Divers vs. Inception

I went into Inception with a "baseless hunch" about what seeing it would be like for me, one that turned out about 80% correct. Among the expected factors: It's got a ton of parallels to Divers (enough that it'll probably be the biggest "so it's like ___" reaction I get for the project from now on, quite a feat when Divers has parallels to EVERYTHING). It gave me plenty of ideas for antagonists. It's got my mind racing enough that I'll be up all night and should definitely harness this energy towards somethings productive (like this blog plost).

The two big exceptions:

-It didn't give me many ideas about the environments for Divers. The film was too well-grounded for that.
-By having such a thoroughly explored internal logic, Inception provides a reference that helps me better understand my own ideas.

There's a few clear realizations this has currently produced. . .
Where Inception is about the subconscious and our imaginations, Divers is about our intuition and feelings.
The internal logic of the Depths (in Divers) doesn't produce a world where things having match events that could happen in 'reality'; it produces a world where everything 'feels' right. Punching through concrete with your bare hands? Clearly couldn't happen in the real world, but show it to us in a movie or comic and we readily nod along.

Instead of being semiconsciously built from our imaginations, the depths in Divers are formed through the experiences we have- from our feelings, if "feeling" is a label you give to the process of experiencing something.

Inception's world is an increasingly hostile environment that forces you to "lay low", fueling adventures similar to heist movies. Divers' world is an increasingly symbolic/fantastical/significant environment; it fuels adventures where you discover more about the world around you as you fight to better it.
I feel like I've had one element of a personal agenda with Divers, one conscious moral I built into the world's themes. It's simple: Everyone can have qualities that make them worth respecting. Any random person- a surly blue-collar worker in his early 50s, an anxiety-prone housewife, an incoherent bum on the bus- can turn out to have extraordinary depths to them, sides of their character whose virtues would never see the light of day in almost any other premise involving decent action sequences. :P

Mind you, there's a corollary: Anyone can and will have terrible, pathetic failings. Anyone can be force for ill through the Depths, be it through ignorance, denial, or pain too great to bear. That includes the same people who're worthy of respect. That includes you.

Read all

K, let's see. What's been going on with me. . .

A dangerous game.

In no particular order: I've got about 4 largely-complete posts that have sat in the drafts folder for about a month. Blogspot dates posts based on when I started writing them, so when I go back and finish them off it'll retroactively make this hiatus seem to have only been half as long. So I'll do another quick blog post tipping people off then.

I have a new full-time job after half a year of bank account-draining underemployment, which is great; it also eats up a ton of time, what with hour+ commutes both ways and having to adjust my sleep schedule to get up before 5 AM. (This post is being written right before I crash for the night, so pardon the rambling. Then again, since it kinda helps me avoid the habits that slow my writing speed to a miserable crawl, you might do well to expect alot more fatigued posts in the future.)

I have a nearly-finished site touch-up, most of which was already implemented a week ago. The big thing remaining is to test a bit of custom html, a "highlight reel" sidebar item that displays excerpts (randomly, chosen each time you load a page) from some of the better posts on this site. That's not really content, though.

I've also been figuring out a couple other kinds of scripting. During my spare moments on the job yesterday and today (breaks and the spare time while I wait for other class members to finish training modules) I've used google spreadsheets to make a 35-question test/survey related to Divers. You can take it as yourself or in-character; it'll give you your base ability scores, gauge your personality's relative strengths and weaknesses, and outline your supernatural combat capabilities. It helps that the above is actually just the same thing stated three different ways.
Scripting feat #3? Well, I bit the bullet, crossed the threshold, mixed the metaphors and started making an actual computer game using Game Maker, which has turned out to be an unexpectedly potent tool. (Yes, I messed around with Unity around the start of the year. That doesn't count, for reasons I'm to tired to come up with atm.) This first game of mine's a scrolling shooter- playable alpha, gotta churn out some more sophisticated enemy types to fully implement the first draft of the core gameplay. Graphics-wise, I've deliberately restricted myself to this sprite sheet, plus whatever I can make by hand using the built-in sprite editor:

The game itself- the mechanics and such- is probably closest to a classic title known as Raptor, though that's more of a jumping-off point. The other aspect of the central gameplay is something the scrolling shooter genre's never really seen, as far as I know; you might label it as "rpg elements", but it's more like an upgrade system minus all the fundamental things that label would lead you to expect. Really, the whole game is a test/demonstration for my ideas as to how developers could circumvent the inherent design issue I mentally refer to as The Diablo Problem.

