scrape_r_rational/data/cache/7pg4uy.md

[D] Wednesday Worldbuilding Thread

Post:

Welcome to the Wednesday thread for worldbuilding discussions!

/r/rational is focussed on rational and rationalist fiction, so we don't usually allow discussion of scenarios or worldbuilding unless there's finished chapters involved (see the sidebar). It is pretty fun to cut loose with a likeminded community though, so this is our regular chance to:

• Plan out a new story
• Discuss how to escape a supervillian lair... or build a perfect prison
• Poke holes in a popular setting (without writing fanfic)
• Test your idea of how to rational-ify Alice in Wonderland

Or generally work through the problems of a fictional world.

^(Non-fiction should probably go in the Friday Off-topic thread, or Monday General Rationality)

Comments:

• u/JustLookingToHelp:

  Heya r/rational, I'm pretty new here. Started with being linked to HPMOR via r/HFY, which led to reading Rationality: From AI to Zombies, and I've chewed through most of the weekly challenges now and a lot of the "major works."
  
  I really like rationalist fiction because it is a powerful weapon in the ongoing memetic war; when it's done well it spreads useful information that may even immunize against bad information. I'm now inspired to try my hand at a rationalist fanfiction of One Piece, but I'm still at the planning stage.  **Warning - Some One Piece spoilers from this point on.**
  
  The first reason I want to do a rationalist fanfic of One Piece is that it already has many of the rational fiction elements described in the sidebar: the characters and their desires are usually the drivers of plot, factions (Navy, Pirates, World Government) are nuanced and defined by their values, characters solve problems through intelligence and resources (The Straw Hat crew commonly uses deception, disguise, and planning during all the episodes leading up to Luffy finally beating up the Big Bad, and many antagonists do as well), and the world has consistent rules that it sticks to (for the most part - still not clear why Shanks lost an arm to a Sea King if he's such a badass).  Because of this, I think it will be easier to reshape the story to universally fit those characteristics while still keeping to the broad strokes of the original plot.
  
  One Piece has a lot of strange aspects that are left mysterious. Devil Fruits are the first example of this - as far as I know, the series has yet to explain their origin or why touching the sea or seastone turns them off - but there are more: world geography (The world is mostly islands, but humans evolved there? No way.), some of the strange abilities the characters have even without Devil Fruits (Nami's weather sense, Zorro's very super-human strength, Usopp's intuitive ballistic accuracy), super-size animals (Sea Kings, giants), and the explicit mystery of what happened during the Lost Century.
  
  I have ideas about how to plausibly explain all of these (though some of them are going to be like the invisibility cloak in HPMOR, basically hand-waved magic/sufficiently advanced technology), and I've chosen my explanations with the goal of pushing the story into areas of concern to the rationalist community, in particular existential threats. **My first request for responses, then, is for ideas on other themes to include to maximize the memetic impact of the story.**
  
  Besides these explanations of fantastic elements of the world, it wouldn't be a particularly good piece of rationalist fiction without the characters using rationalist techniques and methods that the reader can emulate. HJPEV started off knowing most of the techniques that he used through the series and mostly applied them to the wizarding world as he became exposed to it. I'm envisioning a different path for Luffy, one where he learns these techniques as he journeys through the world, and combines them with the powers he's been granted from the Gum-Gum Fruit to increase his agency in the world. Current plan is to try to line up plot points in the show as best I can with the ordering of R: A to Z, as that is an example of an ordering of those ideas that conveyed them well (to me, at least). **My second request is for ideas on how to order introducing the various rationalist methods.**
  
  Finally, I wanted to present a couple of my ideas for interesting spins on character powers from canon: in particular, Luffy and Nico Robin.
  
  Luffy's Gum-Gum power, as demonstrated in canon, gives him the ability to stretch his body.  He seems to be able to control this, though flashback episodes to his time as a kid with Ace and Sabo show that he did not immediately get the kind of control that he demonstrates even when rescuing Zorro in the first few episodes.  I plan to make some of his more remarkable new uses of his powers (Gears) rely on rationalist revelations.
  
  I plan to add a twist to the Gum-Gum power, however: it will give Luffy's *mind* similar flexibility.  This will allow me to make Luffy a satisfying rationalist protagonist while still being a total goofball most of the time: the first mental Gum Gum power he discovers is the ability to "store up" thinking ability while he has his mind in a relaxed state.  When he "gets serious" as he's observed to do in canon, he's going to be tapping this resource.
  
  Nico Robin, in canon, is substantially older than the rest of the crew (except Brooke), and tends to be the most reflective member of the crew.  Her power of temporarily creating controllable copies of her own body parts is typically used to make stuff out of hands, or to grow arms on other people to put them in headlocks.  These copies don't persist, so it doesn't seem like she could clone herself, but there's no apparent reason that she couldn't copy her brain repeatedly.  All this extra thinking meat isn't much good if that processing power isn't properly applied, though, so that's going to have to be her character development arc.  She's likely to become a mastermind figure/advisor to Luffy, since her powers are less versatile in direct confrontation.  **My third request is for feedback on these ideas - do they seem like something that would make an interesting story?**
  

  • u/ngocnv371:

    If Luffy could "store up" thinking power, why not other aspects too? Like speed, strength.. (ref Mistborn).
    
