18 KiB
[BST] Something Quest
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2x6pxd/bst_something_quest/
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Score: 29
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Created: 2015-02-26T02:13:28
Post:
The thought has occurred to me to create a universe and let the readers vote on what the character should do, and see if the result is something like a very weak superintelligence, because YOU'RE COLLECTIVELY SMARTER THAN HARRY AT THIS POINT AND POSSIBLY ME. THERE I SAID IT.
We should totally do this.
This thread is for determining if there's enough interest to run such a thing, and for starting to work out the details.
Suggestions raised so far include:
- charge money for votes
- as a fundraiser
- winning suggester gets 10% of the bids
- or not
- on...
- a generic forum
- a livestream
- anonkun.com
- with multiple competing factions, each controlled by a different (paid?) forum
Assuming that EY won't or shouldn't be the one to GM this, we have to consider who will. One author, or several?
There will need to be worldbuilding, but since the rules of the world probably shoudn't be initially public knowledge, please do not make worldbuilding suggestions in this thread; such discussions should take place on a private GM-only forum/subreddit, once such a thing exists.
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+45] Time flies like an arrow (an hour later)
The thing you really need is a good writer who can reliably hit their updates, and not have their updates spread out too far. Preferably someone with experience GMing a tabletop game, because I see a lot of similarities there. Everything else is going to hinge on that, and if you don't have it, it's all going to fall apart.
The second thing you're going to need is a reasonably large community. If you're down to just a handful of active commentator/players, you might as well just be playing D&D online. The whole idea is to have a collective intelligence guiding the player. To that end, you need quite a few people, which means low barriers to entry and ideally brand recognition. If you're talking about betting real money, or having people sign up with a faction, you're talking about multiple clicks to take you from someone linking to this thing, and actually playing it. That's bad.
The third thing you're going to need are concrete rules that have been thought about ahead of time. At the same time, if the players find some exploit in these rules, the aforementioned good writer has to be able to patch that exploit in a satisfying way that is consistent with the established canon and doesn't make the game feel unwinnable.
For general genre, I would suggest fantasy because it represents a world that's in many ways less complex than our own (I literally have a computer in my pocket that connects to a global network of information).
I personally would have interest in following something like this, so long as it was well-written, which as I hope I've said, is what most of this will hinge on.
Edit: Oh, and I would split the difference as far as prediction markets go - give people some fake currency to vote with, ideally something that accrues as the chapters pile up. RationalBucks or something. But again you get into the problem of increasing the barrier for entry.
u/None [+7] (5 hours later)
Re: Entry barrier, etc. Suggestion: two level currency.
(1) is used for voting on existing suggestions. (2) is primarily used for bidding on suggestion slots, and secondarily for betting and status.
Suggestion slots are limited, perhaps by having a fixed total or by sharply increasing prices past a certain limit.
(1) is given in equal measure to all participants just after an update, and is wiped every time just before a distribution.
(2) is earned by having voted on a winning suggestion. The total pool of (2) available is proportional to amount of (2) spent that round on suggestions. X% of the pool is won by the original suggester, and the rest is distributed pro rata to voters.
(2) can also be obtained by real money donation; by trade or bet (or possibly purchase?) from holders of (2); and by collecting on nonwinning suggestions through fanfiction (see EYs comment)
u/None [+2] (18 hours later)
How would regular old comment karma work as #1?
u/traverseda [+3] With dread but cautious optimism (an hour later)
Someone start doing up wireframes.
u/qznc [+3] Chaos Legion (6 hours later)
I think it requires at least two factions. If the player is controlled by hive mind, then the author must provide equally powerful challenges. Without powerful challenges it devolves in boring munchkin shortstories similar to [MK] here.
With multiple factions it becomes difficult to keep them separated. This necessarily means higher barriers of entry. If people manage to play in multiple factions this means factions can read each others minds. Ultimately I guess factions would self-destruct by espionage, distrust, and politics.
u/AugSphere [+3] Dark Lord of Corruption (7 hours later)
Participation in prediction markets may actually constitute a beneficial barrier for entry. For me, the presence of a sane method of conflict resolution and strategy selection among players is a huge plus, so this would not keep me from participating. And if this barrier keeps out the average quest players, so much the better.