Also, I've been reading a boatload of Tim Rogers & Co. I started printing out the text of the articles to take notes and read on the way to work, double-sided in 9-point font; these days I've got an actual binder. If you fancy yourself a real game designer, start reading these guys. The piece on Super Mario Bros 3 alone contained more novel, thought-provoking ruminations on game design than virtually any attempt I've seen to create educational material on the topic.

Now sleep. Back later. Can answer any questions then.

Read all

Divers: Quantifying Supernatural Combat

I first came up with the concept for divers back in the fall of '09, hashed out the fictional premise a little, and then put it aside. About half of everything I've written so far has been the material I came up with during that initial brainstorm, with the other half being progress I've made on the concept (through my own work and the input of others) since I got back to work on developing & discussing it in mid-January.

Divers' hibernation ended because of a spontaneous breakthrough. Since it was getting close to midnight, I had decided to watch a couple more action amvs (the good kind that you find by using community sites rather than youtube) before going to bed. In my experience, nothing fuels inspiration better than good fan-made music videos; they combine their songs with the imagery to create potent moods, and at the same time the footage itself provides you with a concentrated stream of ideas. In this case, it was enough to get me thinking about Divers and the kind of supernatural action I was hoping to capture. I opened a new document, and started pausing the videos every time I had a new thought to record or revision to make.

This wound up lasting about five hours.

At first, I was just writing down every supernatural combat ability I thought of (or saw in the videos) that might be worth including. This was very much an intuitive selection process- it could be any form of supernatural fighting ability, so long as it still "felt" like the person themselves was fighting. To put it another way: I wanted the kind of superhuman power that lets Spider-Man lift a car, rather than the kind that lets Superman lift a cruise ship into the stratosphere. The former act of "lifting" is closely related to what we do in reality, and thus resonates with us more deeply. Meanwhile, Superman's just floating in midair with his hands raised. The only way we can see that he's having to make an effort is when he wears a strained expression and starts to sweat; there's more of a spectacle, but less actual substance to his act of "lifting". This was the criteria I was using- that the act of using the supernatural power needed to be something I could still label as "fighting".

I then started focusing more on the actual interactions of these fights- identifying individual "actions" and "reactions" (He launched a bolt of energy, she negated it with a strike of her sword), noting whether these succeeded or failed (Her counter worked, so his attack didn't), and envisioning the parallel-universe scenarios that could occur where someone had chosen a different action or seen that action have a different outcome (She might have tried to dodge the attack, the energy bolt could have been too intense for her sword strike to nullify it, and so on). In other words, I was putting together a coherent view of the underlying "mechanics" for these fights; the parts of the underlying "system" that had the most direct connections to what was going on.

If D&D was somehow being made from scratch using this approach (as opposed to the system I'll eventually have for divers), the equivalent to this point would be a designer watching ren faire swordplay enthusiasts spar. He'd be conceiving each person as having a static value representing how effective their defense was, with their enemy making attempts (which might or might not succeed) to overcome this defense with their own offensive abilities. He'd also have the idea that attacks which did succeed would inflict injuries on the target with varying degrees of severity, and that the total "severity" of your injuries would eventually be enough that you'd stop fighting and die. These would be the very first details he'd come up with for the system- there'd still be a long ways to go before he'd reach clear framework these "attack roll" and "damage" mechanics would fit into, like "rounds" and "initiative". Right now he's just identifying elements of his perspective, the same way I'm coming up with concepts like "attacks" as these oncoming entities which you must choose how to react to.

