First Journaling RPG - Alone with the Archive (in process)

Session 1 - 20230827

20:05 - 23:15 (03:10:00 playing time)

Credits

Alone with the Archive was created by Melody Saturn. Based on Alone Among the Shifting Trees by Takuma Okada, Special Thanks to Dusty De Leon

GM emulator questions system from Tricube Tales Solo Rules: AUTHOR Richard Woolcock / SYSTEM Tricube Tales / BACKGROUND Figu Design / STORY SYMBOLS Delapouite and Lorc Game-icons.net / ILLUSTRATIONS Felipe Gaona, Publisher*’s Choice Quality Stock Art © Rick Hershey - Fat Goblin Games

I used this question system in three ways:

  1. Simple question: Any roll below d6 target = no
Probability 1d6 = yes but (1d6) plain answer and (1d6)
Very likely 2+ 1-2 3-4 5-6
Likely 3+ 1-2 3-4 5-6
Maybe 4+ 1-2 3-4 5-6
Unlikely 5+ 1-2 3-4 5-6
Very unlikely 6+ 1-2 3-4 5-6
  1. Scaled question
time, size, distance, hostile-helpful, significance level (1d6)
low value 1
--- 2
--- 3
--- 4
--- 5
Hight value 6
  1. Complex Questions
    I rolled on the answer involves... table from the Tricube Tales Solo Rules and interpreted the result in a way that fits the question.

The setting

Thirty years after the first AI-film (digital movies totally generated by a creative digital entity) I'm in one of the last video-film archives in Monterrey City, known as "the quantum entanglement house" (QuEn)[1]. It's a big warehouse disguised as an abandoned light bulb factory. Inside, floor-to-ceiling shelves keep part of the last moving images material backups in the world. QuEn is a secret to Skopos Corp, the creators of the entire AI-film industry, because this archive is a menace to the algorithms behind AI-film production.

Are you a visitor to the archive?

"Maybe" d6=2

I'm not a visitor to the archive owners, but it's been a while since my last time in the place. I'm part of the caretakers, part of the generation that arrived years after the first archive. Although I'm not a newcomer, I'm still seeing the archives with novice eyes.

Why did it take me so long to come back?

The answer involves 2d6=3|1

I dedicated my last 10 years trying to rescue thaumatropes, phenakitoscopes, zoetropes, flip-books, moviolas[2], videotapes, audio tapes, films, and all kinds of analog moving image devices from around México. I brought the rescued objects to this place because I thought that in combination with my possible findings in QuEn, I finally could interpret the videofilm-human algorithm.

Oral Human stories say that the videofilm-human algorithm can explain the fall of human-created moving images and could be the key to ending the AI-film empire. Behind the AI-film empire, there are intertwined generative AI entities made by Skopos Corp.

Session 2 - 20230828

Playing time:

Session 3 - 20230901

Playing time:

I which to know where to start. I checked the index in my paper journal, looking for a prompt to start my search on the shelves. I found an entry dated a week ago. I know is likely to find any prompt to start

Was I convinced by the first prompt I found?

"likely" d6=2

I'm not so sure about my first prompt, so Driven by my trust in randomness, I chose the shelves labeled with Q (d6=2) and I accessed an item easily without much trouble. It's a (condition d6=3)tarnished red box (Questions: Clubs 7) with half a photograph on the top. In the image, I distinguish a tree and an incomplete name in a sign interrupted by the paper rip. Inside the box, I found a b/w 8mm film. Previous experiences told me that film was 1 minute of running time at most.

Are the box and the film somehow related?

D6=1

It looks like the box was just a practical container, but it's not related to the 8mm film.

  1. I imported the concept of Quantum Entanglement to connect the name with the idea of how the objects in this archive are a present reality and share properties with its past reality: "A pair of particles once associated would be eternally connected, even if they were light-years apart. Measuring a property of one particle — its direction of spin, say — would instantaneously affect the measurement of its mate. If these photons were flipped coins and one came up heads, the other invariably would be found out to be tails" Black Holes May Hide a Mind-Bending Secret About Our Universe. In this same article from the New York Times, dated October 12th, 2022 Dennis Overbye rephrases a definition of quantum mechanics, a very useful version for the purpose of this game, the one started by Einstein in 1905: "(...) quantum mechanics, the nonintuitive rules that inject randomness into the world". Einstein faced his own proposition with the famous phrase: "God doesn’t play dice". Einstein couldn't read it but, based on Dennis Overbye narrative, the scientific publications around black holes, wormholes, and classical or quantum physics in the last 10 years, are closer to the idea of a limited randomness, a controlled one. ↩︎

  2. https://history-of-animation.webflow.io ↩︎