I'm making a ttrpg about life in an intentional community during the last year before the Singularity

post by bgaesop · 2025-02-13T21:54:09.002Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

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Hi there! I'm Thomas Eliot. You may remember me from the Bay Area Rationalist Community, or the one in New York, or the one in Melbourne. 

I'm writing a semi-autobiographical roleplaying called THE SINGULARITY WILL HAPPEN IN LESS THAN A YEAR inspired by The Quiet Year by Avery Alder about life in a barely fictionalized intentional community during the final year before the Singularity.

The tone I'm going for is "existential dread tinged with joy in the moment and the possibility of hope". This is very much intended for an audience of Rationalists, though hopefully it will also have outside appeal. It's intended to be emotionally cathartic. 

You'll play through just under a year of story and roleplaying prompts as you draw from a deck of cards, each one corresponding to the events of that week. Spring has the tone of "we'll get to it later", Summer has an optimistic tone, Autumn has a desperate, scrambling tone, and Winter's tone is resigned to your fate.

Roleplaying prompts include dealing with a sudden advancement of AI capabilities, celebrating a holiday, a proper cult splitting off from your community, handling social scandals, being presented with moral dilemmas, and more. You'll be pressed to make difficult ethical decisions at every turn as the end draws ever closer.

You are the Reasoners, an intentional community devoted to the art of human reasoning, who have been concerned about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence for longer than most. While the outside world calls you the Reasoners (if you're lucky - they call you "that AI death cult" if you're not), to each other you call yourselves "mice". A bit of gallows humor - laboratory mice are sacrificed by the millions in the name of scientific and technological progress, but also, mice are what we use to control computers. You hope you're the latter, while you fear you're the former.

Each turn you'll draw a card, make a decision, play through its prompt, and then choose whether to work on a coding project that might change how the Singularity plays out, work on a personal project, or socialize with your fellow man during the last precious few days that that is possible. You'll also be challenged to think rationally - updating your expectation as to whether the Singularity will turn out well or poorly whenever you feel like something that's happened has made you more or less confident.

You'll use an image generating AI as you play - each time you complete a coding project, you'll get to put a few more words into the prompt, collaboratively creating the prompt together, and when the Singularity occurs, you'll press create, and see what the brave new world you've created together looks like. 

Here's hoping it's a good one.

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