, but then you turn out to be something utterly alien.  Or vice versa.

Maybe, though, there's some value in allowing some pre-play tweaking along the spectrum above.