The Drawing Board

'''Welcome to the Depository! '''Or the Drawing Board, because that's the page title and we don't yet know how to change it.

This is where all your unconfirmed concepts: texts, artwork, notes, and cartoon pornography should be dumped to be nominated for canonization.

Heading of a sample idea
This is a sample idea. It has four legs and feeds mainly on surface-dwelling zooplankton.



Kelprich
Kelprich could be considered a kingdom, with resemblance to a medieval castle. It is in fact more civilized than Beaconsburg in its own respect, and much smaller. Although Kelprich's technological standards are lower than those of Beaconsburg, their society functions far better and their culture appeals to be more desirable. To the envy of Beaconsburg, the two civilizations formed an ongoing rivalry.

Kelprich is under the rule of one young, but wise, male Cray.

From some positions, Kelprich can be seen from Beaconsburg as a singular yellow glint in the distance.

Kelprich will be implemented as the 'medieval themed' region and culture of Tech A - the other is based on Beaconsburg as a motor and computer obsessed culture.

S51 as a procedural, plotless exploration game
Link to its own article

Three Creeds
Civilisations throughout the known world can be categorized into one of three core ideologies.

Tech A - The Industrialists: Outdo nature.

The aim of developing technology to 'advance' further and further from nature. Engines, computers, machines, things of that subject are considered absolutely necessary. Beaconsburg, even Kelprich, and most developed civilisations naturally assume this category.

Tech B - The Primitives: Praise nature.

Most tribes live in less developed environments. It is a common fundamental ideology to maintain peace with nature, and not break from the roots. Variations within this philosophy exist throughout the tribal religions.

Tech C - The Shellpunks: Use nature.

This innovative culture is currently little known but referred to as 'Shellpunks' for their manipulation of nature's power. Shellpunks are masters of genetic engineering and would use biological materials and living things as utilities. For instance, they are able to artificially grow shells that form solid structures, including armor. They substitute machinery and motor vehicles with specially 'designed' living creatures. Shellpunks (Creed C) could be considered an ironic combination of A and B.

Species notes
Just some notes to be put into their pages later
 * Lesser Cray: A sub-species of the Crays. They are essentially identical except that their eyes are on movable stalks, like crabs and shrimp. They are far rarer than 'Common' Crays and are considered to be the depleting predecessor (otherwise less fertile cousin) species, hence 'Lesser'.
 * Rural Cray (triops cray): Also a sub-species of the Crays, based on a minor physical difference. A Rural Cray has three eyes (the third is between the other two) like a triops. Unlike the iris/pupil eyes of a Common Cray, a Rural Cray's eyes are entirely black. This subspecies is almost only ever found in tribal areas.
 * Mollmer (gastropod man): Humanoid molluscs. They have a head with sensory antennae, upper body, arms, and a single-footed slug-like lower section on which they crawl. Without legs, this gives Mollmer a speed and mobility disadvantage. Molluscs can usually come in any colors in the entire spectrum, however an evolutionary drawback for humanoids is less vibrant color. Mollmer are not restricted to a uniform color, but are nonetheless subdued. Mollmer are likely related to the even rarer 'shellheads,' with which they share a legless lower portion and gastropodal qualities.
 * Nautiloid ('nautilus cray'): They bear resemblance, despite perhaps being completely unrelated, to the Crays. A Nautiloid could be described as a soft-bodied Cray with round (instead of oblong) eyes, two (or more) short tentacles instead of hard mandibles, and a hard exoskeletal 'cap' just over the head and near the eyes. I've yet to decide on their color. I imagined them similarly to Crays with blue males and red females, but that would make them resemble Crays a little too much. To lean towards the nautilus influence, perhaps the Nautiloids are orange to brown.
 * Bathymus (giant isopod man): a hulking humanoid with protective exoskeletal armor like an armadillo. It is supported by four legs and has two very muscular arms. The body proportions of the Bathymus are hugely exaggerated compared to other humanoids. Its head is small compared to its body, and its legs are noticeably smaller than its arms. Like the 'Shellheads', the Bathymus is a classified humanoid that doesn't actually look very humanoid.

Personality in characters (for the PP game )
The humanoids look far enough from human, and our target audience is human. They should act, to an ideal extent, like people so that we can relate to them.

TF2 has 9 classes, each with a very distinct personality and background. It doesn't matter that there are multiple of the same class in the same place; it's the personality that distinguishes each class. It's not a bad thing, or lazy design, that there are two or more identical personalities in the same place. It actually makes it easy for you to tell that they're, say, Medics, from a mile away.

I think using the existing humanoid species, and likely to add more, each will have a unique personality that applies species-wide. The Crays are essentially the 'blank slate' species, with the most generic behavior. This is because it is the Players' species, and we wouldn't want to force a stereotype into their experience.

With this format, species would be no longer meaningless. Each species would be its own bundle of character and probably come with their own strengths and weaknesses.

The Official S51 Premise
S51 has been growing well away from the original 'Sewer' setting and rather than trying to return to its roots, it's going to just keep growing in this direction. This is why it needs a new title. The possible title 'Reef' came to me and has been in my head for a while, but I'm not very pleased with its lack of uniqueness. Rather than changing the title completely we could simply replace 'Sewer' and keep the '51', so for instance 'Reef 51'.

Let's call this the Reef 51 Premise:
A body of water near a nuclear site was slowly draining. Eventually the water level was so low that some life adapted to live on dry land that was once underwater. The terrain left poking above the surface became small islands. ''This may all be happening within the walls of a large atoll, which raises the possible title 'Atoll 51' which makes more sense, but isn't as catchy as Reef. The official logo of this project will likely be the shape of an atoll.''

'Biomes'
These are some of the regions, and region types, that are found in the Atoll. Yeah, let's refer to the world as the Atoll. Or Reef? Which sounds better?
 * Scattered islands (pirate lands)
 * Misty Pass (foggy atmosphere; water is still (because "a sea monster scared all life out of this area") you should be worried if the water begins to move.
 * City (an actual, populated city; Tech A)
 * Beaconsburg (industrial)
 * Kelprich (medieval)
 * Sewer (particularly one named 'Sewer 51'; can be considered an underground passage to sneak into a city. Sewers are home to shady dealers.)
 * Caves
 * Neon cave (the most common, and the largest. This cave is lit up by colorful bioluminescence)
 * End cave (pitch black; you can only see its inhabitants' glowing eyes)
 * Dungeon (artificially dug mazes or halls where unfortunate adventurers have left their loot)
 * 'Petrified Den' (where a type of deadly sea monster has dehydrated; the place is kept dry because the monster would reanimate upon contact with water)
 * Reef (lush, above-water coral reef - the signature environmental biome; home to plenty of non-hostile fauna)
 * Dead reef (entire forest of dead coral; murky water; mostly lifeless except for some nasty critters)