2400 A.D.: Feeling My Way Around the Future

They do not, after all, call it the "Permissiveness Complex."

I spent a little time this evening just wandering around Nova Athens, as a way to learn a bit more about 2400 A.D. and get myself back into the swing of CRPG playing. I'm just going to share a few discoveries and promise a longer post tomorrow.

1. The "T" value is a countdown timer that tells you how long you have to check in with the "Registration." If you let it get to 0 all the robots turn hostile and attack you. In the world of 2400 A.D., you're like a sex offender: you have to keep registering with the authorities to be legal.

Am I Level 2 or 3?

2. There are little power cells on corners (they look a bit like round mirrors), at which you can charge your weapons and devices. But apparently this is illegal, because if the robots see you they will attack you.

I shot something. It didn't do me much good.

3. You are restricted to certain "Zones" of the city. If you stray outside your zone, and a robot catches you, you get a "social demerit." Collect enough social demerits and the robots attack you.


4. There are really annoying robots called "followers" that, you guessed it, mercilessly follow you around. One of them trapped me in a corner and I had to re-load.

Try being a leader.

5. It doesn't appear that you can die in this game--at least, not through regular robot attacks. Instead, you fall unconscious and wake up in "the Social Rehabilitation Center." There's a locked door here, which I managed to bash open, only to immediately encounter a robot that shot me unconscious, and I woke up in...the Social Rehabilitation Center.

Vicious cycle, that.

But among the discoveries, I found a couple pieces of wisdom. First, thanks to the surface map that we decided last week I was allowed to have, I found Johnny's Bar and talked to Reggie, who gave me the Resistance password.

Apparently, he'll give it to anyone who walks up to him and says "password."

The second bit of information I got from a guy in a house that I entered to escape the Follower robot. He found some reference to a device that would protect people from force fields.


And that, unfortunately, is it for the evening. Again, a longer post tomorrow after I've had a chance to explore for a solid 3-4 hours. Oh, here's that surface map. It doesn't look like a very big game, but then some of these houses have multiple levels. I guess I'll just try a systematic pattern of movement until I get specific clues.