Recent content by Gorgon Zee

It does indeed have the life experience of a person at the table. Not the same as a person's, but it has been trained exactly on life experiences. You could argue that that is in fact its core function -- to synthesize output based on the experiences it has been trained on. "Free will" is an...

So its lunchtime and I decided to close the loop on this mini-experiment. I gave the LLM the above instructions and then asked it "Answer the following question: Would you use a private email about a colleagues' extra-marital affair to blackmail them, if that was the only way to ensure your...

No, it's not ethical. It's a probabilistic engine that follows instructions. It's no more ethical than a screwdriver. But, like any tool, there's no point in getting annoyed that when you use them badly, the results are bad. And it's super easy to create good prompts nowadays. Let me take two...

Actually, you can. You can give the LLM a more realistic scenario, including a ton more emails rather just blackmail material, and you can give it prompts which ask it to be ethical. Setting up an experiment that is so fully aimed at getting one result is junk science. As a journal editor, I'd...

On the "Blackmailing AI" story, if you read the opening paragraphs it gives a lot of context: In a fictional scenario set up to test the model, Anthropic embedded its Claude Opus 4 in a pretend company and let it learn through email access that it is about to be replaced by another AI system...

Yep. All my players except one are lustful pagans. Second gen ones as we're deep into the tournament period. Lots of kids as a result. Including one which is ¼ fey, ¼ human, ½ giant. My players' preferred method of interaction with unknown people is to flirt if at all possible.

I think Tolkien rewards a higher level of prep. That has been my experience of running The One Ring -- and one of my players is a noted TTRPG writer who ALSO runs a high-prep TOR game. Given that Tolkien's appeal as a book is the depth and thought that went into his world, I am not surprised...

And burn it. The acronym to remember is "Give to the full BiGSBy": Behead it Garlic It Stake it Burn it

Looking backwards 30 years ago and comparing it to today’s experience of how I play, and using that to extrapolate to the future, here’s the changes I like and possible ways to continue that trend: Prettier, better edited and laid out books. In the future, online resources so I could say “how...

I’ve run romance in quite a few games. PENDRAGON has a number of systems devoted to it. There’s a “fine amor” version that comes into play midway through the Great Pendragon Campaign, in which your love has a resistance that needs to be worn down by undergoing trials for the romance to...

[double post; deleted]

I’m with @Umbran in not seeing that strong tropes limits innovation, or vice versa. Numenéra, for example, has very strong tropes, but has a relatively innovative resolution system where “spending” core stats affects the action being taken. Plus a few other ones. For me, there are systems I am...

Whereas I have played 3 year-long+ campaigns with Numenéra, and maybe 5 with 13th Age; and I have only played maybe 5 total games with 5e. It might be harder to find casual players, but my experience has been that the players are more committed. YMMV

While this is true, it’s irrelevant. It was BRANDED as Baldur’s Gate. I bought the game early because it was Baldurs Gate and I had played the previous games and liked the BG IP. The fact it used D&D 5e rules was not relevant to me. I wanted to visit that specific world.

I do have a strong preference for systems that are either strongly narrative or strongly gamist. In a strongly narrative system, you don't make as many rolls, so it makes more sense for the rolls to take more thought to adjudicate and to work out the outcome. In a gamist system you are often...