plot up for c&c

[Ha Ha I am OK]

I came up with astory that i felt was perfect for an adventure game.
Its really wierd though...

John Smith (I don't have a name) is a new prisoner at the West Chesterville Insane Asylum.  His main goal is to escape. Once he does, he is misteriously knocked out. When he wakes up he is dressed as a pirate and surounded by robots of all shapes and sizes.

He learns from the robots that the only way he can survive in the world is if he becomes a cyborg. As he starts on his quest, the humans learn about him and want to kill him while the robot overlord wants to harvest his brain. He must become a cyborg in order to destroy the robot overlord and rule over the humans with an iron fist.

please, tell me what you think

[Krysis]

Easy with the robot, pirate stuff... Sorry, but this story makes very little sence.

1.Is he insane?
2. Is he imagining all this robot stuff??
3.How does he manage to escape? It is not that easy to escape an asylum.
4.Howcome he gets knocked out? He just does??
5.Whats the connection between robots and this asylum part?
6.Why does he have to become a cyborg?? Can't he rule the world as a guy?
7.How does he become a cyborg?
8.People want to kill him? What people? What is that world? Some sort of futuristic robot/human land + evil robot overlord + mad guy trying to rule it all. What???
9.Why does the overlord wants his brain harvested??
10.The guy wants to rule the world? No wonder people are mad at him. Why do I care about him? He's just an ambitious crazy guy... why would I want to play this.

[sergiocornaga]

No characters save robots and a megolomaniac makes for some pretty poor charcter-development.

[Ali]

There's no need for the asylum or the cyborgs. With a little pruning you have a potentially genius plot.

Now this is a story:
Johnson Butterworth Smith goes to sleep under an apple tree. When he wakes up he is dressed as a pirate and surrounded by robots of all shapes and sizes.

He learns from the robots that the Ironville féte starts tomorrow, but none of the carnival floats are finished and no one has made any cider. Being a generous soul, JB offers to help. Building himself a float-cum-galley he sets off on a quest to save the Ironville féte and win the heart of Baron Boron's beautiful daughter Nancy.

...Maybe not. My point is, you have too many themes: robots, pirates, madmen. Trim them down to your favourites and try writing another synopsis.

[Ha Ha I am OK]

Okay I made some changes to the plot.

John Smith  is the newest guest at  West Chesterville Insane Asylum.  Deeming himself completely sane he tries to find a way to escape. He finally does by tricking the guard into giving him a knife to cut through his coat and scaring (not killing) the workers. Unfortunatly he is knocked out when one of the workers who managed to escape came up behind him and hit him on the head with something heavy. When he wakes up he is dressed as a pirate and surounded by robots of all shapes and sizes.

He learns from the robots that he is now in the year 2500 and that the only way to save his fellow humans is to defeat the robot overlord who wants to harvest his brain and use it to put in a robot and destroy humanity. The only way to defeat the robot overlord is to become a cyborg. In order to become a cyborg he must travel to the mysterious lands of the south and visit the scientist named Dr. Scienstien (pronounced sigh-en-shtigh-en).

After a long journey across deadly fields and valleys John finally makes it to the laboratory of Dr. Scienstien. John must argue with the scientist about ethics and possibilities before he agrees to turn John into a cyborg.  After the operation is complete (the only thing that Dr. Scienstien did was give John nightvision goggles  and duct taped an AK-47 to his arm) John must find the robot overlord and destroy him.  After a long search, John finds the robot's palace and sneeks in during the night. 

Unlike what John expected, the overlord is not asleep but in fact waiting for John's arrival.  Therobot overlord calls to his guards but before they can get there John shoots him in the chest with his new AK.  The resulting explosion throws John into a wall and knocks him out.

He wakes up back in his cell surrounded by nurses and finally realizes that he is completely insane.

I changed it a bit and added more detail. I also added an ending.

tell me what you think.

[pslim]

I'm not sure I follow. How does having a weird dream make him insane?

Also, why do the robots tell him what he needs to do to defeat the robot overlord? Aren't they his minions or something?

Where does the pirate costume come from? What's its function?

Couldn't someone with a slightly higher IQ and a little more adventure game savvy find a better way to defeat the robot overlord than strapping an AK-47 on his arm and blowing him away? I mean, isn' t that the kind of solution reserved for action games? Not to stereotype, but for example even Ben Throttle didn't just run around machine gunning obstacles. It would have made that damned junk yard sequence a lot easier if he had, though.Ã, 

And again, why does having a weird dream make him insane?

I'm with Ali. I would strongly suggest you choose one or two gimmicks that really light your fire and then try to build a story that makes sense around them instead of trying to make them the sum total of the story. Remember that no matter how cool you think robots are, most adventure game players aren't going to stay with you if they're not interested in the character they're controlling, and in what happens to him, so just putting in a lot of robots isn't enough. The fun of putting in something like robots in an adventure game is how the player gets to interact with them (are they scary? cute? incomprehensible? hilarious?).

[Krysis]

A guy runs out of an asylum... he meets robots, dresses like a pirate, fights evil overlord, becomes a cyborg. It is too obvious. At the second you see the robots you'll realise the guy is nuts. No need to make a surprise ending thats no surprise to anyone.

And "Dr. Scientist"? Come on.

