RP concept idea...want thoughts! :)

So...you run into someone in game with the following bio (well it would be more fleshed out...but this is just a quick go at it)...

The hero known as [insert hero name here] has shown up at every awakening of the well. Vanishing when it's effects become dormat once again.

In reality, [inset hero name here] is Suzy. An autistic child who lives in the reality. All of Paragon is but her dream, only [insert hero name here] doesn't know this.

...blah blah blah...there you go. The basics.

Now if you saw that bio, would it be all upsetting? Easily worked around, since [insert hero name here] doesn't even know the truth herself, so couldn't go saying annoying things like "Lol you're my imagination"

Is it any different than anyone else who has a "It's because of me this game effect is how it is" in their bio?

Needs a snowglobe.

Well....I don't really know why you'd mention it in the bio if she isn't aware of it really? That's my only thing with it. If the character doesn't know it, and its not going to come up (which, it really shouldn't) then putting it there seems nothing more than a sort of self-justification of 'just so you know, this character is cooler than you'.....

It's a pet peeve of mine, so yes I would be kinda peeved about "Paragon City/Rogue Isles is all this person's dream, and could thus be ended with a thought" characters.

Then I'd just ignore the bio and be on my merry way.

I have a conspiracy theorist character who believes this is true of another character. In other words, he believes the world may well be the direct result of the dreams and thoughts of an 11 year old girl controlled by another player. That player, of course, has never agreed to the idea, it's just all in my character's head. Of course, he's wrong.

At least he's probably wrong.

Right?

I have issues with the entire world of Paragon being a dream to the girl. If the hero himself was a dream but didn't know it, I'd be perfectly fine with that.

I just have issues with the reality of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles being the dreams of someone else. It's almost as if saying, "When this person wakes up, everything is gone." If the hero suddenly vanishes, people wouldn't suddenly cease to be, and they may be concerned that the hero vanished without a trace, but then the next night the hero appears suddenly again as if nothing happened, that makes for a little more believability.

The obvious problem aside of one character having no way to read another character's bio unless you assume telepathy or something, my RP reaction would be...

"Yeah. Right. Sounds to [me/my character] like Suzy is a delusional megalomaniac. [I/My character] is obviously real, not the fever dream of some little girl."

After all that's how I would react to someone in real life if they came out and said, "You and everyone you know and love are not real, but rather merely the imaginings of an autistic child."


My non-RP reaction to reading that bio would probably be indifference. It's an interesting concept, and I don't have any problem with anyone RPing that.

After all, each and everyone one of our characters is the star of our gameplay. If I've just finished the Positron TF part II with Character X, then it was Character X and his/her team who saved the Overbrook Dam and defeated Dr. Vahzilok, not you and your team who do it 5 minutes later, or Joe and his team who did it yesterday.

I have two words for all of you.

Tommy Westphall.

((I think you'd be better off re-thinking the concept just a little. Why couldn't she just be transporting from her reality to Paragon in her dreams and thinks it's all her imagination?. To me it would be more interesting if she *thought* she was dreaming everything. It might even make her that endearing crazy girl whose delusions people are willing to patronize. But, like others have said, if you want to go with your original concept, then I wouldn't put it in the bio. If she doesn't realize it then only her driver should know about it. Play it the way you want, but I think it's obvious that some people will have issues with it. ))

As long as I never have to actually address the idea ICly, doesn't bother me. Though admittedly I'm not sure what putting it in the bio accomplishes if no one is ever going to find out or have to address the idea.

BTW, you didn't just read Dwayne McDuffie's Six Degrees of St. Elsewhere over on CBR by any chance, did you?

Tommy Westphall, an autistic child, shows St. Elsewhere was all a dream in a snowglobe. By inference, so is half of television.

What Smersh said. I ask because Comic Book Resources just happened to repost Six Degrees of St. Elsewhere today as a tribute to McDuffie.

Reminds me of the scene from The Big Goodbye;

"Tell me something, Dix. When you've gone... will this world still exit? Will my wife and kids still be waiting for me at home?"

To which Captain Pickard responds; "I honestly don't know."

I'm referring of course to the Holodeck. When one of the holo characters learns that it's all an illusion.


