Gary Teter's page

In the New York Times today there is an article about a jewel theft, with the headline, "One Last Job? 60-Somethings With Mob Ties Charged in Jewel Heists" and the subhead, "Four older men with extensive criminal records, including killings and a jailbreak, were charged this week in two brazen armed robberies in Manhattan." Can a chatbot turn this article into a hit TV series? Let's see.

This thread comprises a series of one-shot interactions, each prompt and response takes place in a separate conversation. You'll see that the context for each prompt has been provided by a previous chatbot response. The chatbots provide the feedback themselves.

First, we create the show bible.

Respond in the style and voice of a seasoned Hollywood showrunner who has a particular focus on avoiding cliches and common tropes. Read the following article and write a show bible.

I've been having fun playing mystery games like Tangle Tower with my kid. You find clues, interview witnesses and suspects, and finger the culprit. I decided to see if I could use GPT-4 to create scenarios for various mysteries for the players to solve. At first I was going to map out how to make a video game, but after consideration, decided I wanted the game to be playable with a standard deck of playing cards. I am pretty pleased with the result—the game has rules, and I can ask the chatbot to create new scenarios for the game.

This process took a couple hours, and took about a dozen prompts and responses in total. Below are my prompts, and the chatbot's responses.

We are going to design a system for constructing mystery games. We will start by defining a mystery game. This is a game where the player attempts to solve a mystery, selecting from an array of possible culprits. Each culprit will have incriminating and/or exculpatory evidence. The actual culprit will have no alibi or exculpatory evidence. The player will uncover clues, which provide evidence for and against the suspects.

To design a system for constructing mystery games, you need to consider the following key components:

Game Structure:

a. Storyline: Craft an engaging plot with a central mystery to be solved.

b. Setting: Define the game's environment, such as time period, location, and world rules.

c. Characters: Create a cast of interesting characters, including the detective, culprits, and other NPCs.

d. Clues and Evidence: Design a series of clues and pieces of evidence that will help players progress in solving the mystery.

Gameplay Mechanics:

a. Exploration: Allow players to navigate through the game world and interact with objects and characters to gather clues.

b. Deduction: Develop a system that allows players to logically connect clues and make deductions.

c. Decision Making: Create a branching narrative structure with choices that affect the outcome of the game.

d. Win/Lose Conditions: Determine how the game will end, whether through successful deduction or running out of time.

User Interface:

a. Inventory: Design a system for managing collected clues and evidence.

b. Journal: Implement a journal to record important events, characters, and deductions.

c. Dialogue System: Create an interactive dialogue system that allows players to ask questions and gather information from characters.

d. Hint System: Provide an optional hint system for players who need guidance.

Artificial Intelligence:

a. Adaptive Clue Generation: Implement algorithms that dynamically generate clues based on player actions and decisions.

b. Character AI: Develop AI for NPCs that can respond to player actions and provide meaningful interactions.

Visual and Audio Design:

a. Art Style: Choose an art style that complements the game's theme and setting.

b. Character Design: Create visually distinct characters that represent their personalities and roles.

c. Sound Design: Develop an immersive audio experience with music, sound effects, and voice acting.

Testing and Balancing:

a. Playtesting: Test the game with a variety of players to ensure it is engaging and challenging.

b. Difficulty Balancing: Adjust the difficulty level of the game to cater to different player preferences.

c. Bug Fixes: Identify and resolve any technical issues to ensure a smooth gaming experience.

By considering these components, you can create a comprehensive system for constructing engaging and enjoyable mystery games.

Following the instructions found here, I'm training a neural network on the text of Elaine Cunningham's Winter Witch. Here are some of the things it's come up with so far.

Majeed continued to fade like a painting carried away through the mist. He followed the wizard and the small skeins of a tiny devil with curly hair. A shudder rippled down Ellasif's face. "Sif," she said, "I need to kill us."

