New Fascist Modular (diary)

This company seems to be involved in creating clones for buyers. Each member clones themselves 1000 times, and their rank increases as they lose members of their extended family. They make workers, soldiers and animals so that you can quickly increase the number of people living somewhere, and in the case of terraforming a planet, they are a good way to make an extended ecosystem. If you visit a planet and see an earth animal, they made it. They also seem fond of propaganda, marches and other odd behaviour. At least the people they boss around are copies of themselves.

in the movies (diary)

In the movies there’s a point where the characters realise its a vampire movie, or a monster movie at least. Think about it. If you worked out that the evil killer was a vampire, how would you know what worked against them? holy water, stakes, crosses. get it wrong and you get dead.

my mind wandered down that path during the lecture. It seems that it’s important that I know about these people. They have a lot of different names. They used to all play the same computer game together, in which they were called the “Hidden masters”, so thats the simplest name to call them.

They were a bunch of nerds who worked on some kind of technical hobby. they were in a science club. they worked on computers. Lots of the members were really smart but not in a way that would make them famous. They had their own hobby group. Their own language. They had posters of dragons on the walls and drew bad pencil sketches of women in chainmail bikinis holding swords. They had weird ideas.

They did something. They worked something out. When they had meetings they showed each other whatever it was that they had invented. They got smarter. They improved designs.

The people giving the lecture act like police. That’s why they’re so confused. If the group worked on computers, half would be better at something else. If they invented cold fusion, why so many people who knew about biology? if it was a mathematic equation, why so many artists? No matter how you looked at the members, there were people who didn’t belong.

They invented everything.

I like these inventors more. Its the first lecture, so I don’t know all the facts, but these people seem to talk about them with a barely disguised contempt. They did something new. I like electricity, television, gravity. books.

save point (diary)

I had a life and I’m so mad and angry right now in a sad way. I feel as bad as anyone would if they were told someone they knew had died, or that they weren’t in love anymore.

I asked about the earth. “how has it changed after all this time”?

It hasn’t.

The future started in the eighties.

I’m alive right now because they don’t want anyone to know. Earth can’t change yet, people won’t get robot butlers or flying rocket cars because we don’t know what that will do. We don’t know how the technology works, or if it’s safe. She gave me a simple explanation. If we were cavemen and we found a nuclear reactor, all we’d see were the lights, not the terrible radiation. we wouldn’t even know until we were so sick that it was too late. I thought these people had invented everything they used. but they don’t!

return and lets talk (diary)

It’s nice to wake up with a pretty woman sitting by you, stroking your hair. It’s a lovely gesture and I’d feel happy if I didn’t know that she was some kind of hallucination designed by clever machinery.

I felt a bit out of sorts after my last entry. She wouldn’t talk to me about the prayer for some reason, so I asked her about my future. She told me that I would need to decide at some point which company I was planning to work for. They made a job of resurrecting cryogenically frozen people to act as managers for a bunch of companies in space. That’s a lot to digest, but given some of the stories I read in comics, I suppose its not too much of a stretch.

We get woken up, and after a period of acclimation we get to decide who we work for so that we’re happy with whatever we do. I wondered why “they” didn’t just recruit locals. She said it had something to do with the way everyone changed when they all spread out over the place.

I think she meant that since everyone changed it would be hard to get people who were half robots or zebras to agree on hard choices. I think. See, this is what drives me crazy. I don’t know anything about life now, but these people want me to make really really important decisions about my life, and probably theirs.

this strange prayer (diary)

I had a pale person in my room today and while they were here I didn’t see my internal friend. She talked like a deaf person, but without sounding odd. Stilted. That was a bit unnerving. She told me (the stranger did) in very forceful terms that I should make a habit of reciting a particular prayer. I’m not religious and the words didn’t seem to be related to anything I know. Since I’m not sure if they’re overhearing my thoughts I’ve decided to give it a go. To be honest, I wonder if its some kind of compliance game. Even looking at it makes me feel uncomfortable. This is the weirdest thing that has happened to me since I woke up.

Arise and greet the day.

I shall wrap your hands in gold,

I shall clothe you in gold.

For you shall carry out my word,

On Earth as in heaven.

Rising in the morning (diary)

I can make a diary entry whenever I like.

There’s a woman that follows me everywhere. she’s a ghost in my head that freely offers advice. I thought she was a hologram at first but she told me I have things in my head that will help me adapt to my new life. I can guess that anyone who puts machines in your head will also listen to those ideas too.

I’ve decided not to give her a name because I might like her. it seems she is everything that I find pleasant in a person, and this shows a level of insight in my captors that unnerves. I think this is what a person would feel like if they woke up from a coma and their family were around them. you say you’re my wife, but I don’t know you! Here is the toilet, you can order food from this machine, don’t go down that corridor. but nothing is overwhelmingly dangerous. I don’t see robots or monsters or anything like that.

time for exercise.

game theory (5)

I didn’t add any number details to the last post, so I’ll add them here.

