check out The Eye issue 2, in the Dante's Road article, there is a settlement that is called Beatrix's Redemption (or BeRe as it's generally called) that fits the Village idea of neoprimitivism (written by yours truly) [url]http://www.firewall-darkcast.com/theeye/m-66-dantes-road[/url]

I saw this anime back in the 80s... forget the name of it. it was set in this big city where no one was alowed to leave, i forget the excuse. either a totalitarian corporation or government or they were being kept in for their own protection due to war or radioactive hazards or something. whatever. main character ends up going to the top floor of a sky scraper and -- OH NOES! -- they're in space. On an asteroid or something, being kept alive to re-seed the human population somewhere, or something like that. and there is a war on, so there is a military corps of space pilots and such that are constantly fighting to keep the civilians alive. I really dont remember the details at all. anyway, it would be a harder trick to pull off with rotational gravity, unless you pychosurgeried people not to notice. but if you were going to psychosurgery them, you might as well go all out and The Matrix them. What was the motive?

There was an old movie, that was released in video around the time of the Matrix fever, called Level 13. It was about an experiment in programming and virtual reality, in which the protagonists investigates a murder that happened inside the simulated world because the program that commited it wanted to go to the real world or something like that (if you were killed inside the simulation, your avatar's original conciousness was the one being restored to your body). Of course, the real mind shattering revelation comes at the end ofthe movie when we discover that the world that made the simulation... was a simulation, the only one where the AI's had created a simulation...

Has anyone seen the film the Island, with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson? It is somewhat Village like, with a couple who are survivors of a global catastrophe who live in this sealed city with all the rest of the survivors. There is a lottery where you can win a trip out of the arcology onto the 'Island', a rehabilitated eco system with no plagues or diseases to kill. The only problem is the arcology they are in is not in the future but in a near future and they are clones of extremely wealthy people who need body parts for transplants. Clones find out, wackiness ensues. I thought it was a pretty good movie. The end had a little too much tinsel town action and a wrapped up in a bow happy ending but it was still pretty good

puke wrote:

except that the clones remembered things about past lives through some sort of magical genetic memory. it was pretty good except for that. Too many Scientologists in hollywood, I guess.

That's right i forgot about that silliness.

Unless you have players you know well enough to have a very good idea of the kind of game they like (and who trust you in turn as the GM), I think surprising the _players_ as opposed to the characters would have a good chance of going over like a lead balloon. If your players wanted to play (and were invested in) the pre-modern world that you'd presented them, finding out they're actually in a high-tech transhumanist game could be very jarring and disrupting to their fun.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with players min-maxing vs. developing a story (which is a false dichotomy in the first place -- plenty of people at the gaming table do both, and I would imagine some don't care much about either.) The whole point of a Village narrative is to be jarring to the _characters_. That does not mean you have to surprise the players. Yes, there's a certain appeal to surprising your players with a big plot twist. As I said before, if you know your group would like that, great. Otherwise, I think you're much more likely to have a successful game if your players are aware of what you're doing. Essentially, if your players know what's going on, you lose out on the OOC surprise factor of the reveal in exchange for knowing your players will have fun with both the village and the aftermath, and getting the added value of having them actively helping to make sure the story is successful (and they wouldn't know _everything_, of course -- things like who in the village knew the secret and why it was set up in the first place would be the mysteries for the players to be wondering about.) If your players don't know what's going on, you might surprise them with a plot twist they love (Win!) or one they hate (end of game?) or one they figured out in advance, anyway (so no OOC surprise factor after all.)

What about something like the movie A Boy and His Dog, where the players are in some sort of bunker or fortress. Your idea it being 19th century but curving at the edges(due to the limits of the building) is a good one. Maybe some strange survivalist group hollowed out an asteroid and they all live in there pretending everything is 1950 again. They may even be in a recreation of a historical town, but the town walls rise into and meld with the sky, as the characters have been told has always been the case. Why does it necessarily have to be an evil overlord running the place? Like the village, I would think that a morally ambiguous group could be running the place. Certainly there is something to be said about shielding people from the horrors of what happened, especially if the bunker was built prior to the fall. As the party found out what was going on they might even decide to help maintain the illusion for their fellow citizens. Perhaps they can join an elite group of citizens who are tasked with going into the rest of society to obtain supplies for the others. If they choose to join something like this, then they would be much like the Amish which ride their buggy to the market to sell their wares. If they were even more morally ambiguous they might assist the rulers in disappearing people that find out too much. Finally, why would you be pissed if EP went to D&D? Is it because you like the EP setting or the EP system? Would you be that pissed if it there was a good reason for it, perhaps your characters are locked in a fantastical simulspace as a means of confinement? Maybe they have to go in and participate in that fantastical world in order to build the trust of some powerful entity that refuses to leave. There are plenty of ways that EP could be turned into a D&D setting, if only for a period of time, in a way that enhances the story.

With respect to swapping A for B, my intention is that they would not even know what is going on at the outset. Since most players probably have never played EP before, they likely have no predetermined opinion about it either way. I would not tell them, "We are going to play a 1950's setting. You all ready to make some gangsters?" Rather it would look something like this: Pre Decision to play - Ask players if they want to try out a new system and world, but the catch is that both will be a mystery that is only revealed as they play. Don't make any representations about whether it is fantasy, high tech, horror or other. Pre Session 1 - Distill the basic mechanics down to a 10-15 page document that will be used for issue resolution inside the village. Provide this to the players along with a small document giving some back story and information about the village. Session 1 - Create some basic character templates for them to use, but allow them to customize them within reason and add back story. They can also create their own basic characters. At this point the rules and skills are very watered down so making characters should be straightforward. In this session the hook starts, however by the end of that session they have enough information to know that something is off about the village. Over the next few sessions develop that plot with them increasingly getting more information. Once they interface with the world and get any extended period of time to access the net, you provide them with the Eclipse Phase core materials as well as a some information that the net has on the village. This information may be partially wrong and out of date, but it will at least give them an idea of what is going on. If the party does not show interest in moving to this world, then you can gracefully spin down this plot arch. If they decide that they hate the village and want OUT, the campaign can end when they finally escape the village and get to the greater universe. Alternatively, the campaign could end when they destroy the village and/or reveal the truth to all of the inhabitants. Finally, if they agree with what the village has done they can end the campaign by rooting out the dissident faction and fully eliminating any hope of the occupants finding out about the truth. At this point the only time invested by the GM is in the Village. If the idea turns into a mini-campaign that ends with the Village, so be it. If it spawns into EP(Or many other different games for that matter) great.