Author Topic: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG  (Read 8062 times)

tushantin

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #45 on: April 27, 2011, 05:36:22 pm »
I just had a crack at a "branch" theory, in which case the ARG will not be strictly linear. Basically, there will be missions, and based on the player's decisions, those missions will branch out in forms to reveal a bit of story specific to that player, and no more. Hundreds of possible scenarios, all irrelevant at first but somehow connecting the dots. When the players reach their end of the branch, they're given a piece of a puzzle. The community that plays the ARG will place their pieces on the table and try to put them together, which will give them a final "key" to a finale.

With me here? The idea is to branch out and separate the players as much as possible so, so they can be amazed at the unpredictability and ask THEIR friends to play too. As the community grows bigger and bigger, so will their missions and the schemes of the mastermind behind all this.

Did you mention "former Chronopolis Agent who lost his marbles"? XDDD Evil Belthasar/Lucca Clone is what struck me. Perhaps even "Lynx" or someone with a different animal name. Ocelot?

Syna

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #46 on: April 27, 2011, 06:02:31 pm »
I think we could benefit from some strong examples to emulate. I've been meaning to play some of these anyway, so I'll investigate (starting with the Lost-inspired games that were mentioned), but if anyone else is familiar with ARGs and can make some recommendations, we could get a better collective sense of the medium and what is possible within it.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2011, 06:05:23 pm by Syna »

alfadorredux

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #47 on: April 27, 2011, 06:04:11 pm »
Hmmm. Let's say that the renegade agent is trying to communicate something to the players--an obvious pick might be "Belthasar--y'know, the guy in charge of Chronopolis--is a dangerous madman and we need to take over the institution from the inside before it's too late".

About the puzzles: if we want to separate the players, maybe we should try for several radically different types of puzzles--mathematical, cryptographical, verbal, logical, visual and maybe even information-oriented ("an unauthorized change in the timeline has caused [historical figure with bio data] to be wiped out of existence and we need to figure out what was changed as a result", requiring a knowledge of relevant historical trivia to solve) or "silly" (the clue requires performing some improbable sequence of actions while playing a trivial Flash game, or getting an exact score on a pointless on-line quizz). Most people will be better at one type of puzzle than the others, and this will cause them to naturally head off in different directions.

Licawolf

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #48 on: April 27, 2011, 06:12:42 pm »
Did you mention "former Chronopolis Agent who lost his marbles"? XDDD Evil Belthasar/Lucca Clone is what struck me. Perhaps even "Lynx" or someone with a different animal name. Ocelot?

A wolf! xD
 
I haven't played an ARG myself even though I'm seriously interested in this kind of retroactive narrative. I think we should ask Boo, he mentioned playing the Lost ARG, he must have a better understanding of the experience of actually playing this type of games  :)

Everyone here is mentioning new and more original ideas with each post... (I'm getting excited about this!  :shock:)

hiddensquire

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #49 on: April 27, 2011, 07:33:28 pm »
I think one of the fundamental questions we need to ask is: why is Chronopolis so interested in the year 2011?  And I'd really like to avoid the cliche "because the following year is 2012."  Obviously, if Chronopolis is around in the future to send us messages, nothing happened in 2012 that destroyed the world.  However, one plausible plot point could be "because Chronopolis wants to research how to control a population through the threat of an impending apocalypse."

Another miscellaneous mission could be to send some inexpensive, obscure product that came out this year to an undisclosed location.  Perhaps, unknown to us, there is a great need for this product at some point in the future, or perhaps the inventor of the product is a mad genius who hid a secret inside every copy of his work.  Perhaps, in the future, this type of product has great artistic value, and Chronopolis is trying to preserve all great works of art for all eternity.  Again, key word is inexpensive; we don't want players spending money on this game, as a rule, and the person who sends it should be compensated somehow; perhaps with an "invention from the future."  There are all kinds of high-tech cool things out there that only the super-nerdy have heard of that could be sent to someone as though it were from the future.  And if by some off chance they have heard of it, Chronopolis can accuse them of marketing a future product in the present.  XD
« Last Edit: April 27, 2011, 07:40:01 pm by hiddensquire »

Mr Bekkler

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #50 on: April 28, 2011, 01:48:10 am »
You could have certain assignments where players make choices, and if they choose "incorrectly" in the past, maybe it says something like "Sorry, You can't participate until time is corrected, as you have accidentally prevented your own birth. It has created a small temporal rift, so Chronopolis is aware of the problem and a team of agents will establish a 'fix' accordingly."

