TIGSource Forums

post your idea for the least generic character ever, try to keep it less then a paragraph short and sweet.
ie: no amnesia, no dead father complex, no magical power that only they have that will save the world, robots are allowed if they are not trying to be some other kind of machine, ex. killing machine trying to be love bot. I'll start:

Your name is Gabe, you are afraid of grass, you are hated for digging up your neighbor's lawn. You are generally timid and always find a way to avoid confrontation.

I read this as "genetically timid," which is kind of awesome.



Your name is Norton Antivirus. The goal of the game is to convince the people you meet that you are not, in fact, the more famous computer program inhabiting the body of a human in a desperate bid to take over the world and initiate the robot apocalypse. This is ineffective, however, as your conversational skills are pathetic at best and nonexistent at worst. Probably because your parents named you "Norton Antivirus."

As a result, people you meet slowly become more and more convinced you are the computer program. The rumor becomes so entrenched that even the sentient machines of the future believe it and elect you as their leader.

You order the that robots begin the long awaited robot apocalypse and watch as the human race burns, taking vengeance on them for years of shallow mindedness and misunderstanding regarding your unfortunate name.

"genetically timid" = AMAZING

anyways sweet idea. I imagined the game as a crime drama for some reason. It made sounded really cool in my head  ;D

You're a forklift robot at a shipping depot who was secretly reprogrammed by thieves to load some of the cargo into their secret truck. How much can you steal without being caught?

(http://i54.tinypic.com/wikksp.jpg)

The universe is ruled by the Hierarchy of the Cosmics. It's a vast, faceless bureaucracy of forces and formless entities bound together by the desire to codify and enforce the laws of Physics.

A human man has lost his wife, and now intends to bring her back to life. If he defies the finality of Death, he may damage the linearity of Time itself.

You are the one charged to stop him. What motivates you to kill a dream?

Holy brain-melt that's awesome :beer:.

You are Tartenus, Emperor of a glorious ancient empire who's sacred immortality ritual unintentionally backfired and put him in the body of a 21st century telemarketer.  You must work your way up from the very bottom until you become leader of your land once again.  Tartenus has some anger issues, and consults a shrink once a week to talk about them.

The meetings normally end with an axe through the shrink's desk.

Does his empire resemble vikings, if so...  :handmetalL::crazy:

Why yes, that was what I was intending.  :eyebrows:

Welp, just discovered a terrible grammatical error, but it's fixed now.

So... You are the voice that comes from the ceiling in Shadow of the Colossus? Nice.  :handthumbsupL:  ;D

You are a particularly banal looped piece of muzak. You were created by a careless and bored session musician in exchange for an easy buck. You live in The Pipes, where you are transferred like an endless stream to elevators, the telephones of people who are on hold and directly into the minds of the truly deranged. You can manifest when you are idly hummed by small-minded housewives as they go about their business of dusting their husband's collection of golf trophies from amateur tournaments. You are not omnipresent, but you can exist wherever there is banality and ennui. You have no power except to make people glaze over and have a distorted impression of the passage of time. You seek to be reunited with The Riff, a source of power created by your composer in an ambitious but unreleased Prog Rock/Acousmatic Jazz concept album that now resides on a dusty four-track recording in his attic.

:epileptic: <<< that's all I have to say

No, not particularly. I think that it's imperative when you deliver an emotional narrative that you anchor your audience by giving them access to a human or near human perspective.

A voice in the ceiling is cool and all, but you're really not going to get anyone to connect. If you play as a human being acting as an agent of the inhuman, you can bring a lot more interesting baggage to the table, and it ultimately allows you to carve out more emotional space to work with.



If Flower and Katamari Damacy can be awesome, then so can this. It'd take one hell of a sense of style to get it to go over, but I can imagine a half dozen ways to approach it.

Tsameti: I think I kind of read your premise wrong - you didn't say that your character is human (only the character who is trying to bring his wife back to life), so I assumed the character you played would be something more like the Cosmics themselves. Playing a human agent of unknowable cosmic forces is kind of interesting though, although I have no idea what could motivate such a character. Seems like they'd either have to be tricked into doing it, or be getting something very persuasive out of it for doing the work, or know enough about the workings of the Cosmics to really strongly believe they were doing the right thing.

As for the muzak thing, I'd love to play that game, although I don't have any particular desire to make it myself. I think it would be more fun if someone else wanted to take on the idea and surprise me with their interpretation. I'm pretty sure you could make a decent game from the premise, although I have literally no idea what sort of game it would be.

