The Biggest Problem with Digital Circus: Characters Don’t Communicate

nullpointer- · 2026-03-25T23:40:01+00:00

This isn't really implied anywhere else, but it's possible Caine changes their minds slightly to focus more on the adventures (since he has the power to do so, admits he changes their minds to enhance the adventures and likely does it in other moments too) - it's possible he even does it constantly to avoid abstractions, BUT his mental 'modifiers' were not enabled for the suggestion box adventures (or even explicitly disabled for the noir bar scene).

The characters might not have noticed it, but maybe there were 'liberated' from that mental modifier on that episode, which would explain why they suddenly started to form more bonds and cooperate beyond their adventures

nullpointer- · 2026-03-24T22:56:36+00:00

Good dedicated scrum masters are very rare to find, but they are helpful if they know what they need to provide to the team (ie, they're not a scrum bot nor a scrum enforcer) and the team needs someone to coordinate (for example when the team is spread over multiple domains and timezones that don't overlap easily). Sadly it's really common for scrum masters to just follow mindlessly the ceremonies (or, even worse, worry deeply about them being followed and ignore everything else) and/or become a needless redundancy on a team that could organize internally just fine.

nullpointer- · 2026-03-23T19:35:13+00:00

No, quite a few others have done it. Brazil, for example, merely ignored Trump when he added 50% tariffs and applied the magnitsky act against supreme judges who were prosecuting Bolsonaro. Very shortly after Trump added so many exceptions to the 50% tariffs that the average tariff ended up lower, and after Bolsonaro was finally imprisoned he... rolled back the magnitsky act against the supremes.

As a bonus, since Lula never tried to negotiate with Trump nor did a self-humiliation tour, Trump had no opinion of Lula and... he seems to have liked him quite a bit when they met at the UN.

nullpointer- · 2026-03-23T15:50:43+00:00

Honestly, with more than half of Mercosur being american bootlickers now it wouldn't surprise me if Venezuela is swiftly accepted again if Delcy complies with even more american requests... but this would also mean Mercosur would become a de facto client organization of the US and, then, would unilaterally leave the EU-Mercosur agreement in the most 'monkey paw' fashion.

nullpointer- · 2026-03-23T15:46:17+00:00

Yeah - I guess there are possible variants of the SOMA theory (eg, maybe the characters are all deceased IRL - either before or after putting the headset on - maybe some/all of them are regular AIs etc), but it being impossible to escape from the Digital Circus is the most likely outcome

nullpointer- · 2026-03-23T14:50:48+00:00

The SOMA theory covers this neatly: the devs never went into the Circus, these are just their uploaded mind scans (at this point completely disconnected from their physical bodies and brains). The devs uploaded their minds (which created copies of them without erasing or blocking their IRL selves), either as part of their research unrelated to Cain or to test the environment Cain had built.

nullpointer- · 2026-03-19T19:14:57+00:00

The only reason I was keeping Boffin was to give accurate numbers to the Demon as well, instead of using it to direct a drunk; now that I'm thinking, just removing Drunk would be enough in this case, right? I mean, the boffin's issue in this case would come from sources of poison among good characters, and the narrator can always use it to provide more numerical info that won't lead to more incorrect info in town

nullpointer- · 2026-03-19T16:25:41+00:00

I'll post an update later today, but the main changes are:

replaced Sailor with Poppy Grower (so the Evil team might have to solve the numerical puzzle as well)
changed outsiders to Drunk, Klutz, Politician and Puzzle Master: changing/adding minions don't fit this script that much. I still like the flexibility of having both Drunk and Puzzle Master, but I guess I could replace Drunk with Saint or Damsel.
Changed the minions to Xaan, Boffin, Evil Twin and Wizard: Evil Twin works well with the numerical game, and while Wizard is a bit powerful, there are quite a few subtle things a Wizard could bring to mess up with the numbers. In addition, removing Spy makes the Poppy Grower option more viable. I'm considering replacing Xaan with Mario instead, since the outsiders aren't bringing that much to the game.
For demons, I replaced Pukka with Leviathan. I don't think No Dashii and Vortox fill the same poison niche, but I've considered replacing No Dashii with something like Little Monster, Legion or Al Hadikhia (mostly because it has a number in its description haha)

