john grigg wrote:
> Anyone else here play the microgames? Remember _Chitin_, Ice War_,
> _Invasion of the Air Eaters_, and _Warp War_ to name a few? Interestingly,
> Steve Jackson has an interest in cryonics and has posted on Cryonet a few
> times. I can't wait to play his postsingularity games! :)
One wonders what he would make of our struggles.
---Game background: You are among the chosen of your race. Technology has opened up wondrous new possibilities, but out of the billions of sentients on your planet, only a few individuals can see them, and fewer still are in any position to realise them. Most of the rest either do not know enough to see the future, or do not know how to usefully exploit the resources that are within everyone's reach. New thoughts and discoveries fuel your progress as surely as combustibles and electricity fuel the machines that implement your vision.
Just recently, paths towards ultimate ideological dominance have appeared to you, some objectionable, some producing utopia. You might reengineer your species into your personal vision of superiority. You might seed your planet with nanoscale machines that edit matter to enforce your values. Or you might launch your species on an ever- expanding sphere of colonization of the nearby stars, to forever prevent anyone from achieving the above scenarios for all members of your species.
Along the way, you will undoubtedly go through some transformations yourself. You might appropriate the mass of an asteroid, or even a planet, and turn it into one giant computer linked directly into your consciousness. Your physical body will be rebuilt - whether biologically, as a robot, a mixture of the two, or into some unanticipated form - in order to avoid the form of death that has so far claimed all of your race who grew too old. Although you may bring some of the masses under your wing by granting them vision, or even build armies of sentient machines, you yourself will be the most valuable of any forces you direct.
But you are not the only one. Others have seen the same paths you have, and possess similar physical and intellectual resources. You will have to work together if any of you are to suceed, but everyone's desired ultimate end is slightly different, and at most only one of you can be fully successful - though it is quite possible for everyone to lose. And there are many unenlightened souls out there who, either fearing the future or just misunderstanding it, will do anything to stop you all. Most of them do not even understand the present well enough to be any threat to you, but some do.
Suceed, and you will be revered for all time - and you will be there to appreciate it. Even a good failure will get you some measure of fame and wealth. Take too long to get results, though, and you will be just another person who died before death was cured.
---
Natch, a few elements are emphasised differently than they are in reality in order to make a good game. But it might be interesting to see Steve's take on that, no?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:14:37 MDT