Damn. Now I want to find/create a fair prediction market that actually converges to Bayesian estimates. And to make a good Condorcet voting web site. If only I had the time.
u/anonkun_kas [+13] (11 hours later)
Really interesting idea. I'm a huge fan of lesswrong and HPMOR. I would love to talk with you guys help you make what you need happen.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+15] Godric Gryffindor (19 hours later)
Hi, anonkun! I'm taking this moderately seriously but can't guarantee that I'll be the first author to step up. Also, although some others have spoken of using this on a fundraising basis, I would not mind being paid directly for my next artistic endeavor. (Of course I'd still free the IP for anyone else to use and get paid for, which is my own way of not being evil.) I worry that the system I envision is relatively complicated, but one must always ask before assuming that something can't be done. I'd want:
- The ability for any user to suggest a next course of action for the character.
- The ability for anyone to discuss those suggestions, using either nested or flat comments, but with comments being local to a particular suggestion.
- The ability to comment / post on a latest update in general.
- The ability for anyone to bid money on a course of action they prefer, which is collected only if that course of action is taken.
- The ability for anyone to bid money on the next N words, which is collected after the next N words are produced independently of any particular course of action.
- Ideally, the ability for the author to post one paragraph at a time, and for users to realtime-chat about the paragraphs.
After some worried thought, I've decided that it seems best for now not to award money to suggesters because it seems liable to create fights over a system that would otherwise operate well enough with just user interest. (Sadly, not everyone in the world is money-positive or operates emotionally well with market norms.) I hereby commit that, should I undertake such a project, 10% of revenue will go directly to some charity other than MIRI in order that I not profit personally from the above decision.
I would first want to run pilot paragraphs without money, but with voting, in order to see if the overall system works well for me as a format.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
I think you just secured yourself a second career as a professional Dungeon Master for after FAI works out.
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (2 days later)
I'd read the crap out of that.
u/somnicule [+2] (a day later)
I liked how Wildbow did the bonus interludes thing. If there's a similar piece of writing with loads and loads of characters, and too many plot threads to fully explore, bidding on which characters to focus on for interlude or bonus interludes would be a neat system.
u/HamillianActor [+2] (a day later)
If you end up writing this, I want to buy the film rights immediately.
u/adad64 [+2] Chaos Legion (a day later)
You know... That doesn't actually sound very hard to code at all. If we ever want to get this going without the constraints of using an existing system I'd be up for creating a web app that does this.
u/torac [+5] (6 hours later)
Sounds fun.
Anonkun seems be the most fitting of the listed options so far.
The coder has been considering implementing monetary systems for a while now.
Suggestions on how to improve the site are taken seriously. If a sizeable group wants a change, there is a good chance they get it within a few weeks or months.
The current system is relatively good for discussion of different topics. There is a general chat with additional chatrooms for any topics users create. Voting is done easily, dice system is integrated.
The owner has been discussion ways to safely increase the userbase for a while now. Fears have been that new users will either a) vote stupidly / only for ‘funny’ stuff, b) take issue with some of the morally questionable quests and intentionally try to ruin the fun of others. I think the rational community would improve the community if anything.
Of course there would be downsides:
I’s not as good for discussion as I would like. The chatrooms are mainly plaintext.
It’s kind of buggy. Dice work, but if the same user rolls twice only the second roll is shown, which allows cheating. Other bugs pop up every now and then.
Anyone from the userbase can join any story. While I’ll grant that the /r/HPMOR or the /r/rational community may play a very rational game, I’m not sure how it would fare if random users join in numbers.
Kas sometimes decides to change things for his own reasons even if most of the community wanted something else. This may lead to a sudden influx of bugs.
u/anonkun_kas [+5] (12 hours later)
Great comments on anonkun.
Right now I'm mostly concerned about nailing the product market fit through user feedback, so I'm really open to changes.
We're testing out a new beta right now with a totally revamped discussion system. It's way better at discussions now. See changes here: http://anonkun.com/stories/new-beta/HvPosMFoNvkzmF3hh
The dice thing is also fixed in the beta.
The userbase question is really interesting. I think if you're really concerned about that you can temporarily set the story to be "unpublished". It'll still be visible and you can link it to rational communities without our broader community interfering. Once you get your footing and establish the rationalist culture you can publicize it.
u/torac [+6] (12 hours later)
I’ll try out the new beta. Good to know the dice are fixed there. I think it was only 2 weeks or so ago when I did a bug report on that. (Though I don’t know if I was the first to report that.)
Keeping the story unpublished for some time would work quite well to establish a baseline of appropriate player behaviour as well as a barrier of entry for low-effort posters. Good idea!