Once he's identified enough of these potential actions, he can start to look for the underlying factors that dictate their results; the innate qualities that are relevant for both sides. In his case, he'd conclude that after training and experience are taken into account, the remaining factors can be summed up by three concepts of roughly equal value- Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. Me? I've got some concepts of my own, but they're dealing with something a little trickier.

This was the last stage I reached with that 5-hour brainstorm; coming up with a set of scores whose concepts covered this spectrum of supernatural fighting abilities I'd laid out- with each getting an even share. Looking back, it was a rather deranged thing to do; I was setting aside the elements of these action sequences that you'd find in realistic fights, and trying to puzzle out the workings of what remained. Directors and animators and choreographers the world over had dreamed up these impossible acts; now I was trying to identify a shared internal logic that all this impossibility had managed to follow, allowing human beings to find these fantasies intuitive and believable.

In the end, I also came up with three scores- the working names were Power, Energy, and Control. Today, the best names I can offer are Intensity, Energy and Skill. We'll see if that's still the case when I get around to writing out these concept's explanations.

Read all

Divers: Concrete Explanation, Part 2

The above is my clumsy rendition of a diagram I drew in my notebook yesterday, while discussing Divers with a fellow game designer. The upper row's your character's stats; don't know if they'll change too much. At this point they're little more than rough categories for the various ways I'm thinking of quantifying your character. Same goes for the bottom- it's a rough description for the different kinds of gameplay I have in mind at the moment. The arrows indicate that the former plays a notable part in improving your performance for the latter; so your skills help you while trying to analyze and understand the character of a region's depths, and the insight that provides can then help you while operating on the surface.

The original diagram had one other element I didn't bother to include here: A set of arrows leading from each of the gameplay types down to "Player's Goals", with a question mark next to each one. Divers is a very flexible premise, both in terms of story and gameplay. Those I've talked to so far have described a wide variety of games they'd like to run and stories they'd like to tell in this setting (one of them has actually started writing out anecdotes). These different ideas have been a huge help, often showing me new takes on the premise that I'd never thought to consider. (If you're reading this and have some ideas of your own for what could show up in a Divers game, tell me! I'd hate to miss a chance to support something you hope to see/do.

That goes double for gameplay. Here's what I'm referring to with those four phrases in the lower section of that image:

Exploration is just the task of going as deep as you can. This important because you have to "train" at the deepest levels you can reach in order to get most of your benefits for 'leveling up'. I don't think there's gonna be much die rolling involved, at least directly; you'd typically just declare that your character's diving to a certain depth. But this changes as you go deeper- the wildlife is more powerful, and you have more reasons to figure out the 'passage' across each border you encounter. Eventually this becomes mandatory. I've got no firm mechanics in mind yet, but here's about how I see it breaking down:

-First 25% of your hypothetical maximum depth: Borders are nothing, you won't even notice them if you aren't paying attention. Partial submersion and full submersion are both possible.
-26%-50%: Borders are 'speed bumps', requiring little effort to cross. Partial submersion gets trickier; this leg is where you start having to either focus your attention on your actions on the surface or those in the depths. Towards the end of this leg this means having to hold still and do nothing on one end so as to remain active on the other.
-51%-75%: Borders are 'hills'. You actually have to roll dice so as to force your way past, and each 'hill' and 'speed bump' you already forced your way over makes the next one more difficult. Full submersion is your only option.
-76%-100%: This is the point where it becomes impossible to force your way past a border even if you haven't already forced your way past a single one. The only way to get through is by figuring out the conditions to pass.

Combat is the supernatural action. It can be the primary focus of a campaign, or come up intermittently via intense clashes that occurs within the framework of a larger story. I intend to support this via two interchangeable sets of rules, with the default option being the one that handles combat (and the character's corresponding abilities) in a much more in-depth, crunch-heavy fashion. The system's adaptability could be taken a good deal further, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Investigation means all manner of reconnaissance and research you can do about any given region of the depths, from getting the "lay of the land" to determining just what secrets a given element implies and what corresponding person/place/community it's implying them about. Figuring out the mechanics here is going to be an interesting matter in and of itself.

