Hello, DDR here.
I have searched the wiki, the forums and found nothing on the history of this world. Is there any at the present moment? Also, what is a blob's biology? Their thought process? Are they a sort of 'communal mind', from sci-fi, or more of a down-to earth type, like ants? How much individuality does each blob have?
Do maps loops at the edges because of magic, or simply around the planet?
I'm thinking of making a nice campaign, one with some story in it, for this nifty game.
As far as I know (though I'm probably not the best person to answer) there isn't yet an official backstory/universe to the game. But I have seen in some archives (forgot where) some discussion about this, could be in the wiki somewhere, and a lot of the suggestions there seem to be about making globs some kind of human experiment sent to colonise alien planets or something like that. They're mostly set in the future. Do you have anything in mind?
No, not at all. I was looking for some inspiration.
Perhaps:
"The globs are launched by a human space program, and are designed to build up and use basic infrastructure. The humans were *suppose* to follow in a few years, but never showed up. The idea was that, the old Earth being overcrowded and depleted, people could simply board spaceships and find planets with ready-built cities for them to live in, fields of wheat and fruit trees to harvest. when human showed up, the globs were suppose to leave so as not to disrupt the culture and society of the humans.
The seedship of the gobs seeded tens of planets before radio contact was lost.
Each planet was built up, and eventually there was nothing left to do but maintain it. As per their programming, they then built small, one-shot seed ships and launched them at likely nearby planets.
This feature was untested.
Rockets burned.
They exploded.
They simply failed mid-course.
But the globs had some freedom, and they learned through their mistakes. Soon, two spaceships landed on the same planet. This, too, was not tested. There were suppose to be human operators monitoring the operation. For whatever reason, the glob colonies went to war over resources. They reported back to their home colonies, which assessed the situation, and, like they were built to, they learned -- to attack!
Soon, the entirety of the project was embroiled in conflict. A simple form of evolutionary pressure came to bear on the globs, in that those who fought better lived to reproduce. Over hundreds of years, colonies died out and war making improved. But this came at a price - the original instructions were mutilated beyond recognition, reduced to a few buildings beneficial to war making. Evolution is a series of simple steps. It is not a magical process, in which better fighters just *happen*. It is just a bunch of tweaks to a system. First, the heavy laborers became a specialized warrior class (The other classes gained in efficiency, but are still greatly unchanged). The cities became buildings, for training the globs to fight better. And, the blobs lost all memory of the humans who had created them. Each base had it's own AI, a direct and synced copy of the original. A war of expansion ensued, and you, reader, are the controlling AI for the outwards fight!"
Personally I don't really care that much about a backstory. The only thing that annoys me is the constant (though not so much anymore) statement that the globs are a hive mind. Read my post on the wiki for reasons why this just doesn't work.
do not be afraid to joust a giant just because some people insist on believing in windmills.
Donkyhotay, (darn I want to spell the Don Quixote, so I will) I think you make some good points in your wiki post. However, next time, could you also post the relevant section in the forums?
Anyway, I like the reasoning behind that. But, I still think that the globs are a hive mind. You are a hive. Your body, composed of organs, composed of billions of cells. (random guess, hope I was close) You do not think about breathing, you do not think about digesting, you do not think about your heart beating. Like that, I believe that what you, Don Quixote, have described is the internal command structure of the blobs. Their intelligence is probably functioning like ours, with certain areas just taking care of things. How else do all the blobs know to avoid this area, to go to that area, and so on.
You are playing as this 'upper level' of decision, what was meant for policy originally. I know it is an odd description of the player, sorry... I will not mention that in the campaign, when (not if) I find time to make it.
Yes, a hive mind is essentially a single organism built of different parts. And there are many parts of a body that are essentially ignored and run on automatic (like breathing, digestion, etc.). However the parts that aren't automatic work exactly the way you want. When you decide to do something consciencely you don't think 'pick up that glass' and a random limb (maybe even your foot)tries to do it for you, but that is the way the globs work. Sometimes when a command is given, the 'wrong glob' decides to follow the command you want even if there was a perfectly good glob right there that has the capability of performing the task. Some people complain about this but for me thats just part of the game, it makes it more realistic. Ultimately it doesn't matter a whole lot. The idea of what the backstory is has been discussed since before I found the project which was a couple years ago by this point. Ultimately it's not really that important because unless your playing a campaign game most people don't care why the globs are slaughtering each other, you just care that his explorers are wiping out your superior ground forces faster then you can kill his main base.
do not be afraid to joust a giant just because some people insist on believing in windmills.