Each commander in a group decides their leadership style: this is defined by a die (plural: dice). The large the die, the more aggressive the leadership style and the riskier it is.

For example: A D6 in aggression. There are six possible outcomes to rolling that die. if they roll the lowest number possible (1), they have made a critical error which causes the action to fail and penalise the group an additional amount. If they roll the highest number possible (6) they have made a critical success, earning a bonus amount of points. If they roll within the low 50% of the die range they have failed at the action, if they roll in the high 50% they have succeeded. As an additional factor, that leader can increase the likelihood of success by adding additional points to the roll. Each point adds 1 to the roll, making a large expenditure likely to succeed but yield lower profits, while a risky successful gamble earns points. Success ties on both sides merely defer the result while penalising or rewarding both groups that turn. they can choose to continue to gamble for success of that objective, or they can pull out, losing the points they wagered so far but avoiding a real loss.

Where the additional complication comes into play is this: a leader might be using a D12 for their leadership roll while the other side uses a more cautious D6. One side may have more than one leader and so can roll multiple dice (picking the best one). One group may be intentionally baiting the other side into spending points to win, even though they don’t care about a win/loss, because they’re draining resources out of their enemy to win later, or to be more successful at the negotiating table.

D4 D6 D8 D10 D12 D20

Game theory (4)

The Ideol system should represent the themes that I believe best describe the true nature of diplomacy and warfare: Economy and stance.

Imagine that you have decided to head to a casino to gamble for fun. You know how much money you can afford to spend from your bank balance, and you have a reasonable idea of how skilled you are at the games. As you walk in the door you make a mental decision about several things: how much money you can afford to spend, whether or not you’d prefer to play the less lucrative and safer games or the more random and profitable ones.

As the night goes on, you make the occasional win. The money you earn can help you to either continue to play, or to add to the amount you define as a profit. For you, if you blow all your money you can call the night a bad one. If you leave with a little less or even a small amount over, you can call it a good night. If you made a clear profit it’s a great night.

Your actions that night can contribute to the end result; if you spent large amounts on poor odds, chances are likely that you’ll lose that money, with a chance to (very rarely) win a large amount compared to a modest series of safer wins. Personal issues may affect your success, such as drinking a lot, forgetting about your budget and so on.

I think war (and any kind of conflict, such as economic competition) operates on this simple path. Each side decides how far it is willing to commit, it’s style of play (aggressive or cautious) and what its ideal win, loss and break even states are. Negotiators and Generals are aware that it is unlikely that they will achieve all their goals, but aim to gain as many as possible. Each side can begin to learn about the other through the early conflicts: sides may begin to earn reputions as bold risk takers or careful planners. Great losses are often caused by risk takers who “bet the farm” on grasping victory from defeat.

I have been working on a system that tells each player how many resources they have and roughly how skilled they are. They should “feel” the breadth of their capacities, and I want them to choose how cautiously or aggressively they commit their forces. I intend to let them choose the difficulty of their actions. One of the side benefits is that small teams are more likely to act aggressively (because they have less to lose) while larger groups of troops are more likely to act in a cautious manner because they will still earn a good result if they succeed.

Perhaps this explains why very rich people are more likely to gamble vast sums of money: they want to feel the way a person does when they cannot afford to lose at a wager.

Game theory (3)

In regard to writing I have been taught that no matter the genre, there is one very important factor: character development.

As a game designer, I not only need to visualise a system and all the possibilities of error or misuse in that system, I also need to know that it has the scope to permit the growth of each player’s character, the power of the player party when it works together, and that it permits the development of exponentially more powerful opponents (which also continue to be novel).

An unfolding dramatic game must allow the players to feel that there is a goal towards which they can strive, which has enough scope to let them feel that they have shaped it, that they have some control over the specifics of their development and goals, and that their choice is just as valuable as any other.

A question I have often asked myself when playing games is: when I rescue the kingdom, save the planet, beat the bad guy, is there still more for me to do?

Sometimes the worst thing a game can handle is the success of the players.

Game theory (2)

There’s a well known computer game called “The Sims”, in which you direct the choices of a normal person as they go about their life. The game has been very successful over the years, which is surprising given the sedate nature of the content, but it does illustrate some important points in game design. Often when you look at a game, you can guess that the designer has put the most effort into the parts of the game that interest them the most and spend the least amount of time on the less crucial parts.

When a player creates a character, they are investing themselves in that character, whether as a form of empowerment, or a form of social experimentation, that character has become an avatar for the wishes, longings and subconscious desires of that person. Often they will choose looks that give them a sense of empowerment, such as beauty or a menacing visage. A game designer should ideally create the scope within a game’s character creation rules for each player to “feel” that they can, as far as possible, make a character that they can identify and empathise with. I would go so far as to say that the most successful games have facilitated this the most effectively. As an added note, I would say that a game should and must appeal not only to masculine ideals, but also feminine ones. Games which make a character seem generic, difficult to play freely and seem railroaded into a small scope of roles won’t last beyond the initial novelty of a first session or two.