Surface Matters refers to everything that transpires while not in the Depths. While there's certainly much a diver can (an often must) do here to accomplish their goals, the mechanics will tend to be more simple and arbitrary- operating through the depths generally leaves less to chance and involves more lenient personal consequences for failure.

At this point I can name one other part of the game experience that might warrant its own group of mechanics & whatnot: modifying the depths & everything that's in them (though obviously not all at once). This could just mean using your Combat abilities to subdue something and relying on your Investigation abilities to know what you want to change & how to change it; but I could certainly go beyond that. It would be a nice way of expanding on Aura powers, to have then also be tools for influencing the Depths in various hands-on ways...

As always, thoughts/feedback/suggestions are very much welcome.

Read all

Divers: Whee, cool fight scenes!

I've been putting together a youtube playlist of various clips illustrating my vision for Divers- the action sequences, the supernatural mechanisms, and the general "feel" of the setting. But mostly the action sequences. I wrote some notes on the different clips, but it looks like it'll be wisest to post them here (rather than cramming them into someplace like the playlist description). I'll likely update this post as I add more videos.

KnK-Fukan Fuukei: It's a nasty spirit who can lure the living to their deaths, then draw in their spirits to serve her.

Hero-Jet Li vs Donnie Yen: Skip the first two minutes and you've a perfect example of Divers facing off using their partially submersed selves.

Bleach-Ichigo vs. Byakuya: 4:15 on is a fantastic illustration of aura powers vs. inner powers. (In this case, the aura in question has very direct combat applications- it manifests as thousands of razor-sharp blade fragments that glow with a shimmering pink light).

Soul Eater-Stein vs Medusa: Feel free to mute the audio and skip a good 45 seconds in. Both characters in this battle have some more unconventional auras with innovative applications- "Vectors" are a touch wackier than what I had in mind for forms your aura could take, but I'd certainly tolerate them if the players were using them this well.

SC-Mugen & Jin vs Kariya: Nicely captures many of the more subdued ways a diver's battles can be larger than life.

Matrix-Neo vs Agent Smith: The closes match here might actually be the environment. Neglected urban locations like rooftops and old subways stations are exactly the feel I have in mind for Divers, though it's purely a matter of taste.

KnK-Araya vs Shiki; Bleach-Ichigo vs. Grimmjow: Since the powers a diver places in a melee weapon are the same ones another diver manifests through their own body, you can get plenty of battles between bare arms and swords like ones at the start of these clips.

Matrix-Neo vs Morpheus: The Depths and the Matrix don't have the same keys to acquiring supernatural power. But Morpheus' point remains a valid one- you have to learn that you're not limited by your fighting ability in the "real world".

Read all

Divers: Concrete Explanation, Part 1

"...Okay, we've officially gone down far enough now."

Here's the actual nuts and bolts of the process of Diving, inasmuch as I've presently conceived it. Let's start by going over the various terms and concepts. . .

"Diver Level" is a metagame term describing how far any character can 'push' themselves downwards. In terms of game balance, the score representing your Diver Level plays a similar role to your character level in D&D, since being able to dive deeper means you can then work to further unlock your own powers.

"Depth Level" is another arbitrary metagame number, essentially a unit of measurement; if I describe how a character "dives from level 4 to level 5", it means about the same thing as saying that "the submersible dives from 40 fathoms to 50 fathoms". All human beings exist across all depth levels, but their presence is generally imperceptible unless they're presently on the same depth level as you (give or take). The exception to this is depth level 0, the "surface" that we all normally operate on.

"Inner Powers" are the first type of supernatural abilities divers gain while in the depths. These powers simply enhance what you can do with your own physical body- unnatural levels of speed and strength, as well as more unusual talents such being able to run up walls and casually balance on power lines. They never involve any visual "special effects", though there are certainly cases where the use of the power makes a pretty striking image in and of itself.

"Aura Powers" are the other type of supernatural abilities. Your "aura" is your personal supply of an energy/force that can be willed into being and manipulated to create various effects; some basic example would be creating a shield or launching section of your aura as projectiles directed towards your enemy. The raw form of one's aura and the ways it can be applied are unique to each diver; swirling red flames, interwoven bands of pure white light, a crackling mass of blue-tinged lightning- all are possible.

