Think Like A Game Designer - Ben Robbins — Revisiting Microscope, Designing Uncomfortable Games, and the Mechanics of Shared Stories (#110)

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

About BenBen Robbins is an acclaimed indie game designer best known for creating Microscope, In This World, Kingdom, and This Means War. Ben’s flagship design, Microscope, revolutionized GM-less storytelling games by allowing players to collaboratively build vast, non-linear histories from the top down. In this returning appearance on the podcast, Ben and I dive deep into the psychological hurdles of revisiting a beloved, successful game to create Microscope v2. We explore the creative trick of fooling yourself to bypass pressure, the design spectrum between "wings vs. rails," and why opening your playtesting process up to the public saves time while yielding better results. Plus, we break down his experimental new game This Means War (which strips narrative control away from players) and engage in a passionate, honest debate on the role and impact of AI in the future of game design. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I speak with world-class game designers and creative pioneers across multiple industries. Each episode takes you on a deep dive into the creative process, exploring the nuances of game design and the extensive cultural, technological, and business factors influencing various creative fields. Tune in for practical tips and inspiring insights that will expand your creative perspective,

whether it's inside the gaming realm, or beyond. I have something I am so excited to finally announce. If you are serious about designing games, not just thinking about games, not just listening to the podcast and dreaming about games, but actually finishing your own designs, then I have created something for you.

It is the brand new Think Like a Game Designer, Design Lab. It is a step-by-step system that I have created and tested with dozens of other creators and other aspiring designers that includes over 60 less. to take you from generating ideas to building prototypes to finding playtesters, refining your core design loop all the way through publishing, running a crowd fund, and even getting hired in the industry. You'll also get access to my private design Discord filled with me,

members of the Stoneblade team, and other creators all actively building games. Plus, I've got some incredible bonuses for people who join right now and for longtime fans of the podcast. If you're ready to stop pretending and start actually doing, designing games with intention. Check out the Think Like a Game Designer Design Lab at justingarydesigns.com. In today's episode, I speak with Ben Robbins. Ben is the creator of microscope in this world and this means war amongst other games. I've had Ben on the podcast previously, and I will link to that first episode in the show notes.

So if you want to learn about his fascinating origin story and a lot of his other design thoughts, please listen to that episode. But in this episode, we get into a lot of really interesting philosophical questions and deep game design questions, as well as a heated discussion about the value and threat of AI in gaming and in the world. We talk about what it's like to revisit a game

that has been successful many years later. I had this experience with Ascension when we did the 10th anniversary edition, and he had this experience with Microscope V2. We talk about the power of fooling yourself in your design process. We talk about the difference between giving your players rails versus giving them wings,

and we talk about the essential nature of how you know your audience and how you craft an experience that's custom for them and what that means based on your own taste, based on what your audience wants, based on what they expect. And we talk about the value of laziness and how to do public play tests.

There's a ton of great things in here. Ben is an incredibly interesting person to talk to. Very opinionated. We go back and forth on a lot of subjects, which I absolutely love. Someone's not afraid to challenge me, not afraid to be challenged. There's a lot of value here, a lot of fun chats.

And so without any further ado, here is Ben Robbins. All right. Hello and welcome. I am here with Ben Robbins for your second episode. It's great to have you back, Ben. So good to be back. Yeah, I just re-listened to our last episode and it's so much fun. Such a good time. Yes, it was. And for anybody, we'll link it in the show notes. So we're not going to recover the same ground. I'm just a huge fan of your work and your design thinking. And I do really, I want to kick it off because the game that first introduced me to you and connected me to my creative director and the very first game we played together. something that has been an inspiration to me forever, Microscope, you are doing what is now a V2 of the game. And as someone who has made games for many years and has gotten some time to come back

in and do new additions, what's motivated you here? Like, what drove you to say, no, the original is not enough. I need to revamp it. It's been a long and emotional process. I'm very, I'm very, like, I'm very attached to all my games, but microscope holds a very special place in my heart. It's very, It's very near and dear to me. And the prospect of actually opening it back up and working on it is very intimidating or has always been very intimidating. Because it's kind of, I've joked before that my friend Caroline who designed downfall, we're both big Tolkien fans. And she kids me that microscope is my sill morel. It's like the work of my heart that cannot be remade.

And she's right. It's basically, it's very intimidating to work on it. And so I did this little trick where I pretended I wasn't working on it. I pretended I was working on microscope Chronicle, which was a version. version of microscope. I told myself this, and I did, and I worked on Microsoft Chronicle, but I used this separate game as a test bed to test all the things I wanted to change in microscope. So then I wasn't working on microscope. And then at some point, it clicked so well, I was like, okay, this is clearly better. I've made improvements that would make the original

game just blatantly better. And then I was able to say to myself, okay, you know what, I should just revise microscope. I should do that. Sometimes you get to play games with yourself. You can't use yourself to do that. I actually think this is a really clever trick, right? I've talked about the kind of paradoxes of success with some of the other really successful designers on this podcast. And it's this problem that you, when you're a raw designer and just making stuff, you're like, there's no real pressure, right?

Nobody expects anything from you and you can just kind of take swings. But when you're working on something where you've got a beloved audience and a beloved product and a thing that they expect, it creates a lot of pressure. And ironically, I did, you use the, Lord of the Rings as a reference, right? I did this exact same thing with the Lord of the Rings game I just made. When I made, we did an Ascension Lord of the Rings game. And when I started working on it, I said, eh, it's inspired by the Lord of the Rings. It wasn't even Rings game. It was like, I'll just pretend like it was Lord of the Rings-ish. And then how would I design that game in my head?

It was like, I'll just re-skin it to something that's Ascension in our universe, but it'll use the Lord of the Rings mechanics. And then only later did I then say, what if it really was Lord of the Rings? Do it? What if I just faced reality and did it? It's funny, too, because I'm like, I'm a team of one, right? I'm not, there's no one else making me do this. I, and I could literally just keep putting off doing a second edition of microscope. And no one could make me to do it.

So it's purely that, you know, you ask why it made me do it. And it's purely that I look at it and I say, there's things that could be better for this game. And I, what do you really want as a designer is you want to be able to hand someone in the book and say, I have total confidence that if I hand you this book, you're going to have a good time. I want you to have a good time. I want you to have a smooth. I want you to look back and go, that was amazing.

You never as a designer want to hand someone in a book and say, okay, but there's a couple things I would do a little bit differently. Like, you don't want to have those hesitations. And so when you start to notice that you have these caveats in your explanation of the game, it's like, okay, now I've got to fix those things, right? And they're not even like the core game is awesome. It's just like little side things. Like, oh, and when you get to do legacies, do it a little bit different.

But that's not how you want the game to go forward. You want it to be correct in itself. Yeah. No, and again, I can relate to this, right? When we did our extension, the sort of 10-year anniversary edition, they were like, for the most part, like, I'm very happy with the game. I think it's good. And obviously, people love it.

But there were like a couple of cards, literally just like a handful of things. I would not do it this way today. And so I'm like, let me just do little tweaks, right? Then you get the curse. But do you tamper with the magic, right? You can never go back to where your brain was 10 years ago, 15 years ago, whenever you did something. So can you keep the essential, because the danger is watering down the uniqueness of a game, right, to making it too accommodating everybody, right?

So it's like, can you keep the essence of it and not really interfere with that in a way? This is where I think it has to come down to you being true to your heart, right? Like, it's not about me. Like, I didn't make the changes to ascension because people were asking for these changes to ascension. But you're a different person. But like you're not the same person you were. That's the interesting part too. Like you're not, you just have different tastes like different worldviews and you're different

experience. You can't step in the same river twice. Exactly. No, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when you go back into something, there's a real cost there. There is that.

So yeah, sorry, gone. There's the other fascinating thing, which is even comes up like when you're first working on a game. Like you play a session, a play test and you go, that was amazing. And then later on, you're thinking about changing something. I've got to fix something in the rules. And you go. wait, if I change this, that playtest never would have happened.

Like this one rule was essential to that thing happening in that game. But was it? Was that the only thing they made that happen? Like, do you have to honor every single fictional event that happened in a previous game? Yeah, I think it's a good point. It speaks to the idea that games are very, like, fickle, like connected creatures, right? Every single little rule and change has these ripple effects throughout the entirety of the system. And so I literally was just having this conversation with my design team.

