Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Random LNA Ideas

So I'm still racking my brain for ways to make Live Nornish Action more interesting for the community. And while I'm planning on doing a few community live wolfling runs, so far the idea really hasn't gained much support or contribution.

One of the problems with streaming community live wolfling runs is that the lives of the norns are so short. People might be interested in watching their own norns and maybe their first offspring, but after that the creatures are foreign to them and there's no real motive to keep tabs on them.

So I'm trying to come up with some more ideas for "programs" that hopefully people can feel a little more connected with.

The first and simplest notion to come to mind is just a feral run with genetically altered norns-- just changing the half-life gene so the norns age very, very slowly. I'm talking a lifespan of 100-200 hours (less so if the run was shown in intervals rather than stream 24/7). Some other modifications might be made to make pregnancies longer as well as recovery time afterward, but otherwise the run would proceed as normal. It would give everyone a chance to see their creatures in action and perhaps put more emphasis on actual survival, since the longer a creature lives the more likely it is to come in contact with antigens and other dangers. People might be able to get a bit more attached to something like that.

Now, developing the notion a little further, I might consider running some sort of Survivor-esque game show (which.... probably wouldn't be very survivor-esque, considering I've never even watched survivor) in which members of the CC send in creatures under their names. The creatures are genetically altered to be fixed at a desired lifestage and never age (they are still perfectly mortal, just not by aging). These representative Creatures would be released into the world and occasionally be subjected to certain obstacles-- be that disease, a particularly vicious creature, an elaborate version of the IQ test, etc.. Creatures would be awarded points based on how many children they had (which would be exported after note was made of them) and for exceeding in certain obstacles (being the first to finish the IQ test or killing off the vicious creature). Most of the time though, the creatures would just run around doing their creaturely things-- though I would probably make note of dates and times that certain events would take place so people could watch at that time if they wanted to.

Something like this could work several ways:

- The game could run for a certain length of time and at the end the creature with the most points would be declared the winner. Creatures that died throughout the course of the game may be reincarnated at the cost of half or all of their points.

- The game could last as long as it takes for all but one of the creatures to die off. Points could be spent on reincarnations, but if a creature dies and is out of points, it is out of the game.

- As per tradition, people could vote a different creature out of the game every week. The creature with the most points would be immune to the votes, reincarnation would cost a set number of points, and votes against creatures with negative points would be worth twice as much.

- The game would be ongoing until everyone got bored and and have no real winner, but a point tally would be kept for fun.

In the end though, LNA is just a bunch of creatures running around-- something anyone can witness by firing up the game. Except in the case of special events, it's really not meant to be something you watch for extended periods of time; it's just something you peek in on now and again to check on a favorite creature. Unless the community can really benefit from it in some way, I'm not sure how long it will last after the novelty wears off.

I am considering using it for other purposes though-- perhaps as a way for developers to promote upcoming breeds, metarooms, or agents. I think having an open warp in an unreleased metaroom would be quite a way to get people interested about what is to come.

It doesn't have to be limited to unreleased stuff either... It could also just promote any community-created content that people might be interested in. Might be a fun way to spread the word about new or nearly-forgotten content.

Anyway I'm rambling now. I believe I've been up all night brainstorming.

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