Playing the Game of the World Forge

Don’t count on this being the same forever. Playing it to reinforce your Warleader is different from playing it to reinforce your own power...

The world forge is arguably the ’crunchiest’ of the Great Games. Everyone entering into the game starts with some clear do X for Y effect instructions. There’s no equivocating, no subjectivity or doubt - at least in the actual mechanisms. To a certain extent that means it relies the least on hard skills of any kind. If you have a use quintessence skill, you can effect the World Forge exactly the same as every other philosopher with that skill. Whether you do that openly with great fanfare or quietly from the sidelines, whether you asses the state of play in an instant or take hours to plan you move - the World Forge itself is impassive and the result will be the same.

This could be a bit of a risk on our part, as it’s entirely possible the World Forge gets used in a very utilitarian fashion with philosophers in and out with no interaction with each other just reaping the rewards. Obviously in a system where we have little direct intervention we’d much prefer it if the philosophers got into ’debate’ with each other as to what moves to make. In that regard we’ve tried for a mixture of simple competing instructions drawn from a complex potential pool (10^134 different world forge combinations for those that care), so that they’re should be plenty of bickering space. Once a philosopher gets their instructions, it should be clear they’re going to be picking arguments with philosophers not only from different cultures, but probably their own culture too and maybe even within their own warband.

And that’s just from the basic starting information available, and the mechanistic returns on it. With special effects impinging from outside and the more open debate of ’what it all means’ up for grabs - I’m hoping the World Forge will stir up quite a bit of conversation time amongst the philosophers. That’s where I hope the investment arrive in terms of ’player interaction’ time, I’m looking forward to seeing deals struck, theories argued and hopes dashed before moves even get entered into the system.

I’m sure the Warleaders and Champions wont care too much as long as the philosophers keep churning out the juice that lets them win arenas or complete quests, but then again the philosophers aren’t interested in the specifics of territorial gambits until the coin flow stops and they can’t play with the forge any more...

For the game theorists amongst you, what the World Forge represents is an elaborate game of the chess variety. It’s an open knowedlge game where the moves available to all participants are available to anyone (like Chess, unlike Poker), which hopefully will lead to strategic long term planning. Each move is conceptually simple - move one place round - but with 125 possible moves at any given time trying to definitively plan ahead quickly eludes the grasp of computers let alone humans. Hopefully that’ll promote much re-evaluation of startegies and plans. We’re trying to get the effort to reward balance right, and I can’t promise we’ll hit it first time but hopefully the basic tenets of personal/cultural goals and achievement at set milestones will mean it’s enough to keep players engaged throughout the event.

Whilst I doubt there’ll be many philosophers who set up camp within the World Forge for the whole event, I’m hoping it’s something all philosophers will dip into and out of throughout the weekend - and be a default conversation starter when any two philosophers meet out and about.

Vince