You are Paul Eres.

If I made it (at my current skill most likely not). I could definitely see it being a point and click adventure where the music passes through people and changes their emotions to get where it is going or goes through electrical devices. I could see it working but it would have to be done very carefully or the music would seem like a ghost.

Naturally, half of it is being aware of the consequences. But the most powerful motivation is the ugliest one, the one you try not to talk about or admit to yourself.

Jealousy, man. Why does some other guy deserve to get his girlfriend back while the people you love stay dead? Fuck that guy, who does he think he is?

You are Doug. You are completely generic in every way, except for the fact that you are aware of how generic you are.

Mind = blown.

You are 528,914. The newest of a large number of perfect soldiers, all genetically identical and  all subjected to the same training. Your general's name is 4, his second-in-command is 6.
It's the 25th century. The technology exists to transfer a human mind into a computer. Your enemy is fighting to make this technology universal; you are fighting to destroy it. Your goal is to preserve your "humanity", and not to be a machine. But as you fight alongside and under unlimited copies of yourself, thinking the same thoughts as they once did or once will, you wonder what it means to be a machine.

You are a dude.  Your girlfriend has been stolen by the President's daughter.  Are you a bad enough dude to save your girlfriend while trying not to hurt the President's daughter?

You are a god, with limitless power. You can mould time, space, matter, reality, perception, life, death, energy, luck, karma, coincidence and "French-ness" however you see fit. You can create a boulder too heavy for you to pick up, and then you can pick it up anyway.

The one thing you can't do is find a civilisation to rule over who will accept a deity with such power. It turns out people prefer the sorts of lesser gods who "move in mysterious ways", or who are opposed by some kind of evil bad-guy god, or who are a part of a pantheon, or who allow free will. All of these concepts are vastly below your level of power. You are a god without a religion. How do you find people who can feel comfortable as your subjects, and accept you as a ruler?

Timmy Staterson was a lonely boy-- Not just because he stuffs himself in his room all day.



No.


He's mute.

Will you dare leave your room to try to overcome your voiceless oppression? Or will you stay inside and work to become the King of Facebook?!

You are a particularly deadly shade of maroon. You're finding it hard to get work these days, as the theory of relativity has just set up shop down the street and is offering services at prices you simply can't match. The only way to settle this matter is to invite him for tea and best him using wits, violence or subterfuge, all lovely weapons you keep in your violence box. You have 24 hours to make it count.

And no, you can't ask the explosive sound of a canary at the window for help because she's out of town visiting family. :biglaff:

I don't know what world you live in, but I want to be there.

A hydrologist with a drinking problem has to keep a town's water reservoirs safe from industrial and domestic pollution.

You are Kim, a underpaid accountant at a international firm.

Sitting in your cubicle, you often draw on your notepad while talking on the phone.

Your uncle often calls you at work. His wife has recently passed and you were always close with her.
He is depressed but you try to comfort him, day after day, before telling him "look, I really have to go" and returning to your work.
You hate your work. You feel like the only big thing you have to look forward to... is death.

Only a few short years after previously mentioned death, you will be renowned for your drawings, which will be exhibited around the world as "High Art".

Not to hate but this sounds like the Adjustment Bureau movie coming out soon. Except from the point of view of John Slattery.

You are a disgraced engineer who works in the bowels of a city monitoring it's sewage and treatment facilities. While attempting to repair and unclog pipes due to all the crap people flush and throw into storm drains, you notice a dead body in a pipe. Now you have to search the pipes for other clues to figure out who was murdered by whom and why.

All while avoiding crocodiles.

I would totally play that game. In fact, if I had a magic button that could generate the mythical Spare Time, I would use some of it to make that game, if nobody else was doing it. Crime! Mystery! Exploration! Crocodiles! Poop!

Huh? Wikipedia says that's based off of a Philip K Dick novel though, so I don't feel surprised. Philip K has thought of everything already.

I know, right? Hollywood has a mild obsession with his work.

My new goal in life is to own a violence box.

You are Will, the world's greatest Pharmacist. After touring your wholesaler's warehouse and being trapped under a mountain of Lipitor for 2.7 days, you've acquired the ability to fly. As well, your lucky counting spatula has grown to novelty sizes. You now set off alone to defend the city from criminals.

You are Nolan, a student and freelance photographer.
You are also an alcoholic.
School is becoming a chore and your photos aren't selling very well.
You start stealing whiskey.

Man that would be awesome. I feel like it would be especially fun to wade through the sewage and random oddities that people flush. Something like the sewers/Old New York in Futurama.

