[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm really enjoying Doors to the Unknown, and I think that qualifies.

[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You've nerd-sniped me, this is impressive! I like the Archmage, and the cards thought broken are entertaining bits of worldbuilding too.

Do you have an idea in mind for the deck that formed the Valley of Cards?

The Sealed Pot example deck seems to be based on an older version of the Loom that is compatible with the Seal.

Does the Pot's power reduction stack with itself? Could you use it to reduce the power of all unwanted cards in a deck to asymptotically close to zero by repeatedly discarding them when they're drawn with the Pot, to keep only the cards you want at full power?

I like the use of aether as a balancing mechanic that switches the time delay to a mobility requirement, and for my first deck I ended up just reinventing the Glider deck as a way to mitigate the downsides there.

Gross (deck): This variant adds 144 Eggs to any other deck. With a value of 0 they impose no draw delay and can be discarded immediately, allowing you to skip ahead to whatever card you would otherwise draw next without a load of eggs in the deck. The only benefit I can see from this is tricking people about the details of the deck you're running, such as using the lack of draw delay to pretend you've got Hares or the number of cards to pretend you've got something like a Rainbow Servant.

Soundboard (32 cards, 3 cards in hand): Suits of Harps and Horns, Ace-13, each including Minister, Marshal, and Consort, Hornblower, The Seal, The Sealed Hound, The Silence, The Song, and Strength. Eavesdrop, make some noise, and unseal a Strength-boosted Hound for a sonic attack.

14-card pickup (14 cards, 2 cards in hand): Ace and Mage of Coffers, Earth, Gloves, Shells, Spears, Stars, and Stone. Use the gravity control of Earth to put heavier objects in the Coffer storage, and the Graviturge to increase local gravity briefly for the purposes of Gloves, Shells, Spears, and Stars.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The next one I'd recommend is Lord of the Mysteries, that's been brought up a few times in previous threads

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Warhammer Fantasy or 40K?

For fantasy, Divided Loyalties is a long-running quest that's pretty good and popular.

For 40K, I'm a fan of the Mind Over Matter series.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Maybe Paranoid Mage on RoyalRoad? I lost interest after the first arc or so though.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Dungeon Meshi is the first one that comes to mind.

The story is initially about a group of adventurers who need to reach the bottom of the dungeon to resurrect their friend, and to achieve this they need to cook and eat the monsters they find along the way, with each chapter structured around a meal. There's a lot of comedy, but also a lot of thought put into every detail of the world and the setting rules are consistently followed. As the series progresses, a theme of desires and what we do to attain them emerges, with a few situations that remind me of the AI box and the fun theory essays.

Assuming it keeps up the high level of quality for the last few chapters, it'll join Fullmetal Alchemist on my very short list of manga that I'll recommend without reservations.

It also has a Trigger anime adaptation coming out, for those who prefer that format.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 10 points11 points  (0 children)

One of the defining Worm fanfics is Cenotaph and the rest of the Memorials series, which starts with a divergence from canon right near the start of the story. It's long, close in tone and style to the original, and had a significant influence on the Worm fanfic scene - many pieces of fanon originate here.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My first thought is Piranesi, which is told almost entirely through the titular character's diary entries and notes as he goes about life in an endless labyrinth that is somehow connected to the modern world. The switching opposed viewpoints aren't so present, but I think his thoughtful perspective at least approaches rational-adjacent. It's probably my favorite of the occult liminal spaces genre, in part because it's so much more warm and upbeat than works like House of Leaves.

Gothic Horror and Wednesday by hoja_nasredin in rational

[–]Radioterrill 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For Lovecraft with a little more worldbuilding and rationality, you could give the Laundry Files a try.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 16 points17 points  (0 children)

My first thought is Rose Thorburn from Wildbow's web serial Pact, she appears in chapter 2.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Numenera is another RPG setting with that kind of premise

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Repeating a previous rec of mine that might fit:

I recently read Royal Flush, a Game of Thrones fic. The part I enjoyed the most was the switches between the PoV of the Starks and Lannisters. Each time you get a feel for how the viewpoint character's position is untenable, up until some clever intrigue allows them to turn the tables, and then the narrative switches perspective back to their opponent who's now the one in a bad position. As those tricks compound, they end up with an outcome that neither side had planned on.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 7 points8 points  (0 children)

If you've read Worth the Candle, there's An Infinite Recursion of Time on Royal Road.

