I recently read some of Gregory Benford's "Galactic Center" novels, and it got me thinking. Has anybody here tried having a gaming group try roleplaing a distributed intelligence? This could be a hive mind, where all of the players are playing extentions of the same hive mind, although exactly that might be a bit boring (everybody is the same character). A better way to approach it might be where there are several "subminds" of the same ubermind, and each player plays one of those. Each submind could be embodied separately-- indeed, the individual subminds could be embodied in humans. (These sorts of things usualy show up as the "bad guy" or the threat in the kinds of whimsical sci-fi movies and games where they show up, but they don't have to be malevolent!) One reason why this might be particularly natural is that the whole dichotomy between player knowledge and character knowledge goes away. Often right now when the players split up, and the GM deals with one group of players, the other players watch but have to remember that their characters don't know anything that's happened. In this case, though, it would be perfectly natural that everybody would know everything. Indeed, remembering *that* could turn into another sort of roleplaying challenge, and might be fun to give a try. The best way to do it (IMHO) would be to have each submind potentially having a different personality, and some independence of thought-- so that the players still can have individual characters. But they share their knowledge, share common goals, and decide together what the entity as a whole will do or think. (Sounds like a well-socialized PC party, doesn't it?) Thoughts? -Rob ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
