This is one of the most brilliant and mad things I've ever read. I hope you end up bringing this together in a tangible format so I don't have to wait for False Machine: The Book: Part 2: False Machine Rising.
This isn't the first time you've mentioned a discord — is that a closed thing, or is it open to the public? No worries if the former.
I'm not really into wargames but this sounds awesome. Love the setting, so many ideas that are thematically and aesthetically interconnected in complex ways.
I've tried to explore some of these more abstract causal/time ideas as well, everything from multidimensional causality as sudoku, time as a stateful system, time manipulation as source control management, causality as surrealist dreaming; spacetime as relative yet manipulable via something like fractal box counting or probabilistic modeling or graph theory; but it always ends up requiring some combination of a deeper understanding of systems or of non-linear or non-binary or abstract thinking than most people are capable of or willing to engage with, or like in this case, the ideas are so complex and abstract that it's hard to make anything concrete or functional or practical out of it.
Part of the problem is, you're trying to manipulate reality within a game, where a game is already a model of reality. Yes, by virtue of being a model it can be more easily manipulated, but the premises are already fatally flawed; you are operating within the confines of reality in the first place, or at least some sufficiently overlapping consensus of reality.
And even if you transcend consensus reality via some means or another, then you run into the problem like I was saying before where most people can't or won't engage with it, and that maybe speaks to the efficacy of what you'd be doing even as it paradoxically makes it unmeasurable.
It's as though the failure to be able to gamify this kind of idea is itself the closest approximation of a success state.
Really, this will be much better if you team up with someone to write proper rules for your game. I respect you’re not into that sort of nuts & bolts stuff, but if you want this to be anything more than another forgetable “rule of cool” 28-style offering, you have to make sure there’s an actual game there. So much of this stuff falls flat when the initial excitement of flipping through the rulebook has passed 🙄
it says right at the top that its an idea for a game, not the rules for a game... tell me you arent a creative without telling me you arent a creative vibes
Yes, it does, but it also displays a very casual attitude towards rules, with lots of imaginative ideas that are hard to translate into playable game mechanics. In an RPG of a certain type you can get away with this more easily than in a miniature game. It's why The Doomed looks great at first glance and falls somewhat flat when you actually get down to playing it. This proposal sounds like The Doomed on steroids by someone who has never actually written a miniature game and isn't terribly interested in rules. I'm sure it'll be a great read and fire the imagination. Less convinced a lot of great miniature game play will come out of it. Let's hope I'm wrong :-) Go Patrick!
This is one of the most brilliant and mad things I've ever read. I hope you end up bringing this together in a tangible format so I don't have to wait for False Machine: The Book: Part 2: False Machine Rising.
This isn't the first time you've mentioned a discord — is that a closed thing, or is it open to the public? No worries if the former.
I'm not really into wargames but this sounds awesome. Love the setting, so many ideas that are thematically and aesthetically interconnected in complex ways.
I've tried to explore some of these more abstract causal/time ideas as well, everything from multidimensional causality as sudoku, time as a stateful system, time manipulation as source control management, causality as surrealist dreaming; spacetime as relative yet manipulable via something like fractal box counting or probabilistic modeling or graph theory; but it always ends up requiring some combination of a deeper understanding of systems or of non-linear or non-binary or abstract thinking than most people are capable of or willing to engage with, or like in this case, the ideas are so complex and abstract that it's hard to make anything concrete or functional or practical out of it.
Part of the problem is, you're trying to manipulate reality within a game, where a game is already a model of reality. Yes, by virtue of being a model it can be more easily manipulated, but the premises are already fatally flawed; you are operating within the confines of reality in the first place, or at least some sufficiently overlapping consensus of reality.
And even if you transcend consensus reality via some means or another, then you run into the problem like I was saying before where most people can't or won't engage with it, and that maybe speaks to the efficacy of what you'd be doing even as it paradoxically makes it unmeasurable.
It's as though the failure to be able to gamify this kind of idea is itself the closest approximation of a success state.
this is like something that happens when meditating on some of the hell realms in dzogchen/atiyoga, bravo good sirrrrrrrrrrr
Do you do any gaming online? Would love to play in one of your groups some time. I have experience!
Really, this will be much better if you team up with someone to write proper rules for your game. I respect you’re not into that sort of nuts & bolts stuff, but if you want this to be anything more than another forgetable “rule of cool” 28-style offering, you have to make sure there’s an actual game there. So much of this stuff falls flat when the initial excitement of flipping through the rulebook has passed 🙄
it says right at the top that its an idea for a game, not the rules for a game... tell me you arent a creative without telling me you arent a creative vibes
Yes, it does, but it also displays a very casual attitude towards rules, with lots of imaginative ideas that are hard to translate into playable game mechanics. In an RPG of a certain type you can get away with this more easily than in a miniature game. It's why The Doomed looks great at first glance and falls somewhat flat when you actually get down to playing it. This proposal sounds like The Doomed on steroids by someone who has never actually written a miniature game and isn't terribly interested in rules. I'm sure it'll be a great read and fire the imagination. Less convinced a lot of great miniature game play will come out of it. Let's hope I'm wrong :-) Go Patrick!
If I ever make this into an actual thing I will use this as my blurb on the back cover.
Thx! :-)