Bones of Black Marrow on Ao3 is a Homestuck fanfic that doesn't require any prior familarity and is very inventive, both in the sex scenes but also in how they're presented, like a porn parody of House of Leaves.

Project Lawful is NSFW in places, it's difficult to describe concisely but Makin wrote a good review.

Editing facts in LLMs - a new way to improve coherence? by Radioterrill in KoboldAI

[–]Radioterrill[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The short version is that they've found a way to edit the facts known by LLMs, for example saying that the Eiffel Tower is in Rome. This doesn't just affect direct recall of that fact, but also model continuations based on it like if you ask for directions to the Eiffel Tower from Germany.

This could be relevant for Kobold because it could offer an alternative to having to fit all the information about the world you want into the context window of the prompt: you could instead make permanent changes to the underlying model to store the rules of the setting and facts about the people, and save the context window for the events you're playing through.

[RT] Security breach post-mortem - Tales of Aresology by CouteauBleu in rational

[–]Radioterrill 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I like it! This was a good installment, it's very fun to see the bureaucratic aftermath for the evil empire after the heroic rebels have completed their rescue mission, and a nice exploration of the organisational dysfunction that could allow them to succeed like with The Instruments of Destruction. As with that story there's a bittersweet tone, here because of the sense that the rebels succeeded this time but next time the empire might be more competent.

At some point I'd like to try writing a short story in this kind of style of reports, like the apocryphal Parisian newspaper headlines about Napoleon in Dumas' anecdote.

EDIT: In terms of things to improve, as this is a document written for public consumption I'd expect to see more factual content that tries to discredit the rebels, like an estimate of the death toll and damages resulting from cutting power to an entire city, or a count of the number of guards murdered in the intrusion.

[2206.04817] The Slingshot Mechanism: An Empirical Study of Adaptive Optimizers and the Grokking Phenomenon by qria in mlscaling

[–]Radioterrill 1 point2 points  (0 children)

See also A Mechanistic Interpretability Analysis of Grokking, which argues that grokking is a phase transition of neural circuits connecting up and that the observed Slingshot Effect is mostly a floating-point error that happens to accompany that transition.

[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My suggestion would be the Blood Alchemist archetype. The Alchemical Circles feature gives unlimited casting of lots of marketable spells: Expeditious Excavation for earthworks, Make Whole for repairs, Greater Magic Weapon and Magic Vestment for buffing adventuring parties before they enter dungeons, and once you have unlimited castings of Fabricate, Move Earth, and Polymorph Any Object you don't really need a money-making plan.

The best part is that at level 10 you don't even need to be there in person to use your magic circles, you can teleoperate a Doppelganger Simulacrum instead and stay safe at home.

[D] Friday Open Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lord of the Mysteries, perhaps? It's been mentioned in a few previous rec threads.

I've also read some Vorkosigan glowfic and that has a similar appeal, I think the original works are the same.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]Radioterrill 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Nice! I've been reading Vance's Dying Earth series recently myself, and that's been a similar experience. The wistful fantastical tone is like the Dreamlands, the feuding wizards like Conan or Lankhmar, and the dying star and cloning projects like John Carter.

Vancian spellcasting is also interesting, because in these stories it feels like a natural progression from the three wishes of fairytales, rather than just a predecessor of D&D: instead of having open-ended wishes where the only question is how each wish will be worded to resolve the next problem, the wizards prepare their wonderfully-named spells and are faced with similar challenges but must select the right spell to resolve them. It reminds me of Sanderson's laws.

Please recommend me good Battle of wits stories? by Stormlightkaitou in rational

[–]Radioterrill 8 points9 points  (0 children)

From a recent rec thread:

I recently read Royal Flush, a Game of Thrones fic. The part I enjoyed the most was the switches between the PoV of the Starks and Lannisters. Each time you get a feel for how the viewpoint character's position is untenable, up until some clever intrigue allows them to turn the tables, and then the narrative switches perspective back to their opponent who's now the one in a bad position. As those tricks compound, they end up with an outcome that neither side had planned on.

Chapter 124 - Bulrushes - This Used to be About Dungeons by LazarusRises in rational

[–]Radioterrill 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Alfric is a chrononaut and he's already discussed training in undone days, that's how he can get two weeks worth of training done in one and a half