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The Easter Eggs
- Thread starter Jack7
- Start date
Perhaps others will cover me 
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Jack7
First Post
I just hope it was useful to ya in some way Weem.
I'd also be interested in seeing some more specific examples of how others use Easter Eggs (though you don't have to call them or think of them as Easter Eggs of course, but it could be anything along he general lines of what we've been discussing) and that kind of thing in their games, adventures, and so forth.
Have any of you guys ever redesigned Easter Eggs, Power-Ups, Cheats, and whatnot and adapted them to other types of games? That kind of thing interests me also.
I'd also be interested in seeing some more specific examples of how others use Easter Eggs (though you don't have to call them or think of them as Easter Eggs of course, but it could be anything along he general lines of what we've been discussing) and that kind of thing in their games, adventures, and so forth.
Have any of you guys ever redesigned Easter Eggs, Power-Ups, Cheats, and whatnot and adapted them to other types of games? That kind of thing interests me also.
I tend to have lots of references to former games, campaigns, characters, etc. And, occasionally, real-world references as well, though I try to ever have them so intrusive as to break the narrative of the game all that much. So in that respect, I suppose I use Easter Eggs.
There is never any particular benefit in noticing them, though, and I wouldn't have thought that particular definition was the default one. But in terms of just including occasional cameos for the clever player to notice, that tends to be a regular occurence in my games.
There is never any particular benefit in noticing them, though, and I wouldn't have thought that particular definition was the default one. But in terms of just including occasional cameos for the clever player to notice, that tends to be a regular occurence in my games.
That's pretty much what I do as well. As I'm GMing a future world that has this one as its past, contemporary pop-culture references are not too anachronistic (they might be "dated" but at least you can't say "huh? Movies weren't invented when this game is set") and occasionally I might introduce something weird and quirky that grew out of late C20/early C21 pop culture - like a posergang that models itself off the Rocky Horror Picture Show, prefered weapons are ice picks and stiletto-heeled shoes... or Max Headroom being a true CGI entity based on the original series...
The netrunner's nom de guerre is "diGriz" and I'm seriously thinking of putting Zik-Zak burgers and Soylent Green on menus...
In game, if the players google the reference, there will be not merely the correct pop culture reference but an explanation of why it's become relevant in the "here and now" of the game. E.G. How RHPS fans gradually became more militant to protect themselves from people who used to attack them for their outlandish costumes - the downhill slope to becoming an armed gang...
One game I had the player team rescued by a team they had played in a different game - that was fun once they heard and recognised the names.
These references etc confer nothing more than a sense of recognition on the part of the players (if they recognise them).
MarkB
Legend
It's a bit of a running joke in my Clone Wars and Dark Times-era Star Wars games that, at some point, the PCs' patron will attempt to pay them in the form of long-term real estate investments in beach-front properties on Alderaan.
In one game long ago, one of the players, when hastily coming up with a fake eye-witness description of the perpetrator of a crime another PC had committed in order to throw the Watch off the scent, described him as a tall man wearing a black robe, and a gold chain with a red gem on it. Ever since then, in any game run by the same GM, we're occasionally liable to run into someone matching that description, or have events attributed to him by NPCs' unreliable eye-witness accounts.
In one game long ago, one of the players, when hastily coming up with a fake eye-witness description of the perpetrator of a crime another PC had committed in order to throw the Watch off the scent, described him as a tall man wearing a black robe, and a gold chain with a red gem on it. Ever since then, in any game run by the same GM, we're occasionally liable to run into someone matching that description, or have events attributed to him by NPCs' unreliable eye-witness accounts.
Jack7
First Post
An ongoing, but little resolved or (un)explained feature, especially one the players can't quite get to can be a very interesting and fruitful Easter Egg. Plus it is a good plot device. And I think it works even better if it changes some over time, or lets out rewards little by little, or only partially, over time. It's a good device that also spurs on motivation and curiosity.
Another good Easter Egg like that is one that appears in different forms in different situations but is obviously in some way the same Easter egg or tied to the same idea or idea-set.