Doesn't work with the TB or TTI theories, but would be a fun way to punish fail decisions without driving players away forever. Or maybe just when the site goes down or something.


Edit: I actually played the Heroes and Office ARGs, which boil down to 1.emails (or txts but i don't think that's practical financially) almost to the point of being spammy, but from characters in-universe as though they were sending you advice, story snippets, or assignments, while including you and 2. a weekly challenge or contest or event online, maybe with video or a new website to explore with hidden links to secret pages that would give clues to what might be going on between episodes.
  • You can do an art contest to replace an important stolen portrait in the past one week.
  • Maybe a fake corporation with the business website and a rebelling group a la PETA with a website detailing their evils, and have the player choose a side to register on. Then they get emails depending on which side they chose from either their new boss at the corporation or the communications expert from the rebel group keeping them in touch with what's going on in a pre-scripted story that is resolved based on which side has majority registrants before the week's up for the next challenge, then that side remains prominent and the other disappears from time and they say they went back and caught the leader of either side in a scandal in their early 20s so they never got to do any evil.
  • Go into the future and "hack" (solve visual puzzles) into some evil server that hosts a virus that might bring down Chronopolis and start the time crash.
  • You could have an assignment to collect beef jerky and take a picture of your hand holding it, then submit it to Chronopolis so we have a record "in case we need an agent with jerky". Then there could be a jerky photo gallery, and it could get massive. Definitely need to preapprove the images though so no weird porn gets submitted.
Ideas are many, and to keep people interested, there should be a big list of them (feasible ones) before anything really starts. I'll volunteer to help in any way I can, I'm ok with web development to a point (XHTML and CSS) but can't write javascript well, don't understand php, etc. I'd be down to design some of the sites that have to pop up, you're gonna want different styles for some of them, they shouldn't all be done by one person.

As far as the "origin" or the "why", it's not the time they're interested in. It's the fact that YOU found THEM. Like Will Smith in Men in Black. The players stumble into this world, then Chronopolis is like "Oh noes, you found us! Well, as long as you're in, here's what we're doing. Can you help?" Just remember it should feel like you're roleplaying and accidentally wandered into this other realm for some time every week. It could even be incorporated with the Chrono Compendium, like the Compendium can be referred to as the collection of all of Chronopolis' knowledge. Give the link and here we are.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2011, 02:13:45 am by Mr Bekkler »

alfadorredux

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #51 on: April 28, 2011, 11:17:54 am »
Plotwise, maybe...

1. Player discovers Chronopolis and is recruited as an agent
2. Player completes a few missions of the type we've been talking about
3. At some point, a bulletin about a renegade agent is posted on the Chronopolis site
4. After that, mixed in with the stuff needed to complete some missions, little puzzles left behind by the renegade agent will appear. The solutions to those puzzles will allow players who follow up on them to "hack" into parts of the Chronopolis site they couldn't otherwise access and discover concealed information about Chronopolis and the intentions of the people running it (the renegade's excuse for setting up the puzzles could be something along the lines of, "I wanted to make sure the people I'm passing this on to have the skills to keep the information hidden...")
5. Eventually, the players must decide whether to aid in capturing the renegade...or aid the renegade in taking down Chronopolis

Okay, I admit, I'm a bit hung up on the "Evil Belthasar" thing, probably because I just finished writing about several people chewing strips off him for spinning nasty plots. :lol:

Dialga_Palkia

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #52 on: April 28, 2011, 02:04:49 pm »
You madam/ sir have a career in the making. The layout is truly spontaneous and azure. 

Kodokami

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #53 on: April 28, 2011, 07:33:02 pm »
What role could Robo play in this, being the Prometheus Circuit?

Licawolf

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #54 on: April 29, 2011, 12:59:21 am »
I love the Jerky-photo idea  :P We know Jerkys have already changed history before.

