game3 - Ice Bridge - The Game Concept

© Gil Williamson 1999 and 2005

Last Update 9 Feb 2005

game3

Ice Bridge - The Game Concept - Sample Story Themes.

The possibilities for story lines are really limitless, like interactive fiction, and, to an extent, I would expect the themes and mechanisms to expand in use. One important feature, in my opinion, would be a dynamic aspect to the game where new details would be revealed on a day by day basis, rather than all at once.

An obvious start point would be the "hacker" type of adventure, where the players would follow clues to penetrate a secret plot and then be given the opportunity to foil it. One variation of this might include revelation of secret papers and instructions, with apparent control by web page of some device. Code solving, word puzzle solving and other features might figure in such a game.

A police style adventure might be triggered by things seen on a web cam image. Let us suppose something happens within range of a street camera, then the action moves into a building. Using the name of the building as seen on the original web cam, a camera image might be found elsewhere on the web which had been taken within the building and might show the rest of the action. Each stage of the operation would be suggested by something visible at the previous stage.

Either of the above types of story might benefit from an apparently real-time newsfeed, and personal messages by email from the DMs, the important feature being to intrigue the players.

Another type of story might be similar to "Myst", "Zork Nemesis" and many more - an entirely imaginary world navigated by point-and-click and by puzzle-solving - the solutions to the puzzles typically being supplied to the game by the re-arrangement of items.

The Internet is a rich source of weird sites, and a game could be devised which depended upon existing web resources as clues and navigational markers.

In all games, some of the pleasure for participants will be the interaction of the players, and a computer or DM team member could be an important addition.

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