Young Writers Society

I have been developing a world for a darkly-comedic webcomic and a series of short stories using what little I can remember from the Scott Pilgrim series as a jumping off point. Here is what I have so far: (This might take a while to read)


The story takes place in a world similar to ours, but very video-game like.

Everybody has Health Points, multiple lives, Experience Points, etc.

You respawn at the last place you slept
It is possible to create a single use respawn point by marking your own insignia onto a wall. People used to carve them onto trees outside of dungeons, and as time went on, those carvings were replaced by spraypaint. However, quite a few people abuse this by making their respawn insignia something vulgar, and then spraypainting it all over the city. And due to the ease at which one can get spray paint, you'd be lucky to find a place in the cities that aren't covered with graffiti.

In order to graduate from High School (and to get a head start on the X.P. hunt), students are required to accomplish at least one major/life-threatening quest before the 12th Grade. Such tasks include: Saving the world (This happens fairly often), Defeating a super-villain (Another common sight), Taking a grand journey to some far away land, Competing in a martial arts tournament, and discovering a rare treasure. Unsurprisingly, some students do not return from these adventures. These fallen ones are often forgotten, or used as motivation for other students to finish what they started.

I need a bit of help trying to figure out how vital X.P. is in this universe. However, there are people who go to great lengths to get it, doing tasks like taking illegal drugs that instantly level up its user.
I had this other idea (that may be scrapped as it appears to make no sense) where certain people go a bit insane in their pursuit of X.P., and end up slaughtering everyone in sight as a way of harvesting it. At first, the police started keeping them in prisons, which was a bit of a problem, since they hadn't been used in quite a while (see below). As the number of these people grew, it became harder to contain them. Rather than keep them from killing each other, like they were supposed to, the police ended up doing nothing more than watch these "X.P. Junkies", as they came to be called, beat the living hell out of each other. A few of them started making a little money off of the fights, placing bets on who would win. The more corrupt ones snuck a few of the junkies into small arenas crowded with thugs, criminals, and such, and had the junkies fight to the death. As usual, everybody placed bets on who would win or who would lose. The higher-ups in the police force weren't sure how to react to this. While it did provide a way to lower the prison population, it also raised problems with the mob, who made quite a bit of money off of gamblers. To this day, they're still trying to decide what to do about the situation.

The police don't really do much other than guard the cities. Due to the whole multiple lives thing, murder is somewhat legal (so long as you don't slaughter everyone in sight like the above example). And if someone were to steal from/kill/or otherwise dishonor you, it was your problem, and the only ways to solve it were to beat the health points out of the perpetrator, or send a local hero out on a quest to do it for you. Anyways, the only thing the police do are guard the city, confiscate any firearms (see below), or arrest any enemies of the state. The whole "X.P. Junkie" ordeal was one of the few times they actually got to see any wide-scale action in years.

I had this idea that guns are illegal in a lot of parts in this world due to the fact that they have a very high critical hit rate. The only way to obtain one is to purchase a horribly outdated and un-maintained model from places like Chechnya. However, this does not make much sense, as stuff like swords and (non-lethal) lasers are perfectly legal.

Overpopulation would obviously be a concern, due to the fact that nobody really gets a game over from disease or old age. If you do catch some horrible sickness, you'll just end up feeling horrible until you lose a life, then you wake up the next day feeling fine. I'm just not entirely sure how the government would deal with it.

And....yeah. That's all I have so far. My main concern (other than what is listed above) is that this seems to be a society of sadists. That, and I'm not sure how to portray the whole X.P. Junkie issue (if it doesn't get cut out) without ending up using the Drugs are Bad trope.

So..uh..what do you all think?