GURPS Virtual Realities
Feb. 25th, 2012 06:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI realised where I was making another math error or three in my calculations of the population and capability of my VR world. So I am once again hearing the wake up alarm from the wrong side because I play with silly numbers. But on the plus side it filled up my head enough to push out the usual downward spiral of bad thoughts, which is all I really need from my days.
If I use the rules for gestalt matrix computers, biocomputers, biogadgets, mind emulates, digital minds, VR interfaces and VR managers, plus throw in a rule off a forum for altered time rates, and run the math hopefully correctly this time... I get a very expensive setup, in both money and character points, even if I remember to buy the different mind speeds as altered forms. But I don't mind that because I need the added godlike for the City and there are built in hitches.
The maximum waking population of the virtual reality in the lost city is 197,423.
Very shortly after the meatspace humans arrive, that drops to 19,386, due to their actions.
Safe to say that all 19,386 are seriously unamused.
There is one Artificial Intelligence, a mind that was never human, who developed a personality by accident.
Some people call him the Landlord, but he knows he never owned the place. He was owned. Now he has just been left here, guarding the last few as fiercely as he knows how.
He's trying to figure out a title. He'd rather be a Guardian, but he fears he's the Warden now. He used to just be a Caretaker, but things got darker.
When Earthers arrive he calls himself Jess.
I know that's not how you say Gestalt, but it is right for a hawk's jesses. And for being a people name.
'He' is somewhat arbitrary but he's going with it for now.
He runs in real time, or at least he can. Honestly, he's mostly been asleep up there. Everyone left had slowed their experience of time so they can have more people be awake at once. For ten thousand years the vast majority of the matrix has been running at 1 in-day to 100 out-days, and basically ignoring that Outside even exists. They've had about 100 in-years like that, and it works for them.
Jess has been living in there with them, mostly switching avatars and staying incognito. When he has to break out the Wrath he was working 100 times faster than any other mind in there, with more authority over the VR, so he's basically godlike.
When he encounters humans from Earth he chooses an avatar from their minds, and it looks like David Tennant.
Lonely god. Seemed to work.
With 100 minds in the gestalt there are 197,422 mind emulations running in a VR with an interface program each and 19,743 VR manager programs. The manager programs govern the interactions of users, and presumably the rules of the local world, so there's a lot of room to split those rules up. They aren't about geography though, they each deal with up to ten users. Are those groups a basic social unit now? Are some tens running in the usual physics, and others in high magic? Who has the access permissions, or can hack them, to decide such things? If Magery is a property of your interface program, you can hack yourself to being a mage. But if mana level is a property of your manager program, you can hack the world to being magical for yourself and 9 other people. And not necessarily people you like, or even know. ... I still haven't mastered the VR rules, they're likely nothing like this, but they make interesting shapes this way.
The basic problem with a gestalt matrix is the sharp drop offs. It doesn't scale smoothly. So if they lose one mind from their happy 100, they don't just lose a few MEs, they lose a whole level of complexity. That's why the drop is so huge. With only 99 minds they lack the critical mass.
... which honestly seems a daft rule to me, but you can get so much drama out of it I'm keeping it.
When someone blows up a sleeper box, one of the component people gets jolted awake. From suspended animation he's not quick to get up physically, but the matrix loses him straight away. And because he's smart, it will take a lot to replace him - four average people in fact. So the matrix really, really wants him back... but they'll settle for four of the idiots who blew him up.
And those 19,386 minds are all people who chose that 1:100 time distortion just so their society could be bigger. They wanted a whole city. Crashing back down to the size of a university? It's post apocalyptic in there. And as soon as they figure out why, they're going to be very, very pissed off.
Be glad for the time lag.
(I chose the time distort because I wanted to not have to deal with 10,000 years of living history. But with 2,000 ish people awake at any one time, over 10,000 years, you could get up to the same total number of people having been awake if they just lived a lifetime and died. They simply wouldn't have many people to talk to. So do you choose to be more social? Or more connected to the outside world? Once the outside world abandons you, the answer seems pretty obvious.)
Those 19,386 might want to speed up a bit, to fix things. If they all want to real-time it on the simpler system you can get about 197 people awake. Any number of minds between 99 and 10 can cope with that many. Which is odd, but since they've got 96 that leaves 85 minds-in-bodies that are now optional. And they could get up and poke the world if they felt like it. And those 85 would be additional to the 197 MEs, so you'd add up to 282 people working the problem. But once they got those four extra minds in hand, a single incredibly smart person or a handful of average ones, they'd all have to go back in their boxes to get back to the social benefits of their slow yet numerous society. Only, if any of them didn't feel like getting back in, those would need swapping as well. Could be a problem.
The AI Warden, Jess, though, he has more options. If he makes almost all MEs dormant, he can run ten times faster than real time, even with only 10 brains plugged in. Try to out maneuver a man with godlike IQ who can do ten things in every one second, when you can only do one. He could be awake in there with up to five other people. All ten times faster than us. Better hope they can't do much in meatspace.
Oh, wait, they have up to 85 pissed off allies with meat bodies. Sliiiiiight problem there then.