Quote
You could have certain assignments where players make choices, and if they choose "incorrectly" in the past, maybe it says something like "Sorry, You can't participate until time is corrected, as you have accidentally prevented your own birth. It has created a small temporal rift, so Chronopolis is aware of the problem and a team of agents will establish a 'fix' accordingly."

I imagine these working as some very humorous 404 error pages for the member’s area of Chronopolis... maybe it can be reworked to work with TTI as “You accidentally prevented the creation of the internet”, “In your new timeline history, computers were made of cheese” or “You accidentally caused your own country to be dominated by monkeys” or something like that (maybe way too silly, I just say that TTI can cause a poor agent to be stranded in the most strange situations :P )

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Ideas are many, and to keep people interested, there should be a big list of them
I’ll try to start compilating the ones mentioned in this thread in a word document (unless someone has a better idea to organize them  :wink: )

Quote
As far as the "origin" or the "why", it's not the time they're interested in. It's the fact that YOU found THEM. Like Will Smith in Men in Black. The players stumble into this world, then Chronopolis is like "Oh noes, you found us! Well, as long as you're in, here's what we're doing. Can you help?"

I agree with this. I think it's better this way, if you're able to find your way into the Chronopolis website and suscribe then you're an agent, no need to acknowledge that you're from 2011 or any year, the date is relevant, you're recruited because "you know too much now" (maybe Belthasar needed all the lab rats help he could get, ha). I think we can save us a lot of trouble of thinking feasible reasons for Chronopolis to be interested in our time if we take this approach. (as an example of something similar, The Beast was an ARG that took place in the year 2142, but it never acknowledge that the participants were from the present).

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I'm a bit hung up on the "Evil Belthasar" thing

I think this works just fine. But I'm opinionated against Belthasar myself, so I'm biased. But we must remember that even if the agents go against Chronopolis, they can't win in the end (at least not completely), because if this is a CC prequel, then Project Kid would end up taking place despite their efforts.

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You madam/ sir have a career in the making. The layout is truly spontaneous and azure

Thanks! just madam works just fine  :lol:

Quote
What role could Robo play in this, being the Prometheus Circuit?
I don’t know... but now you got me thinking, would Lucca play a role too? since she did know a little about project Kid, didn’t she? I don’t think the CT cast should have very prominent roles, since the protagonists are the agents, but it would be nice to see them around or hear about them...
« Last Edit: April 29, 2011, 01:13:09 am by Licawolf »

Kodokami

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #55 on: April 29, 2011, 02:03:55 am »
Quote
I don’t know... but now you got me thinking, would Lucca play a role too? since she did know a little about project Kid, didn’t she? I don’t think the CT cast should have very prominent roles, since the protagonists are the agents, but it would be nice to see them around or hear about them...

I don't believe Lucca was involved. Maybe she learned something from Lynx though. Robo, however, was commissioned by Belthasar during Project Kid's development. And while I'm sure he knew the risks, perhaps Robo had reserved feelings for the project? I could imagine him messing with things in the background, hidden from FATE's and Belthasar's view.

alfadorredux

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #56 on: April 29, 2011, 09:05:18 am »
Quote
I'm a bit hung up on the "Evil Belthasar" thing

I think this works just fine. But I'm opinionated against Belthasar myself, so I'm biased. But we must remember that even if the agents go against Chronopolis, they can't win in the end (at least not completely), because if this is a CC prequel, then Project Kid would end up taking place despite their efforts.

They could end up forcing Belthasar to break his ties with the institute and go into hiding, though--IIRC, it's canonical that he disappeared from Chronopolis before the Time Crash.

tushantin

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #57 on: April 30, 2011, 05:05:22 pm »
Or we could leave the CT/CC relations ambiguous, like CC did for much of the par (except at the end) about CT. See, it's highly likely our players will not be aware of Chrono series, so we wouldn't want to scare them away by showing things they're not familiar with. This project could actually be used to get people interesting into Chrono series, while still keeping it fun for both people who know and don't know it.  8)

Boo the Gentleman Caller

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #58 on: May 01, 2011, 11:29:04 am »
Lost has had multiple ARGs. I think everybody reading into them is a good idea. The initial two ARGs were incredibly in-depth and required real brainpower - something that I was not capable of performing to required standards. It was complicated - some clues required people to manipulate audio samples (such as changing the frequency to reveal cryptic messages) and manipulate images (such as change color filters to reveal hidden images), which is obviously something few would think to do, let alone have the abilities to do so.