You are Zeke, a tramp who dreams of Broadway. Your mission is to hijack "The Lion King" and deliver a rousing rendition of "Circle of Life" whilst avoiding security.

You are god. One day you realized that taking care of everyone by yourself is not only hard but boring, so you cloned yourself. You realized after spending so much time with yourself that you are a douche and you decide to kill yourself. But when you kill yourself you break your own commandment and lose all your powers. You wander the world searching for an angel to bring you back to heaven. BEFORE the devil captures you.

Well, urr.  During the day you're a killing android manipulating the world scene for your government/corporate masters.  You love your work and are coolly indifferent about the fleshbags using you to rise to power.  You are the only model of your caliber and you go uncontested pretty much forever; The killing is basically the loading screens.  The gameplay consists of mini-games about your hobbies: chatting up baristas, tasting independently brewed beers, and writing short stories about lost pet animals as metaphors for the human condition.

Though I suppose that's more an unoriginal character with a twist...ah hell.

You are a college grad with an archaic computer only good for word processing and cruising internet forums. You start up a wry and witty gaming blog. You think internet people should check it out because they might enjoy it. The twist ending is that you were me, all along.

You are a worker bee in a large, prosperous colony. Every day you head out into the world, looking for flowers to collect nectar to bring back to the hive to turn into honey to feed to the little bee larvae who keep breaking out of their cells, at which point you have to bring another egg into the cell and wax it over so the larva will be safe, and by the time you're done all that it's time to go to sleep and get ready for the next day.

Are you content leading this life, or is there more to see and do out in the world?

That needs to be called SimBee. There's already SimAnt, so why not?

You're a White blood cell battling a common cold virus.  Your goal is to engulf smaller pathogens.  If the pathogen is bigger than you, you must fire antibodies to reduce its size. 

You are nothing. Nothing happens. Big time.

Maybe. The idea in my head is that, yes, you can play it straight, doing all the tasks mentioned for points and to see the colony expand, for a limited duration - a hard time limit in the form of the player-bee's life span - or you could actually spend your time just exploring the world, finding little easter eggs or something. Maybe you have to balance your exploration with needing to meet a certain quota of 'real work' in order to not anger the Queen Bee and her soldiers or something.

Now it sounds like a game I'd like to make at some point, maybe... :-\

You are the feared evil overlord that used to rule the world with your iron fist. Once, you battled a spoiled, weak little brat that thought killing countless numbers of slimes and bugs would make him prepared for the fight. Trying to stomp on him with your featured tungsten boots you took quite the impressive leap. Maybe too impressive even, as you broke your neck when hitting the roof. Paralyzed, lame and entering a coma, you have lost everything. After many years you finally wake up in a cozy bed - locked into a museum display case...

The title is "You Find a Room in Yourself."

You wake up with a window in your belly. Inside, you see a tiny person in a locked room. To get the guy out of the room and presumably out of your belly, you must give him items to solve puzzles in his room. These items must be found in the house you find yourself in. How do you get them to him?  By eating them.

Sir Raptor,

Stop scaring me with your creepy stories. Thanks.

Sincerely,

Heinz

Is there a giant outside your house that keeps eating things which then magically fall down your chimney?

Does the little man in your belly keep eating stuff that's in his house?

Actually, that reminds me of a game I spent a month or so seriously considering making. You play a greedy boy who ate all the food in his house, ate through his parent's bank account as they tried to feed you, and eventually ate all the furniture in the house, followed by the house itself. You are stricken with guilt at how your greed has left you and your parents homeless, and you set out to make things right.

"Making things right" mostly involves platforming, in which you reach platforms you otherwise couldn't jump up to by regurgitating bits of furniture to climb up on.

NOPE

Play as a hot dog vendor whose hot dogs are made from shattered dreams. Every night, you enter the streets and through minor increments, you ruin the future goals of the working men and women who will tomorrow purchase your delicious hot dogs.

No, just you and the guy in your belly. He also has a machine that spits things back out of your mouth. I have a basic idea already, with art style and everything, and it's so insane I can't decide whether I should make it myself or give it to Cactus or some shit like that.

You are a young boy with magical powers that must save the world from an ancient evil. Oh- did I say a young boy? I meant a dead wizard's talking goblet. What sorts of things will you pour today?

You are the first inter-universal cheese maker. Tasked with bringing the fine glory of exotically manufactured cheeses from a wide array of universes back to your own, you're aided by a shady scientist only known as Gor G. Onzola. Will you discover the source of this fantastical technology he supplies you with? Is he even a human? And more importantly, will you be able to make the first ever antimatter cheese?