There was one aspect of the Two Towers game. And there was a legitimate problem in the game. And one of the designers working on it had a solution that did solve that problem, but it also took away some of the magic of a part of the game that led to the most exciting things that were happening in previous play tests. Exactly. Now is the cure worse than the disease? And so as a designer, usually you have to step back and really go to what are the actual

core assumptions. What are the goals and objectives and assumptions that I have? And then, okay, now, let's not get attached to that solution. Is there a solution that gets you the best set of tradeoffs there? Which tradeoffs do you want to make? Right. So there's a lot of times you just have to step back. So when you're in those situations, there's no one right answer, right? Every now and then, you find a perfect tradeoff. Every now and then, and I don't know if you have any stories. The worst is when you look at you had a great playtest. It was amazing, but you go, but that rule actually should go. That should go. And I love that. How. happened in that game and maybe we would have arrived at that same magic in a different way.

But I got to be honest, that rule is not, doesn't belong. I should take it out. And you're going to just get a look into your heart and say, no, I'm going to do it. Yeah. No, there are definitely those moments like, wow, that was awesome and that can never happen again. Exactly. It was great. I can't bend the game to match the history of our play.

Right. And to me, there's a lot of role-playing games out there. A lot of role-playing books, which are an enormous amount of craft, like ludicrous amounts. Like, I don't play a lot of role-playing games anymore because these books are just these fricking tomes of whatever that I think, honestly, it's more for just like the fact that it's a to home on your shelf or it's like kind of fun to read, but not actually useful for play, like just gets in the way. And I never thought that about microscope, right?

It is a small book with a lot of power per page in its play opportunities and creative enabling. So maybe give me your like kind of top three or whatever is like whatever the things are that you're like, oh man, this was a problem because of this and this is what I'm fixing it. What does the two do for us that I didn't know I was missing? Yeah, I have a very specific list. I will say that my, that thing you're talking about, the like the streamlined rules like raw as simple possible. It comes from a culture of play. It comes from Storygame Seattle where we sit down with

people and you play and you're like, I'm holding the rules of a book in my hand and I'm trying to play this with people and I am flipping through the pages. I need this to be tight. I can't sit here and flip through your page after page. Because also if you're playing D&D, you're not really reading the rule book most of the time. You've already internalized the rules. You're on session 50 or whatever. If you're playing a bunch of random indie one shots, you are following the rule book. You're like, oh, we haven't really played this game before we played this a little bit. I am following your procedure, and the procedure has to tell you what to do in a timely fashion. You don't want to be sitting there going, hold on everybody.

Let me read through these next five pages. Yeah, exactly. It's terrible. And so many, I see so many books that still do that where you're like, there's an instruction here buried in the middle of the third page in. Like, bold that or something. Tell me what to do. Don't give me a lot of prose. But to answer your question, I've toyed with this a lot.

basically the major thing, the most, the biggest thing, I would say with the microscope that's been not an issue, but a thing that, where the game as written disconnects from what people actually do is role played scenes. That's the big one. The game as written is designed so that you have the full scope of you're building this epic history. And for anyone who doesn't know what Microsoft is, which you probably should explain. Yeah, it's probably worth a shot. Right. I always forget to do that. I always forget that, yeah. So, Marks Kovas game where you sit down together and you build a vast history, some imaginary history of some kind, can be sci-fi, can be fantasy, it could be anything.

But the thing that's weird about the game is that instead of building it, like, in chronological order, you imagine the big picture and then choose to jump around to anywhere in the timeline that you find interesting and drill in. So you might be like, oh, we just found out that this is about humanity spreading to the star, let's jump a thousand years in the future and see how this one planet has developed utopian civilization. And then the very next turn, you might be like, okay, I'm going to jump back to like the 1950s space program and talk about how some scientist was like debating humans settling on the moon.

And so that's what interests you and you want to do that. And you can just go back and forth like that seamlessly to anywhere in the timeline. And the part that's interesting is you as players are surprised by what you discover. as you keep exploring the history more and building it out. But part of that, the vision of that is that you have this, like, this grand scale and these huge events where players can be like when entire planet is destroyed or whatever. But to make that have meaning, you need the human level. You need people, right?

And so the idea would be you could also zoom all the way in and go down to what did these two people in a room discuss that night. What was the moment of conflict between these two people or anything like that? And those would often be in role played scenes. And you can do two ways you can do it. You can do this dictate a scene where you just describe what happens. You narrate it. The other is we're going to sit down as players, each take a character and go through the process. And the thing is, and that's awesome.

And here's the thing. That in so many games I've played, even one role played scene makes the whole thing come alive because suddenly you're like, oh, you really feel the whole perspective. So it really does tie the thing together. But the problem was, and I think they're really. original rules don't take this into account is that if you've been building history in this huge, dramatic way with vast chunks of time, to then switch gears and role play characters is a totally different skill set. And so it's not, it's dumping a whole new method of play on people

without properly saying you're changing gears. You're acquiring, you're taking an unise of skills and you have to be prepared to do that. So part of it is just basically framing, scenes as like clearly an additional skill you have to use to play the game. But then separate from that is also making scenes more manageable. Like in the original game, during a scene, you actually have the ability as a player to narrate big things being true. You can talk about the world, talk about things happening. But that wasn't the point. The point wasn't to like world build during the scene. The point during the scene is to be those people, to be in the moment as those people. So I've kind of inverted, I've basically limited the scenes much more. When you're in a scene,

you're supposed to be playing that character. Just focus on playing that character. Be that person. Don't narrate stuff about what the order of knights does. Don't talk about the secrets of the universe. Just be that person. And likewise, every scene was driven by a question, right? And the question was basically telling all of us, this is what the scene is about. We're going to answer this question and that will wrap up the scene. And the questions were also very open-ended. So you could ask a question about basically anything, but that meant scenes could be potentially just very open-ended. And that wasn't good. So the new system is basically more a question is about a person or people. And so you're learning about a person or people, a decision they make, what they think, what they do.

the idea is to basically limit the diameter of a scene, you might say, to make it tighter so that people playing it have a clear idea of what they're allowed to do, what they can do, and what they're trying to do, so that they play it and they're successful. And they go, oh, awesome, I learned about that. And again, it was always supposed to be about people. And this is just really making it, making the rules batch the ideas. And so the output for each of these things is still driving the larger narrative with whatever question you're answering. Totally. Like you're feeling it in this and telling that story in a different way because you're embodying those characters. Yeah. And you're just narrowing, you're making it clear to players what they're supposed to be doing. And I think the original rules were much more like a lot was possible. So much could happen in a scene.

Players could do so much. And so it really just opened Pandora's box. And I think for a lot of people, that would make scenes uncomfortable. because they were like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing because I could be doing so many different things. Some players would run with it and just be like narrating stuff as fast as they could talk and that wasn't productive either. It's just basically like, and it's also from years and years of experience doing good scenes. Like how do you make, how in the short term do you get people in these alternative skins in the situation and drive a dramatic situation very quickly? So I'm hard to know.

In many ways, this is like the heart of the problem with every role. role-playing game, right? Like, we just, there's a, there's this, this sort of gap between the kind of open-ended, go do, let your freak flag fly and be as great as you were. And then, hey, let me put you on rails and make this a lot more comfortable and a lot more straightforward. Yeah. And roll, roll the D20 or whatever. There's, and I think that there's, it's hard to say that there's a right answer here, right? Because it just, it's very play, group player dependent, right? Some people love the freedom and want to run. And some people hate that. And get terrified. Yeah, and the funny thing is the rest of the game has a very specific procedure.

