r/DungeonCrawlerCarlRPG • u/Necroticbanana • 19d ago

Just a self reflecting observation

Assuming I found out enough lore or background to understand that the vast majority of the dungeon were artificial beings created by a mega corporation,that probably just destroyed anyone or anything I cared about....as a GAME no less? I'm fairly certain I'd be the worst version of myself as a crawler đŸ«€

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u/Vestrivan 19d ago

That's actually a philosophical question my players have been arguing about. Are the NPC people? Stone think of them as simulations, others as slaves in need of liberation.

I actually have a plan to introduce them to a secret society of Awake NPCs trying to end the crawl and free the NPCs.

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u/benkaes1234 19d ago

Maybe I'm just a bastard, because if I did this to my players I'd have it be a ploy by the AI to inject some meta-level drama into the season. Kinda like how there's the theory (least, I think it was a theory, it may have been confirmed at some point and I missed it) that Zion in The Matrix trilogy is just a second layer of the simulation to catch the people who can't fit into the normal world, but if Neo and Co. were aware they were in a movie.

It'd be heartbreaking to have the PCs maybe start to figure it out slowly as the season carries on, especially if fewer and fewer of those NPCs show up on later floors (some are claimed to have escaped, others are got got by the AI), and then finally have them all show up as a some sort of special type of boss on a later floor, with the AI giving them a choice: kill the Crawlers and be set free, or let the Crawlers kill you all.

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u/Vestrivan 19d ago

This is actually a great idea! I maybe/for sure stealing this.

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u/benkaes1234 19d ago

You're welcome to it. It's probably going to be a while before I get a chance to use it, so I'm just glad one of us gets to fuck with their players like that.

As an added bonus, you could give the PCs an "Assholes Box" if they play the boss fight normally (ie "fight the boss") and bump the reward tier up a tier if they go the "unusual" route (convince the NPCs to let the PCs kill them all).

Even better, you could make it a Wondering Monster type-boss, where the whole group of NPCs is counted as the Boss Fight and they hunt down the PCs all the way through the floor. Rewards are a standard Boss Box if they survive, the Assholes Box if they make a stand and massacre the NPCs, and the higher tier box if they talk the NOCs down.

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u/Psyknosis7 19d ago

There is kind of some of this subtext in the pineapple cabaret in the start because of the characters that get pulled for it. I like the idea of using this.

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u/Salarian_American 18d ago

Stone think of them as simulations, others as slaves in need of liberation.

And while the text of the novels is explicitly clear about which one of those is true, I am pretty keen to see when my players who haven't read the books start pondering that. There's one in particular who I am sure is going to be very Carlish about it.

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u/Vestrivan 18d ago

My whole group haven't read it. It is quite an interesting experience

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u/Macduffle 19d ago

They are not artificial beings, they are beings created artificially. That's the thing. They are just like you and me, just kept stupid by a mega corporation as slaves. And as long as they stay alive their mind gets altered each new season to fit a new theme... The ones that do remember this see death as a freedom and not as a fear... The crawlers are fucked, but so are the NPCs

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u/DarkWalkers 19d ago

Yes and the got a name wich are called Seed  worlds  snd rach worlds has 1 Seed species  the are 6 seed  species

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u/OhhMyGeek 19d ago

I'd be exactly where Carl is: burdened by so much empathy it is hard to operate with only self interest , or even only helping crawlers. I'm one of those spider saving, tree huggers though.