HorizonVirtual:Main Page
About Horizon: Virtual
Virtual is one of the five books that comprise the Horizon product line, a series of "mini-roleplaying games" by Fantasy Flight Games. The line is intended to work with the D20 System with the aim of providing a short campaign in an alternate setting. Virtual uses the D20 System as presented in the Version 3.5 Core Rulebooks to create a playable world inspired by the movie TRON and the animated TV series ReBoot, a world where sentient programs called 'wakers' roam an electronic world that exists inside our computer networks.
About the Horizon: Virtual WikiProject
This WikiProject has been set up and is being run by myself, IMAGinES. Ever since I purchased Horizon: Virtual, I’ve wanted to develop the ideas, rules and setting and contained therein a bit more. Virtual can only do so much in sixty-four pages, and although it tries to not be Another Fantasy Setting, its very reliance on the D20 SRD winds up being rather constraining.
As a virtual world can look like anything, it starts to look like a fantasy wilderness so it can use the regular environments and beasts rules. And although the classes known as Programmers and Thinkers have been able to gain some level of universal Admin privileges due to their intuitive understanding of programming languages, use of said privileges is accomplished by using the standard D&D magic spells (with some of the names changed). Now don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a very natty idea, not to mention one of the best explanations I’ve seen for “magic” in any given setting. But I think the re-skinning needs to go a bit deeper, so that immersion in the game isn’t wrecked by having to leaf through the spells lists in the Magic section of the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook v3.5 and trying to remember that Magic Missile is called "Code Bolt" in Virtual.
Thankfully, the Open Game License allows one to do just that. In other words, chunks of the System Reference Document (such as the Skills, Feats and Magic Spells lists) can be re-worked to fit in more with the world of Horizon: Virtual and posted on the Web. Such re-working still takes time, but using a Wiki allows other interested parties to check the work in progress and make their own suggestions and corrections.