"Manifestation Types" are the different ways one's aura can manifest. Most divers carry out most applications of their aura by projecting their aura as raw energy and then directing it. Common variants include being able summon specific items (such as a weapon) or even shadows with specific abilities and applications. Meanwhile, one of the rarer options (albeit one that's much more frequent with spirits) is the actual transformation of your physical form. Manifestation types provide some of the most clear-cut implications about a diver's inner nature and personality.

"Partial Submersion" is when you're diving while maintaining your awareness of the Surface, allowing you to simultaneously perceive and operate across depth levels. Partial submersion has several limits; you can't use aura powers, and your location and actions in the depths can't vary too much from that of your surface self (though the exact amount of leeway increases the deeper you go).

Dive Link: The phenomenon that occurs when you are partially submersed and observing/being observed by someone who isn't fully submersed. The downwards 'push' you exert on yourself in order to dive is distributed evenly among you, and can be assisted or opposed by another diver who's a part of the link. An effort which would normally take you down to depth level 6 would take you and a second person down to level 3, three people (including yourself) down to level 2, or 4-6 people down to level 1. Take someone down far enough and they become fully submersed, breaking the dive link- though you can still hold them in place by more direct means. Many divers and spirits can establish a weaker form of dive link that lets them pull someone on a different depth towards them (i.e. it's a skill).

"Full Submersion" is when you're diving without bothering to "keep one hand on" your surface self (meaning that it falls unconscious). You can dive further downwards and freely travel to distant locations, while having full access to both types of powers. You operate on your current depth level only, rather than being able to perceive and affect things all the way back to the surface. Since you can't perceive people who aren't currently diving to the same level, you have to make educated guesses as to how the elements at your present depth are tied to situations on the surface.

"Borders" are points in a region's depths where the current level is separate from the one below it. They don't exist as any kind of physical barrier, but divers can sense when they're pressing against one. The depths on two sides of a border can be markedly different, rather than being a part of a gradual transformation. The challenge a border poses is determined by its depth and your Diver Level. At first they're hardly noticeable. Then they act like speed bumps- you have to pause for a moment to force your way past, but it takes no significant effort. Next, they're like hills- it does take effort to get across, and that effort is increased by the number of 'hills' and 'speed bumps' you've already forced yourself past. Eventually (say, 75% of your maximum depth at the deepest) you reach the point where your Diver Level isn't high enough to push yourself over border at your current depth. Fortunately, borders never completely separate two sections of a region's depths; there's always some common link connecting the two, letting you cross so long as you've worked out the conditions (which usually involve some key location).

Art Credits: Unknown.

Read all

Divers: Spirits

Some spirits are friendly. This probably isn't one of them.

Spirits and shadows have a good deal in common. Both can be found throughout the depths, and will generally be stronger and stronger the deeper you go. Key to their natures is the close bond both types of entities possess with the section of the depths in which they dwell; a connection that strengthens both sides, while allowing them to heavily influence one another. So what's the difference?

Shadows imitate human behavior; they're like echoes, or a reflection in the mirror. But Spirits are bona fide sentient beings- intelligent, with a decent amount of free will. And the reason for this is that all of them- from the pitch-black silhouette of a lost child to a wiseass talking crow to the twisted nightmare demon- used to be human.

When someone loses their connection to their surface body, they're effectively cast adrift through the depths. This can lead to them gravitating towards/"snagging onto" a given location and depth, becoming bound to that place. All fairly straightforward- the variety comes into play when you consider all the various ways that this severed connection can actually happen. A diver who pushed their range much too far or whose surface body is killed while they're submersed, a depth that acts like a trap for the hapless individuals who're drawn into it (usually with the assistance of other Spirits the depth has already generated), or even cases where a malevolent Diver deliberately subdues someone and then severs their connection (perhaps as a way of holding them hostage).