Of course we would still need to find a good, willing author with an interesting idea and a bit of time on their hands for the forseeable future…
Edit: Tried out the beta. Saw the mandatory comment feature. Will no longer use the beta.
Edit 2: Authors can now turn off mandatory comments.
u/OffColorCommentary [+5] (21 hours later)
One author, or several?
As /u/alexanderwales points out, this is similar to GMing a tabletop game. In my experience, the quality of my campaigns improved dramatically when I started giving more authorial power to my players. So what if we did that, and had everyone playing some part in it?
There are quite a lot of non-story-affecting details that could be farmed off to community voting. To use HP:MoR as an example, you could have brought large chunks of Draco's personality or Hogwarts lore to vote, or really most of the background details inherited from Rowling's work.
I don't know if being able to vote on both creative setting details and munchkin/rational decisions would cause problems for some readers. I'd be down for it, but I suspect I'm weirdly good at this sort of split.
u/Nepene [+11] (11 hours later)
http://forums.spacebattles.com/forums/story-debates-play-by-post-games.10/
This is already normal in many forums.
Wildbow, the author of Pact and Worm, is currently doing a PRT quest like this where you vote for their actions.
http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/prt-department-sixty-four-thread-iii-worm-quest.310039/
I am currently doing a mother of learning version of this, where people have the option to vote for the actions of a character.
I'd prefer to do it with the free version.
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (a day later)
I first saw that kind of gaming on Spacebattles. Is there any other maybe even more prolific forum you could recommend?
u/torac [+4] (a day later)
mspaforum. It’s huge and there are hundreds upon hundreds of quests of every flavor. A story that was submitted here some days ago: http://mspaforums.com/showthread.php?46308-Deep-Rise-An-Illustrated-Xenofiction-Adventure
forum.questionablequesting.com I only followed one story there and that one is long dead.
boards.4chan.org/tg/catalog Filter by quest. Most of the stories are bad to mediocre, but there are some good ones if you keep looking.
suptg is one archive for stories from /tg/. I can very much recommend Void Quest. It’s been years since I read it, but I remember it being a pretty cool sci-fi story from the perspective a war-ship that finally managed to restart after 65k years of drifting in space: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=void+quest
Anonkun. Mentioned here several times. No story fitting the rational community comes to mind. The Reigns of Command has been fun. A lot of war, strategy, politicking etc. http://104.236.88.162/stories/top
I think that’s all the relevant ones.
u/ExeteraAdams [+2] (a day later)
The problem, of course, is that the PRT Quest provides expert proof of that old adage "The IQ of a committee is equal to the IQ of the dumbest member divided by the number of people on the committee." You have no idea how many times I wanted to throw my computer at a wall back when I still read that.
If we actually want an interesting rational fic to come out of this, we're gonna need a better system.
u/Nepene [+3] (a day later)
I think it would probably be necessary to have actual experts.
Have various people assigned to various characters to dissect and analyse their motives and actions, produce regular reports. Have a group that strongly respected expert opinions. Regularly analyse goals and ideals.
Something more structured than popularity.
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
Something more structured than popularity.
Harry gushed over the latest chapter of Shingeki no Kyojin. "Oh Eren-kun, I will keep you close to my kokoro until I can make you alive"
u/None [+2] (a day later)
I really think that anything with a built-in voting mechanism (e.g. Reddit, Anonkun) is going to mostly avoid that problem.
u/eaglejarl [+5] (12 hours later)
I've actually been considering doing this. I am writing full time right now, so I would have no problem hitting my updates. People seem to have liked my writing on 2YE, so hopefully that works.
One thing people should be aware of, though: since I'm trying to write full time, I need to monetize. If I were being the DM on this full time, I would ask that people either throw a few bucks at my Patreon, or spread awareness of my for-sale works, or in some other way help me get closer to that hoped-for "writer who isn't starving" state.
As to what the topic might be -- I'd be happy to do things in the 2YE-verse, or in the new manapunk-verse that I will be starting shortly. Obviously, if people have other ideas that's fine too.
u/comport [+5] (8 hours later)
What the heck? Competing factions? Paid votes?
This kind of thing is standard fare across many roleplaying/scifi/fantasy/anime message boards, all done organically within the board.
If you want to do this, just go ahead and start it and let people take part as they discover it.
u/Bowbreaker [+3] Solitary Locust (a day later)
I assume y'all have heard of the Worm PRT Quest that Wildbow himself GMs?
It is on a hiatus at the moment but Wildbow says he'll pick it up again at some time. Still an awesome read so far. And a har game too.