You create huge things, but you do like, it's your turn, make a period, make an event. It's very, like, it's huge power, but it's clear instructions, right, if the rest of the game. And then you get the scenes, and that wobbles. That's much more unclear. And so that's the trick. It's not so much, it's, hey, if you wanted to destroy a planet, make an event. But if you want to play characters and see why they destroyed the planet, make a lot. scene. So it's like you still have all those powers. You're just picking in advance which one you're doing, right? Which version of creative power you're taking on. Yeah. So I think you still have, it's definitely not removing the wild power you have a microscope, but it's making it clear what

the expectation is at every point. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. And I think it's also, you made the point earlier, but it's like the skill set jump is so big between different modes. It's huge. And more so maybe in microscope than any game I can think of. But certainly, many games, right? Because I'm just like, yeah, okay, cool. I'm world building. I'm creating things. And we're just like telling this collaborative, ever expanding story. But ironically, the name of the game is the zooming in part, which is exactly the whole. And lots of people to skip scenes. And I think it makes sense because if you've never played, if you've played a lot of other role playing games, but you never played microscope, the new thing that you're getting in microscope is like,

oh my God, I can just narrate these huge things that can make up whole world. That's very attractive. You're drawn to that because it's a new skill or it's a new, it's a new opportunity. So people then don't do scenes for that reason. And so you go like, okay, that also makes sense, right? And so the trick is to, and people might still play fewer scenes, but the idea is to make it clearer and easier. So if you do engage with that part of the rules, you'll have success. You won't go. Oh, that's too much of the time sync. So that's the big way. How do I get my hands on this new version? Because I'm intrigued. Let's tell you, Microsoft Chronicle, has been out, has been in public playtest for a while now. And that Inc shows a lot of these

features, but again, Chronicle has a different mindset a little bit than Maine of microscope. But the new addition of microscope is going to crowd fund. There's a Kickstarter coming in October probably. No, definitely October. I'm holding myself to it. It's October. If I say maybe, then it's maybe, no, it's definitely October. And then hopefully when it's finished, I'll have a early release draft or an early release version for backers very quickly after that. I do the thing, like, I can't do a crowdfunding unless I've already written the game. Like, I can't, I have to have it basically done before I can crowd fund it. And the rules are done.

They're intact. It's just, it's the thing that I fret over every single word ever and over again. So there's a lot of, I just add it like a crazy person. So then talk to me then about this public play testing process, right? because I think that sounds intriguing. It's also as a solo designer and solopreneur here, you've got a lot to manage. How did you start that process?

How did you manage playtest? How did you pick? It's all in the public. It's just laziness. It's just laziness. I used to do private playtests. For the longest time, I was like, okay, if you want a playtest,

it email me. I'll put you on a list at a private mailing list and that email out the new versions of people. It was like 200 people to be on the list, And that was great. And at some point, I was like, what did I just let anybody who want to download this game and play it? Why not? What's the downside? I got lazy. And it's interesting. I think that a couple, there's a lot of psychological factors involved. I think for one, people wisely are hesitant to playtest a game because they want to play a finish product. They want to, their play time is limited. They only have some time to play. And so they want to know that the thing they're playing works. And so if you present someone with a play test, they're often like, maybe I don't know. I until you're done. And that's smart because you don't want to have a bad game. So the idea that oh, everyone would just download the game and just run wild with it is not really quite what happens. But this way, the nice thing about it is that when it's a public play test, I just,

I'm basically done. I'm just like, here's a form to give feedback when you want, but it's there. You can access it. It was another way to basically say, I think these are important changes to the game. I want you to have access to them. And you do. Now, they're out. You can immediately access system, right? So I'm no longer the roadblock to people getting to do this. That's really my motivation for less. I want people to be able to play these games sooner than later. And I'm often so slow and methodical, I'll spend months and months thinking about something before I release it. So I'm like, this is a way to get in people's hand sooner. Yeah, I love forcing public accountability as a tool here, right? You now have said publicly on this podcast that your campaign

is launching in October, great. But you know, you know, no, no. No, we're providing a link. We're providing a link. We're providing a leap. Oh, it matters. Deadlines are magic. Deadlines are magic. It's all self-imposed.

It's basically another year went by and I was like, I have to, if I don't do it. I'm working on this means war, which we'll talk about a bit. But I was hot on fire with this means war, having a great time working on it. But I was like, I have to do microscope this year. I have to. I just can't wait any longer. I've been just putting it off. I've got to do it.

So I'm kind of doing two of. once because that's how you that's how you roll yeah i've got five or six projects running at the same time all the time but i have just one guy yeah yeah that's more than fair that's more than fair so okay let's you brought it up so let's use the transition talk to me about this means war this means war it's experimental let's say it's experimental it's a weird game and as someone else said to me he said wait you made microscope and you're saying you made a weird game can you explain what you mean by that That was my first reaction too. I was like, yeah, okay, show me weird, bro.

It's different. I'll put this. So here's the surface of it. Obviously, it's a game about war, which is, it's a game in which the characters are characters who are caught up in a war and are dealing with it, right? That's the obvious part. The reasoning behind it is that, or here's the actual thing that's strange about the game. Most of the games I make are games where you collaboratively make a world together, right? And we, the players, our desires are what matters the most.

rules moderate our interactions and the rules help us come to agreement. But the ultimate purpose of the game is for us as players to show our creative side to make this world, right? And to harmonize all of our viewpoints so that we get something together. We're like, that's the idea. But what if? Instead, I made a game where the game takes away your control over what happens, right? This means war is a game about. war and it reflects that in a war like you don't control what happens it's a thing bigger than you like washes over your life and you're going to deal with it the game does the same thing the game basically once you set up the war you sit down creative make the world set up the situation

the game the machine of the game takes over and determines what happens in the war you don't determine what happens in the war right so you as playing a character like the new season is fall of the second year and we find out that the fleets are invading the bay of holine or like the city is being invaded and maybe you live there or maybe you're nearby or maybe you're far away and your job as a player is to have no control over that part of it but just to react honestly as this character to what is happening it's like and it is this there are so many implications of or consequences one could say of this. Because of that, the way players play is wildly different and more so than I even expected. Because there's, think of it this way, right? If you're playing with the GM and the GM says like,

hey, this thing happens. You feel like, okay, that's just a person telling me this thing. I have a certain degree of criticism in my brain. I have to be willing to accept their vision. I'm like, okay, you say it's true. I would be telling the story way better than you. But all right. It's like, okay, like I recognize that's a thing you just said, but I know you have. at work today. Like it's, it has a certain degree of, yeah, it is true, but I know it came from this person. But when none of us are making it be true, it has a certain level of independent truth that the machine is making it true. The machine is doing it based on things that have purposely happened. It's consequences of previous actions. We don't wrestle with each other over what we

want to have happen in the fiction. That's done. Like the world is decided. We get to just focus on, on these people. It's back to the whole these people thing, right? You then instead, don't worry about that stuff. It's out of your hands. You worry about how these individuals' lives

are impacted by the things going on around them. And the thing that amazes me is that I've played with, it's like three different wars now, three different groups of people playing wars. Players who I've played with a lot play entirely differently in this game. They, people who often struggle to play characters or to come to groups with like what's going on in the fiction do not have that problem.

And it's fascinating to me. I could really have a PhD thesis about like the shift in mindset. And I think it's partially because they don't have to wonder. Like in every game you're always like, is what I'm introducing is it acceptable to everyone else subconsciously? Is like, is this good? Am I taking the game? Am I taking the story in an interesting direction? But in this case, the overstory, the overstory, the overstory.

overarching world is not in our hands. So you don't think about that. You can't think about that. You don't get to decide whether the overarching story is cool. You only get to focus on how your one person is dealing with the thing that we've already said is true. And so it's just, it's making people, it's giving them the freedom to just be a person. And there's a lot of other tricks that the game does. The game really slowly eases you into being this person. It doesn't be like, hey, what's your backstory? It does this very tiny step at a time. so that we're, instead of making a character, it's more like we're all learning about this person at the same time. So every time you show a scene with this character, we're all like,

that's really interesting because we've never seen that before. You didn't know that. We didn't know that. None of us knew that. So it's this kind of process of continuous revelation about these people in this situation. So in essence, that's like kind of what you're doing here is like I'm slowly revealing slash discovering my own backstory. through this my own small part in a war that I have no control over whatsoever. Yeah, and the fact that the game specifically doesn't ask you a lot of the big questions that game, we don't want to ask you about characters. You don't even start up with a name.

You name your character at some point along the way until then you're just the farmer or the charioteer or whatever you want to be. But the thing is because there's always things happening. The world keeps making new things happen. You're never like, oh, what should I do next with my character? because something just happened. Something happened in the world a minute ago, right? A new season happens.

A new event happens. You always have something to react to. There's always current events going on. And not only that, but the game will also has, because I'm a terrible person, it has these fate roles where basically it checks whether or not the war did something bad to your character. Did your character die this season? And you can. You can just die spontaneously.

And then you have to explain why this character is dead. Or like why this character lost their home or why this character was. sent to the front. Or why this character was injured in battle or why this character saw a friend die. And you then have to take that on. And it's fascinating because you might have an idea of it. Oh, yeah, I know where I'm going to go with the story. And then one favorite a role later, like, that's derailed. I'm doing something totally different now and I have no choice. So you've said that your goal with games is that people like each other more at the end, right? That's what this is for you. And you've generally avoided kind of more conflict-based designs in your

whole career. What the hell's going on here? Precisely. What are you doing? Precisely. What am I doing? But here's the interesting thing. We aren't enemies, right? We are each of us just sympathetically trying to portray this person, right? Whether it's a farmer, it's the poor shepherd boy who got shot. They're just people. And so the whole, when another player is describing this kid going out and trying to find food for their family to give a really sad example, right? I am drawn into their thinking. I'm like, that's a really amazing portrayal of humanity that you're doing, right? I'm into it.