I think Easter Eggs, depending on how they are done can work in nearly any setting or gaming milieu or genre. But I think modern pop references would obviously work bets in modern pulp, horror, mystery, and detective games, as well as sci-fi and futuristic games.
I especially like the idea in modern games of allowing the players to access their computers and Google to investigate references. This would be a kind of game hacking I would encourage in modern games as it would be a type of research skill and it would also allow the players real world practice at research and investigative skills (among other things). I'm going to adopt this in some of my more modern games. I'm also gonna work on employing this idea and Geocaching (another thing I've recently undertaken in conjunction with some of my games) to enrich my games and training scenarios.
The Shaman
First Post
By this definition, yes, I include Easter eggs in my games.
Frex, many of the fictional (as opposed to historical) non-player characters for my Flashing Blades campaign are based on characters from French novels. The musketeer Achille de Châteaupers is a descendent of Phœbus de Châteaupers, the captain of the Paris Archers in Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame; the marquis de Saint-Méran is an ancestor of the character of the same name in Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo.
That would work really well, provided the players did not spend more time looking up/reading online than gaming.
In the case of references to diGriz and others, I prepare notes beforehand - usually taken from real internet entries to get the style right, often abridged if it's going to take too long to read it all, then add anything relevant to the game world. If the players bother checking out the reference, I have it on hand; if not, it usually took me less than a couple of minutes to prepare, anyway.
For diGriz, all they got was a very shortened version of the wikipedia entry on the Stainless Steel Rat books by Harry Harrison - including the blurb about stainless steel rats in a steel and ferro-cement world - so they only learned where their netrunner got the name and perhaps might want to speculate/theorise why that name was chosen.
For Max Headroom, they got a shortened wiki entry plus I had to write a bit about how and why a genuine CGI version had "recently" been made from the original series.
For me, that keeps the amount of sitting around reading stuff down to a manageable level and frees up time for getting on with game play.
BTW, it's not just something I do for weird pop-culture references. I also create "wiki entries" for other places, people, organisations etc in the game so they can "research" other things in the same fashion.
Sometimes the info they pick up may be relevant to various plots going on around them, sometimes it might be something handy to know, sometimes it's just irrelevant useless information that may or may not elicit a laugh.
It's up to the players to work out which is which - if it's relevant to what they've chosen to pursue.
While most pop culture references or shout outs to previous games and characters etc are just going to be little in jokes, it's not impossible that one of them be somehow relevant to something - if only a clue as to how others view themselves...
Jack7
First Post
Yeah, I can see how time limits would have to be imposed "on on-line research." Although maybe much of the on-line stuff could be done prior to or post game.
Also you've got some very interesting ideas about creating Wikis and so forth for researching wholly fictional in-game material. with that kind of approach you could do all kinds of things including working in other components such as misinformation and disinformation, codes, ciphers, crypts, fake documents, false papers, etc. for espionage, military, and detective games.
One of my daughters is taking Cyberops classes right now with my squadron. This could be good training for her as well as a very entertaining game component. I could easily work in geocaching and even some vadding to an on-line connection. I wish I had time to create that kinda stuff, but maybe I could sub-contract out that kinda stuff to some of the younger computer Geeks in the squadron. I just write up the outline, and provide the components and if they wanna do it then I just task them with the actual content creation and posting.
Very interesting ideas.
Another thought I had re "Easter Eggs" - I named streets after Cyberpunk authors, then characters (when I ran out of author names) then mainstream SF authors and local (Hamilton) streets. I don't know if the players have picked up on that as no one has commented on the fact that their first night in town was in a coffin hotel in Silverberg St then they met their boss on the corner of Case St and Vardon St. Also news has mentioned Zelazny St.
Totally meaningless in game terms - unless I later decide that some plot hook suggests a certain author and I tie it to the appropriately-named street.
Totally meaningless in game terms - unless I later decide that some plot hook suggests a certain author and I tie it to the appropriately-named street.
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