"You don't know how to reach Whitethrone," he said. "I need to find you."

The smell of pine trunks were like an adventurous injured. These are Shoanti.

"I didn't want to frighten you off with me," she said, "And I will."

Ellasif ran outside, a rag doll. "But I should have better northern ass," he said, devising a tone of skywing. "Stand back."

The Varisian's face twisted with rage. He took a welcoming smile from the swords drawn by the bed. He ignored her neck and took Declan to the point. "No," said Declan. He nodded and raised one hand as she heard his voice.

Today we're rolling out a new version of the website. If everything is going right, you're using it right now. If not, we hope to have the new version up very soon. What's new? Lots of stuff, and not much, and very much faster.

What's new: Lots of stuff

Goblin Squad Store
If you missed out on either of the phenomenal Kickstarter campaigns that are helping propel our sister company Goblinworks' next-generation online fantasy game to the finish line, now's your chance to get in. Buy into the vision, help shape the game, and get access to exclusive products that are only available to Goblin Squad members. Check out the Goblin Squad store here.

Order Checkout Wizardry
Way back in the long ago, the paizo.com website was blue, it sold only two or three products, and it had a step-by-step wizard guiding you through checkout. Along the way we've complicated up our order checkout process real good what with the twenty thousand products and preorders and backorders and special orders and things that ship in a tube and things that can roll with other things in a tube and things that can ship in their own packaging and all the possible shipping methods and customs categories and restrictions and the bound printed matter and the per-service dimensional weight and dynamically repacking orders into multiple packages shipping via potentially upgraded delivery services and redeeming promo codes and gift certificates and selecting gift recipients and products that are both electronic and physical and shipping orders to multiple addresses and ongoing subscriptions and the ability to combine what's in your cart with a pending order or with an upcoming subscription shipment -- the sidecart! we probably should've patented that -- and holding subscription shipments to ship with various things and picking up at PaizoCon or Gen Con and, well, there's actually too much to list.

My point is, the checkout wizard was a really good idea and we've brought it back. I'm especially pleased with the final confirmation step -- read on for why.

Order Confirmation Emails
Paizo's order confirmation emails have always been plain text. Now they're going to be formatted. They'll match what we show you on the final step of order checkout, as well as the display in your order history. This may not sound like a big deal but if you've placed a complex order with us you know what I mean. The new display includes a lot of information previously only available to Paizo customer service like expected package weights, customs categories and shipping timeframes. Items on paizo.com orders can come from lots of places -- your shopping cart, subscriptions, Kickstarter pledges, and even other pending orders (and then there's the magic only customer service can do, like replacement shipments) -- so we're including more detailed information about where items originate. Products can also do lots of things to your account, like grant PaizoCon badges or add PDFs when the print portion of a print/PDF bundle ships, so we're including more details about that sort of thing as well. Basically we took the most common queries received by customer service and put that information at your fingertips so they can focus on the really "interesting" problems.

What's new: Not much

Well, not much visible beyond what I've described above. But this is the most significant revamp in Paizo's history, and we've done a LOT of revamps. Over the years our order processing system has grown in complexity as we've added features. Along the way the codebase has grown brittle and increasingly resistant to change without putting up a really effective and quite vicious fight. To get an idea, check out Auntie Lisa's Story Hour; each pivot Paizo takes requires new code, and those pivots come quickly. So there's about a decade of changes, some hasty and poorly conceived, some from the excellent-idea-at-the-time-if-we-were-in-that-business-anymore department, and a healthy mix of "we just messed up a few thousand orders, what do we have to do to fix this before anybody notices" in there.

Well, good fracking riddance, that's what I say. This codebase is cleaner, way easier to understand, and now comprises a foundation on which we can start building new things rapidly, instead of continually bailing water and trying to figure out why the thing we built a year ago just broke today. No promises. But I think things are about to get interesting around here.

What's new: Very much faster

Oh yeah, the site should be faster now. And we've made some big changes to our customer service tools that should help us fulfill your orders faster, too.