So I am more sympathetic to you. I'm never the guy. I'm never the war. The war is the machine of the game that's doing this. It's not me. It's not you. None of the characters are ever actually soldiers or people in the war. They totally can be.

And you see you could totally have a situation if you want to. two where my character shoots your character. That absolutely could happen. But that's not the requirement to the game, you could say. Another thing of things about the game is that the most games you play, again, everything's weird about this game. All of our characters are connected. We have relationships. Relationships are like the magic gold that makes a lot of these role-playing games work. This does the exact opposite. None of the characters have any connection whatsoever. They're all over the map. One person is a sailor. One person's a senator. There are anywhere they of the map. And then as we play, what we're really doing is we're, we've made up this country.

There's two countries, right, that are fighting. And we initially start out playing. We pick one of the two countries and we make characters in that country first, but not the other countries with this other place as a cipher. What we're really doing is by seeing these people, we're learning what the society really is. What is this culture? We just made up this place. We don't know anything about it. We're getting insight into this, these communities. these people, what are they like? But if you think about any real community in the real world, nobody's homogenous. It's not just like we all think the same thing.

Some people are cruel. Some people are charitable. Some people are greedy. Some people, you know what I mean? There's every possibility is there. So when all the characters are showing different aspects of this same society, they can be very different. Some person might be a raging xenophobe who was like, yeah, we've got to crush those people.

And someone else is like, no, my brother lives over there. That's all fine. It's fine to have characters that expose seemingly contradictory aspects of a society. And that too is part of the fun of the game, seeing how the society is not this simple monoculture. We start out thinking it is. We always do because we're human. We make up this fantasy world and we think it's going to be like, these are the good guys, these are the bad guys.

And then we play and we're like, no, it's not like that. it's much more complicated. So what, I guess that still doesn't answer the question to me of like, why this game? Like, why did you choose to make this game? You could do anything that you want. You said, you know, you've got no pressure of anything. You chose to make a game that is either, the descriptions that you've said, it's either pretty horrific and sad or there's some, this, you know, conflict in its core.

It really is. You got a kid looking for food and somebody that had their leg blown off or whatever and lost a house and you're just like, you know, these are just the events that you These are the things the players, it's like everything. It is what you wanted to be, right? Okay, here's the thing. To answer your actual question, right? The one of the things that happens to these games is that we're all making stuff

up in any of these other games. Not talking about this means word for a second, talking about story games in general, right? If you're playing a GMless game and I do GMless games, right? It's this collaborative process where we come to an agreement about what's happening, the rules guide things. But there's always this level of. it's only real because we have all agreed it's real right and there's a certain level we're simultaneously playing characters but also managing what is true about the world and maybe somebody

else has an idea there's a here's what it really is there's a there's a unspoken rule i find in a lot of these games where people are asking themselves if i say this is this acceptable am i is my idea going to gel with the crowd and there's rules for managing that but even beyond the rules for managing it. There's like often kind of unspoken or people feel there are. So people question whether or not they can contribute something. And so the idea I had was like, what if you took that part away? What if you removed that, say, insecurity, that concern over whether what you're contributing fits, right? And in this case, I did it by basically saying, we're not going to, that layer is not in your control. Your layer is just this.

character layer, right? So it's more of a removing the negotiation over world stuff by taking away control of the world. It's an experiment. And it was interesting, what would that do? I was like, what would that do? Right? And shockingly, it, what it seems to do in this particular case, the way I've done it is it gives people like extreme confidence to play characters. Like,

They feel like they know. That's what it is. It's because the facts of the world are established. Like, that happened. There's an invasion occurring. People are very confident to just then play normal characters. They're not wondering the direction we're going because we know we don't control it. Does that make sense?

It's pretty weird. It does. Yeah. Yeah. I did. I was expecting weird from you, but it's an interesting weird because, no, it is. It's weird. Yeah.

No, it's one of the things I love about you as a designer and why. I love our chats because I think this idea that just restate back what I heard, right? In a GMless game, much of the game is this sort of process of negotiating between ourselves or having the way to get to the results. Telepathic negotiation. Yeah. Yeah. And that by removing that from the table and you end up forcing the character building part of it,

the character embodying part of it, to be a more focal point and less of a, I don't have to worry about the clash of my character with. any other event or any other character, I could just say, okay, what is, how does this persona evolve in reaction to events? And that's a really interesting exploration and way of communal storytelling.

It was funny, if you were, again, back to the GM movie, if there's a GM, you'd say, oh, it's the same as a GM game, but it totally isn't because again, the GM, even if the GM has unitary control over what happens at the world level, we as players still know that's another human that's doing it.

and we resist it, judge it, think about it. We know that it's a bit arbitrary, right? We know that another person at the table who's in our social circle is doing that. We're thinking about it. But when it's like us against the machine together, we have a very different vibe. It's like we're all in it together. That's what's fascinating. When we're playing together, the dice told us this is happening.

We didn't. Nobody chose it. We made zero decisions about the events of this war. So it frees us up to be on the same sides. Yeah. Emotion. Yeah, even though you may not, yeah, you may not be on the same side in the story of the game, right? I think that there's something there, right?

I still think we play role-playing games primarily to learn more about ourselves, right? Totally. By being able to embody different roles, we're able to explore and feel like what it is like to do certain things or be certain people or express parts of ourselves that aren't okay in the normal day-to-day world. And I think that we learn the most about ourselves when bad things happen to us. Having gone through this stuff and we're, it thinks we don't, when we have to confront things we don't necessarily want,

even difficult choices. Like, like you want to stay here with this person you love, but duty calls you over here. Like, nothing that's happened to you, but you just, you have to choose. You have to make a decision. Yeah. Yeah, how do we react to the things that life puts in front of us,

whether that be these kind of painful choices, which are at the heart of most good gameplay experiences too or these character moments where, you know, in many ways, the most impact for things like where you don't, you have a choice other than how you will choose to react, right? The classic's kind of stoic mentality, right? It's like, look, the world is going to be, the world's going to world.

And things are going to happen. Yeah, the world's going to world. The world's going to world. People are going to be dumb and rude and blah, blah, blah, and like, you get to decide how are you going to let that impact you? How are you going to respond to that? How are you going to react? Even if it doesn't change a damn thing out there, you can have that control within yourself. And that's something that I... And that's very much this game. It's very much the world's going to world. And things happen

that are completely shocking. We're like, oh, my God, why did they just offer peace? They offer peace. They were totally crushing us. And we just roll with it. We deal with it. Another thing, like another humanizing, because it's like it's about seeing these people as people, right, humanizing them. And one, it's so small, but I love it so much. There's a part when you first introduce characters, you know, you describe them, you show a little moment of, you barely describe them to see, this person's a fishmonger, and you show a little moment, like an ordinary moment in their day, and then the next step you're asked is to show us where this person sleeps. Here now, describe their bedroom, if they have one, if they have a home, or maybe they're living

in an opulent palace, describe it. And then periodically throughout the game, every several turns, whatever. We do the same thing again. We keep coming back to that. And it's, it seems so simple, but you think of like you play D&D, right? And often your character is this like detached entity floating through the world. They don't really live in the world. They're like this adventurer. They just do stuff. They do heroic things. But you never see them like living, like a normal person, right? And just asking people describe where your character sleeps here and now in this particular season and with the events that you've described, where do they lay down their head, what's it like? It really, people stop.

They go like, oh, what is it like? And it's amazing watching them slowly pick through it and describing something that seems completely mundane, but suddenly makes them go like, oh, I understand this person's situation that much more. And also to see the contrast, one person's sleeping in the open field, the other person's living in this, like, beautiful palace. It really is like a, it's a very good question. I find. And the players, like, every time we do it, I'm like, oh, it's going to get boring

for you doing it over again. It does not. It's every time, it's ready to sleep. I like that. Yeah, these interesting little granular pictures that you force in. It's a tiny prompt, and it does so much heavy lifting. Yeah. The right questions, the right questions. So how do you figure out the right questions? I don't know. Sometimes it is. It's like, you know, the thing you say about we're just humans, right? You got to just kind of stop and think about humanity. I don't know. It's a, I think it all stems from, like, I'm pretty empathic.