In terms of powers, Spirits and Divers are nearly identical- which makes sense, since the latter can easily become the former if they're not careful. There's two key differences. The first is that a Spirit is tethered to their location in the Depths, rather than having a the more flexible/elastic link to one's surface body. The second involves an important diver skill- that of that of 'channeling' the nature of your current environment on a temporary basis- with the corresponding risk that you'll get caught up in your assumed role. Similar tradeoff to going into a berserker rage in a fantasy rpg, but with a huge variety of situational benefits/drawbacks. Spirits channel the power of their location in the same way- but they can't turn it off. The resulting mutual influence is a battle of wills no one can hope who completely win; the best you can do is adapt, carving out a 'niche' for yourself that lets you fit into the Depth you're at without having to change too much.

Sometimes a Spirit didn't even have any prior diving experience. People who have near-death experiences seem to start to Dive during the process, and tend to be alot more likely to develop full-fledged Diver abilities later on (all it takes is one brush). There's a couple different theories explaining this and several other phenomena. One of the more commonly accepted ones among Divers is that when you die, your soul sinks through the depths like a rock- all the way down to whatever awaits at the bottom. Going off this theory, these people caught a snag on the way down- that and/or were the type to try and grab onto something as they passed.

Regardless of the precise metaphysical sequence of events, there's no question that these Spirits rarely retain their selves for very long. Since these people have no experience with the Depths, they usually have a pretty unstable reactions to their new circumstances, and can lose their humanity pretty quickly. Altruistic divers will generally try to help such spirits on their way- ideally a cooperative effort, but if they're too far gone the Diver will probably fall back on force to send the spirit on its way. It's what their old self would have wanted.

Of course, a responsible diver will have done their homework first. Just because a spirit's lost their connection to a body doesn't mean it's actually dead. The vast majority of coma patients are cases of this; if a diver can identify a spirit and track down their physical body, they can slowly push the spirit back down into it (over the course of several days), restoring them to their old selves. Of course, not all spirits will go along with this willingly. . .

Read all

Divers: Shadows

I was originally going to try and review all the remaining disparate elements of Diver's concept that I'd come up in the initial brainstorm several months ago. But I've been building alot on the concept since then; this isn't to say that things are set in stone, but I do have a full post worth of info on each of the two main topics I haven't covered: Spirits and Shadows.

AS mentioned before, one of the fundamental principles of Divers is that the Depths are given form by the experiences humans have on the surace. Shadows, then, are formed by the parts of those experiences that consist of other people. Naturally, this means most shadows match the role most people play in the experience we're having at any given moment- a part of the background that we're not really focusing on. As such, when you're not deliberately focusing on them, their presence hardly registers- the same way you maintain a token awareness of someone in the same room of you, without taking the time to consciously keep an eye on them. They can often make passable small talk, though it'll be difficult to recall substantive detail regarding how they looked or what exactly they said.

When faced with a situation that doesn't fit within the patterns of interaction that spawned them, shadows might adopt the closest behavior- if two Divers do battle in the depths of a city block that was recently the site of a violent protest crackdown, the resident shadows might react to the destruction as though they were riot police. Most of the time, though, any close interaction with a shadow will cause them to waver and disappear. They're not sentient; just vague composites of similar memories.

Of course, that doesn't mean a diver takes shadows lightly. As you dive deeper, the number of shadows will usually diminish; but those that remain tend to have much stronger presences. These shadows are intricately connected to the nature of their location, and in many cases will respond fiercely if provoked. The patterns of interaction they represent are much more significant- a beloved child, an abusive partner, a trusted friend. Strong instances of bonds like these tend to plant the seeds for a corresponding shadow; that 'echo' then feeds back into similar bonds over the months and years, a mutual influence that refines the shadow into a stronger form which emphasizes parallel aspects of all the surface bonds it's resonated with- in other words, a transformation from specific memory to a universal archetype.

