I''ve been re-reading some Katherine Kerr novels over the last few days (too d@mn hot to do anything else) and I started thinking about simultaneous storylines. What if you had 2 or more characters, in different locations, that you switched between and actions that each character commits affect the others in subtle or not so suble ways (think the butterfly effect in chaos theory). For example, the 1st character, Derek, is a small baron. He selects a young woman by the name of Natalia to marry his son, Jonah. In a rival duchy, a young girl named Ariel is adversely affected by this choice, since she was a prospective wife, and without the status boost marrying Jonah would have had, her family have to sell her into slavery. Did I mention she''s the second character? Now, whilst playing Arial, you meet a Slaver called Sharak, who is not such a bad person, but who came into the slave trade hereditarily. He is touched by the gentle nature of Ariel, and decides to free her and run away. Unfortunately, during the escape Ariel is killed and Sharak is declared a fugitive. Enter you as Sharak... running for your life, you lose your footing and tumble down a steep bank, where you break your leg. You try to keep moving, but the pain is too much. You look as if you will starve, but... Jonah comes riding along with his new wife, Natalie, who sees you and jumping down off her horse, runs over to tend to you. You explain what has happened, and finding your actions noble, she offers you a job with her and her new husband. So now, we take over the role of Natalie, who has to protect herself when she is kidnapped and held for ransom by a rival baron whom Derek had a blood feud... Ahem... I''m finished now... think it could work? Depending on your decisions, you take over the role of people you encounter... Comments? "NPCs will be inherited from the basic Entity class. They will be fully independent, and carry out their own lives oblivious to the world around them ... that is, until you set them on fire ..."
"When you are willing to do that which others are ashamed to do, therein lies an advantage."

I like it. Solid from a design standpoint.

Would you consider making it two player?

The cause and effect stuff would have to be

more subtle in some of the above examples.

I think it would heighten the experience if another

player had to face the consequences instead of you as

another character.

Also the character swithching needs to be by player choice,

I think thats what you were suggesting.

split screen and or/lan for no waiting.

Ps. K. Kerr eh? is that a hint?

Holy shit! I think morfe and lupine have just single-handedly created the next wave of multiplayer gaming! I would pay dearly to play a game like this.

Allow for two separate and (relatively) independent stories, each of which is controlled by a different player. The choices one player makes will affect how the other player''s story pans out. The hardest part would be synchronizing actions between the two players, since one person will definitely be moving faster than the other. Then again, you could make it sort of a race.

I love it! Jot up a design document and find a publisher today!

Wow!!:-)

This form of writing is very popular in a lot of modern fiction. William Gibson (inventor of the word cyberspace) does that sort of thing. The book Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson does this as well, even carrying out the simultaneous plats in multiple time periods and locations across the globe.

Makes for a very powerful linear story line. It''s also the basis of what would have to be done to make a real non-linear story line the way I see it.