I'm a pretty empathic person. I'm pretty sensitive to those around me and aware of their feelings, all that kind of stuff. And I think it comes from a bit of that. You think what would, not only what would I think about someone else, but what I can, I'm pretty good, maybe, of getting in the heads of the players and thinking, I was sitting at a table now, what would be the thing that would be really. good to ask that person to think about, to get them on the right page. And it's just, I don't know, it's a skill. No, empathy is a superpower and it's probably the most important skill as a game designer, right? Just to be flat out. I need to understand how the rules I create and the things I present to my players are going to make them feel. And what's the best? I got to get in their head.

At this point of the game, if they've never seen this before, what do they need to know? What are they thinking? What are they wondering? What are they not sure about? What's the right? thing to say at this point to help them play yeah yeah even the things about your motivations to make this game and like the there's these subtle instincts right they're like yeah sure i have a game master and he tells me what to do but i might feel a little resentful or judgy about it and like back yeah i was a game master for a millionaire and you you probably had this if like anybody who's gmed has had the thing where if you're starting with a new group you like you start your campaign or whatever and you're pitching it and everyone is basically kind of judgy they're like they're reserved

They're not sure they're committed to this idea yet. They're like, tell me, they're waiting. They're like, give me your pitch. And, like, there's a period of time it takes to get them to buy in, right? There's a buy-in that happens, a natural process. And sometimes players will, I've had players across decades, like, act of your rebel or players will be, like, subtly sabotaging the game because they're, whatever. It's human nature, right?

You're asking them to buy into your vision. There's naturally going to be people who do not. It's normal. of course yeah okay I have talked about and dissected your games now

for a little while and I love doing so and I'm excited about your projects but now I'm going to have you help me dissect mine because I am you're going to be so sorry you've never got you

yeah okay I got to warn anybody in advance anybody who's gotten criticism for me before is out there crying for you right now they're like no don't ask him no don't you'll be sorry love it I can't wait I can't wait because

And I prompted you about this a little bit as we were emailing back and forth before this chat because I am making a GM-less role-playing game. And I am intrigued for me, right? I like to be at the frontier of technology and see how technology can empower these new modes of play and better storytelling and the core emotions, same core emotions we've been getting at for centuries or millennia, but in ways that were not possible before, that opened the door for more people to participate that couldn't participate before. I was the first deck building game on mobile, the only one in virtual reality as far as I know.

I've done physical digital hybrid games and blockchain games and God knows what else. And this one is taking the format of a short form video RPG. And so I have an actually in homage to you, I call it Telescope RPG. And it is, I don't know if that'll be the final name, but it was this idea of being able to expand this story in a almost maybe telephone may be the better way to put it where it's like I'll tell I get a prompt I record a 30 second video it gives me the thing then that will bounce to the next person then they have the opportunity to record a 30 second video and then in this case I'm using I am there's a human written narrative for the kind of bigger arc but I'm using AI to help stitch the gaps together right so if you've

created and you've introduced little green aliens this is going to make sure that the next prompt lets that person know that little green aliens are a thing. And so my goal here is that I could allow, and it might even, when I show them your video, it might even throw some little green aliens into the video, right? And I think that there's something really cool here. And so then at the end, you end up with this like movie you've created that's maybe however long we want to make it.

Could be that it's six to eight short form videos you put together. It could be dozens depending upon how you want to tell the story. And I feel like there's something really magical here. I think there's something that like a lot of what you're doing, right? It can reduce the scariness of participating because I can record quickly. And it's just a 30-second thing with a simple prompt. It can increase, it can reduce the time commitment and burden to it because I don't all have to be in the same room at the same time. And it can create a very different types of stories, potentially, that could engage a larger audience.

So that's the highlight level. Feel free to beat me up or pick it apart or asking questions. So I looked at that. I saw the snippets. Here's the thing. I think you could do that with that. I wonder, I like the idea. I don't think the AI is necessary at all.

I get that it's there and it's a tool you could use. I think the core of that is the thing of, this is the person doing the 30 second snippet. And then the next person is looking at that 30 second snippet and going like, ah, I'm building on your contribution. The kind of almost really telephone game, like you said. Like, we talked about this briefly before. AI is a monster.

So everyone's very clear about my point of you have AI. I have a huge problem with the way. that AI is being deployed in our society right now, right? But speaking just me to you, right? I fear for you that a lot of people will see that there's any A involvement, even if it's very minor in this case, and that will be an automatic black flag. And they will overlook the rest of the game because of that. That seems to be a very common reaction in the public right now.

Yeah, and I'm well aware. I'm for it. I agree. Yeah, no, I'm well aware of that. And I also, I think it's, I have been advocating for a more nuanced discussion because I think that the AI is the devil and the AI is the savior are both crazy positions that don't make any sense to me. I think that this is an incredible powerful tool that's coming whether we like it or not. And it doesn't, and I think used correctly, it can empower human creativity and human connection.

Used incorrectly, it could destroy all of society. Absolutely. I think that anytime you have to say something's coming whether you want it or not, there's definitely something going on. So not to get into a huge AI discussion, I would argue it isn't about AI. It's not the technology. It's that all, everything happening with AI is being driven by people, that there's people who are going to benefit from it, right? That it's a, it's being pushed for corporate and or political purposes, that individuals

are trying to realign the balance of power and society in ways that benefit them. The fictional books is not what's happening, right? It's it's it's they're trying to make you think about the make also all thing not you personally right to see you they're going after you Justin. They're trying to they're trying to evoke the science fiction aspects and the possibility of sentience and all this stuff in order to make some money right and to have more power over things like all the way information is exchanged in the entire world the entire how all information is present in the web,

how you gain access to all information workers, the whole thing. You could make that same argument about every single major telecommunications technological revolution. And people did make that argument. They made the same argument with radio and T and newspapers and the internet. But that doesn't mean that those things aren't useful and that they don't have value. What you're saying is, I 100% agree. As a society, there are many steps we need to be taking.

to assure that this is a naturally power-compressing technology and consolidating technology to help protect against that, to help protect against a lot of the, to help. I think I'm a huge believer in transparency. That's why, unlike most people in the industry, I'm willing to talk about this and be open about it because there are areas of my business that AI does not touch at all,

like Ascension and our Lord of the Rings games and all the things, like we don't do it at all. But I think, I'm, I think that there is space here to make new kinds of play, to empower different types of designers, and to create a revolution of upstream art that wasn't possible before. And I'll just, to give an example, just to get a sense of this, I think with music,

it used to be the case that you had to have an orchestra and go into, to be able to listen to music. You had to have everybody there, and they had to all play the music live for you or you can't listen to music. And then at some point, someone was like, whoa, what if we record that in a way that you could just replay somewhere else?

And that was the coolest thing. I'm really the original, freaking record things, right? And then that was amazing. And then going forward, absolutely, now I can make any sound using tech my laptop. And there are people who've created and created entire careers, building massive world DJs that do everything on their own and everybody gets access to it. And now the next step, AI could let you, in fact, it did let me create a birthday present for my mom that was a full Broadway show about her, that she loves Broadway show.

that was like, made of day. Here's the thing, though. Here's the thing. This is the thing. We're going to, let's see it. Let's look at it. Here's thing.

The thing you just said, like, that allowed you to create, this is really the rubber hits the road. Not to attack you personally, but I got to say, you can't defend it. It's fascinating. When someone makes something with AI,

they don't make something with AI. AI makes something for them. If I went to an artist and said, hey, make a cover for me, they would go and draw the cover. They'd bring it back. And here's the cover. Awesome.

They did that. I would never say, I made the cover. I would say they made the cover, right? Even if I gave them all this sense guidance, like, oh, do this. I wanted to be a big guy with a sword and blah, blah, blah. But it's fascinating because AI isn't a person, the lexicon, the language we use is that I made it with AI.

And I think that's very intentional that they want us to say it that way. Yeah, I mean, the same argument people made about Photoshop and digital art when it started coming in, right? People didn't love, people were upset because this is not painted on a canvas anymore, so it's not real. And then, you would never see you didn't do it. You still definitely did it. You can tell you, like, well, I don't like that. I use a tool that does a pre-fill or I use an auto-correct or I use a, another system is doing some of the work for me that I don't have to do. And the question is, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not an absolutist on this, Right. Because I think, like, for example, like even what I advise, I teach game design. I teach a lot of designers.