... quite possibly too much problem for the initial adventure party. Reserve it for when serious bad turns up, and keep the first time simpler. You wouldn't want to turn off a whole world if you didn't have to. Even if the world could not be aware of it.
Initially, their problem is that one person got out of the box, and there are really large numbers of people who would like him to get in again. Or be swapped for more people. Either works.
That makes it one adventure party vs an irritated AI, their slow VR, and a meatbodied genius of godlike proportions. Well, godlike mental proportions, I haven't decided what he looks like yet.
I have got in the habit of calling him Arty. ... because he's as smart as the Warden but opposes him, so he's his Moriarty.
Arty the godlike has an odd ring to it. Possibly I need to work on that.
But Art short for Arthur could have him as the saviour King of his VR world.
Or, since he rises from the person sized box, there's Nosferatu.
I know it's a bit obvious, since I'm playing with ideas from Atlantis, but if you're getting someone out of suspended animation, going with the obvious is really, really tempting.
A vampire of godlike genius running around the lost city could up their problem level really quite considerably.
Points balance becomes a serious issue.
But they do learn by sharp example why the city got lost.
Back in the VR world Arty is easier to explain. What does magic look like in there? Is it rituals and spells? Or is it having the pen and ink in a cartoon world?
That would take some very careful mood balancing though, given that so far I've tweaked the tech to be squishy, made with brains and symbiotes, squirmy, scary, and not for the squeamish. All that good horror stuff, and then add a magic pen? Hard to balance, even though it really does depend on what he draws.
There's a lot of stuff drawn on the walls on the way down to the vaults. Warning signs in pictographs and scary pictures. Ominous frightening art is already a feature then.
So, anyway, my Lost City doesn't look very impressive on first glance. It's only as big as the university buildings. If they had an extensive survey of the place they'd still only find around a hundred intelligent bodies. But in the VR there is an actual city, a population in the same ballpark as Norwich.
And the first thing the visitors do is break it.
If I use the rules for gestalt matrix computers, biocomputers, biogadgets, mind emulates, digital minds, VR interfaces and VR managers, plus throw in a rule off a forum for altered time rates, and run the math hopefully correctly this time... I get a very expensive setup, in both money and character points, even if I remember to buy the different mind speeds as altered forms. But I don't mind that because I need the added godlike for the City and there are built in hitches.
The maximum waking population of the virtual reality in the lost city is 197,423.
Very shortly after the meatspace humans arrive, that drops to 19,386, due to their actions.
Safe to say that all 19,386 are seriously unamused.
There is one Artificial Intelligence, a mind that was never human, who developed a personality by accident.
Some people call him the Landlord, but he knows he never owned the place. He was owned. Now he has just been left here, guarding the last few as fiercely as he knows how.
He's trying to figure out a title. He'd rather be a Guardian, but he fears he's the Warden now. He used to just be a Caretaker, but things got darker.
When Earthers arrive he calls himself Jess.
I know that's not how you say Gestalt, but it is right for a hawk's jesses. And for being a people name.
'He' is somewhat arbitrary but he's going with it for now.
He runs in real time, or at least he can. Honestly, he's mostly been asleep up there. Everyone left had slowed their experience of time so they can have more people be awake at once. For ten thousand years the vast majority of the matrix has been running at 1 in-day to 100 out-days, and basically ignoring that Outside even exists. They've had about 100 in-years like that, and it works for them.
Jess has been living in there with them, mostly switching avatars and staying incognito. When he has to break out the Wrath he was working 100 times faster than any other mind in there, with more authority over the VR, so he's basically godlike.
When he encounters humans from Earth he chooses an avatar from their minds, and it looks like David Tennant.
Lonely god. Seemed to work.
With 100 minds in the gestalt there are 197,422 mind emulations running in a VR with an interface program each and 19,743 VR manager programs. The manager programs govern the interactions of users, and presumably the rules of the local world, so there's a lot of room to split those rules up. They aren't about geography though, they each deal with up to ten users. Are those groups a basic social unit now? Are some tens running in the usual physics, and others in high magic? Who has the access permissions, or can hack them, to decide such things? If Magery is a property of your interface program, you can hack yourself to being a mage. But if mana level is a property of your manager program, you can hack the world to being magical for yourself and 9 other people. And not necessarily people you like, or even know. ... I still haven't mastered the VR rules, they're likely nothing like this, but they make interesting shapes this way.
The basic problem with a gestalt matrix is the sharp drop offs. It doesn't scale smoothly. So if they lose one mind from their happy 100, they don't just lose a few MEs, they lose a whole level of complexity. That's why the drop is so huge. With only 99 minds they lack the critical mass.
... which honestly seems a daft rule to me, but you can get so much drama out of it I'm keeping it.
When someone blows up a sleeper box, one of the component people gets jolted awake. From suspended animation he's not quick to get up physically, but the matrix loses him straight away. And because he's smart, it will take a lot to replace him - four average people in fact. So the matrix really, really wants him back... but they'll settle for four of the idiots who blew him up.
And those 19,386 minds are all people who chose that 1:100 time distortion just so their society could be bigger. They wanted a whole city. Crashing back down to the size of a university? It's post apocalyptic in there. And as soon as they figure out why, they're going to be very, very pissed off.