Here is a story idea:

Far future
Humans have perished ages ago and the only "living" form left is the robots. They are controled by the Overlord. The overlord is their God, Guardian and Mind. He/she/it is the Ultimate Rule.
Due to an system error Robot 06 (Zero Six) gains freedom from the Overlord. Zero Six finds his newfound self-awareness rather sweet....
Now he wants to destroy the System in order to free every robot in the world. But the Overlord can be stopped by no robot. The overlord is created by humans. "No robot can destroy what humans made." So Zero Six has only one chance to beat the rule - He needs to go in the Wasteland, find the long lost legendery lab of the human civilization, create a mindless human clone, upload his mind in it and become human.
In the land of the robots the human is the only true God. The human Zero Six easily erases the Overlord and the robots are free... Or maybe not. Zero Six is a human and humans allways will be the robots' true masters. "Be free" are Zero's final words before he leaves the robots to their destiny and dissappears back in the Wasteland.


And it lacks AK47s, pirates and insane guys...

[Babar]

hahaimok's plot was funnier. You just went completely serious!

[Hammerite]

Ali's was by far the funniest.
THE FETE!!
THE FETE!!!!

[Krysis]

Hey, my story could be funny too. You two just envy the fact I have some sort of plot. 
I don't mind funny things - as long as they make sence.

[Babar]

but there is also the kind of funny that comes from stuff being absurdly insane.

[eternal_renegade]

Well yeah Krysis plot could be hella funny. What if becoming a human made it easy enough to go to the overload and the only thing you say is Self-Destruct (which could happen to be the only way to stop him) but there are complications with that to happen.
But yes right now I don't see the point of the pirate costume. Perhaps it can be used as some sort of disguise later.

[deadsuperhero]

All right, I'll take a shot at this.
The place is Moscow. The year is 2085, shortly after the Third Cold War. An American ex-soldier goes to visit his extended family, but he has a seizure.
He wakes up in a secret lab, naked, and has to figure out what the hell has happened to him. He has several nodes sticking out of his body, and he can't remember anything. He's missing several limbs, so he has to use some cory of Cybernetic body/interface thing in the game to rebuild himself.
He then has to escape Moscow to tell the world about whatever horrible experiments are going on.
An interesting idea would be to make the player unsure whether this is reality or dreams. The hero would fade in and out from one reality to another. Empty buildings would phase into a buisinessplace full of people.

[Ha Ha I am OK]

well, my plot isn't really made for a hugely long game.
maybe for something that would last a few hours.

I threw the pirate costume in just for fun and i didn't really think the death of the robot overlord all the way through yet.
I might add some other things that would make the game more logical and playable.

right now I'm just playing with the whole idea of some insane dude in the future.

[Kweepa]

Needs more ninja monkeys.

[fred]

I don't usually like fiction where the main character is insane or doubting his sanity - seems like too much of a carte blanche for the storyteller to make the story twitch in any which direction he desires - it will all make sense anyway after the like 10th awakening to real real real reality - a cliche. I can't attach to a character whom I expect to suddenly "wake up" and prove me wrong in everything I supposed. It's storyteller megalomania.

At the first sign of this, as a viewer/player all I can reasonably do is sit back and wait for the ending that will reveal real reality. Getting involved along the way is just fooling myself. Not that it can't be done - it's just extremely hard to surprise people once you play the insane/alternate reality card - they'll be expecting anything from you. It can be done. The Matrix movie did it, first time I watched it (but notice how it didn't succeed in the sequels), and Fight Club got pretty close - Simpsons did it constantly.

However, imho it's much more interesting to insist on one level of reality and show how absurd even that can be. Even to the point of exploring what drives people insane. Show insanity, don't tell it. If you don't know anything about it, chose another subject. Or if you just want to entertain, insist on the "insane reality" throughout the playable part of the game - for immersion - like Weird Dreams did.Ã,  We can all accept an insane reality if that's all there is - we pretty much have to

[deadsuperhero]

Here's a thought-
the entire world population are the insane ones, but the ones inside the asylum are sane?

[pslim]

Here's a thought-
the entire world population are the insane ones, but the ones inside the asylum are sane?

That makes me think of that classic Twilight Zone where the girl had her face horribly mangled and everyone's shocked about how ugly it made her, and she's devastated, and at the end you see that she's beautiful and everyone else is hideous.

That bait and switch has been done so many times you'd have to do something really brilliant with it for it to work.

IMO unless you know you're capable of doing something that brilliant it's better not to set the bar so high for yourself. Choose a plot that isn't going to be continually compared to something everyone is aware of that did it 10 times better than you could ever do it. Trying to pick something reasonably original isn't simply an end in itself; it's a great help because if there's nothing for people to compare it to they can just enjoy it for what it is.

[Hammerite]

All right, I'll take a shot at this.
The place is Moscow. The year is 2085, shortly after the Third Cold War. An American ex-soldier goes to visit his extended family, but he has a seizure.
He wakes up in a secret lab, naked, and has to figure out what the hell has happened to him. He has several nodes sticking out of his body, and he can't remember anything. He's missing several limbs, so he has to use some cory of Cybernetic body/interface thing in the game to rebuild himself.
He then has to escape Moscow to tell the world about whatever horrible experiments are going on.
An interesting idea would be to make the player unsure whether this is reality or dreams. The hero would fade in and out from one reality to another. Empty buildings would phase into a buisinessplace full of people.

the THIRD Cold War, what the hell?