And for the most part, I tell them when they tell me they've got a super ambitious, like, I want to make this really cool video game as my first game. Or I want to make a TCG is my first game. And I want to self-publish it. I'm like, you're crazy. You can't do that. That's terrible. Oh, do something super small. But now that's not necessarily true. Right. Now, like, you could, if you've got a clear design vision, instead of having to hire a team of engineers or high or high, or high, a team of artists, you could use these tools to let your design vision shine through, right? Or like the example I like to use is like things like movies, right? Like I love going to the movies and I love watching these big budget super cool action flex, right? Marvel movies or the Odyssey or like whatever, these big giant things, right?

They're awesome. And the reality is that every single one of them is like a sequel or a tried and true story that's already existed because they cost way too much money to make. And so you as the creative individual can't do it realistically. But if the costs come down because AI can make the animations and you can write the script in the story and build something like that means the world has more creative art. That means the world has what it. That means more people can see their stuff come to life. Well, to see the stuff come to life is an interesting point.

So again, if you, if people are willing to say I didn't make that part, I wrote the script and the EA I made the movie, right? I didn't make the movie. If so someone says, like I said, my point is to say people are saying they made things when in fact, they asked for someone else to make things. I said I made Ascension when I had plenty of artists and a whole team of people that make the game. But I led the vision. Yeah, but you don't take credit for their work.

There are credits. No, but it doesn't mean that you didn't. I think all of the people there deserve that credit and take the work. I think, so again, that's for me, and we can move past this because some people were losing and some people hate me with the fire of a thousand sons now, I'm sure. It's good to talk about it.

It's good to talk about. Yeah, that is it. I spoke to a panel at Jen Con a couple weeks ago, talking about what the role of game of AI in gaming and my goal here and actually the very the guest that just went live is Ryan Scott Dancy his podcast just went live I think today or yesterday as we're recording this and he got fired for saying nice things about AI from his company and we talk about that too I don't want that right I want us to have a rational conversation and not vilify someone that's on the other side because I think there are real challenges here and there

are real opportunities here and I want at the very least as a community like I love gaming I love gaming. I love the gaming community. I love inspiring people to be more creative and designers and that means we have to be able to talk to each other. And we don't have a GM rule to navigate it. GM loser rule to navigate our conflicts. And there's like the short version, a couple of the short version.

One is if you say, if anybody who's willing to say all AI generative content should be labeled as AI generative content. If you're not willing to do that, I question, the people who are willing to question their motives. If you're saying like if you blanket said it's the law, everybody must do it.

any content that's AI generate has to be labeled, then that's a step in the right direction, because then people can choose, people can decide, right? But you got to at least have that. You can't, and you are open about it, right? Yes, absolutely. People are like, no, they don't want to be required to admit that something was AI created. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to continue.

No, I was going to go to our second point. So go ahead. Yeah, I think 100% transparency is really important and only becomes more important as we go for, right? Because as AI will soon, it will soon be the case that you could see a podcast like this and someone could be completely. and completely not a real person. And I think the trust that we are able to have in each other, right? And again, the reason why this podcast exists and what, it's like people have trust in me as a creator or at least that I will be honest.

And I have trust that I've built with people like you and other creators in the industry that they're willing to come on to the podcast because they're going to have a reasonable conversation and not be gotchaed or whatever. That human trust is central to our society. And I think a version of transparency that gets us there is, is critical. The friend of mine just described it as the death of the entire internet and news as we know, because it's true.

It's to the point where you can't believe whether anything is real or artificial that's online, they're looking forward to it because from their point of view, then we can get off social media because it will all be destroyed. When you get to the point where you go onto the web and every single thing is fake, why would you go into the web anymore, right? Except if you can't be like. Yeah, that's where I also want some kind of like cryptographic signature type thing of some time where it could be like, no, this is only me and only me and I can prove it right by. That's the nightmare scenario.

Like, we're all like having to show our papers in order to prove that anything is. Because like anything won't be really. You see a zebra walking down the street. That's not real. You'll see a political candidate. That's not real. Nothing. It's pretty night.

And it's more not just that it's nightmares, but it's the many to one relationship, the ability of a small group of people or even one person to use these tools. to mass produce misinformation is astonishing. It's going to be, it's an astonishing danger. We're worried about gun control and it's like the same. Arguably the opposite is possible too, right? Social media has already proven to be like a massive problem on that space, which was not obvious at the beginning, right? At the beginning, the idea that everyone, humans have done this problem.

And it's possible it goes the other direction too, right? There's some, and I promise everybody listening, we will get off this topic, but it is interesting. It's fascinating stuff. Because like it is the, to make the argument more broadly, right? The people were worried and there was real problems because television centralized, once centralized sources were able to broadcast information, which meant that there was a limited number of views that got heard.

On the flip side, we had a better collective consciousness. We had more common ground. We could listen to Walter Cronkite and hear the news and agree on the news. Now everybody has a microphone. Everybody can say whatever they want. And the algorithm has pushed us to be more balkanized. And so I hear the news that I want to hear and I don't necessarily believe anything

that you're hearing because it's totally different. Again, that's specifically because that's where the profit lies, that the reasoning algorithm does this because the people controlling those venues have realized that outrage makes more money. And that's a different topic we could dig into, but we probably won't on this podcast.

Alder Krook wasn't going to be money in outrage, but he didn't know. But at least in principle, the current AI incentive is different. Right? As a pay a subscriber for this useful tool, I actually get value out of it for it being useful to me if I'm paying for a subscription tool or I'm paying for a token usage. And it could be the case. I'm not saying it is. I'm saying it could be the case that I as a personal AI tool. And in fact, I do this, right? GROC is actually a great tool for this, believe it or not. It's like,

you could just fact check anything and it will search automatically and get you reasonably, pretty damn reliable results for what's happening. It searches all of, you know, all of X. and all the internet. And so there is a world where the AI could be the solution to the problem that social media has presented, which is like, you're right. I won't trust anything by default. I won't trust anything by default, which is a problem, but also just the facts, right? This was true. Television is the previous example. It used to be the case that seven impressions of a ad would get people to act on average. And that number jumped to 30 something. I don't know the exact number, but it's like orders of magnitude more because we now know that television advertising

is lying to us and is trying to influence us. And over time, we become more resistant to it. And I think that's just true about social media now. And we've only, social media hasn't been around that long, but we're learning to become more immune to it. And so it's possible that a tool like this could help. It's like, hey, my first instinct, if I see something crazy on social media is, I don't believe this, let me check. And my personal AI, that's the money incentive is for it to serve me because I'm getting, that's what we pay it for, not for attention. In fact, they lose money, the more attention I give it because I have to, it costs them more to take inference. And then I say, okay, here's this. They can potentially validate or help fight.

The problem is that the people making those tools stand to gain a lot more by controlling the world than by getting $10 a month for your subscription. It's the you'd have to trust. You'd have to believe that the makers of that tool had your best interest at heart or wanted you to have real information and not information that was to their advantage. Yeah, I think that there's, yeah, I think that there, you got to trust the sports. Yeah, I mean, there's, yeah, there's, I'm a trust but verify kind of person and I do think that we need sort of regulations and transparencies to help. I spend a lot of time thinking about this sort of stuff and paying attention to what all of these people say and how they behaved over time. I don't think that's a tough, that's a tough read. There's a lot. They, they, there's a lot. They do a lot. Yeah. I don't think anybody's, I think, again, the world is not black and white. I think the incentives push one way. I don't think they're villains. I don't think they're heroes. I do. I do. think that there's a lot to attack. It's not, it's not villains or heroes. It's just, it is natural and normal for people to be, to support their own beliefs, right? Whatever your beliefs are, you're going to, you're going to support them. And often, I think we've seen, like in particularly like American politics kind of thing,

people can do things that are bad, but think they're doing good because they think they're supporting a just cause, right? And the danger is when people vilify people. And then the other way around, where, like, immigrants. are bad, stuff like that. Where you take an entire category of people and you demonize them and therefore anything you do is legitimate, right? And that can go in all directions, right?

