Introduction
"The Nome" was a short fictional story I wrote for the Nth Society writing competition - imagine the world. I'm not much of a fiction writer. Heck, I'm not much of a writer, period. But I find the premise of both the competition and #nth-society to be very compelling so I wanted to contribute in some way. From the competition description:
I want you to imagine the gameplay from the perspective of the game character and write a short story about it.
If you're not yet aware, Nth Society is (or will be) a computer game.
The computer game should model a free society or the conditions for a free society in some way, and be expressive enough for players to be able to interact with each other and the environment in a system which models the relevant aspects of life.
So the game is like Mineraft but with more focus on how you would live and interact with others in a free society. To learn more about Nth Society, I highly recommend reading "Nth Society explained at 5 levels of difficulty." When you're done with that, you can continue with the "off-white paper."
Purpose
I had fun imagining the Nth Society world but the writing competition only allowed for 400-600 words. I had all these ideas but I couldn't go into any detail. So instead, I wrote what I hoped would read like an excerpt from a longer story but would at the same time reveal concepts about the world and also the possible game play. It worked for some readers but not for others. That's fine though. Admittedly, I was more interested in the competition objectives than I was in writing an actual "story" as such. And like I said in the beginning, I'm not much of a writer.
So, since I couldn't go into any details in the short story, I thought I would take a separate in-depth look at what I wrote. I think it will be fun to take a deeper dive into the potential world of Nth Society. Perhaps some of my ideas will coincide with what is already planned for the game. Maybe other ideas will be novel and could be taken into consideration. Or, I could simply be way off base and @personz and/or others involved in the development can come in and set me straight.
Before we continue, you should probably read my short story first if you haven't done so already: The Nome
Let's begin
"Korrant hadn’t visited Malakai in what seemed like forever. But since he was anyway near the West Woods, he decided to take a little detour to check on his old friend."
I played Civilization a lot when I was young. In that game, you start with an undeveloped, unexplored world in 4000 BC. In Nth Society, I imagine the first players of a brand new game world starting out in a similar way where they'll need to build everything (all man-made infrastructure) themselves. My mention of "the West Woods" was to imply that this is not yet a modern world. No concrete roads or highways. No mass transportation. No modern technology.
"The last time I was here, it was just a farm. But look at it now, a bustling community. You have 20-foot walls, watchtowers, and everything."
Here, I further the idea that you start from zero and have to build everything up yourself. You find a fertile piece of land and start building a farm. Why? Well, if the game is meant to be realistic, you'll need food, shelter and clothing. Building a farm will allow you to be self-sufficient. If you work together with other players, you can progress faster and build your own communities and safer places to live. I'll be interested to see how quickly (or slowly) players come together in this regard.
I'm also interested to see how the years will go by at game speed. The idea of the game is that you are born, you grow up, and eventually die of old age (assuming you don't get yourself killed earlier). How long will it take to build a farm, a community, a city? What can one in-game character achieve or be a part of in one lifetime? If the focus of the game is more on human interactions, perhaps building and growing will be more trivial than realistic, which is fine for me.
"Yeah, it helps keep the marauders out. Not a single successful raid on us since we completed the walls."
Here, I have even more questions. Will there be non-player characters? If yes, who would they be? Marauders/Bandits perhaps? Or other types? Will players form gangs and raid other players? How would raids work? Can you be attacked while you are offline? Can you be killed? It would suck to be killed while you're offline. In a free society, people can kill other people but perhaps in the game players can only kill each other if both are online?
Speaking of raids, attacking, and killing, what kinds of weapons will be possible? I don't think I'd want any weapons that shoot projectiles. Maybe not even spears. If this is to be a social game then I think fighting and killing should be up close and personal. I think this will make players consider more carefully before resorting to violence since they will also be at risk if they're the initiators.
"I had to make a deal with Madame Sparrow for extra resources and security but it was worth it."
As in any society, there will be leaders and followers. Some will be richer, more powerful. Some will have things that others want or need. I wonder how trade and commerce will work in the game. Will a system arise naturally? Will employment also arise naturally?
Also, how will resources be gathered, stored, and transported? In fact, what resources can be gathered? I assume food and water. Will food have a shelf life? Different expiry dates for different foods? What about construction materials?
Will wood need to be converted to lumber? What about bricks? Or metal? I suppose the game can't be too realistic. Otherwise, it will get bogged down by endless details.
Anyway, I think this is enough for now. This post is already getting long and I don't even know if it's useful or not. It's just stuff I've been thinking about related to Nth Society that I wanted to write down. Hopefully, there's some value in it. In any case, I'll continue this discussion in another post.