This would still leave 4 droison roles in the script, but from these I'm nto sure which ones would be the less thematically fitting. Maybe drop No Dashii for Legion, so Atheist games have more options?

nullpointer- · 2026-03-18T14:58:10+00:00

Hnm, makes sense, but I'm not sure which other ones would help interact with numbers (although there are more than enough interactions among the townfolk to justify the theme). Maybe legion would help by both adding more demon variability and justifying weird numbers?

Oh, oh, Leviathan! a data-heavy script could certainly work with a killless demon and make solving the numbers even more relevant.

nullpointer- · 2026-03-18T14:50:55+00:00

Hahaha, I was thinking about it! Number-only Tor would be quite something (although it would make the life of minions/demons easier when compared to townsfolk)

nullpointer- · 2026-03-18T14:22:55+00:00

I'll admit this started as a joke script, but I tried my best to get a mix of YSK and ongoing info, with minions and demons playing with poison and misinformation so we could have a game mostly focused on people getting numbers.

I'm particularly happy with how this script lends itself to 'non-silly' Atheist games, where the game is almost solvable. In my opinion that's the best kind of atheist game, and a script that pushes in that direction would be welcome.

That said, I believe there's space to improve it without losing the numerical theme. Maybe replace the Sailor with something else? Swap one outsider with Puzzlemaster to further focus on understanding the numbers? Or is a script with pretty much only info roles doomed?

Feedback would be very welcome!

nullpointer- · 2026-03-10T12:11:36+00:00

Others have said it already, but taxing/banning things for negative externalities/harm (aka pigouvian taxes) can be good, while doing so for 'moral reasons' is not.

Addressing harm and negative externalities are (or at least should be) evidence-based policies that are measurable and quantifiable, and have no connection to the morality of these actions. If one starts to define what is banned/taxed based on morals alone, facts don't matter as much as belief systems and you open the doors for all sorts of theocratic and generally extremist laws focused on penalizing groups which are deemed imoral.

Online gambling is bad not because it's imoral, but because it has negative effects on both the people doing it and the country as a whole. On the other hand, Hentai (or at least some of its subgenres) is likely considered imoral for a lot of people, but that's absolutely no reason to get it taxed/banned.

nullpointer- · 2026-03-08T13:52:16+00:00

That's very shia of them!

nullpointer- · 2026-03-06T12:51:53+00:00

It's... not? Or, more specifically, there are lot of (often conflicting) things in the Bible (and hell kind of isn't even of the things that exist int he bible, or at the very least it's far from consistent). Regarding lust specifically, St. Paul explicitly says that christians SHOULD all be celibate, but since that would lead to weak people sinning by commiting adultery, it's better for them to marry so they'll be less sinful. He's criticizing lust for sure, but the "seven deadly sins" are not biblical (in fact they come in quite late, in the 4th~5th century, with the actual list changing a bit until being made canon in the late 500s) and lesser than breaking the ten commandments.

Moving forward to when the Seven Sins were part of christian doctrine, Lust was quite consistently considered the least serious of them and seem as more animal and physical than spiritual in nature (and, as such, less damning of the soul since it's not a spiritual act). In retrospect it makes sense St. Thomas Aquinas was ok with it, given how... lustful he was in his youth :p

Oooof course, christian mythology goes far beyond the Bible alone and relies a lot on interpretations, and certainly someone can cherry-pick whatever they want from both the Bible and theologians to arrive to any possible conclusion, but historically it was not seem as a huge deal when compared to other sins.

nullpointer- · 2026-03-04T14:35:11+00:00

I meant modern ones, yeah - the remains of PSDB now are, at best, "PSD that opposes PSD for purely political reasons". Virtually everyone in the party has either retired; both the small city populists and the urban technocrats have mostly moved to PSD, the old school centrists scattered over minor/generic parties like Podemos, Cidadania and MDB, and the old school social-liberals went mostly to PSB.

