Interest Check: Assassin's Creed (CofD/2nd Ed) Game?

[ShelBeast]

I was having a conversation the other day with someone and I don't even really remember how, but we got onto the idea of an AC game.

Last night, while I was feebly trying to sleep, my brain decided to go into fever pitch full on creative mode, and it struck on this.

So, what would people think about an AC game, using the Chronicles of Darkness/2nd Edition ruleset? For obvious reasons, it would be a Mortal only game, but overall the basic elements are all there. Tons of mystery and strangeness to the world, based on lost Ancient Aliens style tech and such... perfect for mystery cults (the Templars and Assassins basically fit this mold nearly perfectly), relics (again, the tech of the progenitor race fits this perfectly), and generally a cool world setting.

As for the breakdown of the way the game would function, the biggest problem would be on what time period and location to set it in. I had a few ideas about that. For example, it could run in seasons, with each season being a new story in a different period and location. One season could be ancient vikings, the next could be 1960's NYC, and the next could be the fall of Carthage.

Then I had another idea about it. Instead, there could be multiple timelines. Each player would log into the game with a sort of "OOC" account, and in the actual game, chose their alts. The timelines offered would act as "spheres", and you could have one alt per sphere. The OOC area would be, essentially, an Abstergo Entertainment office, and the login PCs of the playerbits would be Abstergo employees from an "IC" standpoint. So, even your OOC chatter would be a sort of metagame IC situation. From the OOC/Abstergo office, you would go into the Animus room, which is where you would select which alt you want to play and that would launch you into the grid for said alt.

With the Dark Eras sourcebook, we'd even have good coverage for replacement skills for those that wouldn't work. Perhaps some of the psychic/supernatural merits could be implemented, as well.

Anyway. Just kind of tossing out an idea, and seeing if this is something people would think would be fun to play.

[Faceless]

I fully support this idea, if only to be present to watch the failed Leap of Faith rolls.

[WildBaboons]

gives splat books a new meaning?

[Jennkryst]

What would also be somewhat interesting is if the progenitor tech also somehow created other supernatural sorts. Over time, the Templars have wiped them out, leaving our mundane world in its wake, but before, vampires and werewolves were realsies.

Or something, ignore me.

[ShelBeast]

@Jennkryst

So far, the AC series has never shown any hint that anything overtly and truly supernatural is real. That being said, there definitely seems to be some things that seem to push that idea in the new game. Like giant snakes and being able to warg a hawk or something.

[Ominous]

Assassin's Creed is an interesting setting that has created a large franchise with lots of material; however, what will the players be doing? A great setting does not lead to great gameplay. Will they just be going around killing NPCs or each other? Other than being assassins or Templars, what other options are there? With so few niches, a small number of players could come to dominate the storyline.

[ShelBeast]

@Ominous

That's just it... the stage of history is the setting in AC. While the Assassins and Templars do take center stage in the game, they're also surrounded by equally larger than life figures, embroiled in epic plots and even more historic conflicts.

You could play in any number of factions. You could play an alt that's part of the redcoat army during the American Revolution. Maybe a member of the Horde of Genghis Khan during the invasion of China. You can just be a craftsman who happens to make strange tools for stranger clients. Literally, the number of different aspects to play are only limited by the page of history you're playing in, but that's often super diverse.

[Ganymede]

@ShelBeast

I think you need to focus on a particular faction. Making the game too broad is going to cause some unintended theme-drift.

[Jennkryst]

@Ganymede said in Interest Check: Assassin's Creed (CofD/2nd Ed) Game?:

@ShelBeast

I think you need to focus on a particular faction. Making the game too broad is going to cause some unintended theme-drift.

I was going to write something pithy about DRIFTING SKILLS, but then remembered it's called the Bleed Effect, and am sad.

[ShelBeast]

@Ganymede

I would worry about that, because like @Ominous said, with too narrow a focus, you could have a small number of players dominating things.