I will say that I think with the AI thing, the thing that's going to happen next, and it's already happening is the whole AI is national security, right? And this is where they're already positioning it. They can't make enough money from subscriptions. So it has to become, they're pushing for it to become a requirement of national security. Therefore, the government has to say. subsidize AI. And they're doing it all right. And it makes perfect sense because it's the only the only place the money can come from that matches their need is if we taxpayers have to have a nuclear

arsenal of AI. So I think it would be interesting because when I was working on this means worse. This means worse is a pieces of paper and dice, right? And the constant thing was like, oh, it would be easier on a computer. Of course it would be, right? I would challenge you to look at your design and say, if I didn't, not for more reason. If I didn't have AI in it, if I, if I had, if I had, I had to make it so it could work on a desert island kind of thing. And this, of course, is completely not true because yours already uses video recording, so it's got technology built into it. So think how would I address those same problems with procedures?

You know what I mean? How would you do that? I think you could. Yeah. So, okay, let's stay there, because that's where I wanted to talk about anyway. Because I do think, so one of the inspirations, I was actually on, I was on a podcast with Ivan Men Norman, and we were, he were talked about Alice's missing in that podcast.

game was the trigger point for me. Anybody that can listen to that episode here live when this idea came to me. This was on that podcast. And he was also terrified of the AI thing and stuff what he was associated with a project. But this idea of that game solves this problem in a different way. Right. So you can have events that just drive it and everybody just reacts and does what they do. And so you, in essence, like your game, you give up control over the larger narrative. Like the larger narrative just happens to you and you just get to do your bit. And you do your bits and that gives you the thing. So 100% this game could absolutely work without AI. No questions at all. I just, I liked the idea that you had control. I like the idea that you got

to influence the overarching story. I like that's a thing that's possible. Can you, when I'm getting it, can you do that same thing? Because obviously, we have a ton of games where you control the narrative and you have without external tools. So what I'm saying, like, for example, you say, like the green aliens thing, right? There's certainly ways you could pass that information to other players without using an external technological tool. Would it be, what I'm getting at is, would there be, could the game be even better if it's like, oh, you pass me the green aliens information? How do I incorporate that?

Because then you're seeing what I think about your idea, not what a third party thinks about your idea. Yeah. So, okay, so I think in order to keep the game moving and not have it just go off the rails, the way I've structured is that there's a... Well, yeah, but that's my point is I don't. So, yeah, speaking to my design goals, I want the 12-year-old in Kansas and the mom that's across the world and the other people to be able to play this game with each other, to be able to have it and at the end have an artifact that's a satisfying thing that exists, right? That much like microscope does a great job.

At the end, I've got this whole visual world, this whole thing. And so to be able to do that through this technology, I think I want it to be very accessible to someone who's not comfortable role playing. someone who could access and to draw them in. And so having these kinds of easy prompts that gets them to do the thing and then lets them feel like and have it drive to a natural conclusion are both priorities. Letting them feel like they have some control of that conclusion is something I like, but I agree it doesn't have to be a primary pillar. And then knowing that's the kind of emotional arc I want to create, I think you could do

it without AI at all. You could just say, here's act one, here's what happens, bounce. And act two, here's what happens. An act two does not reference anything about the aliens that you came up with or any of those things. It just is going to give you some vague. The threat mounts further or whatever. I don't know.

Or I've got to give just world events. Like you lose some of that, in my opinion. If I have to be totally abstract or I have to really narrow down your freedom within that zone of what are you allowed to tell stories about what can you say happens here. Yeah. But I would argue that the thing we talked about earlier about the whole, the games are about, I think, about like looking at each other after. words and saying that was cool that we did that thing together. I have a greater sympathy and respect and

love for you because of that. We built this thing together. And I think in the flip side, of course, if that is a possible reward, there's likewise the possible danger of us falling apart and not having a good time, right? They're both there, right? If you can have a really positive experience, you have to be open with the idea that might not always work, right? People won't always tell. I played a game of diplomacy with friends that I'm no longer friends for. Right. See, but that's the moment of it's built for that, right? And that's the scary part.

The scary part of all these games is that they are a risky human activity. They're not a normal thing that people do. It's not a casual conversation over coffee. It's getting into stuff. You're being creative, right? And I think there's a natural tendency as a designer to want to try to mitigate that risk and to control it and to avoid the danger. But that's the deal.

I think that you've got to kind of swing for the possibility to get that connection to get that the reward for the players you got to give them the opportunity you got to let them you got to let the toddlers walk so that they could run and then go to college right if you shelter them if you protect them too much they're never going to get the chance to experience the magic of the world yeah they're in a million metaphors i mean to parenting now i'm all over the place yeah it's kind of hard to get all of that in but but i will actually there is an interesting design ethos question there right Because I think that, in fact, part of me wants to be able to allow for that freedom. And part of me wants to be actually providing the rails to help you.

Right. Like, I think a lot of people in the gaming industry would be terrified at meeting up for a cup of coffee and just talking. They want to have a game with rules and guys and that gives them step by steps to help engage. And so what I'm trying to thread that needle a little bit with this game design, I want you to be able to express yourself and tell stories and feel like you contributed. But I also think there's a whole world of people who are not necessarily the people that are playing your games right now, but there's a whole world of people that would love to play this kind of thing and they can't do it. And part of why, again, we don't need AI for it and I understand your position on it.

But I also think if when I see that video come in, it's not just you talking to a camera, it's like the scene comes to life in a way that's visual. to me now getting a prompt that feels organic and I see what you did, that's going to appeal to a much wider group of people that might bring people into our industry, that might create a new category of game that never existed and a new category of player that would never have existed. I don't think that there's, yes, it can be done with that AI. Yes, I 100% agree there's worth, that's worthwhile design exploration. And in fact, makes perfect, I will do further.

So thank you. But also, I don't think, but I don't think it's worth abandoning because I do think there's value there that can't be necessarily recreated in another way. There's when you were talking about the thing about the people being uncomfortable, saying that in a coffee, there's an interesting, I had a discussion with somebody years ago, and they said that exact thing. We were talking to was a miniature documentary for Story Game Seattle. And the interviewer was asking each individual person, like, hey, what do you like about

doing this? And people were like, oh, I love the bond and creativity. And one person's response was basically like, creativity is great. I give it a B plus. That's great. But what they said was that the real benefit of this. interaction was that it was interaction with rules. It was like they knew sitting down what they were supposed to be doing and how they were supposed to be interacting with the people around the

table with them, right? There was guidance in this interaction. Like you said, it's not just like freeform coffee. And yeah, I think that's, there's absolutely strength in that. And even more, like if you look at Avery Alder, who's a great person, great designer, Avery has a game and then it's a style of game. You could say, why am I having a problem saying? Dream apart? No, I'm sorry, DreamSkew. I'm having one of those like elderly moment or a camera of the name of the... DreamSkew is one of the versions of it, right?

You want to wait and ask, ask Chat ChatsyBT-B-T. But Chat-T-P-T would be like, yeah, this is how big a dolphin is. But the thing about that I was going to get to is that it uses a totally different style of moment-by-moment interaction, like in a role-played scene. For example, like in a lot of role-played scenes, oh, we're just talking.

Like, you say what your character says. And maybe we get to a conflict in roll dice or whatever, or something. And Drew Muskew uses basically a different style where you might have particular tags about your character or particular moves about your character. And every time you invoke one of those, you can move a token. Like I can take a token or give you a token. So some people really love that because they're like, oh, I don't know what my character

should say next, but I can look at my sheet of things. And it says, oh, every time I, refer to the strings of one of my comrades, I get a token, right? So it gives them an immediate guidance of what to do moment by moment. I don't really like that style. Like I love that people love that, but it drives me nuts because I'm like it to me personally, this is not a, this is not a value thing. This is just like what I like, right? Some people like football, some people like baseball, whatever. I don't like rules that interrupt me so much, right? I want to kind of do something and then have the rules jump in later.

I don't want like a sentence by sentence. There's like another famous game, and I found out of a famous, but a very old game called Capes, which is the superhero game, where literally every interaction, you'd say a sentence, then you're going to roll dice,

then you say a sentence and roll dice. It's this micro-level interactions. But the point I'm making is that some people love that style because it gives them guidance, like second by second of how to have this interaction. And I think that it's good to have all of those. things. It's good to have all those possibilities because it's like you say, different people will like different things. Different people will be comfortable at different styles of play.

Or I like to use a totally different example. Think of some games are interactive. If we're playing a board game, we can have a board game where we are directly interacting, maybe even directly attacking each other's pieces or whatever. And then you have other games where it's like we're all effectively playing independently of each other and we're not really even interacting. We just count up our scores at the end. If we're playing wings, Yeah, competitive solitaire. Yeah, competitive solitaire, exactly. And those are both totally valid.

