What makes Neotech different from other 'cyberpunk" games? It is the perspective by which we have cultivated the world. The feeling out of visceral emotions that shape humanity. You are not just a rebel. You are human.

To close off this thread, here's an image leaked from an unknown data center where something fishy is going on. For more info, better wait for the anon book where they managed to leak info on the top 10 artilects from the Turing registry.

We tested a rule where the GM would get "flow dice" to represent what the artilects are trying to achieve in the world. That everything that happens the PCs somehow have a pattern behind it. Or that dice from smart eqip can be subtly influenced. Something for a future book!

From the gaming perspective, artilects in Neotech drive mystery and the global metaplot. They call the shots. They are the equivalent of gods or dragons in fantasy settings. They are alien in nature, not the traditional HAL. They have different goals, some benevolent, some not.

So the artilects kept on humming and growing, partly under control, but partly ... not. Because how can you know that you've successfully contained something that you can't fully understand and that seems more intelligent than you?

In media it sounded like the world's governments together stopped the singularity / Skynet doomsday event. The sad reality was that world already depended on the artilects. No CEO wanted to say "we'll stop asking our artilect stuff, halt our research and slash profits in half".

This was dangerous both to an already overheated planet and to the global peace. So the UN managed to agree that artilects had to be locked in, restricted and fairly distributed, and created a division in Interpol, sometimes called the Turing divison, to keep the artilects at bay

Researchers coined these entities as artilects. No one really knew exactly HOW they work, just THAT they work. And that they require insane amounts of energy and compute. By the 2050s a global race had begun to convert more energy into compute and grow the artilects.

Their systems started behaving in unexpected ways. Seemed to be able to correctly answer questions no human even knew. Able to predict what the company should do for the next few years. Able to create military strategies and handle any number of drones.

The platforms amassed insane amounts of data. They wanted to optimize research, profit, public opinion. They build data centers over ground, under ground, in the oceans, in the glaciers. Using this massive power and evolutionary coding, eventually they had a breakthrough.

To differentiate the vast, superhuman intelligences that the platforms ended up creating, we borrowed the word Artilects from AI-researcher Hugo de Garis (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_d…).

Thread pt 2: Artilects. Let's start with the word. AI is all over the place already today, and in Neotech very much so. Most eqip can be considered smart and many of them can learn, see patters, take commands, converse, and so on. But they are not truly intelligent or self-aware

Neotech's platforms count their user bases or citizens in the billions, giving them rights, passports, pay basic income or charge taxes and fees. You can be a member of more than one platform if you can afford it, but completely switching platform is akin to a life reset.

Quote from anon: »the platforms engineer how you feel, think and vote. They control the mood of the basers so that they don’t go Disangani and revolt - or at least direct their anger at the right target. You consume the product, but never forget that you also are the product.«

The founders that were part of building the new global digital nervous system became immensely rich. Platforms expanded horizontally and vertically, and founders went on a shopping spree when traditional businesses struggled in financial crises. They became the new keiretsus.

Like today, governments tried to regulate them but also needed them. Better have your own Facebook than rely on China's ditto. Internet became a Splinternet en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splint… . And nations started merging with the platforms - not easy to undo outsourcing your national IDs.

So in our 2070, the world is divided in half a dozen platforms that control all parts of human life, from official IDs, security and money to 3D-prints, health data and entertainment. We have named some of them in Neotech: Yumashard, Nexus, Weihu Exchange, Shiloh and Puro.

The inspiration is easy to find - just follow the daily news and read what today's founders say between the lines: theverge.com/22588022/mark-z… . But recent SF also explores this, like The Circle or Devs, for example.

The platforms are the extension of today's Facebooks, Googles and Tencent. Instead of mining raw material or slave labor, they mine our data and attention. Extrapolate what we see today to 2070, with the AR Layers feeding into billions of eyeballs 24/7, you have a potent dystopia

Neotech's previous editions did exactly the same. But whe we wrote Neotech Edge we felt there was a need to tweak this story. It didn't feel in sync with reality. We still left some traditional Evil Megacorp stuff in there, but we've tried to focus on "Platforms".