At it's core? I'd be content to just do Assassins versus Templars. But I don't think that would be as appealing to people generally. I worry that it would be too restrictive. There are always those people who like to play people who are in the dark about the things happening around them, and want to peel back the layers of mystery, etc.

So, what do other people think about this? Is it better to narrow the focus on the faction war, or to let it be a playground through history?

[Ominous]

@ShelBeast said in Interest Check: Assassin's Creed (CofD/2nd Ed) Game?:

I would worry about that, because like @Ominous said, with too narrow a focus, you could have a small number of players dominating things.

That's not what I said. I actually approve of a narrow focus. It keeps everyone on the same page and helps move the meta-plot along. See BSGU as a great example.

What I worry about is not having enough roles within a narrow focus.

[Ganymede]

@Ominous said in Interest Check: Assassin's Creed (CofD/2nd Ed) Game?:

What I worry about is not having enough roles within a narrow focus.

If combat roles were diversified and power levels restrained, I think there'd be more than enough roles to go around. Everyone can't be around at all times.

@ShelBeast, you should have a look at BSG:U's set-up. It's a good example of how a tight, narrow focus can produce a diverse set of characters and a lot of action.

[Wizz]

@ShelBeast said in Interest Check: Assassin's Creed (CofD/2nd Ed) Game?:

Then I had another idea about it. Instead, there could be multiple timelines. Each player would log into the game with a sort of "OOC" account, and in the actual game, chose their alts. The timelines offered would act as "spheres", and you could have one alt per sphere. The OOC area would be, essentially, an Abstergo Entertainment office, and the login PCs of the playerbits would be Abstergo employees from an "IC" standpoint. So, even your OOC chatter would be a sort of metagame IC situation. From the OOC/Abstergo office, you would go into the Animus room, which is where you would select which alt you want to play and that would launch you into the grid for said alt.
[...]
That's just it... the stage of history is the setting in AC. While the Assassins and Templars do take center stage in the game, they're also surrounded by equally larger than life figures, embroiled in epic plots and even more historic conflicts.

You could play in any number of factions. You could play an alt that's part of the redcoat army during the American Revolution. Maybe a member of the Horde of Genghis Khan during the invasion of China. You can just be a craftsman who happens to make strange tools for stranger clients. Literally, the number of different aspects to play are only limited by the page of history you're playing in, but that's often super diverse.

That's not the setting in the AC series, or how the Animus works though. It's not a time travel device or the Matrix or whatever, those times and places and characters are only simulations of memories. They don't "exist" or play out when the memory isn't being accessed, and it's only a simulation of that one person's genetic memories from their POV, other people don't just "log in" and muck about in them. Abstergo built the Animus specifically to run through very specific sequences of events that would give them clues as to how to find progenitor tech in the real world, that's it.

You could stretch the source a little and have it so Abstergo has multiple Animus machines running simultaneously with a lot of different subjects, and that those simulation sessions aren't just solipsistic but an actual Matrix-style recreation of a certain time that was shared by all those subjects, but...why?

[Jennkryst]

@Wizz said in Interest Check: Assassin's Creed (CofD/2nd Ed) Game?:

You could stretch the source a little and have it so Abstergo has multiple Animus machines running simultaneously with a lot of different subjects, and that those simulation sessions aren't just solipsistic but an actual Matrix-style recreation of a certain time that was shared by all those subjects, but...why?

One image of one memory only allows you to see what that one person saw. One image, compiled from two separate memories of the same time, will allow you to extrapolate significantly more data. Repeat as needed, with different machines.

It's kinda like how losing an eye only reduces your vision by 20%, alters your depth perception a teeny bit (it doesn't destroy it, as some people thing), but utterly removes your ability to parallax without bobbing your head back and forth like a cat.

[Wizz]

@Jennkryst

That's why Abstergo has abducted multiple people and searched their memories, right. But why link them and risk corrupting the data? All of those simulations are solipsistic, ie there's only one "user" at a time, and even then "synchronization" is a huge issue in the game. Even though Abstergo might have multiple machines running, those individual test subjects wouldn't be experiencing the same thing if they chose to do something "out of synch" - it's not a shared simulation, the other users would just see the sequence of events in the memory from their ancestor's POV unaltered.

