Lego Adventure Diorama

        I dreamed that I was helping build a huge, about 60 foot long by 4 foot wide, diorama out of Lego. The theme was “pirates are shipwrecked in a giant crater full of prehistoric beasts and ancient step pyramids.” There was also a very secretive bunch of inhabitants, who seemed to know the pirates were likely to be trouble.

The pirates and Legosians were all made of traditional mini-figures, but the large creatures and buildings, as well as the terrain were all made from bricks. Several of the diorama segments were actually backed by flat Lego murals. We’d set the diorama up in a sort of comic book sequence, so that as people walked through they would see the shipwreck, with pirates fighting off pterodactyls and larger crocodiles, then would follow the scouting parties out where they had discovered abandoned pyramid structures (made from grey, black and green mossy bricks) and more dinosaurs. Then on to finding and eventually fighting with the Legosians as the pirates true nature came to light. The pirate Legosian conflict was modeled on the outer the steps of a golden fully inhabited pyramid city (mostly made of yellow and white bricks.)

I was helping assemble some of the structures of the city, hollow buildings with mini-figures engaged in commerce or trade, unaware of the threat to their way of life on the steps of their metropolis. I also had the structures and rails for the city monorail left to put together and set to running.

In some ways the diorama was like a huge Lego promotional display, and in others it was like a model railroad. The whole display was the work of about a dozen people, and we had provided most of our own bricks. The crowd that had arrived early to the display were very enthusiastic, and several of them had all ready bought the game rules for playing out the Pirate Legosian war with their own miniatures at home. I was thinking that this would be a great MMOE setting. (Massive Multi-player Online Entertainment) It would be easier to code than many of the current MMOs, as the models weren’t particularly high poly count. Lego would have a huge virtual presence and might be able to make a premium from selling real custom kits of in-game models.

Character customization would be fairly easy as well, as you could make all model enhancements take flat textures which you could find or buy as a player.

By the time the dream had ended I had put together a fairly thorough game proposal, one that would allow builders to build in large expandable world that they would populate with their own mini-figures and even allow for scripted events to generate in game events for other players. It was a combination of high tech and low tech, and the zones were separated by the Central Power rule. The higher tech a gadget, the worse it functioned the further away from the Central Power Core. You could buy batteries, but they were somewhat limited and fairly large. The further away from the CPC, the lower the technology. Everything was also balanced on the idea that item effects were limited, but their visual effects were widely varied.

        The game also would have a fairly hefty building and crafting system.

Ad astra per technica,

FF