Be glad for the time lag.
(I chose the time distort because I wanted to not have to deal with 10,000 years of living history. But with 2,000 ish people awake at any one time, over 10,000 years, you could get up to the same total number of people having been awake if they just lived a lifetime and died. They simply wouldn't have many people to talk to. So do you choose to be more social? Or more connected to the outside world? Once the outside world abandons you, the answer seems pretty obvious.)
Those 19,386 might want to speed up a bit, to fix things. If they all want to real-time it on the simpler system you can get about 197 people awake. Any number of minds between 99 and 10 can cope with that many. Which is odd, but since they've got 96 that leaves 85 minds-in-bodies that are now optional. And they could get up and poke the world if they felt like it. And those 85 would be additional to the 197 MEs, so you'd add up to 282 people working the problem. But once they got those four extra minds in hand, a single incredibly smart person or a handful of average ones, they'd all have to go back in their boxes to get back to the social benefits of their slow yet numerous society. Only, if any of them didn't feel like getting back in, those would need swapping as well. Could be a problem.
The AI Warden, Jess, though, he has more options. If he makes almost all MEs dormant, he can run ten times faster than real time, even with only 10 brains plugged in. Try to out maneuver a man with godlike IQ who can do ten things in every one second, when you can only do one. He could be awake in there with up to five other people. All ten times faster than us. Better hope they can't do much in meatspace.
Oh, wait, they have up to 85 pissed off allies with meat bodies. Sliiiiiight problem there then.
... quite possibly too much problem for the initial adventure party. Reserve it for when serious bad turns up, and keep the first time simpler. You wouldn't want to turn off a whole world if you didn't have to. Even if the world could not be aware of it.
Initially, their problem is that one person got out of the box, and there are really large numbers of people who would like him to get in again. Or be swapped for more people. Either works.
That makes it one adventure party vs an irritated AI, their slow VR, and a meatbodied genius of godlike proportions. Well, godlike mental proportions, I haven't decided what he looks like yet.
I have got in the habit of calling him Arty. ... because he's as smart as the Warden but opposes him, so he's his Moriarty.
Arty the godlike has an odd ring to it. Possibly I need to work on that.
But Art short for Arthur could have him as the saviour King of his VR world.
Or, since he rises from the person sized box, there's Nosferatu.
I know it's a bit obvious, since I'm playing with ideas from Atlantis, but if you're getting someone out of suspended animation, going with the obvious is really, really tempting.
A vampire of godlike genius running around the lost city could up their problem level really quite considerably.
Points balance becomes a serious issue.
But they do learn by sharp example why the city got lost.
Back in the VR world Arty is easier to explain. What does magic look like in there? Is it rituals and spells? Or is it having the pen and ink in a cartoon world?
That would take some very careful mood balancing though, given that so far I've tweaked the tech to be squishy, made with brains and symbiotes, squirmy, scary, and not for the squeamish. All that good horror stuff, and then add a magic pen? Hard to balance, even though it really does depend on what he draws.
There's a lot of stuff drawn on the walls on the way down to the vaults. Warning signs in pictographs and scary pictures. Ominous frightening art is already a feature then.
So, anyway, my Lost City doesn't look very impressive on first glance. It's only as big as the university buildings. If they had an extensive survey of the place they'd still only find around a hundred intelligent bodies. But in the VR there is an actual city, a population in the same ballpark as Norwich.
And the first thing the visitors do is break it.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 02:58 pm (UTC)Yep, you've got a story. Looking forward to this! Not sure I should recommend Accelerando ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_%28novel%29 ) to you -- on the one hand it explores some of the same themes (accelerated VR communities vs real) and might help you out, on the other you may not want to contaminate what you're doing.
~
no subject
Date: 2012-02-27 02:30 am (UTC)that looks interesting.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 08:05 am (UTC)Landlord, or Lord, for the massively fast distant dude above.
Taker for the dark that walks among them. Someone has to take the Sleepers back to dormancy.
Jess is a use name, not the one he's been using among the VR.
... Jess has a C name for a surname?
... Jess A Computer ;-)
No, wait, Jess Capertiller.
He's pulling names from their cultural repertoires, he knows full well what he's doing with them, why would he go there?
We get something rather trinitarian though, a spirit that takes the sleepers, a fast mind above that can change the rules of the universe, and an ordinary man.
Also you can make deals with the Taker. All he needs is to keep the numbers going, and keep it fair. You really can trade with death, if you'd rather sleep yourself than lose someone.
The 100 minds, up to 100 minds-in-bodies, that sustain the matrix have certain added privileges. They sleep, but not solely in VR. They get second chances. They're waiting every time someone makes a space. So out of all the massively many of them, these 100 live by different rules, and do not stay dead.
They're the ones who support the whole thing, the ones the computational power flows through. Like abdals in the young wizards books. But there is no necessity for them to be good or generous people. In fact each and all of them pissed off someone enough they were put in a box in the first place.
Landlord or Lord is how he is addressed by those within. Jess knows he's no such think.
Just the Caretaker.
But he's left with a more active role now.
Keeper.