They're both totally valid styles of play. But some people might really like one and really not like the other. It's just, I think, know which one you're doing, right? Knowing what your goals are, right? Yeah, you know who your audience is trying to serve and which audience you're trying to serve and know what experience you want to create for them, right? This is game design 101. It's the very first lesson.

But they're not, they're not, it's whether they're not good or bad. It's not that, oh, that thing is infuri to the other thing. Yeah, and I think there's Even if you don't like it. It's useful to articulate the different axes that exist, right? Like I think you actually talked about two when you were previously things, right? There's this sort of how directly competitive is a game, right? Is it, and I purposely just like, Ascension is closer to the Solitaire, competitive,

solitaire than a lot of other games because we are interacting over cards in the center row that we're fighting, but otherwise we're just doing our own thing and counting up the score at the end. Which I should mention is, Ascension is a great game. I should be very close. Thank you. And then I made Shards of Infinity, which is a more aggressive deck building game where you actually attack the other players and you just their things. And it's a very different feeling.

And the games appeal to different audiences, right? And that's intentional. And then the other thing that the other axis that we started this on is like, I haven't actually used a term for this for, but I'm going to call it Rails versus Wings. The idea that either I'm trying to put you on Rails and give you a very clear kind of linear expected experience that you know how to play within that space,

or I'm giving you wings and you could fly and you could also crash into the sun or the ground and you know, I'd help you. And so I think that there's a distinction of how far in each when you want to go. And again, yeah, we'll appeal to different audiences and different styles. And I think that navigating where that right place is for the audiences you have, or even most of the games I work on, it's card games and board games. They're infinitely more scripted than even the most scripted role play game. Of course, totally. You know, it's not even close. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's a very interesting space. And for me, again, I've wanted to design a role

playing game forever. I've never, I have several that are in the designs. I've worked on it a little bit. I have design files and they've never gone anywhere. But I think this to me, I also just, I never want to just retread ground that's already been done, right? Just make a D20, whatever. It's so popular. Everyone loves that. I know. I know. And I guess I'm not. Mark 500. Yeah, I know. I know. It's crazy. I'm not knocking it. It's great, but it's just not somebody it likes me. That is, It doesn't light me up. The thing now we're even pre-existing games, or be like, what if we just took the entire game and threw out the rules

and said it was fifth edition D20, D&D, would people buy it? Let's try it. So it's a little. I've been advised that exact thing, right? When we talked about making like an assigned genit role playing game and I was like, oh, cool, I can make all these things in this whole mechanic and they'll be used. And they're like, no, no. Do you want to do it just make a fifth edition thing and that's what you should do?

And I'm like, okay, I just not doing that. But it's a, my question is, if you just, if you wrote on the book cover, that it was fifth edition D&D, but you wrote whatever rules you want, would anyone notice? What anybody, is it even, is it just a marketing thing?

Is it just a, if I say this, people go, oh, it fits the inventory I already have, right? I feel like I don't have to learn something new. I know what I'm getting. I think I know what I'm getting. Yeah, I think there's two pieces to that, right? One is most people who buy role-playing games

or most of the role-playing games or most of the role-playing things get bought and never get played, right? It's just a thing that's on a shelf. I'm just guessing, but I think you're absolutely right, yes. Yeah, I'm a victim of this for sure. I love buying these things. I love imagining myself playing these games.

I want to play them, but I just don't. So I'll just speak for myself, but I think it's true broadly. And then I think the other piece is exactly the same previous thing of the Rails versus Wings. If I know what I'm going to get and I know that this system exists and I know that it's less of a cognitive lift for me, it's less effort I have to put in, it's less uncertainty that I have to deal with because I know, okay, it's going to fit into these rules and tropes. And what I really want is the world, I don't want to have to learn a new game. I don't want to be.

It also speaks to the, where are you innovating, right? What's important about what you're doing? Like, if it's a, if you just care about building a world for people and letting them play in your world, then it may not make sense to innovate a whole RPG system. I think, I got to be honest. I think it's, okay, I had this. You're going to start being honest now, huh? I thought you were going to be honest.

I had this discussion when I was like 19. I don't know what it was. I was talking to these older gamers. And this is like back in the dawn of time. And I was arguing from the position, which I now completely disagree with, which is that why would I need a different game I have D&D? I can use D&D for anything.

If I want to play a samurai game, I just use D&D. And they were like, no, there are other game systems that do that better. Like, like, Shito or whatever.

And as a child, as a youth, it didn't make sense to me. I was like, no, I can use this one system for everything, whatever and that makes sense. And now as a, I hope, older, wiser, if you make something D&D, you're basically saying it's a game about combat, right? All of our stats are combat stats, right?

There's vast chapters of combat that the rule system is a black hole, it's a gravitational well that draws behavior into it. Whatever the rule system is designed to do, that's what's going to happen in your game. Or it's going to draw you towards it, right? If you play a a game where you don't even have combat stats, you can probably have less combat. You know what I mean? There is a direct effect. So if you take a system like, there was a recent case of this, I thought,

like some video game property that was about like cozy monster ranching or something and that I forget what the name of it was. And so they made it until a fifth edition did anything. And now it's about fighting all the time. And everyone was like, what are you doing? Like, Starry Valley, the combat game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The rules have an effect. The rules change behavior. The rules make things possible. They make things impossible. So you can't just say, I wrote a world, but the tenor of the world is unaffected by the rules. It absolutely is affected by the levels. We have levels. Some characters are unkillable.

Other characters are not. You've changed the metaphysics of the world. If you play Dune, the fifth edition of D&D, be like, well, I'm a 20th level fighter. I can go in and kill all those dudes because I cannot be stopped. That's an artifact of the system. And you can't escape it. You can't write it out. Yeah, no, I think...

You're putting on your face right now. You know, you made a great point. And I wholeheartedly agree. I think it is true that the root... I think the types of things I'm imagining were more classical worlds or would fit reasonably into the... Adventure, adventure style. Yeah, but you're absolutely right.

And I think that if the rules have to evoke the emotions and play patterns that fit within the world and the emotions play patterns are the kind of character roles in that world, and if the rules aren't doing that in a role-playing game, you're not going to have a good time. Bernie Valley, the adventure game is going to be awesome. It's going to be so good. I can't wait. I love pulling those cucumbers.

It's going to be so good. Yeah. I forget. I've talked about it before. The Amber role-playing game is one of my favorites of all time, the Chronicle, where it was just like no dice and it has this like the way that the system is set up to like conflict. If you're better than me, the stack rank of line.

And the fact that we bid off of those things is just like, this doesn't matter. Like conflict will resolve exactly the, way it's supposed to resolve. Like, you role play to get yourself. Also, like, at a deeper level, it really reflects the, the egocentric nature of the Amber Universe. The Lee or what matters. These characters are what matters. The entire rest of the world is just, there's no like, oh, is that ogre strong. It's like, no, all the facts are ranked relative to each other because we are the center of the universe. Yes. Again, even that's evocative of the genre of Amber. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And so the home run for designs and we'll wrap this up there is that we're where the rules, bring the core emotion that you're trying to bring to life together in a way that the story, all of it fits, right? And I think that's just such an incredible tool that you specifically have done a really good job of exploring in many ways of the fringes of that space, right? In ways that way, you see this means war. Yeah, exactly. It's exactly what I was thinking of. Wow, that is like, I've never seen anything like that before. I had never seen anything like microscope when I saw microscope. I think what you do is incredible and pushes the genre forward and I'm proud to...

I'm pushing it's pushing. It's pushing. It's doing. There's a boundary, right? What we do as designers, is what I'd like to do at this stage of a career for anyone. There's this fractal boundary of all the things that are done are possible. And I want to be at the edge of that fractal and discovering what the new layer of fractal is. Yes. Do something interesting. Exactly. Do something interesting. For anybody that's listened this far, go do something interesting. Yeah. Bring your whole heart. Okay. I'm going to give one more platform here for you to

push we already talked about a little bit but i know you got microscope coming to kickstarter in october what else do you how else can people find out what's up and what you're doing laymanage com is where all the action is and i got a blog there where i talk endlessly about all sorts of weird stuff and all this kind of if you really want deep dives into like game theory the nature of why things matter and my brain my blog i've been writing it for 20 plus years now and it's just i go on and on yeah lots of thoughts yeah no i love it talking about this stuff. And if we had more time now, I would even push down that. That's great. It's good. Fantastic. So we'll have another part three, I'm sure, soon. Thank you.

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