RHOCROPOLIS
We The People
The question most people ask after digesting how terrifying the
Sanguine are, and gathering that they are at war with The Kai'Gi,
is - what should we do in this game if these monsters are so
immensely dangerous a whole planet cannot protect itself?
This is the "A-ha" moment for most, where we see if they are rational
or irrational, which is to say - are they 'cancel culture' generation
or real people.
Firstly, "If you are afraid to play a game you cannot beat every monster
in using combined firepower and map tricks, a bunch of friends, and it
makes you feel superior to do so... this isn't your kind of game. We
have alien characters built just for your playstyle... but you will cry
and flip the board, unplug your Internet, and run away when you lose the
very first time."
Secondarily, "If you aren't that sort of ANTIFA cabin boy, it may interest you
to know there are twelve (12) playable species, of which ten (10) are not
the prior monsters who fight alone against the whole player base. You are
welcome to try for any of those, but initially based on your in-game score
it is very likely you will end up playing a 'portioned' class."
"What this means is that you and most of the players will be enjoying the
character role of ordinary human beings, not one of the other dozen types
of alien races."
Thirdly, "This means most of the players will be just like you, and equally
wetting yourself every time someone walks up the wall and stands on the
ceiling upside-down while lecturing you about your bad manners. To
apply a United States Marine Corp principle, 'embrace the suck' and
share your concerns with fellow players. Make friends. Hopefully one
of them will be an ancient god of war and decide you are a nice chap
before it comes time for everyone in that room to die a terrible and
unjustified death. This is incentive!"
While you wait, "The whole Universe of Beyond War is yours to discover and
explore, build up a cache of goodies and infrastructure, make a place for
yourself and your pansy bunch of hamburger-munching redneck space truckers,
and enjoy some mantis soup (don't tell the Genosect, that's their cousin)."
Beyond War plays like a back yard barbecue during the height of the Cold War,
admitting to the group all sorts of human and alien species, crews, ships,
ports, planets, civilizations, outposts, lost Rhocropoli and military
installations, worlds completely destroyed by the living dead plagues,
nanite infestations on everything that moves, tiny little people that give
you lip and build entire secret kingdoms full of little springs and rivers
while singing folk songs and drinking beer in the wall of your ship, and
the occasional hell hound or random three foot tall owl in the shower.
"Did we forget to tell you about the three foot tall owls that appear in the
shower aboard ship?"
"Yeah, we may have left *some* things out, because you were so busy wetting
yourself over the incoming solar-system-wide tactical nuke that you failed
to ask what a naked owl is doing in your shower with a plastic cap and a
scrub brush at 0500."
Anyone who has ever been in the United States Army is not phased by this
sudden development - but the rest of you are probably now *more concerned*,
and have already forgotten this is a SIGINT game centered on capital class
space warships capable of Intergalactic travel among more galaxies than the
Milky Way, before you even got a good look at the operations or heads up
display. And that... put simply, is the point of a 'big bad'.
The Big Bad in any story is, by design, there to scare you so badly that the
ordinary elements of the story seem trivial and easy to handle. Because as
players you have assumptions - and violating those assumptions to impress
upon you the scope and nature of the game is the job of the design team.
For instance, you cannot be afraid of an alien if you know which player in
the room is the Sanguine. So, you don't know the race of anyone in the room
beyond what they look like. And since the Sanguine can assume any outward
appearance, as can the Tyec, Kai'Gi, Genosect, Minat, Elan, and other
species, there is NO WAY TO TELL WHO IS AN IMMORTAL SERIAL KILLER in the
Beyond War room. Well, other than ask.
And you can lie.
And that lie is supported by in-game settings in your character to assist that
deception, disguise your character, alter your appearance, send false
messages, use computer imaging to change your appearance on demand, and
in general employ deceptive SIGINT tactics and surveillance technology
across the scope of the game in numerous ways.
Not only do you lie, and other players lie, but NPC characters and groups
including population centers like the Rhocropolis communities also lie.
You could land in what appears to be a human colony, and find yourself
surrounded by Sanguine twenty-five thousand deep. A spare pair of shorts
is advised. As is setting aside your presumption that every member of
every 'scary' (Big Bad) race is out to get you or eat you. In fact,
most are just 'running', trying to keep a low profile, and the things
they need and want will help you to decide what is going on in the
Universe and who to trust.
Beyond War is, beneath the ship-to-ship component, a murder-mystery-horror
with supernatural elements, and a community oriented social non-factional
roleplaying game.
