Thanks for editing ST, I nearly had an aneurysm. That was some crazy messed-up sh*t you came up with. Hessians attacking the Bundschuh and then rampaging through Dresden? That sort of thing needs waaaaaaay more explanation than you offered, my friend. Why did they do it? How did they manage to get their hands on all those ships during a blockade? Why didn't anyone help? If they had so many ships, how come the Hessians didn't just break the blockade the old-fashioned way? If the Hessians have mines like the Mollies, why aren't their bases similarly protected? Those are all questions you should have dealt with then and you will do well to consider them for your next post.
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I have an issue of my own. Ghosts. To illustrate how out-of-place ghosts are in the Freelancer universe, let me tell you a story... I first read Wilde's post a few nights ago. It certainly wasn't something I would have written; creepy and odd, with a few things that looked like they might have been continuity issues. It never even once occurred to me that Damien was a ghost. The merest thought didn't ever consider the remotest possibility of maybe crossing my mind. But this RPG isn't about writing to please me, so I figured "them's the breaks" and went along my merry way. Then, this evening, HK dropped a bomb on me. Damien is a ghost. Well holy WTF Batman?! What is that all about? I don't ever recall seeing ghosts, or anything even remotely resembling ghosts in Freelancer. Not ever. I saw funky purple artifacts, guys with creepy glowing eyes, a weird guy who spoke in tongues and freaky-ass Nomad parasites, but no ghosts. It certainly looks like ghosts have no place in the Freelancer universe.
Or do they? As I indicated above, there is a good amount of "freakiness" in FL. All of it seems to revolve, in one way or another, around the Nomads and DK. The closest thing to ghosts I can think of is the whole Jonner and Blix scene on New Berlin. There were references to "higher planes" and I think Trent said that Blix's voice sounded like a whole crapload of people talking all at the same time or something (paraphrasing a Neural Net entry). If Wilde somehow links the ghost to those things, then all will be right in the world and we can go on our merry way. But just dropping that sort of bizarre phenomenon, without any sort of explanation of how the farkity-fark-fark it works, is just not cool.
Probably the best way to deal with it (afaik) is to have that scene as some sort of vision Tanya gets as she slips into unconsciousness (or once she's fully out). Then Wilde can explain that Damien was infected with a Nomad, or forced to touch an active artifact, or something else Freelancer-ish which lets him communicate telepathically, even from beyond the grave. The same can work for the new commo with HK; he'll go to sleep and, just as he's drifting off to dreamland he'll "see the phantom". Or something. Yes, it'll take some work, but if you want to introduce something that does, at first blush, seem so very out of place in FL, you're going to have to explain WTF is going on. Ghosts can be made to work in the game, yes, but because this is the Freelancer universe we're working in, we must do everything we can to make any crazy sh*t like that fit. Garden-variety ghosts just don't cut it. Period.
Edited by - Codename on 6/19/2005 9:12:30 PM