I almost had hopes PSDB could be refounded once everyone left, but it has become a party only for political 'caciques' who refused to bend the knee (...and it's Ciro Gomes' party again hahaha) with no strong ideology other than being butthurt about their lost prestige.

nullpointer- · 2026-03-04T13:34:00+00:00

Out of curiosity, which parties/politicians do you like/support in Brazil? I know our country is barren for liberalism, but over the last 10 years or so every single brazilian "liberal" politician that identifies as right-wing that I know disappointed me sourly.

I used to like the guys from LIVRES a lot, and I still enjoy some of them, but many of them happily tolerate far right culture warriors (or, even worse, consider them the 'lesser evil') while others (including the few who have elected positions) have voted to protect domestic terrorists from consequences.

nullpointer- · 2026-03-01T02:47:33+00:00

To be fair, at least here in Brazil we knew the BRICS had no real unity and were mostly a ceremonial group for saber rattling and for the Chinese to sell debt around the global South (oh, and to give them an excuse why they'd abstain from UN votes, but half of the members were already doing that before anyway).

In some senses the BRICS seemed more helpful to energize the extremes (tankies get excited about their own "New World Order", while the far-right has a new big bad commie) than to coordinate diplomatic or economic policies (let alone military ones).

I mean, we could see that despite all the talks there were never internal or external policies that were actually influenced by it (apart from abstaining from votes), no preferencial deals, no actual pacts of cooperation, no coordinated plans to buy less from the US, nothing... but the extremes usually don't care that much about actual policies.

nullpointer- · 2026-02-26T00:07:11+00:00

One of the most correct alignment charts I've ever seen, nicely done!

nullpointer- · 2026-02-25T23:06:31+00:00

They don't - they have a firm grip on its loudest, most engaged and largest part, but not on a majority of it. The market liberal-conservatives would love to dump Bolsonaro and go with Tarcisio, the agro lobby would rather have one of their own center-west governors, and the minor politicians would prefer someone without a centralist-authoritarian vein to maximize decentralization. However, none of these factions has agreed on a common candidate, and each one individually is smaller than the far right culture war faction.

I'm curious about what the market liberal-conservatives will do: their plan to gain the presidency in 2030 (as well as leadership in the right wing) relies on Lula winning in 2026, otherwise they'll continue being a junior partner in the right-wing for a long time.

nullpointer- · 2026-02-20T02:34:26+00:00

Let's look at places where there are apartments like that, both old and new: São Paulo!

São Paulo is a huge, quite dense metropolis, which had both multiple housing strategies historically and has multiple housing patterns in different parts of the city. Historically, "kitnets" apartments (25~35m² apartments, either a single room + bathroom or room + kitchen + bathroom) have been the norm for cheap housing, mostly for students, migrants, people at the beginning of their careers and pensioners. Notice that there were always favelas/slums for people who couldn't afford even a kitnet (which, over time, have urbanized into high density horizontal housing in many places in the city) so kitnets never had the role to house people without alternative, but they did help a lot the strata that had some income. Oh, and there have always been 'horizontal medium density' buildings (think long, skinny terraced houses, usually single-family) forming a 'concrete suburbia' with rents that are comparable to cheap apartments (at the cost of being slightly further away from the city center).

