Side-Write: Pointless Violence

A lot of the story behind Project Wild One is still up in the air-- the focus is largely on the system and the gameplay itself at this stage, and the necessities of what I'm designing here will guide a lot of what the game turns into as a story down the road. That does present some very interesting challenges, though-- rules of "how the world works" bring with them a lot of questions about what sort of world our characters are living in and how it influences their behavior.

So today's side-write is an exploration of one of the big things we've established about the world of Project Wild One: any living being killed by another will disappear (or convert into nutritious paste, in vore situations) and "respawn" elsewhere in the world. I still don't know how this will factor into world development in the larger scale, and this served as a good exercise for exploring what that means and what we should avoid assuming about the people we'll be seeing in this world. I hope it makes for an interesting read!

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Perhaps moreso than any other feeling, our fear defines us. Fear has the power to overwhelm love, pride, avarice, anger, or just about anything else that might motivate us, especially when life itself is on the line. We are terrified to think that after we've spent so many years struggling, learning, improving, finding our way to where we are now, that it may all end, suddenly and forever. The immediate fear of death can dominate our minds and drive us to incredible feats for better or worse, and the distant fear of death shapes all of our choices, large and small.

Indeed, it's likely that fear is the most omnipresent emotion on the planet. Even simple forms of life are more likely to be capable of fear for one's life than of any other feeling. Only now that we have worked so hard to distance ourselves from danger does the specter of death seem as distant to us as it does-- for any other animal, and for many people in the world now, death is a constant companion, lurking over one's shoulder every day of life, awaiting a single misstep.

For that matter, even the most basic facets of our nature are sculpted by the fear of death. Each of us is the result of countless iterations of natural selection, literally choosing the creatures best suited to avoiding death in theirselves and their children from each generation many thousands of times over. More than perhaps any factor in all of existence, we are defined by death, and our avoidance of it.

What, then, would we become if death were no longer a threat? Not in the way we see today-- not a dampening of disease and starvation, but a perfect immunity to death by violence. What would the world be like if nothing truly died when it was killed?

What if you had far more to fear from the long drop off a cliff on one side than from the charging tiger on the other? What if a guard using lethal force was at most an inconvenience? What if you were more worried that an assailant would leave you alive than that they would kill you?

In a world where any person, monster, or animal's death by the hands of another leads to an immediate, perfect resurrection, what would become of society? What would become of the natural order? How would natural selection shape us, and how would the balances of population change?

The first and most obvious answer is probably that populations would skyrocket in general. Predators literally could not run out of food as long as they can eat in a way that "works" under the rules of this world. Herbivorous species normally kept in check by predation would explode in population until they devour all the available plantlife and starve to death. Scavengers might grow more numerous as well, as deaths of causes other than predation become much more common. If we narrow the premise down to the rules specific to the world of Project Wild One, in which predation of the living is only really possible when swallowing them whole, then the food chain becomes much more clear-cut as a hierarchy of size. Small predators could only survive hunting even smaller prey. Larger animals would simultaneously have less to fear, since they can't generally be hunted for food, but also more, since a pack of hunters will be much harder to scare off if killing one or even half of them does nothing to scare them off. But since the hunters couldn't claim food or even useful materials from a slain quarry, the reasons to hunt would largely be diminished to "getting them off our land." Large creatures might be seen as less of a threat or opportunity, and more of a nuisance, or competition for food. Plant-based foods would suddenly become much more precious, limited in supply, and high in demand than prey animals. Ranches would be almost pointless, but farms would be precious and need careful guarding from various creatures that literally don't care about risking their lives for a mouthful of your crops.

Murder would arguably become a crime similar in severity to stealing, and possibly allowed or even encouraged in certain circumstances. A civilized society might imprison someone for choosing not to kill an ailing person at a time it clearly would have been beneficial for them. Secrets would be much harder to keep when any witness killed will simply come back in a few hours. Depending on how exactly "the world" tells murder apart from natural deaths, there may be a thriving market for finding ways to put a certain person in as much danger as possible, in the hopes they'll die "naturally" and not come back.

Reckless activity like risking a long drop, driving dangerously, or playing around heavy machinery would still be just as dangerous, but anyone hit by the reckless driver, or the clumsy falling person, or the drunken construction worker, would simply be inconvenienced. Guns or similar weaponry might become strangely commonplace-- it would be wise for anyone to have a weapon available should they need to kill another to help them, and having nonlethal weapons that incapacitate people without killing them might be seen as much more offensive. If you break a person's leg they might have a limp for decades, but if you break their skull right after, they would be right as rain shortly after.

Disease and starvation would become the great enemies of all life, and food might become a commodity that is eternally scarce, especially for those that cannot eat other beings. Wars would change shape drastically, as would criminal punishment: enemies must be captured, secured, and deliberately kept alive, lest they manage to die and escape. In this world, massive facilities filled with people (or monsters) chained tightly to prevent self-harm, force-fed with tubes to prevent any possible death, might become a strange and chilling new norm. Victory over another people or over a criminal could only ever be won through captivity or exile.

Perhaps over time, evolution would move us in new, strange ways. Natural weapons and the ability to hunt or evade hunting would no longer really matter. Resistance to disease and the ability to live efficiently off many different kinds of food would be a much greater benefit. Pack hunting would become less necessary and less beneficial, and herd grazing might do more harm than good. There might be a large shift toward spreading out and individually hunting for food, both to reduce competition and to avoid disease. Prey species might not even bother evading predators once it's clear there's little or no reason to do so.

In many ways, it feels like it might remove some aspects of life we take for granted and leave it feeling more... hollow? Certainly more lonely. Although building a civilization might be much easier when people don't have to fear violence... as long as you can keep everyone fed. To some extent, we actually see some of this mentality in many video games already. Many NPCs act like they don't care if they're killed fighting the heroic player character, but even moreso, the player often doesn't care about self-preservation when they know they can restart if they get killed. Would this create a similar disconnect and lack of passion for life? Without fear, do other emotions also diminish? Does conflict lose its sense of excitement knowing the greatest escalation amounts to so little in the end?

It's hard to estimate what it would actually feel like in the end-- what "exploits" the entirety of life on the planet might discover, or what standards might eventually be set as the new norm of behavior. Would the wolf lie down with the lamb, and a new sense of greater community and peace arise? Would a universal hunger drive everyone to constant, pointless conflict and casual murder when the consequences are so little? Would things shake out to a stability and normalcy similar to ours, save a few rather alarmingly different details? It's hard to estimate, but certainly at some point or another all life would adapt to this new order of things and accept it as "normal," even if that normal might be so alien to us it's difficult to even comprehend, let alone relate to.

The line between a utopia and a dystopia can be a fine one. Many other factors might still sway this world one way or the other, but this particular feature would undoubtedly create a world both morbid and fascinating in its own quite unique way.