Kids 'R' Us Orphanage

@13ventrm Right now in Zombie Exodus and Samurai, I don’t think the Humanity bar actually does anything except for the mission on the oil rig where that guy judges whether you’re worthy or not, correct? And if I recall, even if he judges you unworthy, there’s still a way to get around that, so what I’ve taken from that is that having a bar for humanity or morality seems besides the point.

I like the way Unnatural, Mobile Armored Marine, and Vendetta does it, wherein Unnatural and Vendetta they let you pick philosophies, and wherein Mobile Armored Marine at the end you basically get a sum of all the things you’ve done and how it will affect the world around you, pretty much like a shiny metal badge. Vendetta still has a “morality” bar, but for the most part it serves the same purpose as a “shiny metal badge”. Unnatural has one too, but it’s for the most part just plain useless right now? Not to say shiny metal badges aren’t cool, just that they’ll be saved for at the end. Shiny metal badges are awards, not gameplay factors, basically.

Personally, I believe that logic, reason, fairness, justice, and redemption are the controlling forces in this universe. If it is not, then it is our job as human beings to make it so. For the sake of the game, there probably won’t be a “morality” bar, just a “health” bar.

@Neo

The morality bar in Unnatural is harder to implement than I thought so am working on the best way to do it.

@Nocturnal_Stillness Oh, not like I was attacking you. I think it’d be best if you turn it into a shiny metal badge rather than a gameplay factor, but at the end of the day, it’s fine so long as I still get to unite the world through common understanding with all of it’s inhabitants.

In your story.

*Cough*

Sounds cool to me and I think you should go ahead with your idea. I’ve done a story involving the whole “trained to kill from birth” thing and other stories involving darker themes so I don’t see this as being that bad.

I’d dispense with the morality bar completely because it doesn’t really apply for a story like this and go with an “efficiency” bar instead. You can still be cruel, but pointless cruelty without positive results should get you executed by your superiors.

Or on the flip side, if you don’t instill enough fear/respect in the kids they could possibly gang up on you when you’re vulnerable (and too arrogant to believe that they could harm you because they’re kids).

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@EndMaster I <3 your dark games they’re sooooooo good. I encourage Neo to take any and all advice given

This will be a bold undertaking. You will be going the same path as Alfred Hitchcock but be wary that the path’s inherint traits doesn’t make dark your path. Set forth with a gaol and do your best to not stray from the path, lest this dark forest swallow you whole.

I personally love the idea of a dark game but when I encouraged a similar game on another thred everybody got pissed at me. So I wish you luck in making your game and I would happily help you even if they make you take it off the forums.

@raven & endmaster I have not seen any of your games which ones are they

@Cagye_bee

They’re on other CYOA sites (There’s probably a couple threads mentioning them in the “Other Interactive Fiction” Section).

I’m more of a story focused CYOA writer rather than a game focused one and they’re not for everyone, but I like to visit here seeing what others are doing with the format and of course because this place has some cool games on here that I check up on to see if there are any updates or new ones.

@Neo

Don’t worry I never thought you were. Just wanted to give a reason for removing it from the game.

I wish you luck with your project :slight_smile:

In ZE, humanity is more subtle… it opens a few options, mostly to give the choice to kill certain people if humanity is low, and provide some bonuses if high. But I don’t give much feedback to the user, which may be a limitation. I have found in most choice games that social- or behavioral-based stats are extremely subjective and are not as useful to a wide audience as something tangible like dexterity.

I love dark games, so I like your concept, but as others have said, you may want to run it by CoG if you want them to publish it.

I get the feeling I’m supposed to say something, but nobody asked a question, so here are my thoughts.

@EndMaster Instead of a “morality” bar there will only be a “health” bar. It will probably function the same way as an “efficiency” bar.

@Raven I will not take any and all advice given. Instead I prefer to take questions. Questions are more engaging and thought-provoking to the story-making process whereas suggestions or advice are not always good and will probably create more work in the form of having to sift through the well-fitting ideas and ill-fitting ideas. And as your storyteller, it pains me to have to disregard any of your ideas.

@Hermit Everything is a dream, but the dream is everything.

@Cagye_bee This is a game about the human condition.

@Nocturnal_Stillness Thank you.

@JimD I think you’re handling the humanity bar perfectly fine.

I came up with this concept after reading and liking ZE, Vendetta, Unnatural, and Corruption of Champions, as they are in the same stream of settings and are popular, so thank you.

Will we be able to designate our past and disposition?

@Hermit Backgrounds, for the sake of the gameplay, yea.

Disposition would be harder to pull off. In Vendetta, picking your disposition only moves your “morality” bar, correct? To be true to a disposition, you’d probably have to have a completely different set of choices or an entirely different game for the various dispositions. That might be interesting and intriguing to make, but regardless I want the game to show who you are, not the other way around. So no disposition.

Heh. OK, whimsical hand-holder, here’s my first question: How confident are you that your child sex dystopia will actually end up reflecting “the human condition” rather than just slipping into a nasty, run-of-the-mill power fantasy?

If you’re the second coming of Nabokov, sure. Maybe Kids R Us will end up pulling off a Lolita, which managed to do justice to both the monstrosity and the humanity of a self-absorbed pedophile.

