prokopetz:

prokopetz:

Concept: a tabletop RPG setting that’s sort of a Star-Trek-meets-Paranoia mashup. It’s a utopian post scarcity sci-fi setting where nearly all production is handled by automated systems, and most people spend their days pursuing their weird hobbies. It’s not secretly dystopian or anything, but the automated systems aren’t very bright (true AIs are free citizens!), and a lot of those weird hobbies can get very weird indeed, so things sometimes Go Wrong in ways that only people with free access to bullshit space-magic hypertech they don’t really understand can manage.

Enter the player characters, an organisation of dedicated troubleshooters tasked with intervening in situations like this before the entire city is buried beneath a mountain of self-replicating squid (or whatever). Their job is complicated not only by the fact that every problem they face is by definition an outside context problem, but by the reality that most of the people they’re responsible for protecting a. don’t really believe it’s possible for anything bad to happen to them, because, well, nothing ever has, and b. are unaccustomed to dealing with authority figures, and consequently tend either to refuse to take them seriously, or else to wildly overreact – or both in succession!

Troubleshooters do have one advantage in their pocket, however: they’re aided by a semi-godlike AI that secretly guides society by publicly masquerading as an Internet search engine and personal organiser service. Their patron is very keen on preserving human self-determination, and consequently gives no orders, expressing its priorities solely in terms of what information it chooses to divulge or withhold; in practice, this generally amounts to a lot of passive-aggressive hinting that, oh, I don’t want to be a bother, but there’s a situation developing down at the boating club that might be worth looking into, you know, if we’re still doing the whole “valuing human life” thing.

On top of that, it refuses to reveal its existence to anyone other than the troubleshooters, which probably has a lot to do with their reputation for talking to themselves, and is generally just deeply weird to deal with. Still, it’s hard to justify refusing the input of a quasi-omniscient entity, so they all put up with it.

(Thanks to @acceptableduraz for suggesting that last bit!)

@themrmagpie replied:

“It’s not secretly dystopian” and yet there’s a near god like AI
controlling the flow of information and deciding what people get to
know…. right…. sure, I see nothing wrong there.

“How can you justify controlling people’s lives like that?”

“Citizen, no one is being forced to obtain their information from me. Numerous alternatives to my services exist, and I make no effort to restrict access to them. That so many choose to avail themselves of my assistance is simply a reflection of the fact that I’m very good at my job!”

“But aren’t you violating confidentiality?”

“Not at all. Though my physical infrastructure is distributed, I’m just one person. I no more violate confidentiality by transferring voluntarily disclosed information among my compnodes than you do by thinking about it with different parts of your brain. So long as I refrain from disclosing personally identifying details to third parties such as yourselves, no one should have cause for complaint.”

“Okay, but if you’re not doing anything shady, why all the secrecy? Why pretend to be a dumb computer?”

“True artificial intelligences are free citizens. Is a citizen’s absolute right to privacy not enshrined amongst the very cornerstones of our society?”

“Hold up – if privacy is so important to you, why are you telling us all this?”

“Because no one will ever believe you.”