So I had a thought yesterday for a theme. Make it a session, a scenario, or even a campaign.
“Only The Blind Can See”
Admittedly, I don’t have this very well thought out because that’s not the way I run games. Typically, a campaign for me starts with a single thought such as above and doesn’t get anymore development until about 20 minutes into the first session.
In this case however, a few thoughts flooded in after that initial thought.
What if the blind could be made to see by using VR?
What if their VR world was just as good as our own, or even better?
What if the only way to live on this world, was to be blind?
What if those who could see, denied entry into this new world, came to be considered ‘blind’?
What if people were willing to trade their sight so they could enter this better world?
What would it cost other than their sight, what would they pay to become blind?
Who would choose if a person could become blind or not?
I don’t know, maybe I got something, maybe it’s just goofy nonsense. I’m often struck by the concepts of disabilities and what happens when the perception of a disability (especially sensory ones like sight and hearing) is reversed. Even more so when technology makes it possible to explore that reversal.
If the advancement was a cure for certain neutrally-related blindness, then it might be the process only works to the full extent if the nervous system has never had to process visual information before. Sighted people can have AR implants, but they really sing if AR is the only way your mind has ever seen the world.
Corps and organizations would seek to incorporate these Seers into their structures as quickly as this was noticed, and a few might be independent operators (PCs?) making the best use of their “unique perspective”.
You may live with your eyes and be casted out of the future, striving to survive.
Or you may enjoy The Veil, the post scarcity, the warmth of society and live happily ever after… seeing only what they whant you to see.
I see a honed here in the first group.
Maybe an architect in the second, using her cyberbrain to see beyond.
Perhaps the iconoclasts are the masters of the new eyeless world and the onomastic has the key to the truth within his cybertome.
Does the executive work for the system or is her corporation a rival offering a better, more free, virtual world?
If you are bound to obey in order to get access to the eyeless future, there might be an honotbound hunting those that do not adhere to their commitments to the new society.
Oh my god, I have to play this! You certainly inspired me.
That’s brilliant. I see kind of a Matrix slant – the virtual world is the real world; without it you are effectively outside of society.
Glad I could offer some inspiration. Wish I was in a position to run a game, I’d love to set this in motion and see where players take it.
I like Judd Goswick’s idea about the implants only being fully functional for those who have never seem the world before.
Alpo _, those are all great suggestions. I hadn’t really thought beyond the questions I asked, so I like you’re thinking one characters.
Gerald Rose, yeah, I could see a Matrix slant to it. Although, by introducing tjMatrix angle, one has to question, what if the non-AR/VR world isn’t real either? What if the umenhanced world was actually another illusion, created for those that couldn’t properly use the enhanced world for some neurological or psychological reason?
Thomas Minser That’s a great idea. I like the thought of multi-layered reality. Perhaps as a way of class segmentation, or control.