Ahh life is good.

Outatowners is undergoing it's final textual edit before getting all it's shiny pictures and cool layout. The system has been revemped to run on the Miscreant Engine's play-by-web format so that by downloading the PDF, players will be able to log onto the website, scrape together a playgroup, and play the same as if they were all huddled around a card table in someone's basement.

Advent of the Dying Age is under around the clock development (due more to the different time zones the developers are in moreso than by virtue of having a huge team, but hey...around the clock is around the clock) with some severely talented people.

And both Heralds of the Dying Age and Sanguine Embrace are getting thier final coats of paint before being handed over to their respective artists, printers, etc.

So...now's as good a time as any to come out with the next cool project.

It's a Sci-Fi RPG to be implemented as a MUD (it might work as a MMORPG, but it's got so much resource management, players would spend most of their time looking at lists and charts anyway...may as well MUD it). I've got a concept, a loose storyline, and the ruleset (not terrifically different from Advent...but with Big Robots!!!). The only thing I don't have yet is a title.

Yeah, can't come up with a Sci-Fi title to save my soul

Here's the hooks (kickers?...never fully graped the terminology around here. I only came to understand GNS a week or so ago) that make this game at least slightly different from what's out there.

Interplanetary travel:

The game is centered around resource wars. Corporations, governments, and guilds travelling from planet to planet establishing colonies and mining resources. This means interplanetary economies, capitol ship battles, smuggling, etc.

Build your own colony:

High-level characters will get to establish interplanetary holdings. The game uses a standard modular building system that will ensure that all colonies are built the same way, but in styles to suit the tastes of the designer.

Mech Battles:

We'll prolly call 'em Frames to avoid following the leader (although that's been used too), but characters can purchase, upgrade, and mantain fleets of orbital (flight capable) and heavy (ground-based) frames. Heavy Frames are for holding a planet, defendin it's resources, etc and orbitals are suitable for defending interplanetary trade routes.

All the cool stuff from Advent:

Okay...maybe no magic but everything else is in there. Commanding troops in widescale battle, making new characters through old ones(although...thanks to cloning and genetic engineering, it won't carry the same weight as having a family), invention and customization of objects and items (and vehicles, and warp drives..etc). Melee combat, gun battles (yeah...Advent's got pistols. Not good ones...but they shoot), and cabals of sinister individuals trying to control the action through their behind-the-scene manipulations.

Not bad for starters. Unlike Advent, I know about the forge as I'm developing it (the last one was largely edited here, although I did get a buncha cool ideas) so I figure I'll involve the Forge at ground Zero.

So...anyone got a name for this monstrosity?

- Wyld out -

There doesn't seem much particular to work with here. Is there any point, or driection, apart from just being a space in which this MUD occurs?

For such generica, usually a name alluding to space itself would be chosen. Or remoteness, or frontiers, or a feature of astrography. That at least can get you come cool factor.

That's the problem. There is a backstory, but I can't plumb a name out of it. The gameplay and system are the same used in ADA, so there's nothing startlingly groundbreaking there...except for the tricks ADA is able to pull off. Even the backstory isn't exactly revolutionary as far as Sci-Fi goes.

It basically goes like this:

Mankind makes contact with an alien race and agrees to serve them as soldiers in exchange for technology that eradicates disease, hunger, poverty, and ironically...war. Human youth undergo accelerated genetic enhancements, receive around-the-clock educational downloads to cybernetic links at the base of their spine, and receive military training en eutero through hormone injecttions designed to increase their capacity for violence.

Naturally, the old men who made this deal didn't forsee their grandchildren rebelling against it. Deciding that a life of endless galactic warfare as the mercenary soldiers of an oppressive alien empire wasn't much fun, a civil war shatters the human race as we know it. Military units become rebel factions, and eventually form their own legitimate governments on planets that they hold through sheer force of military might.

