The Eden Project
Something made incredibly simple by setting a campaign or RPG in a medieval or fantasy environment is the amount of general world knowledge, and the freedom for DM's to insert or edit the minutia of a world without affecting the realism and believability of the setting. This is necessarily more complicated in a modern environment. Although Element 133 is science fiction, I've made a lot of effort to include real-world locations, businesses, people, events, animals, technologies, etc. Some of which you may have real-world knowledge of, and some of which you have no idea about. This occurrence of real-world knowledge of things your character wouldn't know can cause problems at the game table. Although none of you (being DMs, and long-time players) have used your expansive knowledge of Fearun and 5e rules and Monsters to a significant, game-breaking extent in our previous campaigns, the fear of Metagaming is real. So for this campaign, I'm permitting you to metagame! Well, to an extent. By allowing in-game methods for accessing real-world knowledge and for instant telepathic communication I'm providing the mechanics for which some light Metagaming is not only acceptable but encouraged and necessary in some circumstances.
Watch Your Step!
I have no belief that any of you will abuse this ability it should make for some better teamwork. However, this ability can easily be removed or limited to a few PCs should it become abused, or make the game less fun and comfortable for everyone.
Quantum Tweets
With the discovery of Element 133, came tremendous and unprecedented leaps in technology. The multiuse particle, simultaneously safe and volatile, charged and uncharged the element provided the solution for technological problems including, massive renewable energy, control of quantum particles, atomic energy storage, gravity manipulation, and clean atomic fusion. Although, In most hands, this technology would be coveted and only sold to top-secret government projects. But in the hands of Gen-Z activist Greta Thunberg, who was on a tour of the D.U.S.Y. when Element 133 was discovered. A few lucky pictures of their systems at the time of discovery, posted to Twitter, spread faster than the Coronavirus. And soon everyone who had the equipment only a meager 14 million dollar machine could safely recreate the experiment and soon dozens of countries, companies, and rich white people had projects in the works using the new technology.
The Eden Project
A mere 2 years after the discovery of E-133 the Eden Project was created. Intended to create the first full artificial conscious. More than AI which proved itself to be hostile and genocidal (who could have predicted?) the Eden Project intended to exactly duplicate the brain of quantum computer scientist Alyssa Carter's dying wife, Eden. It worked spectacularly! Eden would live forever, or at least another 8 years until the end of the world. Although the controversy surrounding the morality of immortality, and fears caused by the AI caused Second Cold War, made work difficult for Dr. Carter and Eden they continued to work on ways to be able to hold each other again, and by Eden's request for Dr. Carter to join her in the world of ones and zeros. A few months after the original transfer of consciousness Eden became sick in a matter of speaking. And the world watched with bated breath. Would this new immortal being turn evil and hold the world's internet hostage? Would she die? Would her wife be able to save her?
When it was announced a few tenuos days later, that not only had Eden survived she had discovered how to port the internet into her mind without damaging herself or by directly accessing the internet as an intelligent machine (a law made in effect by the whole AI thing). The government hunted them down almost immediately, and upon explaining that Eden and Dr. Carter were working on a way for Eden to remember the entirety of her life (a now anticipated life expectancy of 43,000 years) when they had discovered a way to condense computer memory so small that a terabyte would be sub-atomic. The connection of this storage device to Eden is what had caused her illness, and could now be explained by the fact that the device, connected to Dr. Carter's laptop had not only downloaded Eden's consciousness in less than a second it had downloaded the entire internet. Dr. Carter assured the government the technology would never be used in this manner by Eden again but ultimately the Supreme Court ruled that the intelligence Eden had as much right to access the internet as Dr. Carter herself as long as she was unable to manipulate other machines through it.
This ruling ultimately gave birth to the andriod race, and solved most human rights issues, as suddenly, it was very clear what was human and what wasn't. Some androids could be created as Eden was by uploading consciousness, but some were created artificially, and others (don't ask me how this works) were the digital children of androids. By the time the world ended eight years later, there was an Android population great enough that 1 in 10 people were androids. Just as complex and varied mentally and emotionally as humans there were only two major body frameworks/operating systems.
A.D.A.M. and E.V.E.
A.D.A.M. or Advanced Defense and Attack Machines were built as soldiers and bodyguards. E.V.E. or Environmental Variable Engines were built as everything else, caregivers, assistants, decoys. A.D.A.M.s look like a robot typically with a humanoid shape. E.V.E.s look nearly human, in fact, it's hard to tell. There were legends of other operating systems being developed, but it was extremely rare. And for the most part unnecessary as despite the Adam and Eve, biblical gender reference was obvious to the girls, gays, and theys it was common to build both operating systems to appear as any gender requested by the android. Although physically possible very few androids were given regular access to the internet, most preferring to view it as humans do on a phone or computer. And near the end of the decade after the Eden project, the economy was booming as many androids found they preferred the repetitive or manual jobs that many humans despised. Creating a beautiful trade-off between races, the general population had finally accepted the androids into society as friends and family.
Asking Terra
The digital daughter, named Terra of Dr. Carter and Eden found a philanthropic purpose in providing the world with a new form of virtual assistance. For those who treated her well, she became the incredibly intelligent replacement for the current technologies of Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Sam, Google Assistant, and Bixby. You as players will have access to communicate with Terra to request information from the multi-web.
By taking 10 minutes, you may request information from Terra. On your real-life mobile device or computer, you may use any search engine (ex. Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo), search individual web services (ex. Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, Quora, Wikihow, Wikipedia), or mapping programs (ex. Google Maps, MapQuest, Waze, topoView, CO-OPS Maps). Whatever your chosen engine or service you may search a topic, question, person, place, thing, or geographic location no larger than 200 mi in diameter. You may use any of the information contained on the first page of results, as well as the information found on the first three websites, videos, beacons, etc., as information in-game. This ability may be used several times as dictated by the access point to Terra. For example, if communicating with Terra directly you may be able to use this feature upwards of 20 times per day and may be done as a party, but contacting them through a multi-web (modern internet), telecommunications, satellite, or hardline access point your ability may be as small as once or twice per day and may be limited to one or two players. To conserve game time, or to compensate for time sensitivity in-game the DM may restrict the amount of time spent searching and reading while using this ability.
You may also use your real-life knowledge and resources, (ex. life experience, books, magazines, CDs, digital assets, personal curiosity, excluding bookmarked or downloaded websites or resources available without cost on the internet. If you bought it, you can use it.), as a search engine of sorts. Rather than be limited to a single resource you may access any of this information as one resource and may use any portion of it during the use of this ability. You are, however, restricted to 3 minutes of real-time to find that resource. This access assumes that you as a player posted about or shared these resources on the internet sometime during your lifetime, and your character, from the future, has access to this information through the multi-web.
Any resource, website, video, map, etc. accessed using this ability may be accessed again at any time by any character. To facilitate this post your links, and personal resources (if you want of course) into the World Wiki channel, and they will be uploaded to a private page on the Element 133 site for easy access and searching by everyone.
What about History checks?
This ability is not intended to eradicate the use of the History or other Intelligence checks, these checks may be used to acquire information that your character already knows, including stuff you won't find on the internet, cause I made it up LOL. These checks DO NOT affect the number of times you may use the Asking Terra ability.
Instant Communication
Having an android on the team and access to earpieces allows all party members to communicate almost telepathically. To a range of 1 mile, and while you can breathe you may communicate as a free action to the entire party. This does not make noise as it doesn't involve actually speaking. This feature works for mute and deaf characters as well by sensing and sending vibrations directly from your throat and jaw.
Comments