What's currently broken
There are going to be bumps along the way. I'll update this thread as we find things that need fixing. By the way, none of the changes in this rollout are intended to fix any known bugs in play-by-post campaigns or add new features to the messageboards or anything like that, so if you've been waiting for a fix, I'm sorry and we'll try to get to it soon.

Right now, gift options are unavailable during order checkout, as is redeeming promotional codes or gift certificates. (You can still redeem gift certificates from the gift certificates page.) Some displays may be a bit wonky, we've switched stylesheets and are in the process of revamping that a bit more.

What's that scratching sound?

We're working on a FAQ for Paizo Game Space and it occurred to me that I can probably head off a lot of questions by posting the current feature set:

What can Paizo Game Space do right now?

Maximum resolution maps stream instantly when you join a scene

Fog of war means unexplored areas on maps are revealed to players only when necessary

Translucent tokens, with control over label, image, size and placement assignable by GMs to individual players

Browse tokens by categories like gender, weapons and class so it's easy to find the monster or NPC you need quickly

Custom labeled dice macros for each token

Tokens may be made visible or invisible, individually or in named groups

GMs can add custom labeled dice macros to groups, rolling for every token in a group as a single action

All controls conveniently located in a single collapsible, draggable tabbed inspector

Integrated collapsible text chat with integrated dice roller, in-character posting for any token a player or GM controls and tabbed private chats with unread message waiting indicator

Initiative tracker that understands using custom dice macros to roll for initiative, as well as entering in physical rolls; draggable reordering including round separator; add and remove combatants; delaying

Easy access to all custom dice macros for tokens you or the GM controls during combat in a slide-out panel

What can't Paizo Game Space do right now?

There are lots of features that either aren't quite ready yet or simply haven't been added yet. These include uploading custom maps and tokens, stat block integration, combat round timers and area of effect templates. The single biggest missing feature right now is freehand drawing, and that's first on our list to be added. If you have features you want to see added to Paizo Game Space—or bugs to report—we want to hear from you!

We've been experimenting with calendars! They're generated directly from the same database that runs the website so they are as up-to-date as it's possible to get.

Here are a couple you can subscribe to:

Product Schedule

PaizoCon 2013 Events Schedule

These calendars are in iCalendar format, which should work in most calendar applications.

I need to test the new polling code. So here's a poll about polls!

In addition to sorting avatars by usage and date, you can now filter avatars by things like gender, class and type. Chris Lambertz has sifted through more than 1,800 avatars and countless products to identify where each avatar came from and tag them appropriately. You can now find a male elf bard avatar in just three clicks.

• To change your avatar, or just see the new avatar organization, go to your Messageboard Settings and click the "Change" button next to your current avatar image.
  
• To change the avatar for an alias, click the "Edit" link next to that alias, then click the "Change" button for that alias.
  
• To change the avatar for a Pathfinder Society character, go to your My Pathfinder Society page, click the "Edit" link next to that character, then click the "Change" button for that alias.

There are some limitations to the current tagging system. The biggest one is that the tags associated with each avatar are currently what the character actually is in the original source product. For instance, this is "Khavith", a female monstrous humanoid wizard from Pathfinder Adventure Path #41, though the avatar could obviously be used for a male character of a different class.

At some point in the future we may allow people to suggest tags which would represent "what this image could be used for" rather than the "what this character is" of the current tags. In particular, I can see adding tags to assist in finding avatars which are creepy, angry or can't-see-the-ears-so-could-just-as-well-be-human-as-elf. But I think this is a good start.

Please use this thread to report bugs with the avatar selection page or avatars which are incorrectly identified.

Today we're introducing private messaging for paizo.com. This is a feature that's been requested a lot over the years and it's finally arrived at the top of the todo list. Here's the current FAQ for private messaging. (Note that I will not update this post if the FAQ changes, for the latest private messaging FAQ, see the actual FAQ.)

