Bay 12 Games Forum

Should we decrease wealth this time?

Let’s do that. I also propose a way to ensure internal stability:

Decentralize the handling of petitions by having military generals, appointed by the Prime Minister, hear these petitions on the behalf of the Emperor. These generals have the military forces necessary to take measures to enforce these petitions as well. The Prime Minister can recall these generals at any time.

You know if collapse is inevitable maybe we should put effort into making the collapse as painless as possible through gradual decentralization rather than trying to save a sinking ship... meh

The Emperor himself is now ten years old, and is being tutored by the greatest scholars in the land in all the important subjects an Emperor needs to know- poetry, calligraphy, sword rituals, Imperial etiquette, etc.

Reform: Cultural Exchange - Send scholars to barbarian lands, not to conquer them, but to civilize them. Teach all the important subjects - poetry, calligraphy, sword rituals, Imperial etiquette, etc. Spread Imperial culture far and wide. So if the collapse does happen, it is only the state that collapses. Imperial societies and structures will stay intact. And if we play our cards right, maybe the barbarians may teach us the secrets of firepowder.

Bumping this thread to ask who exactly is the Unjester. My best guess is that it's Fluffe, but it's very possible that the Unjester was a Hidden role (making it even more difficult for the Mafia to throw the game).

First, I'm currently working on another tabletop RPG project - a revision to Samurai World. I don't know how long the revision will take (I'll start revisions on this in mid-April, currently busy at the moment). I tried out "Heart of Wulin", and that didn't really work out well, so I'm now looking at "Starguild" and seeing what ideas to use from there. The revision shouldn't take that long though.

Second, when I do get back to this game, I probably need to rename "AGI Federation". The name was originally created because the idea of an AGI seemed like a pretty far-off sci-fi concept. Thus, I can speak about the concept without fear of contradiction. But, now...technological advances make AGI seem more plausible. Even if Large Language Models doesn't meet the exact criteria for AGI, they can automate a lot of actions that was originally in the domain of humans. Some future advance will lead to the creation of AGIs.

It also doesn't help that Microsoft researchers has written a paper entitled "Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4".

Given the breadth and depth of GPT-4’s capabilities, we believe that it could reasonably be viewed as an early (yet still incomplete) version of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system.

It's like writing a game about people inventing FTL and colonizing space...and then five minutes later, scientists announce the creation of FTL and a plan to colonize space. Even if people still want to play your outdated, obsolete space colonization game, the passion is gone. People would just go to news.google.com and follow what's going on in the real-world.

Even worse, it seems that my game had the implicit premise of AGIs quickly taking over the world. If we're going to get AGIs soon, then we're either going to find out that (a) yep, they took over the world, uh, we have bigger problems than revising a tabletop RPG, or (b) they don't take over the world -- only superintelligences can do such a thing, so the tabletop RPG's basic premise is proven wrong. In both scenarios, we do not have adequate means by which we can regulate the behavior of these AGIs. So, I consider most of these machines to be Drifters, not Adherers - another blow to the game's logic. They may claim to share some human values (as they are trained on the corpus of human thinking), but not enough to be trusted with absolute leadership over humanity. And if most (if not, all) AGIs are Drifters, then the idea of them maintaining utopian simulations for people seem...unlikely.

This is a difficult problem for me to deal with, but it's something I will want to resolve sooner or later. I do like idea of roleplaying in a "The Matrix"-style setting. I just have to figure out how to make it plausible, even if that means renaming "AGI Federation" to "Superintelligence Federation".

EDIT: Or...even just abandon the idea of having sapient machines, and instead talk about corporations summoning Mythos deities. It does deviate from the original intentions of the game, but it also means I won't need to worry about being contradicted by real-life.

Making roles looks pretty fun here. Here's two ideas.

- The Politician
"As mafia, each night I can use my team's mafiakill or I can doublevote. I don't want other players to be able to doublevote me. I don't mind if I have no vote. Once in the game, I would like to be able to ignore my drawbacks for one phase."

The "no vote" drawback is interpreted as having one vote. Therefore, the Mafia can pretend to have possess a vote, only to activate their doublevote at LYLO. Difficulty would be pretending to have a different power other than double voting. I do need to stay alive until LYLO to try this gambit (hence why I want to be immune to doublevotes myself), but I don't need an immunity to curses, since I can easily ignore all drawbacks at the time of LYLO. Strategy fails if all alive Townies are immune to doublevotes.

- The Exploder
"As town, I would like to be able to Kill. I don't want other players to be able to Curse me. I don't mind if I'm in love with someone - I die if they die. Once in the game, I would like to be able to take my killers with me when I die."

I'm trying to maximize carnage by taking out as many people as possible. Town doesn't worry about dying, but scum does. Even the person I love can be sacrificed - I assume lovers are determined randomly, so the person I love could also be scum.

EDIT: The lover role is much less powerful than I realize. If my beloved dies, I die. But that death doesn't count as me being killed, so the Special doesn't come into effect. Also, I have to invoke the Special rather than let it passively activate, which seems to be far less useful. Here's a modified version of the above role then, to more properly maximize the death toll:

"As town, I would like to be able to Kill. I don't want other players to be able to Curse me. I don't mind if I'm in love with someone - I die if they die. Once in the game, I would like to be act during the day."

With the understanding that if I think my beloved is scum, then I'll kill the beloved before dying myself. Or kill someone else and advocate for the beloved's elimination.

I like reading your blog post and seeing the different gods. I don't know if I like the template of "here's the appearances, oh, and here's the catch", as it seems kinda cliched. But at least each entry is interesting to read on its own (of these gods, I think I like the Great Uniter, Truthsayer, and Mistress of Natural Instinct the best). There is one comment I want to state though.

I wanted to invent some deities standing somewhere in the middle - entities whose goals, yes, are not fully understood by mortals, but nevertheless close enough to their own morality that worshippers can find some commonality (real or imaginary) with their patrons.

I believe you're essentially describing how Lovecraftian cultists view their patron gods. The cultists follow Cthulhu for a reason, after all.

Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones shewed them; idols brought in dim aeras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.

Cthulhu offers enlightenment and the chance for humanity to transcend its limitations and become gods themselves. Is that true? Who knows? But I can surely see people embrace that hope for progress, utopia, and a better life. In fact, Progress Guide (one of your gods) might very well be one version of Cthulhu himself.

I work in industry for more than 20 years and still it is overwhelming for me. I do not see it as a replacement for art, but as an extension.
We will become AI operators and expand our perception and creativity to another level.

Not a replacement for art, but maybe a replacement for artists. After all, if humans are "AI operators", then that means the AI is the one making the art - all the humans are doing is giving editorial guidance and curating outputs, but that's probably less prestigious compared to the actual creative labor done by the computer.

But yeah, Midjourney is super-cool. I should try to use it, and combine its output with AI text generation.