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Why do I need a name? • 2017 rpg

Yoshi Creelman • google.com/+YoshiCreelman

One of you is new to this world. You could be an AI, a construct, a demon, an alien, a small child, a newborn dragon. No matter what, the world is strange and the people are stranger. Ask questions. 
  - Why is the sky orange? 
  - Why does your arm make buzzing and clicking noises when it moves?
  - Why did you put the sword through the guy with pointy hat and grey beard?

Keep asking follow up questions. When you understand respond with, “Thank you”. Now ask a new question to someone else.
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Everyone else
Who knows how you found this creature, you know what it is… but it is just now learning about you. It is strong and powerful and may just ruin your life some day, best keep it happy and teach it about this world so it can take care of itself, the world, and you.

Answer the questions to the best of your ability, or make something up, it’s not like the creature knows any better. The creature is impatient and mercurial, if you don’t have an answer ask for help from a companion. 

Author Comments

I wanted something about improvising and disclaiming narrative authority. I immediately thought of a child constantly asking why and the adults answering as best they could passing the ball back and forth as the child kept asking more and more questions.

I was partially inspired by an ingame interaction with a newly created intelligent creature (automaton) who knew nothing of the world and kept asking us (the PCs) why we did certain things, and started repeating our actions (like attacking newly encountered creatures). Lots of post battle conversations, “Well… we did this because that person was being mean, and we were trying to protect the other people who couldn’t defend themselves.” “How did you know they were mean?” “We didn’t at first, but we watched and listened.” “How did you know the people we defended didn’t start it all?” “We don’t. We could only go off of what we could see and we had to make a judgment or more people weren’t going to get hurt by our inaction.” “Okay”… PCs looking at each other… “um what do you think that means?” /shrug/ “I guess we’ll see…”


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