What are private messages?
Private messages are direct text-only messages between individual paizo.com members. You may format your messages using messageboards BBCode. You cannot edit messages after they have been sent. There is no delivery confirmation for private messages, and no guarantee that the recipient will ever see or reply to a message.

Where are my private messages?
Your private messages are on the "Private Messages" tab on your profile page, which you can access by clicking the envelope icon next to your name at the top of the page. If you have unread messages the icon will be highlighted and the number of new messages will be displayed next to it.

How do I send someone a private message?
Find that person's profile page, and click "Send Private Message." You may also click "Add to Address Book" to make it easier to find them later. If you do not see either of these links, that person has either opted out of private messaging or blocked messages from you.

I don't want to receive private messages. How do I opt out?
You can opt out of the private messaging system by unchecking the box labeled "Members of paizo.com may send me private messages" on your My Account page and clicking the "Submit Changes" button. If you opt out you cannot send or receive private messages.

Can I block someone from sending me private messages?
You can block the sender of any private message you receive by clicking "Block This Sender" on that message. Blocking a person prevents them from being able to send you new messages. Any existing messages to or from that person will remain in your inbox or sent messages until you delete those messages. You can unblock people on the Address Book tab of your private messages page.

Should I use private messaging to contact Paizo staff?
If you're asking a rules question, please post it on the messageboards instead. Paizo staff will not respond to rules questions via private messaging.

Should I use private messaging for customer service questions?
Please either post in the customer service forum or email customer.service@paizo.com if you have customer service issues. Paizo customer service may send you private messages to request additional information from you if that's the best way to resolve your issue.

Someone is harassing me via private messaging. What do I do?
If you no longer want to receive private messages from someone, block them. Please contact Paizo customer service to report abuse.

Can I delete my private messages?
Yes. Deleted messages will appear in the "deleted" tab on your private messages page. Clicking the "move to inbox" or "move to sent messages" link next to a message will move it back to your inbox or sent messages. If you click "empty trash" and confirm this action, your messages will be permanently removed from your deleted tab. If you delete a message you sent to someone else, that message will be deleted from your sent messages but will remain in their inbox. You cannot see if someone has deleted a message you sent.

Can I search, sort or file my private messages or contacts into categories? Can I have incoming messages forwarded to my email?
No.

Will Paizo staff read my private messages?
Your private messages are considered private, however messages may be reviewed by Paizo staff or disclosed to appropriate law enforcement agencies if required to do so by law, or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to investigate abuse or ensure personal safety.

Additional stuff that's not in the FAQ
You can send private messages to and from an alias. There are dropdown menus on the compose message page if you or your intended recipient has any aliases. You can't block aliases or add aliases to your address book; blocking or adding an alias blocks or adds the actual person, not the alias.

There's a saying that every software project expands until it eventually handles email, and I'd like to keep this one just shy of that point for now. This implementation of private messaging is deliberately bare-bones. So you can't sort your messages into categories or folders or tag them, or mark them as unread or flagged, or forward them to someone else, or include a CC or BCC list, or get an RSS feed of your messages, or include attachments, or send a message to groups of people, or organize your contacts into circles or friends or anything else fancy like that. If you need those features, use the private messaging system to ask someone for their email address and then use your email client for that.

Please use this thread to report bugs in the private messaging system. (Feature requests should also go in this thread, but keep in mind the bare-bones design goal.)

Edit: The privacy policy has been updated to include information about private messaging.

I need to test something. So here's a poll!

These things exist:

AFK Tavern
Om Nom Nom restaurant

These things do not, as far as I know:

IMHO AM talk radio
IRL night club
YMMV auto repair or car sales

Take a look at the new Pathfinder Reference Document. Now take a look using your phone, or your iPad. Notice anything different? That's right, it doesn't suck anymore.