[Jennkryst]

@Wizz Something, something, NEW PROGENITOR TECH, something.

[Wizz]

@Jennkryst
That got a LOL at work, thank you very much. XD

[ShelBeast]

The Animus has evolved, over time, and Abstergo (Also now known as Abstergo Entertainment) now packages the "memories" gleaned into video game entertainment, and they mass market animus devices as a video game console. The "main characters" of the AC franchise after Desmond died haven't even been experiencing their own genetic memory, but the genetic memories that Abstergo harvested from Desmond's corpse. They have entire offices full of people hooked up to Animus machines, each rummaging through "Sample 17" memory sequences, and others. So, the concept of people mucking around in a historic playground through the animus isn't really much of a stretch.

But, I'm all for a narrow focus, in the end. As for the diversity of roles within a narrow focus, I think that, really, CofD/WoD lends itself to that really easily, in that there are no classes or levels, or anything. You can make your character into damn near anything, and it will lend itself to a purpose. In the Assassin Brotherhood, you have more than just the assassins running around parkouring up the place. You had support players who did research, tech work, bartering, trade, and on and on. So it would support most people wanting to play something other than the typical robed and hooded assassin type.

Another thing about the AC games is that they are very much a game of politics. Both sides are not just out stabbing each other with hidden blades, but they're making alliances and treaties and interspersing themselves in with causes that aren't necessarily their own in order to gain advantage over the other in some way.

I kind of think it could wind up being a lot like a game of classic Vampire The Masquerade, with two factions fighting a shadow war and manipulating or participating in political events of the time.

[Wizz]

@ShelBeast said in Interest Check: Assassin's Creed (CofD/2nd Ed) Game?:

The Animus has evolved, over time, and Abstergo (Also now known as Abstergo Entertainment) now packages the "memories" gleaned into video game entertainment, and they mass market animus devices as a video game console. The "main characters" of the AC franchise after Desmond died haven't even been experiencing their own genetic memory, but the genetic memories that Abstergo harvested from Desmond's corpse. They have entire offices full of people hooked up to Animus machines, each rummaging through "Sample 17" memory sequences, and others. So, the concept of people mucking around in a historic playground through the animus isn't really much of a stretch.

Again, I'm not suggesting that other people can't use the Animus or that there can only be one machine or whatever, I'm saying that those users are not experiencing a shared simulation. They're all experiencing individual simulations of a specific memory from different POV's.

So for example, say one user simulating his or her ancestor's memory decides to go off script and turns right into an alley instead of down the street to the pub, another user simulating that memory from another POV wouldn't see that person walk right, they would see them just keep going into the pub, because it's an entirely different simulation of that memory, being run separately.

It has to work that way otherwise the data gleaned from the memories would be absolutely useless to Abstergo; literally the only reason they are doing ANY of this is to find the Pieces of Eden, the simulations themselves are just a means to an end. It's not like they're running these simulations for just "everyone that lived in England in 1688," they're only specifically searching the memories of people who had direct contact with the Pieces, because each of these experiences and memories tells Abstergo something about the Piece, like how it appears, how it works and where they might find it. That's a very small pool of people throughout history, they wouldn't simulate the experience of some random blacksmith or whatever just for funsies unless he saw or handled a Piece.

[ShelBeast]

@Wizz

I get what you're saying. I'm saying that they've gone beyond that model in the games, now. Here...
http://assassinscreed.wikia.com/wiki/Abstergo_Entertainment

You'll see that Abstergo focuses on social gaming and they're working on this "sample project" where people can donate their genetic code to them for "new and exciting scenarios". So, the idea of a shared simulation (social gaming) is already there, as is the possibility for someone to just be playing the life of a blacksmith... because... that's just what this donated sample has to offer.