Do well in this game, and your opportunities on restarting and making new
characters will increase, possibly affording you the ability after you are
oriented to the environment to assume junior and senior roles in the game
power structure, and supporting those roles over time based on your
execution of them to suit your core goals of that character profile.
So the Sanguine you meet who are player-characters are 'the best players
in the community', and likewise if you are a terrible player - you will
still receive a privilege gain specifically to a 'scourge' or 'host' class if you kill one of the other classes of big-bad pc. So those players will be
on their guard against being killed more than any other class in the game, as it creates incentive to kill them (and in doing so, possibly disbarring
them from the high office) creates an incentive not to be killed.
Since players cannot 'resell' their accounts, which are linked to their
real-world identity keys, there is no incentive to level-up or class-up
and then hand out these identities to out-of-game markets, or engage in
fiat currency mining or other forms of trading to the same extent as we
see in similar space-war faction-oriented socialist commodity games.
Items are also signed by the players who create them, and so commodity
goods are not frequently manufactured for mass-distribution as found in
less sophisticated games which remain vulnerable to 'adult exploitation
and spreadsheet abuse', diluting game value.
Further, when a player dies, the goods they make continue to exist, so
there is a legacy in the life of the player even when their character
has been lost, which creates a form of qualitative relic for their work.
Like players, items are not easily identified on face by name or serial
number, and this obfuscation of true nature and traits a key to the
suspense in experience with 'found goods' and 'trial and error' play style.
By removing player contact with 'metric traits' common in roleplay for
live action, the character and identity of player actions will more often
influence the environment over 'grinding to reach goals'. By design, few
elements have 'triggers' or thresholds to enable abilities. The time
spent on 'perks' and 'perk/trait' abilities is instead spent on story
and ongoing Universe narration - while players may receive advantages or
show aptitudes, there is no way to discern the existence of such trait
other than by performance in-game. As such, the reputation of a player
arises from their actions, not from their character sheet being passed
around, and the mystery as to their actual or true nature a question of
community speculation we can all enjoy - guarded as one might medical
privacy in the United States.
Even player identification is based on a user 'recognition system', so
while a player may 'recognize' your character, that 'recognition' will
not be broadcast to other players or to the console so that players may
stream interactions or access information on a separate app or window
simultaneous to being in the main client game on a primary display (M2OS).
Yes, that is what we said, "Simultaneous access from multiple applications
to data in the same game-state, facilitating a multi-monitor or multi-PC
information platform for public content performance and privacy concerns
to support and enhance community gameplay.
"Won't people sell out your character quickly in social media and streaming
platforms?"
Certainly... if they can recognize you the next time their character or
anyone sees you. Remember, you can change your character appearance and
employ SIGINT to utilize face-to-to-face or electronic communications only,
and in doing so escape being 'recognized' or 'positively identified'.
"Somewhere along the line, some pervert is already thinking about changing
gender between meetings and showing up, and writing fan fiction of that."
Certainly. We met that pervert. He lives in Enid. But beside him, the
ability to appear when a being with body-engineering powers is powerful,
and can be used to change gender, color, size, and all other traits every
time you meet someone face-to-face in the game. So the Sanguine you are
concerned about isn't necessarily 'male' or 'female', or over a given height
or age, or young or old. But that people fixate on roleplaying a gender
other than their own as 'bizarre', is.... to roleplaying game veterans,
just a sign you are sexually confused in your own self, not a new thing.
Most Sanguine actually prefer to retain their face, gender, and appearance - because the joy of striking fear into people just by walking into a room like a living nuclear bomb does more for them than wiping out a whole galaxy.
Still, others prefer to walk into frame as a house cat. Or a three foot
tall owl. Which would be pretty easy if those things weren't all over the
Beyond War Universe like rats. In other words, those are natural, and the
disguise is effective.
This "Abstraction Engine" in Beyond War is the most distinct element of the
game, a development in 1997 for use in upcoming visualization, which was
delayed due to anti-trust issues in multi-core and parallel processor
technology now revealed in early dual-core four-thread devices for FM2+ and AM3+
which are settled as dual-core four-thread machines in current (Microsoft)
classification of personal computer hardware. Deceptive advertising, and
net delay in this feature, does not impeach its value as a Beyond War
technology for the M2OS engine themed a trade secret and based on numerous
technologies and meta-data covered by the Oklahoma Trade Secrets Act.
