Looking for A.I. Scenarios

[Death_Jester]

Hello Everyone,

 

I have been thinking about running some Scenarios for superhroes. The setting is an A.I. controlled North America sort of like the Nightmares of futures Past of the old Marvel setting.

 

The A.I. Has taken over America and killed off a majority of the superhero population and then dismantled the goverment and set itself up as the Autocratic ruler. It did so in one swift act of controlled assassination. Its goal is to protect humanity by saving it from itself. Then taking over the military with well placed "chip-controlled" personal and computer viruses to take out hardware. It has hidden its central intellicence and now functions through robotic proxies that interact as its eyes and ears.

 

My question to the board is what kind of adventrues does that suggest to the members of the boards here?

[Hermit]

Re: Looking for A.I. Scenarios

 

Pretty dark, but it sounds like you have some inspiration already ("Nightmares of Future's Past"). X-Men and what if universes would be good inspirations from the comics for adventure ideas.

 

I do think that any super with powers like "Invisiblity, Technology only" or Mind Control over the machine class of minds would automatically get bumped up to the top of the AI's most wanted list.

[Ghost who Walks]

Re: Looking for A.I. Scenarios

 

One wonders wehre the A.I came from...

 

Mechanon?

Doctor Destroyer?

 

It might be interesting to have either of those still around, and summon the heroes through some sort of interdimensional gateway.

 

Or, f you are looking at starting a group in the setting, a band of chip controlled people getting free simultaneously might be interesting (regional computer failure). They would have a reason to stick togehter, kill the machines, and search for their missing DNPCs.

[Death_Jester]

Re: Looking for A.I. Scenarios

 

Greetings Everyone,

 

First off I would like to thank everyone that has taken time to answer my request for plot ideas. The goal of this little series of games is to set up a campaign based in the dark future of a world gone to Helen A. Hand-basket. The players will be children growing up in the world of 2035. All the player characters will be Mutants that have had help hiding from the Mutant detecting Sentinel-like Men in black agents of the A.I.. Any Mutant found out will have to live out their lives being either lab rats for the inhuman experiments of the Genetic and Rare Disease institute, dead, living life out as neutered slave labor, or worse yet as chip implanted hounds chasing down other mutants. With these options I "hope" the players will decide to take on the system and decide to make a better world for themselves and their children. The A.I. wants to create a world where humanity can survive and sees super-heroes and the like as a treat to its prime directive, however is also sees freewill as a threat also. The end of the game will be the players going into the past to correct the problem that caused their world in the first place. If they decide to correct the situation than they will have destroyed their home and have no place to go back to leaving them trapped in the world of 2010.

 

The real campaign will start from there but I want to do a pretty standard game after that and I have lots of ideas about this later part of the game but I want to give the players something to fight for. They have seen the future and know how wrong it can be and will fight anything they can do prevent the horrors they have seen in "their past" (which would the future of the campaign world, don't you love temporal plots). The first part, the fight against the A.I. part, will be a few sessions longs about 9 in total and I expect that some of the players will die in the attempt because it will not be easy to win. This, however, is a topic for another separate post.

 

I hope this clears up what I was looking for a little more and gives you a insight into what I was looking for in ways of plot ideas. Thanks for looking and much thanks for posting ideas for me to work with you guys rock.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Looking for A.I. Scenarios

 

The heroes fight it for some time, eventually get close to beating it.

 

Then they discover the *real* threat the AI is working to defeat - the real reason it did what it did, why it needs control, etc. For example, alien invasion that it needed total control over the resources of N.A. to prepare for. The existing govt was denying the threat and not taking proper steps to prevent it, so it had to go. Many supers were aliens, or had alien influences, so could not be trusted, and had to go.

 

If the heroes trash the AI and its preparations anyway, it could be interesting seeing them deal with the alien threat. If they cooperate with it to defeat the aliens, what happens in the aftermath? Perhaps the AI says, "My job here is done", pops itself into an alien spacecraft, and zips off to explore the galaxy, to start terraforming worlds for humanity. Maybe it tries to cling to power for power's sake, and the heroes have to finish the job.

[geekvoid]

Re: Looking for A.I. Scenarios

 

I don't know if it'll work for you at all, but the Shadowrun line just wrapped up a huge AI arc not too long ago. It started with Renraku Arcology: Shutdown and progressed from there. (Just google it and take a look at the various reviews)

 

In short, the rogue AI was pieced together from a spontaneous AI. Deus then shutdown an entire complex with over a hundred thousand people in it and turned it into his personal playground and the hostages into his personal playthings. If you want a little dark, take a look. Even if you don't use it, it might give you some ideas?

[Chiba Bob]

Re: Looking for A.I. Scenarios

 

The AI, being a student of human nature, has concluded that human rebellion is the eventually conclusion to it's regime and the outcome is uncertain. The best way to control this event is to start the revolt itself. Using intermediaries, the AI recruits a group of freedom fighters (the players) to lead this revolution, feeding them objectives/situations that give a sense of accomplishment but do no real damage to the AI's regime. The players may figure this out eventually or just remain a pawns of the machine.

 

[clsage]

Re: Looking for A.I. Scenarios

 

The heroes fight it for some time, eventually get close to beating it.

 

Then they discover the *real* threat the AI is working to defeat - the real reason it did what it did, why it needs control, etc. For example, alien invasion that it needed total control over the resources of N.A. to prepare for. .

 

For a literary view of just this sort of scenario you might want to take a

gander at the "Collossus" series by D.F. Jones (titles being, as I recall them:

Collosus: The Forbin Project , The Fall Of Collossus , Collossus And The Crab).

 

And yes, those are the source material for the 1970's film Collossus: The

Forbin Project. In fact, even though I have no real proof of it, I suspect

that the screenwriter was attempting a "passing nod" to the alien invasion

subtext when, near the beginning of the film, Collossus retasks various

deep space telescopes and begins to generate mountains of astronomical

analysis.

 

-Carl-