If anyone reading this wants me to build them a custom D&D.Sci scenario (or something similar) to use as a test task, they should DM me. If the relevant org is doing something I judge to be Interesting and Important and Not Actively Harmful—and if they’re okay with me releasing it to the public internet after they’re done using it to eval candidates—I’ll make it for free.
abstractapplic
Karma: 2,963
abstractapplic’s Shortform
There are many games already, made for many reasons: insofar as this could work, it almost certainly already has.
Strengthens neural circuits involved in developing/maintaining positive habits
That’s any game where grinding makes your character(s) stronger, or where progression is gated behind the player learning new skills. (I’m pretty sure Pokemon did exactly this for me as a child.)
Build any sort of positive habits that transfer to real life decision making
That’s any strategy game. (I’m thinking particularly of XCOM:EU, with its famously ‘unfair’ - i.e. not-rigged-in-the-player’s-favor—hit probabilities.)
I do think that there are untapped possibilities in this space—I wouldn’t have made all those educational games if I didn’t—but what you’re describing as possibly-impossible seems pretty mundane and familiar to me. (Kudos for considering the possibility in the first place, though.)
I think you can address >95% of this problem >95% of the time with the strategy “spoiler-tag and content-warn appropriately, then just say whatever”.
Is there value in seeking out and confronting these limits,
Yes.
or should we exercise caution in our pursuit of knowledge?
Yes.
. . . to be less flippant: I think there’s an awkward kind of balance to be struck around the facts that
A) Most ideas which feel like they ‘should’ be dangerous aren’t[1].
B) “This information is dangerous” is a tell for would-be tyrants (and/or people just making kinda bad decisions out of intellectual laziness and fear of awkwardness).
but C) Basilisks aren’t not real, and people who grok A) and B) then have to work around the temptation to round it off to “knowledge isn’t dangerous, ever, under any circumstance” or at least “we should all pretend super hard that knowledge can’t be dangerous”.
D) Some information—“here’s a step-by-step-guide to engineering the next pandemic!”—is legitimately bad to have spread around even if it doesn’t harm the individual who knows it. (LWers distinguish between harmful-to-holder vs harmful-to-society with “infohazard” vs “exfohazard”.)
and E) It’s super difficult to predict what ideas will end up being a random person’s kryptonite. (Learning about factory farming as a child was not good for my mental health.)
I shouldn’t trusted with language right now.
I might be reading too much into this, but it sounds like you’re going through some stuff right now. The sensible/responsible/socially-scripted thing to say is “you should get some professional counseling about this”. The thing I actually want to say is “you should post about whatever’s bothering you on the appropriate 4chan board, being on that site is implicit consent for exposure to potential basilisks, I guarantee they’ve seen worse and weirder”. On reflection I tentatively endorse both of these suggestions, though I recognize they both have drawbacks.
- ^
For what it’s worth, I’d bet large sums at long odds that whatever you’re currently thinking about falls into this category.
- ^
In Thrawn’s experience there are three ingredients to greatness
I think the way tenses are handled in the early part of this section is distractingly weird. (I can’t tell how petty I’m being here.) (I’d be inclined to fix the problem by italicizing the parts Thrawn is thinking, and changing “Thrawn wasn’t” to “I’m not”.)
If you go up to someone powerful and ask for something, then there’s 60% chance you lose nothing and a 1% chance you win big.
. . . what happens in the remaining 39%?
Also (outrageously pedantic stylistic point even by my standards incoming) it’s strange to follow up “60% chance” with “a 1% chance”: it should either be “n% chance” both times or “a n% chance” both times.
succomb
succumb
“Tatooine. They’re on Tatooine,”
Was this deviation from canon intentional? (I remember in the movie she picks a different planet with a similar-sounding name.)
brainsteam
Can’t tell if this is a typo’d “brainstem”.
D&D.Sci Scenario Index
Good catch; fixed now; ty.
D&D.Sci: Whom Shall You Call? [Evaluation and Ruleset]
I think there’s a typo; the text refers to “Poltergeist Pummelers” but the input data says “Phantom Pummelers”.
Good catch; fixed now; thank you.
D&D.Sci: Whom Shall You Call?
The Conservative party in the UK are also called “Tories”.
Carla is harder: I think she’s some combination of Carl (literally, “free man”: appropriate for someone who wants to avoid tyranny) and Karl (as in Karl Marx), but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a more prosaic explanation.
Caplan has been saying this intermittently for the past two years.
I think this is plausibly the best scenario either of us have made to date.
The basic game was very good, layering simple rules on top of each other to create a complex system which was challenging to detangle but easy to understand once you know the rules. I was particularly impressed by the fact that you managed the (imo, near-impossible) feat of making an enjoyable D&D.Sci where handling data starvation was a key part of the problem: most players (including me) seem to have had the (sensible) thought “okay, let’s filter for only potions with Onyx and Bone”, and success past that point was predicated on realizing there weren’t quite enough rows to justify being that picky.
The twist struck me as fair, funny and fun. It provided an object lesson in noticing when things don’t quite add up, and letting the qualitative shade the quantitative; it also expanded the scope of the genre in ways I realize I’ve been neglecting to.
All that said, I have some (minor, petty) criticisms . . . not of the game itself, but how it was presented. Namely:
.This entry was billed as “relatively simple”, but I think it was about median difficulty by the standards of D&D.Sci; pretty sure it was harder than (for example) The Sorceror’s Personal Shopper.
.”STORY (skippable)” was kind of misleading this time: the flavortext had a lot of little hints that the Archmage wasn’t on the level, so someone who didn’t read it (or failed to read between the lines, like me) would be at a (small) disadvantage.
.”Archmage Anachronos is trying to brew Barkskin Potion” was A) the GM saying something false directly to the players, and B) a missed opportunity: if you’d written something like “Your goal is to help Archmage Anachronos brew Barkskin Potion”, that would have been a subtle confirmation that giving him exactly what he asked for would lead to the best outcome (vs more aggressive / galaxy-brained forms of sabotage, or refusing to cast judgement on his pursuit of immortality, or any other reaction).
After some consideration (and reading other people’s answers, in particular simon’s) I’ve come to the conclusion that the best answer to give is actually
Vampire Fang, Troll Blood, Ground Bone, Oaken Twigs, Demon Claw
Wait . . . actually, if we’re in the mood for galaxy-brained moves, we could go one better and try to
con the lich into brewing & drinking a regen potion.
I think your theory about
him switching the Barkskin and Necromantic Power potions
is completely correct and I feel dumb for not thinking of it; ditto your proposed reaction. On reflection, I suspect that this is because
he’s actually the Loathsome Lich in disguise
so your right-ness is a lot more important than it might seem at first glance. Good catch!
I think a lot of people have a habit like that, and it’s different things for different people.
Beware.
(Like, from what I hear you’re not wrong, but . . . y’know, Beware.)