Warp to Videoland!

[Nintaku]

Not the most original of settings, but I've been wanting to get this into some working, consistent form for RP for a while now.

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It's Videoland! The multiverse in which videogames from our world are all real and interconnected. And they know they're videogames. Wrap your head around that one. It seems easy until you think about it too hard, so don't do that.

Videoland is comprised of several important worlds: Nintendoland, Segaland, the Play Station and the X-Zone are the major worlds in recent history, though Segaland has fallen and refugees have escaped to the other worlds.

In the center of Nintendoland is the Palace of Power, the seat of all the energy that goes to keep Nintendoland running. The Palace is surrounded at the base by SimCity, a sprawling metropolis. High above the Palace floats the Final Destination, home of the enigmatic creature called Master Hand. In the sky are the stars, each a stray Pong ball that scored someone a point long ago (or so they say).

Warp Zones exist to travel between Gameworlds, allowing one to enter such places as the Mushroom Kingdom, Hyrule, and the galaxy that holds the Lylat System and the Galactic Federation.

Within the Play Station, Gameworlds exist as pocket dimensions accessed using warp terminals within the Station's nodes. It has its own Core, similar to the Palace of Power in terms of function and importance. The Station recently saw an upgrade to Mk 3.

The X-Zone is a separate dimension from the rest of Videoland, and the games in it re generally closer to the Real World in terms of feel and look, much darker than Nintendoland.

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The setting is based loosely on the Captain N series, and could use a lot of fleshing out. It's also worth noting that being based on that series, it's possible to use the Ultimate Warp Zone as a plot device to bring in Game Masters from the Real World. Also, the game system I have in mind for this setting is based heavily on 8-bit platformers more than, for instance, 3D FPS or Tactics games. I definitely had Nintendoland in mind.

Thoughts? Suggestions? And can someone point me to an appropriate forum to start a thread for the system I'm designing for it? I don't want to put mechanics here. My guess would be either the basic Homebrew forum or the Other Systems subforum of Roleplaying.

[Dr.Epic]

The setting is based loosely on the Captain N series, and could use a lot of fleshing out.

So it's about as accurate to actually video games as 300 is to Ancient Greek history?

[Nintaku]

Heh. It's a bit more tightly based on the physics and appearance of videogames than turning a 17th Century vampire hunter into a 19th Century pulp action pilot. And Tetris is...well it's Tetris now. And Mother Brain is not Audrey II. The characters will more accurately represent how they appear in their respective games. The fun part will be that anytime two of the same character get chosen to be Heroes, one will be a recolor of the other. P1, P2.

But in essence, yeah, it shouldn't be an exact replica of the game plots. Videogame characters can leave their games and interact with each other in a wider world, and it's technically possible for them to join each other in other games. Needless to say, this plays havoc on the way those games operate. Also, the system I'm developing for it has a mechanical split between Players (the person holding the controller) and Heroes (the little digital character on the screen), and the level of importance the Player has on the gameworld itself is another important concern.

I could play this sort of thing straight, where the Heroes don't care about the Player except in that it's the Player whose skill allows them to win, or I could go the more anime route of making the relationship between the Player and Hero a central feature of the storyline. That would then color the setting's NPCs and overall plots.

[Mutazoia]

Sounds like a cross between Scott Pilgrim and Doomsday Arcade, with a little Tron thrown in for good measure.