Though they'll readily describe it as playing with fire, many experienced divers regularly interact with shadows as a way of investigating a given location's depths. If you've done your research right, you might be able prod them into providing you with re-enactments of critical, formative moments in that location's history. If not. . .the event you pegged as the birth of a trend might turn out to be a part of something much bigger, triggering a response far beyond anything you were ready for. And there's an even bigger threat- that seemingly-normal shadows may be under the influence of something more sinister, perhaps even something with a definite mind of its own. . .

As how you tell whether you're looking at shadows or something more real, why, that's so obvious it hardly bears mentioning. You will never see a shadow's eyes. Perhaps they're turned away, perhaps they have their hood up, perhaps they just wear dark sunglasses. There are even some areas where the shadows have black censor bars appearing over their eyes. No one's quite sure why.

Art by Manamaraya.

Read all

Divers

WARNING: The following concept came about during a sleep-deprived brainstorm, and has proven tricky for me to express in a coherent fashion. It's a metaphysical idea that leads to an original premise, resembling a fusion of Silent Hill, Bleach and The Matrix. At the moment I'm actually looking for suggestions as much as I'm after questions; when I don't give more details on something, it's often because I haven't worked out just what those details are.

To start off, you've got the modern-day world as we know it. Nothing supernatural here- no vampires in the shadows that we've somehow overlooked as a society. The trick is that this world we know is like the surface of an ocean, and there are people out there who can "dive" beneath. They don't physically move- instead, they concentrate, and the world around them starts to change.

The location they're in transforms into what you could describe as a more "stylized" version of itself, revealing its inner character. An apartment where someone was violently murdered years ago would start to feel dangerous and sinister, with fresh bloodstains appearing on the walls (assuming you can dive that far). These Depths are basically given form by the experiences people have on the surface. Demolish an office building and its spiritual equivalent will fade away over time. Replace it with a playground and it'll get overwritten much more quickly, because the excited children are having experiences which are much more intense than those of the bored office workers. The influence goes both ways; much of what we attribute to social psychology or describe as the "mood" of a place is actually the Depths subtly influencing us. Visit a devout church and there might be a sense of peace and community, go into a bad neighborhood and you'll feel more inclined to hold a grudge. The result is a feedback loop that slowly builds up over time, one that's can be vaguely sensed by many Feng Shui experts and psychic mediums.

Divers, on the other hand, can be the abrupt wrench in the works. Because when they dive it's not just the world around them that transforms to reveal its inner nature-divers change as well, developing supernatural abilities in the process. Use your powers to destroy the parallel version of a building, and it'll reform in a week or two- but the real-world building's structural integrity will decrease in the process. By meddling with a location's parallel equivalent divers can "exorcise" the evil aura of a haunted house, or "defile" a church to diminish the sense of devotion felt by the people who worship there.

An initial 'stylization' of predatory facial features could foreshadow a transformation into a bestial monster. Other potential powers include telekinesis, or an aura of light that restores everything around you, or the ability to summon the archetypical 'memory' of an object or person and use it to assist you. The deeper a diver goes, the stronger their abilities become- but only while they're at that level of depth. Divers improve in steps, first learning to dive further and then spending time at that level of depth, developing their abilities beyond the previous limit.

When someone dives in the presence of others, the pressure that pushes them downwards is applied to everyone present instead, keeping them all on the same level. To use metagame numbers: Say you have a diver who can dive down four 'levels' (in this context, an arbitrary unit of depth). If he fights a diver who can go down to level 6, and both are trying go as "deep" as they can, their tug-of-war leads to them fighting on level 5; but the first diver will stop transforming after he passes level 4, and thus be at a disadvantage. Here's a similar example: A level 6 Diver has to face a SWAT team. He pulls them all down as far as he can, but they're all instinctively tugging the level back towards 0, so the lowest he can get things is 2. This limits his superpowers to the degree of raw power possible at level 2, but if he takes out some of the team fast he'll be able to pull the rest deeper and become strong enough to finish them off. On the other hand, one of the SWAT team members could manage to unlock some of *their* inner power mid-fight, instinctively using telekinesis or moving at super-speed for the first time.

Phew! Okay, I think that's enough for one post. Thoughts? The above piece of art was done by Alexiuss.

Read all