Human factions still loyal to Earth (now merely a puppet state controlled and blockaded by the alien invaders) try to eliminate the rebel groups, who control vast resources on the planets they control. Earth's own resources being long depleted, those remaining on earth both loyal to, and oppressed by, our alien benefactors are slowly dying out as the rebel colonies refuse to lift the embargo on earth.

Naturally, a conquering empire who uses other races to do their dirty work have more soldiers than just human ones. Known space is filled with battle as enemy races loyal to the alien empire do combat with both human rebels and the surviving remnants of vanquished civilizations. Bounty hunters and smugglers make profit off the conflict, and merchant guilds rise to power, only to be violently crushed either by pirates, or other merchants.

So yeah...got a lot to work with...but still no title. This is a first draft of a novel (well, not this, but the actual first draft is four hundred and seventeen pages)...still untitled. I guess I'm out of all my good titles for awhile, but this is just too much fun to walk away from while I try to come up with something snazzy.

Help Meeeeeeeeeee.

What I got from your description:


Control

... Solium Terran...

Deserter.

- Walt

A little bit pretentious, but how about:

Empire's End: The Dawn of Rebellion

?

-joshua

Create a convention whereby all the human starships have names like Compliance and Agreement, and then name the game Deference, the ship upon which the rebellion began. And have all the player characters be former crewmen or blood relatives of former crewmen of the Deference.

Paul

Revenants.

I like the naming convention for the ships. I may have to rewrite (although, knowing my editor...that's pretty much something I'll have to do anyway) to work it into the original story, but it's kinda cool.

As far as the game goes, it follows the same system as Advent, the Miscreant Engine. This means that although player-created objects will follow standards, the player gets to name 'em (and, in the event of new technologies...any unique functions they have). However, as roleplay tends to be encouraged (not enforced...I don't really think that's possible in a CRPG anyway), players may start naming their ships "Defiance", "Rebellion", and "Liberty" just to avoid getting vaporized by rebel forces.

Of course...that's the kind of gameplay the Miscreant Engine encourages. If we get a smuggling, murdering, pirate who evades capture by naming his ship the "Shining Hope", then we'll have done our jobs well. Allowing those kinds of things makes demands of our playerbase that usually, a playerbase makes of it's designers.

He's kickin' your ass? It's not because he's cheating...he's just better than you.

I don't really want to revamp ME here though so I'll provide a link for the interested or just plain curious.

The Miscreant Engine

But yeah...thanks for the names. I'm chewing on the ones I've got. I like the idea of a title in a foreign language. It'd be a first for me. I try to avoid titles that are one single word though. Just a personal preference...I write horror and just about every title is: The [blank]

Of course if my current method of titling were working, I'd have one. Also, just in case anyone does the research and calls me on it, I've got a game called Outatowners and a book called Firstborn.

I do break my one-word rule if the title truly kicks ass.

I really like the Deference idea, Paul.

Well, since I'm getting cool names and terminology out of this, I may as well toss another one out there. I'm not the one to ask when it comes to "technical" names. Even my completely made-up technologies have names that make 'em sound more Fiction than Science.

Okay, I've got "mechs" or "frames" or giant robots if you wanna keep it simple. I mentioned how player-created objects are called whatever the player wants to call them, however, the computer has to see it as a standard. In Advent, a character can forge unique weapons (Signature weapons for non-family members, Heirlooms for blood relatives or clan members). The character can name the thing whatever he wants, but the game still has to see it as a "sword" or a "dagger" or a "whip" in order to apply the correct functions and modifiers to it when it's used.

Here, I've got absolutely no standards.

It's possible to create different technologies, or objects within objects that perform different functions on their parent object (thanks shoka for that one). The way a souped-up engine would make your average car faster, you can make a souped-up engine to make your robot faster. This way, instead of buying new mechs every time you want an upgrade, you can just replace a specific part.

From a programming stance, this one's easy. Frames are pretty much functionless shells until their parts go in. The parts add functionality to what is otherwise a useless mass of metal.

So anyway...since we're naming. Does anyone have any ideas for the "standards" in the game. What to call standard weapons systems, engines, shields?