Others were not so difficult and more puzzle-based, including the "Find 815". I was able to keep up and finish Find 815 - it was a simpler, single player ARG experience. Many of the others required the community as a whole to work together and to share information.

Boo's Required Reading:

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/ARG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game
« Last Edit: May 01, 2011, 11:31:34 am by Boo the Gentleman Caller »

alfadorredux

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Re: Chronopolis: the Chrono ARG
« Reply #59 on: May 01, 2011, 08:58:38 pm »
(Warning! Paragraphs here are not necessarily related to one another, except in that they are
all related to the subject of this thread.)

Keeping things at a level where the player doesn't need to know about the Chrono series
(but players who do get some interesting additional subtext from the game from time to time)
probably isn't a bad idea, although it might be a difficult balancing act.

One thing that does suggest itself as a possible way to reduce the difficulty curve a little
for players having trouble would be some sort of "handbook for new agents" that places an
emphasis on passing secret messages via steganography and encryption (probably under some
heading like "How to Report In Without Arousing Suspicion"), so that it's at least obvious
that some puzzles involve looking for messages hidden in plain sight.

We need to get some general idea of who the characters are, other than Belthasar and the renegade
agent (who has, inside my head, somehow granted himself (or herself) the codename of Jaguar). I
figure the internal organization of Chronopolis probably looks something like:

   (Central Regime)
          .
          .
  Chairman Belthasar
          |
          |
  Board of Directors
          |
          |------------------------
          |                       |
   Senior Agents            (Research Staff)
          |
          |
Junior Agents (players)

Jaguar, if we decide to use him, would have been a senior agent. We'd also have the opportunity
to throw in other senior agents (some of whom Jaguar may have worked with) and any number of
shadowy Directors other than Belthasar.

That makes the plot progress something like...
1. Players join Chronopolis
2. Players carry out a few easy "missions" relating to whatever cover story we give for
    Chronopolis' interest in the 21st century (with a PM playing the role of "senior agent" possibly
    providing a little guidance if some puzzles turn out to be too tough)
3. A bulletin about Jaguar going rogue appears on the Chronopolis site
4. While missions become increasingly focused on tracking down the rogue/undoing whatever he's
    trying to do, Jaguar starts embedding little messages of his own in places that players need
    to check out for missions (and if no-one spots the first few, a "senior agent" should drop a
    hint again).
5. Information gradually comes to light indicating that Belthasar is ordering experiments that
    might conceivably cause the Day of Lavos, long since erased from the space-time continuum,
    to be written back into history. Let's say that the only plan Jaguar's been able to come up
    with for stopping the old buzzard is to kill him outright.
6. The players must decide whether to warn Belthasar (at which point they're tapped as double
    agents and some sort of setup is made to lure Jaguar into a trap) or help Jaguar (which means
    "hacking" into the incomplete FATE to disable key security systems which will allow Jaguar to
    get close enough to do the deed).
7. Regardless of which path is chosen, Jaguar fails to kill Belthasar (although if the majority of
    the players choose to help him, he succeeds in getting close). However, Belthasar, after
    offering up whatever lame-ass excuses we can come up with ("Oh, no, that wouldn't really
    have happened--Jaguar misunderstood..."--he might conceivably have to answer to some sort of
    Board of Enquiry) decides that even careful involvement with an era as technologically advanced
    as ours is too dangerous, and pulls the plug on contemporary Chronopolis operations in favour of
    going back to the Middle Ages or some other less-fraught era.

One random idea I had that unfortunately isn't feasible without more programmers: what if the
Chronopolis staff made a half-assed effort to port the interface from the computers they're
more accustomed to to the Chronopolis website, and in the process left exploitable "bugs"?
It would have to be an unusual enough system that players would look at it and think, "Well,
this is weird," without it being too difficult to use--I was thinking that maybe something
based on mouse gestures might work.