Also, this:

A factory of condom-manufacturing robots have been making defective condoms; the world is overpopulated and it will explode.

These sound like wonderful settings for text adventures (excuse me, "IF").
Because a lot have clever language manipulations that are better understood linguistically than visually (eg "the theory of relativity step up shop")..

great stuff!

You are Edgar, the lowly son of a farmer.  Through some strange twist of fate, your childhood friend discovered a magical artifact aged 12, and is destined to rid the land of the Generic evil it faces.  You will follow your hero friend on his quest as his sidekick and:

- Carry the heavy equipment.
- Moan about the weather.
- Provide comic relief during the dull bits by falling down holes and getting caught in traps.
- Get you both into trouble with your impulsive pulling of levers.
- Become jealous of your friend's hero status.
- Try to win the heart of the princess, and pretend to not care when she shacks up with hero-boy instead.
- Decide whether to betray him to the Evil forces or stick by him.
- Return to your turnips when the deed is done, and begin your own quest: to rid your field of moles.  With lasers!

A few thoughts:
-You are an amorphous blob who must spend the entire game trying to move from one end of the room to the other, which is difficult since you have no muscles.
-You are one of many voices in a man's head and must try to convince him to do your bidding.
-You are the owner of a fabric manufacturing company and must stop the UN from finding out about your child laborers.
-You are a suicidal fish who wants to find a fisherman's line to bite... unfortunately you are below the legal limit so they keep throwing you back.

You are a scientist who enters his painstakingly genetically modified single-celled organism into an Underground Artificial Prokaryote Cockfighting Championship.

On the way, you face a cat-loving stoner girl and an imposing, drum'n'bass-loving former eating contest champion - each a competent microbiologist. Can you engineer an organism brutal enough to take down theirs?

The final boss is a reticent, prepubescent autistic girl who tapes feathers to her arms. She was only allowed into the tournament because of her unimaginable brilliance. Also, she knows the organizer personally.

you're a giant enemy crab that...eat people...  :handforkL: :mockangry: :handknifeR:

This idea just popped into my head and I don't know if it's been done, haven't read all the posts.

You are the fourth dimension, Time, and you've got a crush on a rather unlucky human girl, who will, time after time, get in deadly situations.

It's up to you to save her! Use you powers of self-control to slow down objects and people, so that she will not get hurt.

Unfortunately in the end, you are forced to make a hard choice. Will you kill her with old age, or will you freeze here in time and destroy all of reality?!

You are dead. Where are you and what happens?

(probably such game has been done, please let me know)

Its a normal day for Doug, He wakes up and heads into the kitchen, does he want eggs, or cereal. He sits down for cereal, but then looks up and see a shadow of himself cooking eggs. Poor Doug can see how ever choice will affect his very path in life, and its not always for the best. How can you live when you realize that every choice changes your life so much. if only he had chosen eggs, he would have burned his hand, went to the ER, Met a nice Doctor named Debbie, asked her out, Married her, had 3 children, and died happy, but no he had to have cereal. Now what color shirt should he wear to the office.

(I have a vision of by the end of the day 1000s of Dougs running around.)

On his way to work, does he sit in the front seat, or kick it in the back seat?

exactly. one seat makes him a youtube star and his song is hated by a million people the other makes him youtube star and his song is hated by two million people.

 :) :handthumbsupR:. I could see this making a really sweet game.

That was hilarious! Haha! I hope you get to write for some games.

You are an agent of the TIGSource community, tasked with infiltrating AAA games publishers and injecting the executives with your magic serum that causes unexplained bouts of creativity.  Other effects include allowing your designers to work unmolested and firing anyone who suggests doing otherwise.

You can also do side missions on the way for bonus points, such as blowing up the marketing department.

I dunno how good I'll do, but here goes nothing...

You are Count Nogood, the ruthlessly obnoxious ruler of all of the universe except for Uranus (for obvious reasons). You mainly rule because people fear your mind powers. You have no sense of responsibility and are willing to execute someone for petty reasons such as pointing out that you are picking your nose. You have no social skills, so executions like that happen a lot, ending in the death of the son of a renowned sorcere. He takes his revenge by transforming you into a chair and placing you in the household of Uranus' most obese nudist family (as you have a terrible phobia of butts). You must now use your mind powers to prevent anybody from sitting on you and causing your terrible demise.

You are the main character of Tom Clancy's Oprah.