If the writing’s less brilliant, though, you’ll end up with just another piece of entertainment where the reader has the choice to imagine himself in the persona of a rapist. There are plenty of those out there already. They don’t say much about the human condition that we didn’t already know, which is that a lot of guys get off on rape fantasies.

Absolutely, this world is one where horrible things happen to humans, by humans. I’m not suggesting our stories should be sanitized from that. But the decision to describe a rape in detail or invite the reader to imagine himself choosing rape doesn’t illuminate the grim fact of rape any better than more oblique, less exploitative ways of writing about it. More often, it masks the human reality of what rape is and what it means–either by tacitly playing to the rape fantasist or by using it, “Nazi”-style, as a shorthand for monstrous inhumanity. (And even writers who are aiming for the latter often end up with the former).

I know you’re not considering doing this “for kicks,” and I’m interested in what draws you to the story. If you think our overall mission as humans is to further “logic, reason, fairness, justice, and redemption,” how is that relevant to the stories we choose to tell? And how do you see the psychopathic choice-chain for your story (whether or not it includes rape) playing into that?

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Sounds interesting nice change of pace compared to all the other games.

Wait, is graphic child sex/rape even confirmed to be in this? I got the impression that Neo was just focusing on a child soldier thing and something like sweat shops with maybe some implied sexual abuse going on in the background. I might’ve misread something.

Well either way, I think it could still be done. Better check with the people who run the site though I guess.

@Havenstone Firstly, thanks for having engaging and thought-provoking questions. Had to sit down and think for awhile.

  1. “The human condition” is an interesting phrase because anything anyone writes is illustrative of the human condition whether directly or indirectly, but for you and most people, it probably means “deep and perceptive, the human core”. But of course, because I’ve now revealed the fact that I know what you’re talking about, I can’t pretend to not know or evade your question with nonsensical answers.

I’m not confident about how this will turn out at all. I’m confident that writing this will be just as exploratory for me as it might be for the readers.

  1. I think people get paid to answer that question. If they don’t, then it would be wrong for me to not answer. If they do, then a little charity never hurt anyone. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has a story they need to hear. If at least one person plays Kids R Us and becomes all the better for it, then I can proudly say, “Mission accomplished”. If everyone who plays it become a worse person, then I would have to take responsibility.

  2. I don’t know yet. I can’t say I know what the possible outcomes, consequences or repercussions will be. For now, I think it will be interesting at the very least.

@EndMaster, having some of the kids “educated” in how to be “productive” before they’re “adopted” for the right “funding” is Newspeak for training child sex slaves (as Neo put it more bluntly to Hermit). And if one of the story paths is to “embrace [the depravity and agony] and take it to new heights”… well, Neo’s been pretty clear (for Neo) that the story won’t flinch from the full range of available choices, including kiddy rape. Nothing Neo’s said makes me think it would be an implicit background detail – it will be a choice available to the protagonist, whether graphically described or not.

@Neo, I realize you’re still working this thing out. On the “human condition” I mostly just mean stories whose key characters are humans rather than objects. To rescue the key 'graf from a way overlong post I wrote a while ago:“Some of the most popular stories are those that simplify other people to objects of the main character’s choices. Like stories that treat women as objects to be screwed or rescued by men; or poor people as victims who need to be saved by kindly rich people; or our enemies as inhuman monsters who hate us without cause and must be killed if we are to survive. If we put ourselves in the shoes of the active, powerful character in those stories, they’re quite satisfying.” But they’re not about humans. They’re about me (the reader) and my world of puppets and/or demons.

I’ve been sending these comments from deep in Darfur, as it happens, where child soldier “recruitment” and child rape are ongoing. There are powerful, human stories to be written about these horrors and the people who both perpetrate and suffer them. Dystopian sci-fi isn’t necessarily a bad way to do it. But it would take quite a writer to do it in a “tactful, non-exploitative” way (as 13ventrm said). And trying to include a Choice of the Psycho path that allows the reader to indulge in the violence and abuse of a perpetrator makes the job virtually impossible.

Do you find any of the above non-questions thought-provoking?

Or just pompous and preachy? (And @Shoelip or others, feel free to come back with, “Dude, you’re always pompous and preachy.”)

… This thread makes my head hurt.
Neo, I have to ask you. What was it that lead you to even allow your subconscience to blossom this abberation of social convention? This is a very risky endeavor and will try and judge you with every keystroke. I doubt not your resolve to commit to this tale of the human hubris, but to keep your own very humanity in the process. Many go down this road with swagger and arrogance but very few make it to the other side, none of which are at all joyfull of the trip into the Alegharian madness. The Inferno welcomes it’s guest with barbed arms and molten utterances but to leave is the feat altogether.

Do you still persist in this adventure as perilous as it is? Actor Heath Ledger stared into the face of madness and was able to deliver the performance of his life, at the cost of his oh-so-fragile sanity and later his life. Poe saw into the heart of terrors and the banality of humanity and never was able to be given the peace he sought so fervently.

This is the point of last regrets. If you go forth, let not doubt nor fear cloud your resolve.
If you turn away, you may regret the whole ness of your soul.

Do you still persist?