Dark Side of the Moon, a collaborative story project (original fiction version)

[Cherry Lover]

I don't see how "technocracy" means "rule by the rich"

technology is the new currency so to speak, well commodity. he who has the tech has the power

Yeah, that's not what "technocracy" means, a technocracy is a society ruled by scientists for the purpose of doing science. This sounds just like modern society, only even worse.

Also, the "dwarves" and "elves" thing is kind-of cheating.

it's a blend of scifi urban and fantasy cheating implies there are rules.

Well, I mean "cheating" in the sense that they're not really dwarves or elves, and have little in common with them aside from the name and some very superficial traits.

Also, we need to work out what the plot would be. The society sounds to me like a horrible dystopia, so I think it needs overthrowing....

[lantzblades]

fine, bad pitch, moving on to somethingelse

[Cherry Lover]

Why is it a "bad pitch"?

[lantzblades]

anti authority stories in scifi are dry and over done, i hate them. I've no desire to run with any such development of such as a story as you seem to suggest.

[Cherry Lover]

I see....

Well, anti-authoritarian stuff is the sort of thing I tend to like, and I especially hate stories that make authority look like a generally good thing which is rarely or ever abused, and those in power are magically wonderful despite having no restraints on their power. You only have to look at every internet forum ever and every dictatorship ever to see that unrestricted authority is almost always abused, especially in the long term. Even if you somehow get a genuinely good leader, their successors are almost always corrupt.

[lantzblades]

it's a general, very general premise, without the details this is neither authoritarian or anti such, i just think anti authority  is a very very over done scifi story, the matrix was the knife in the coffin of that kind of story. we can do better then the system is corrupt and i think coming from guys and girls of the fate fandom character based stories are a much better fit.

[Cherry Lover]

Well, the way you described it made it sound like it would be a horrible dystopia. A world run by businesses doesn't sound like somewhere I'd want to live, in general. You have, however, explained ways to avoid this over Skype, so as long as those are in place I think the world could at least be tolerable enough that it wouldn't require a revolution (I wouldn't necessarily like it, but I don't like the modern world either, and that doesn't mean I expect every story about it to involve an anarchist uprising and Bush's head ending up on a pike...).

[lantzblades]

checks and balances are what it needs true, but before we go further I'd like to hear Alice's impressions first, does it some like a good idea Alice?

[Cherry Lover]

checks and balances are what it needs true, but before we go further I'd like to hear Alice's impressions first, does it some like a good idea Alice?

Yeah, fair enough. We certainly need more than just our opinions before accepting it.

I do think it would be a good idea for you to post some of the details you came up with over Skype, though, so people can judge the idea better.

[Alice]

checks and balances are what it needs true, but before we go further I'd like to hear Alice's impressions first, does it some like a good idea Alice?

Hmm... to be honest, I don't like it very much. The elves and dwarves just seem shoved in there to make it seem more fantasy-ish. To make it fantasy, we don't really need any of the stereotypical elements so much as we need some form of magic or supernatural elements. Sci fi and fantasy can actually blend together pretty well if you're careful about it, though the problem is that there's a chance you may be somewhat limited to much softer sci fi thanks to the fantasy elements. Something like Fate/Extra would be a good example of this. Star Wars is as well. Even something like Pokemon fits to an extent. So I think it's better if we're going this route not to go by what's expected from a fantasy or sci fi story and go with wherever our ideas take us, so long as they at least vaguely fit into the categories.

[Cherry Lover]

Well, in my case, at least, I tend to want the basic framework to be consistent. Even if the laws of physics in the universe we're using aren't precisely the same as in our own, I would like them to make sense. Which does make soft sci-fi hard to do, because that tends to ignore things like consistency, and I do not like that.

[Alice]

Well, in my case, at least, I tend to want the basic framework to be consistent. Even if the laws of physics in the universe we're using aren't precisely the same as in our own, I would like them to make sense. Which does make soft sci-fi hard to do, because that tends to ignore things like consistency, and I do not like that.

Something closer to our own reality with the fantasy elements interwoven may work best then. Alternatively, the more fantasy-ish things could take place in an alternate reality or in virtual reality.

Either way though, a fantasy setting also needs some form of consistency in order to work well, otherwise it just seems random. So having it make sense is a requirement to make it work not only as a sci-fi story, but a fantasy one as well.

[lantzblades]

i'd want to avoid the vr fantasy idea, it's an immersion killer imo and very overused, I could name a hundred scifi "fantasy" stories that use vr as a cheat.

as for my pitch it was a really general mash up idea so no loss

[Alice]

i'd want to avoid the vr fantasy idea, it's an immersion killer imo and very overused, I could name a hundred scifi "fantasy" stories that use vr as a cheat.

as for my pitch it was a really general mash up idea so no loss

Eh, not really, at least in my opinion- really, it depends on how you use it. Take Fate/Extra or CCC for example. Both of those work really well despite occurring almost entirely inside the virtual reality of the Moon Cell. I never felt like I lost my sense of immersion in Fate/Extra for example even when the game revealed or showed things going on in the world outside the Moon Cell.

Really, it depends on how well you implement it and how well you write the story. Plus there's a lot of possibilities to be had from it. Compare this with something like elves and dwarves, which are fairly rigid concepts that don't afford much variation for the most part (especially the latter) that have also been done to death thanks to the strength of Tolkien's influence on the fantasy genre.

[KAIZA]

Well, I too like the idea of a mix between fantasy and sci-fi. Hell, my original stories take place in an urban fantasy setting, yet my game project occurring in the same universe is sci-fi (in the Future tm, but still).

If you want to emphasize the fantasy elements, maybe something like Magitek could work. Or for the sci-fi, use the fantasy elements to explain the breaks in physics.