Now exploring this further leds me to believe that yes, in a way, the world will still exist and his wife will be waiting for him, even when the holodeck is turned off. As the next time the program is turned on, the computer would 'fill in the blanks' as it were. So the next time Dixon Hill encounters that particular detective, he has all the memories he would need. All the nights at home with his family. True, they are just 'added' in after the fact by the computer but who is to say that doesn't make it real?


Alternatively you have what I call the 'Choices' issue to deal with. In this theory, every choice that could be made, is made. Thus creating an incalculable amount of parrall dimensions. 1 dimension for ever single choice for ever single living entity...
In this theory the girl who's dreaming Paragon City resides in one dimension, a dimension that doesn't have a Paragon City. This does not mean that if she was to die we would all simply vanish because.
We exist in our own dimension simply as a result of her original choice.
Therefor, even though we were created by her, our own existence isn't tied to her in any tangible way.

Who dreams the dreamer?

I have an Alt that has a somewhat similar backstory. I don't bother to RP so it really doesn't bother most. Suffice it to say, this character was an avid gamer in 2006. He was playing his new favorite alt when a mysterious force projected his essence into said avatar. He goes from being a nobody gamer to being an actual living and breathing superhero. Paragon city is fleshed out and alive for him. No longer being pixels on a screen.
He alone knows that this entire universe is the mere creation of a team of Developers. Yet he is trapped. After so many months he begins to forget his previous life and slowly acclimates to this new world.

In the view of my alter ego, the world of CoH is just another simulated reality in a giant server farm that she's hacked into for s&gs, I have no problem with the concept, but its not something she advertizes, its all through allusion and curious arranged 'coincidences' with other RPers over stuff. I think if you wanted to go that way its fine but keep the people 'knowing' to RPers you talk to OOC about it first and not a public bio posting

As long as you all understand that this entire universe is the product of my imagination and nothing any of you do can prove to me you actually exist.

I'm not sure how the delusion that I'm part of Suzy's dream would impact interaction with the hero character. In theory it wouldn't, but you've gone and told us this isn't The Real World. How are you going to make it interesting to RP with your character, when you've already told the people you play with that any Rp/interaction with your character is the product of Suzy's imagination? Doesn't mean it can't happen, but as a thinking live person (prove it) I'm not really willing to try very hard if everything my character does is dismissed as the other PC's imagination, and not even that, but the imagination of a 3rd non-active PC that the in game avatar isn't aware of being an avatar for

What's the story potential? Is your character ever gonna become aware of the situation? Is Suzy gonna manifest at some point? Are you the player gonna be happy if your hero becomes aware, starts talking about it IC and other players and characters begin to dismiss you/your character as a loon? I can see it as a neat end to a Story, an else worlds, but it's a tough row to hoe ongoing

The whole appearing when the well is active also sorta contradicts the reality being a product of Suzy, but supports the idea of autistic Suzy projecting into the CoH reality, or perhaps, the Well reaching out to her in her more mundane reality. That arc might have some possibilities you could work out with lots o folks. In the end it will be about how well your regular RP crowd take to the idea, the rest will just dismiss the bio and go on.

yeah the fact that it makes it seem absolute that paragon is a dream would peeve me a bit too.

I RP my character as specifically living in Real life, and he wasn't originally from paragon city, either.

What happens when two people have the same concept? Which one is actually a figment of the other's dreamstate?

RP concepts like that might work out for tabletop games, but when you're playing with thousands of other folks, you have to watch out that you're not stepping on their stories in order to write your own. In this character concept, you are simply invalidating everything about what other characters are and stand for by saying, as did Ebenezer Scrooge, "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato". After all, you make pointless their plight to save the day (or take over the world) by having them be little more than wisps of subconscious whims.

If I read that bio I would simply avoid the person. If you want to say you're the lord of all creation in your private RP, that's fine, but I'm certainly not going to take part in it.

i had a pen and paper Champions character who came from a parallel world where a fully immersive FPS was very popular. It turns out the incredibly convincing effects in the game he played were really accomplished by linking the players' minds to heavily engineered and armed clone bodies that are then gated to the parallel worlds that are used as the battlegrounds. He eventually discovers that the games actually involve real injury and death for the inhabitants of the worlds where the games are conducted and starts fighting to protect the world from native threats as well as other players of the game.

i liked the idea of a superhero with FPS themed powers who comes to realize it's not a game when they shoot others. An inversion of characters who think the world is real when it's actually a delusion.