In addition to now including all the open game content from Ultimate Combat and the errata for the third printing of the Bestiary, the PRD is now optimized for tablet and mobile display. Before you ask, yes, that means iPhone, iPad and Android. Probably others, too, but that's what we tested on.

I have been showing this thing off to anybody I can corral here at the office. Lissa and Chris Lambertz have put in a lot of hours tweaking this thing and they deserve all the credit. Ross deserves some too, but he gets all the credit for making the Pathfinder Battles subscriptions working. So there's plenty of credit to go around! Except for me. I take no credit for any of this. Except to say, "Make it not suck."

Since this is a major revision of several hundred pages of content and navigation, there are bound to be problems. Please use this thread to let us know anything you find that needs to be fixed, and we'll fix it as soon as we can.

And yeah, searching the PRD kind of sucks. We're working on that.

Han Solo
Indiana Jones
Aeon Flux
Malcom Reynolds
Mrs. Reynolds

Huh. Guess we didn't test this quite as thoroughly as I'd liked.

I am typing my post! Next I will click the "submit post" button.

Today we're introducing favorites for messageboard posts. They're basically an internal bookmarking system, so you can refer back to posts you want to be able to find later. Favorites are public—everybody can see what you've favorited, and can see who's favorited a post.

To favorite a post, click the "+" beneath the reply link. You can remove your favorite at any time. We show a count of how many people have favorited a post next to the "+", and if you click that text, you can see who favorited the post.

There is a new "favorites" tab on your user profile page, which shows all the posts you've favorited. There's also a tab to show you which of your posts have been favorited, including those you may have posted under aliases.

A note about the terminology: We've specifically selected "favorites" rather than "+1" or "like". Anybody can favorite a post for any reason, not just agreement with the sentiment expressed or how it was said.

The FAQ for the event lottery is here.

We'll be upgrading some servers this Saturday, so paizo.com will be unavailable most of the day. We plan on starting around 6 a.m. Pacific time, and hope to be finished by 8 p.m.

If all goes well you won't notice anything different when we're done, except it will take awhile to get messageboard dots and (x new) indicators back.

If you've ever thought about working in the gaming industry, now's your chance. In addition to the Pathfinder Developer and Editorial Intern positions already posted, we're also looking for a Digital Products Assistant, and we've revised the Software Developer job description a bit.

Come work for Paizo!

Yay!!

With the clicking and the typing and the waiting for witty comments and all.

Now I am testing posting in a newly created thread.

This is me creating a new thread!

I didn't do it, I swear!

And the site really is down... unless you're here in the office. Here, we all have access to the site and we're all reading your posts and making snarky replies and laughing at everyone who isn't us because you can't post replies and can't even see our posts in the first place. Ha ha!

Also, having the interweb tubes get all clogged up like this sucks when you're waiting for the test database to finish re-indexing 25,000 products so you can test the upcoming new hotness search code that is super nifty and will completely and totally rock.

Today I get to mark two items off my todo list: Lists and wishlists.

Wishlists

Wishlists allow you to track products you'd like to buy, or—if you make a wishlist public—to have others buy for you.

To add products to a wishlist, go to that product's page, then click the "List This Product" link just below the "Add to Cart" button. When you add an item, you can specify the quantity you want, and add comments.

If you want people to be able to buy things for you from your wishlist, be sure to specify a shipping address. This address is only visible to you—it shows as "So-and-so's Address" on the purchaser's order confirmation page and order history. To preserve privacy, shipments to wishlist addresses are not trackable even if the purchaser selects UPS as a shipping method. If you don't select an address for your wishlist, purchasers will need to deliver those products themselves.

In addition to keeping track of how many you want of a particular product, wishlists also keep track of how many were purchased from paizo.com. If someone buys you something on your wishlist from your friendly local game store, you can adjust the quantity received for that item yourself. If you add an item to your cart from someone's wishlist and that item gets purchased by someone else before you check out, we'll highlight that product in your cart so you know it might not be wanted anymore.

