[Dev Log] The Anonymouses

[shackary]

Hellooooo Idle Forums!  I created an account just so I could post this.  Maybe I'll stick around 

 

For a while now, I've had a personal goal to get some practice writing.   Looking through the episode titles, I found quite a few that were evocative, and I thought I could try writing a Twine game that ties some of them together.  I worked out a setup earlier today based on a line I've had sitting in my head:

 

Nowadays, the hardest thing about time travel is the grammar.

 

It wasn't always this way; things were a mess for a while.   Around 7 months linear time after the first working hardware was completed, most developed countries across the major timelines banded together to create the Time Travel Regulatory Agency.  The first order of business for the TTRA was to stop time travel from ever being invented, which was harder than it sounds.  There's no way to stop the discovery of the basic physics involved without losing the ability to monitor travel, and the technological barriers can be overcome in a surprising variety of ways.  Humans are clever like that. 

 

Eventually*, the vast majority of known travel-capable lines were altered so that only the TTRA retained the ability to travel.  All travel is subject to strict approval and monitoring by the agency.  Naturally, it's the biggest bureaucracy that has or will exist across all of the participating lines.  

 

Employees are held to the strictest standards of ethics.  After being hired, all traces of their existence are wiped from their home line, and their existence is totally hidden from the public.  In the departments with access to human-grade hardware, surveillance equipment is installed throughout the body in order to prevent the misuse of agency resources.  That's where the nickname started; they used it ironically at first.  

 

They call themselves the Anonymouses.   

 

You work in Detection, scrubbing the agency archives for evidence of unapproved travel.  The agency monitors all public communications channels in every line in which it is has established a presence, looking for changes in history.  When a change occurs on another line, it's your job to find out whether or not it can be traced back to an agency-approved travel event.  It's demanding work -- butterflies and hurricanes, you know.  

 

* By the way, please bear with me when I use time-relative terms like "eventually," because, like I said, the grammar is hard to keep straight.  TTRA had to invent 6 new verb tenses in order to communicate about this internally without creating ambiguity.   I promise I'll try to avoid getting bogged down in the linguistics -- it'll be easier for you.

 

Features:

• Play short vignettes with exciting titles like: I Am Suspicious of Myself, A Great Way To Have Fun, Historical Beef, Data Complete, The Curious Case of the Rhode Island Reader, Dear Mom, and Business Guys on Planes!
• Realistic bureaucracy -- deal with funding limitations, middle-management bloat, inter-departmental communication breakdowns, and more!
• Avoid the temptation to research alternate versions of yourself (an easily detected, fire-able offense)!
• Never actually do any time travel!

 

I know I'm getting a late start, and I don't have anything more than a premise and some vague ideas about where to take it.  I'm honestly not expecting to get far on this, but it might get me over the humps of 1) starting to learn Twine and 2) creative writing.

 

Cheers!

 

[clyde]

If you just focus on writing one of those cases by having your characters act within the circumstances of your premise, you will end up with a Twine that takes me 30 minutes to 1 hour to get through (and likely an enjoyable one). Personally, I prefer finding out about the worlds in speculative fiction by assuming that it is why my characters behave the way they do (the world necessitates it) than through explicit text I read in bulk.

If you are interested, I think your goals would benefit from learning from my successes and failures which were described in this thread very thoroughly.

[shackary]

Personally, I prefer finding out about the worlds in speculative fiction by assuming that it is why my characters behave the way they do (the world necessitates it) than through explicit text I read in bulk.

 

I agree completely.  The quoted text in my post was basically what I worked up to pitch myself on the premise and tone; I never intended to present it this way in-game.  Part of the challenge for me is to develop the world without info dumps.

 

I'm planning to try to at least sketch an outline of some kind over the weekend.  We'll see.

[shackary]

So this is almost definitely not happening, at least not on the timescale of Wizard Jam.

 

I am terrible.

[Jake]

I am terrible.

Incorrect!

[clyde]

So this is almost definitely not happening, at least not on the timescale of Wizard Jam.

I am terrible.

What obstacles is the game facing?