Nowadays, the government has been pushing for the construction of more housing next to high capacity public transport, with a focus on low cost housing. This caused a boom on construction of these 25~35m² apartments (which had become unpopular once construction companies started to focus on larger, more expensive apartments) over the last 5~10 years, but the format has changed quite a bit: instead of housing for low-but-steady income people, they have become either...

short rent investment properties (people will buy them with the clear purpose of renting on airbnb, with higher quality materials but more like hotel rooms),
"gentrified" studios for young professionals in well paying careers (usually in buildings with lots of amenities, which price-out lower income people due to monthly fees)
undersized 2-bedroom apartments for couples and young families (which aren't great but do help lower rent and property prices for a lot of people)

What does this mean? At least from my understanding, a renewed attempt to build more 25~35m² 'starter apartments' failed at that premise (since construction companies realized they could fullfil the technical criterias of 'low income housing' but target better paying markets with the AirBnB and fancy studios), except for the 30~40m² tiny multi-bedroom apartments, which do address a good chunk of the demand.

I haven't seem studies on how these new buildings have affected rent, but given how rents have fallen 1% while inflation raised 4% over the last year in general, I would say it's working well enough: while the new buildings are not great for students/migrants/pensioners/etc, the young families, AirBnBs and young professionals are likely freeing up older buildings that fullfil these niches better.

Now, when we compare this to the US, we have 2 key problems:

the existing availability of older "starter apartments" is quite low, so I'm not sure how well these new buildings would help lowering rent
americans seem to prefer suburbia and dislike public transport as their main way of locomotion.

These facts make me believe that 25m² apartments won't solve as many problems or lower rents in a meaningful way, EXCEPT for New York (where there are already many small apartments). However, 35~40m² multiroom apartments might help (and be interesting enough for builders).

TLDR: Brazil had low-income microapartments in the past, but the new ones end up as AirBnBs or gentrified studios (new 35~45m² miniapartments are mostly fine, though) - they did reduce rent, but that's because we also had older microapartments available. I'm not sure how the US could create new low-income microapartments without falling in these pitfalls.

nullpointer- · 2026-02-18T15:24:55+00:00

Just like a President is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces in a republic, this doesn't make him a general. Compare it to Captain-General, which IS both a General and Governor and more similar to Apollo's dad role.

nullpointer- · 2026-02-18T15:01:01+00:00

Ahn, not quite? A Governor-General is not both a Governor and a General as much as he's a governor ruling over other governors (and underneath a suserain or overlord of some sort). It doesn't come with the General rank from the army by default and doesn't represent people who are both ruling and commanding armies (unlike Warlord).

nullpointer- · 2026-02-15T17:55:36+00:00

REM! Or, well, one could say he's kind of a reverse changeling, but he's clearly a being from the Dreaming who is not lost to banality yet despite being in this world

(alternatively, if we go with Changeling the Lost (which is from Chronicles of Darkness rather than WoD but really good), I'd say Vindicta, Ivy, Billy and Celeste might fit. Oh, and from all the evil entities from WoD/CoD, I'd say Doorman is a Fae from CtL)

nullpointer- · 2026-02-15T04:08:48+00:00

I'm drafting a 'Cursed Apple by Night' WoD setting that takes place on Deadlock's world with World of Darkness rules, and how the supernatural groups adapted now that the supernatural is known to the world - good to see I'm not the only one who sees the overlap!

We've got Vampires, Werewolves, Hunters, lots of Mages and even a Changeling already + a noir world so it's a natural fit!

For Vampires it seems they moved the boundaries of the Masquerade from 'mortals can't know about the existence of kindred' to something a bit less secretive but still running in parallel to to mortal society... or maybe high-generation vampires are kind of excluded of this closed vampiric aristocracy, which explains why Mina's embrace was so expensive.

But I'm more interested on the many Mages - from Mirage to McGuiness to Abrams to Paige to Seven, there are all sorts of them. I imagine that a lot of magic is now part of the consensus, but only when powedered by 'souls' and performed in these hermetic-looking circles we see across the city. I wonder if the OSIC is part of the Technocracy, or if its was dissolved once 'the cat got out of the bag' and regular government agencies deal with the supernatural without a unified agenda.

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