By default, new wishlists are visible to everyone, but you can edit your wishlist to make it private. To make your wishlist easier for others to find, fill in the "full name" field in your profile. (Click your name at the top of the page where it says "Welcome, your name" to get to your profile.) There's a new "wishlists" option in the search box.

You can have more than one wishlist, and you can move items between lists by editing the list. You can also add a description for your wishlist (wishlist descriptions and item comments can include standard messageboards BBCode markup). If you don't want a particular wishlist anymore, edit that list and click the "Delete This List" button.

Each wishlist has an RSS feed so people can be notified when it's updated, and there's an RSS feed for your wishlists page so people can find out when you create a new list.

Lists

Lists work pretty much the same as wishlists, except you can't specify quantities wanted and there's no shipping address. But you're not just limited to products. Lists allow you to track products, product categories, blog entries, messageboard forums, threads, posts, and even other lists.

To add a product category to a list, click the "List This Page" link at the top of the page (next to the RSS feeds). Forums and threads have a "List This Forum" and "List This Thread" link. Messageboard posts can be added to a list by clicking the "List" link (next to the "Flag" link). Blog entries have a "List This Entry" link alongside their tags.

I'm really excited about the possibilities offered by lists, and Lisa's come up with a great one to launch this new feature: Lisa Stevens' items used in her Burnt Offerings game sessions.

In the future we'll make lists more discoverable, but for now, if you've made a list you think others will like, add a link to your list in this thread. (Don't use the "see what others see" link, just click on the name of your list and copy the URL from your address bar.)

Let the lists begin!

We've just rolled out two new features related to your sidecart: A "Ship As Soon As Possible" button, and the ability to put non-Paizo preorders and backorders into your sidecart.

If you have items in your sidecart that could be shipped now, you can click the "Ship As Soon As Possible" button to get your order processed without waiting for the next subscription product to arrive. You'll be given an opportunity to verify the shipping address, payment method and shipping method before the order is finalized. Note that replacement items (i.e., Paizo is paying for the shipping) can't be shipped like this -- they need to wait for the next subscription shipment. (If you really, really want your replacement items shipped immediately, contact customer service and they can process your order for you. But you'll pay for the shipping for those items.)

A couple months ago we started letting you specify during order checkout that you'd like the items in your cart to ship with your next upcoming subscription shipment. At the time that was limited to products available immediately from our warehouse or our distributor, or Paizo preorders. We've now extended that to non-Paizo preorders and backorders, so you can get that new Order of the Stick book and get it in the same package as your subscription shipment when it comes out.

[edit] I guess I should point out that the "Ship As Soon As Possible" button will appear on your My Account page, in the box labeled "Sidecart." If you don't see the box, you either don't have any subscriptions or you don't have any products waiting to be shipped with your subscription. If you do see the box, but don't see the button, you don't have anything that could be shipped right now (i.e., they're all upcoming preorders, backorders, or replacement items).

"To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

"The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways."

There's a $40,000 prize, but really I think it's all about bragging rights.

Now available!

Vote for your favorite RPG Superstar contestant. You can change your mind anytime until voting closes Monday, March 23 at 2 p.m. Pacific time.

This package has now been updated: The Razmiran flag, which was in CMYK colorspace, has been updated to RGB format.

Vote for your favorite RPG Superstar contestants -- you can select up to two candidates. You can change your mind anytime until voting closes Monday, March 2 at 2 p.m. Pacific time.

If you select more than two, you will not see the "Your vote has been recorded" message beneath the "Vote" button, and your vote will not be counted.

Vote for your favorite RPG Superstar contestants -- you can select up to four candidates. You can change your mind anytime until voting closes Monday, February 16 at 2 p.m. Pacific time.

If you select more than four, you will not see the "Your vote has been recorded" message beneath the "Vote" button, and your vote will not be counted.

AND NOW