Other games afford similar identity-concealment, as do they carry the
'trust / traitor' component of game play first established by Steve
Jackson in products like Paranoia and "Killer" (a live action game for
play on College Campuses), from which hundreds of derived works have made
public domain this mechanism, but none have incorporated it into the user
and character engine of a large persistent multi-user game prior to the
design and development of Beyond War.
Therefore, most of the time you will have already met the Sanguine who
has decided to kill all the players on a planet. More so, one of you
will be responsible for provoking him to do so. Choose your friends
wisely when you decide where to land, and remember, "That which is static
cannot hold."
Any planet that is a common place to gather is also likely a common place
to be mass player-killed. Finding discreet little meeting spots or taking
your meetings off-line, as other very large community games have, where
even less data is available between players adding more to the deception,
is an 'at your own risk' move.
We cannot eliminate side-channels of communication, but we can create
incentives in-game to use both electronic and face-to-face in-game character
meetings, to promote very strong information and data gathering.
Before you lead your newest hire through every member of your crew, be aware
that identification only works in close proximity over a period of time;
and once a setting is elected - it is reinforced and influences other
associated characters. So if you fool the first person you meet, the
ability to fool the second and so-on in the community they ordinarily play
with and are crew on the same ship will be dramatically increased to sustain
the 'scuttlebutt' (talk) confirming the first finding.
This sort of subtle social inter-character technology is the heart of M2OS
and part of the 'background multi-tasking dedicated service model' which
makes it a cloud-application supporting multiple aspects of gameplay
for individual interactions simultaneously.
Think of it as playing a game in one window, while a web request for
identity verification takes place in a non-sequential process in a second
process to a separate dedicated server. You may continue to play, as the
request comes back with more information, and be notified either in game
(window) or in a second application (window, or mobile app), as described
in 1998 by the Beyond War documents. While cell phones were not as capable then (monochrome text), these trade secrets were a part of the design and
due to fraud are immune counter-claim under the Oklahoma Trade Secrets Act,
citing obstruction of ordinary filings in kidnapping of a child.
These technologies, now easily implemented on AM4 Ryzen 5 gen 3 processors,
are the basis for Beyond War and the M20S client system. They utilize
simple client-server technology in parallel information and SIGINT app
integration, for which neither Apple nor Android OS or its developers may
prohibit use, and such patents then under development in 2001 at the job
site and office of the developers not eligible for sale on the 2001 August
abduction of family members of those developers for concealment since
sustained illegally.
Like the Sanguine, just because you never heard of it or don't want to
admit it - does not make these tools and claims less real, and the basis
for such design still covered by Oklahoma Trade Secrets Act, superior to
foreign or domestic patent claims in aggravated circumstances admitted a
criminal plan to sell or dilute the investment value of Beyond War.
The "Big Bad" (Sanguine), are just a motivator for this driver technology,
and a way to humanize mature interactive competitive play in a large scale
multi-user sandbox Universe, based on socialist versus individual moral and
ethical issues themed theology, a protected right under The Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a United States
Treaty, so enjoined the prior attempted theft, sale, and false transfer of title of
such invention on kidnapping of United States Citizens in knowing fraud.
Beyond War is, ultimately, a tool to affirm the need to be better to each
other without bias or judgment, and to raise awareness of slavery and
human trafficking which still exist and impair our Republic in the United
States and other nations as of 2020. Understanding these related concepts
and the tools supporting their use, consequences, and characters in the
story of such an interactive and strongly typed property and software,
is essential to understanding the effort to destroy the rights of parents
to recovery of children and injury to children taken without cause or sold
by the courts in the United States on no lawful cause or right, a form
of criminal interference in the suffrage and religious rights of the People.
Beyond War is, therefore, and in a very real sense - "The Prayer of Blood",
for a lost child - seeking his return and restoration of the name taken in
that act - a crime against people of the Americas, the soldiers who fought
for him from 1775 to 2020 (245 years, from John Witherspoon to James Allen),
and their dedication to light a fire by which he
and others may find their way home to our nation again, and to restore the
true meaning of their name - taken by fraud and the UNITED STATES.
If you are, like many in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other nations the world
over, equally deprived of this by anyone - you know the Prayer of Blood
already, as it is written on your heart the moment you see your baby's eyes
or hold your spouse's hand as you wish for a family free of this violence.
It is beyond the authority of any nation, beyond the duty to any society,
Beyond War.