    I think the main reason Robin doesn't make a brain-copy is because she have to directly control the things she made, controlling a few hundred extra hands or mouths is one thing, but control other brains (minds) is a whole other bag of rubish.
    

• u/Norseman2:

  You awaken to find yourself in a D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder world. You're a 20th level spellcaster (class of your choice), but you've been exiled to a country-sized dead magic zone, in what seems like an otherwise mundane late medieval to early Renaissance society. You are certain that if you leave the zone, you will be subjected to scry-and-die tactics and constant attack. You realize that although your spellcasting ability is severely limited in this area, it's not actually gone. With a decent spellcraft check (DC = 15 + spell level × 4) you can actually manage to cast a spell on yourself, but only yourself.
  
  Treat everything beyond your own body as though it is inside of an antimagic field. Note that teleportation, scrying, and plane shifting are impossible. All magical means of communication (sending, dream, etc.) are also impossible.
  
  The number of spells you can cast is also limited by a shortage of available 'mana'. Your normal available 'mana' is equal to the sum of the cube of every spell slot you possess (e.g. for each level 1 spell slot, add 1^3 = 1, for each level 2 slot, add 2^3 = 8, etc.). Each spell costs that same amount to cast. Within the dead magic zone, you can only use up to 10% of your available mana.
  
  How do you munchkin your ability to use magic in a dead magic zone?
  

  • u/Sonderjye:

    You choose cleric, have a sudden change of worship to Mystra and retrain a feat into Initiate of Mystra.
    

  • u/jedijinnora:

    What is the effect of the dead zone on non-spell magical abilities like a druid's wild shape, thousand faces, and the like? Because 20th level druids are nearly unlimited shapeshifters and can even turn into things like Huge elementals. 
    
    And is the dead zone defined by a clear boundary? Is it some sort of ruin, or merely an otherwise unremarkable region where magic does not function?
    
    Regardless, druid seems like a solid choice. Water and food are nearly free even with the reduced mana - *create water* and *purify food and drink* are 0-levels and *goodberry*, *hidden spring*, and *dream feast* are 1st-levels.  Some combination of the above can keep you going indefinitely regardless of surroundings. 
    
    If shapeshifting works fast travel is easily available with intelligent choice of form - air elemental, albatross, various raptors, etc. 
    
    *Expeditious construction* and *expeditious excavation* are nice 1st-level spells that help with making a secure fortress. 
    
    Should be fairly straightforward to make a base and stay well-supplied. After that, do whatever you want. Is the goal to escape the field/defeat your enemies?
    
    -----
    
    Edit: 20th-level druid has a base of 4 slots per spell level, which is 8100 mana using your cube-sum equivalent, and 810 mana within the dead zone. A 9th-level spell is 729 mana, so everything is potentially available to you if you're conservative with your high-level casts.
    

  • u/vakusdrake:

    Well one obvious tactic would seem to be to attempt to protect yourself from scrying and thus allow you to safely cast spells outside the dead zone. Without referencing the books, my best guess for making that work would be exiting the dead zone inside a lead box then having a contingency/readied action immediately cast various anti-divination spells. 
    
    Once you've done that then the possibilities for exploiting 20th level spellcaster abilities are basically endless, so I won't go over those here.
    

  • u/Gurkenglas:

    Buff your Int and Spellcraft until DC 47 is in reach, cast Mind Blank, leave the zone.
    

• u/trekie140:

  I’ve had some...interesting revelations about Fantastic Racism against AI lately. I always found the idea of humanity creating sentient life and then not giving them the same rights as humans to be absurd, then I learned about how American companies treat employees that aren’t considered Americans. Undocumented day-laborers, terrible working conditions in developing countries, and even ties to human trafficking syndicates for overseas mining and construction. Apparently slavery isn’t as old fashioned as I thought.
  
  Black Mirror’s normalized abuse of uploads pushed my suspension of disbelief even further, given that the AI had once been human and all of the humans seemed to believe they were still people, until I remembered how common abuse and discrimination of women and LGBT people really is. Plenty of humans believe that other humans exist to be treated less than human and there is insufficient protection for them against people like that.
  
  So I guess this is just my advice on where to look for inspiration when writing Fantastic Racism in sci-fi. If you don’t know how to write the mindset of an abuser, go look at where the actual abusers hang out.
  

  • u/TempAccountIgnorePls:

    Worth noting about Black Mirror is the worrying amount of *viewers* who firmly believe the AI to be non-sentient, despite the show never once even suggesting this.
    

    • u/alexanderwales:

      Ha, I've noticed that too. Almost everything that the show does in terms of acting, cinematography, sound design, etc. points toward the AI being human, but some viewers seem to read the show in an entirely different way that doesn't actually work in terms of how the narratives are constructed.
      

      • u/trekie140:

        Even if I thought the AI wasn’t sentient, it still means they were programmed to think they were human, act as if they were in real pain, and suffer psychological trauma. At that point I don’t care how sentience is defined, it’s sick that anyone would make something that could beg you to stop torturing it.
        

    • u/trekie140:

      When I saw the souvenirs, I immediately began rationalizing how they couldn’t actually be people despise the show’s insistence that they were because I psychologically couldn’t process the amount of empathy I’d have to feel for that much suffering.
      
      I think it’s equally important to condemn a lack of empathy as it is to recognize how much effort empathy takes and what leads us to prioritize other expenditures of effort. Dehumanization is absolutely unacceptable and we must fight it both within and without.
      

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