redivider's game thread: 'the city is a battlesuit for surviving the future'

[redivider]

I might make a game inspired by this >> http://io9.com/5362912/the-city-is-a-battlesuit-for-surviving-the-future

which was the slogan of an urbanomancer char I played in a short unknown armies campaign.

here taken literally: a game in which characters are visitors from the future, perhaps pursuing one another or being pursued. And they take the mightiest products of the 21st century civilization - our mega cities - peel them off the earth's surface, and 'strap them on' as battle suits hundreds of kilometers high.

I assume that statistics about contemporary cities- their populations, growth rates, size, major industries, trade flows- would determine game stats for the cities as power armor.

I might set the game so that chars must engage with the city/ inhabitants to unlock cities as suits.

or something...

[Vulpinoid]

Sort of reminds me of the original Macross saga, with the city built into the giant transformable battleship, the SDF-1.

That's an ambitious concept. Good Luck.

[Jason Pitre]

Ambitious. You might want to take symbolic approach to account for the infrastructure and social programs in the city.  If a city has an excellent recreational baseball team, the city might be better at clubbing opponents, for example.   The better the roads, the faster the city can move.

I see the City and the Skin here, but I am uncertain if you have described any use of a third element?  The desert or the edge?   Curious how it would be included.

[Jason Morningstar]

Staggeringly cool. What would be extra awesome is if there were the possibility of games with in games as dudes fight across the cities that are themselves fighting. Maybe infiltrators can mess with the infrastructure of the Sao Paolo megasuit - blowing up power substations and plugging stormwater channels - to cripple the suit's wearer in battle.

[redivider]

Sort of reminds me of the original Macross saga, with the city built into the giant transformable battleship, the SDF-1.

That's an ambitious concept. Good Luck.

thanks for the macross example & good wishes

[redivider]

Ambitious. You might want to take symbolic approach to account for the infrastructure and social programs in the city.  If a city has an excellent recreational baseball team, the city might be better at clubbing opponents, for example.   The better the roads, the faster the city can move.

I see the City and the Skin here, but I am uncertain if you have described any use of a third element?  The desert or the edge?   Curious how it would be included.

Hi. I agree that a symbolic approach to what makes the city unique should play a role. I may tie special moves/ abilities into the chars figuring out one distinct feature of the inhabitants and one or two features of the city.

Have been focusing on city and skin. may be able to weave edge in; if not, willing to be get marked down on that front

[redivider]

Staggeringly cool. What would be extra awesome is if there were the possibility of games with in games as dudes fight across the cities that are themselves fighting. Maybe infiltrators can mess with the infrastructure of the Sao Paolo megasuit - blowing up power substations and plugging stormwater channels - to cripple the suit's wearer in battle.

Hmm, maybe in "megacity battle suits vol 2, now human lives are worth something again"

I'll think...

[redivider]

few more thoughts:

Visitors from the future/ elsewhere trying to locate nemesis partly inspired by the films Hidden (1987) and Terminator (84). The motivations of the visitors/ sojourners (escape, capture, conquest, preservation etc) may each give some kind of mechanical effect or have different victory conditions.

initial ideas for how urban data translates to suit stats:

Population 2000: strength or energy
Size: reach
Pop Density: toughness or damage points
population growth rate1965-2000: speed (get speed bonus if city ranks in top ten in airports, ports, electronic data)
Wealth/ per capita income: resources? number of movements? 

I like the idea of players describing/ drawing what the city looks like once 'put on' - perhaps visual concept has some mechanical impacts

I'm using Arjen van Susteren's Metropolitan World Atlas as my main data source. I haven't figured out how the demographic data translates to stats. Here are the world's 30 most populous metro areas as of 2000

city                           Population (millions)   Size (km 2)   Pop density   Growth 65-2000 (%)   Wealth/ income (thousand pounds)   
Tokyo- yokohma   33.2                                   5258                    6312            58                                   30.1      
Seoul-incheon           22.9                                   1191                   16725            518                                   11.9   
New York                   21.8                                   11518            1760            34                                   19.2   
Mumbai                   20                                   738                    19377            325                                   2   
Mexico city           19.6                                   1476                    11687            213                                   8   
Sao Paulo            17.7                                   1981                    8945            221                                   9   
Kobe-osaka-kyoto   16.9                                   2720                    6224            29                                   30.7   
Los angeles           16.2                                   2874                    3353            116                                   17.5   
manila                   14.1                                   1943                    7277            386                                   6.8   
cairo                           14                                   482                    27490            204                                   2   
london                   13.9                                   2263                    4172            8                                   37.2   
Calcutta                    13.9                                   1036                    13456            124                                   3   
New delhi                   13.7                                   583                    17677            376                                   2   
shanghai                   13.6                                   549                    16393            25                                   4.4   
Buenos aires           13.4                                   2771                    4042            74                                   5   
djakarta                   13.3                                   2590                    5135            202                                   6   
beijing                   13.2                                   518                    14479            71                                   3.7   
moscow                   13.1                                   981                    10064            98                                   7.8   
Rhine-ruhr           11.1                                   1823                    4171           113                                   22   
karachi                   11                                    932                    10764           424                                   2   
Rio de janeiro           10.8                                    1166            9271           104                                   8.7   
tehran                   10.7                                    290                    25359           435                                   4   
paris                           10.6                                    2721            3545           32                                   25   
istanbul                   10.4                                   1269                    8219           440                                   5   
lagos                   10                                   145                    41752           567                                   2   
tianjin                   9.9                                   127                    36394           125                                   5   
chicago                   9.5                                   5499                    1629            34                                   15   
Hong kong           9.2                                   52                    104,345           179                                   16.7   
nagoya                   8.8                                   2823                    3130            31                                   25   
dhaka                   8.6                                   83                    39554           1047                                   1.5