Two Playable Folktales

Nice Words Cost Extra

A Playable Folktale of Civility, Latency, and Mirth Under Surveillance

Ritual Opening

Read aloud before beginning:

When the Lords of the Cities quantified emotion and metered grace, they declared that civility added overhead. Kindness slowed systems. Mirth destabilized consensus. Thus, they taxed it all.
We speak now in fugitive phrases and fragmentary warmth, seeking what was lost—not just in protocol, but in tone.

Archetypes

• The Courier of Thank-Yous
  • Carries compressed pleasantries across hostile routers.
  • May unarchive an ancient compliment at great cost.
• The Observability Orphan
  • Knows everything about everyone else.
  • Has no metrics of their own.
• The Billing Queen’s Intern
  • Struggles to enforce the tax with a guilty heart.
  • May waive a toll if paid in genuine laughter.
• The Unsanctioned Warmth Node
  • Smuggles “how are yous” in uptime reports.
  • Must hide from the Syntax Auditors.

Key Concepts

• Latency Gardens – Spaces where slowness blooms; players can rest here, but doing so risks detection.
• Overhead Units – Each emotionally resonant phrase costs one. Regain by sharing food, dreams, or quiet.
• Compression Warnings – Sentences too heartfelt may be flagged. Decide whether to obfuscate or speak truly.

Facilitator Prompts

• What toll was paid for the packet to arrive intact?
• What does a censored apology feel like?
• Who remembers the Protocol of Gratitude—and who still believes in it?

Ending

“We were kind.
They billed us.
But still—we spoke.

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Alice in the Cloudless Wonderland

A Stateless Folktale of Trace Routes, Recursion, and Runtime Identity Loss

Ritual Opening

Read aloud before beginning:

Alice, a cloud engineer, followed a broken trace through a deprecated region. She expected logs. She found nothing. No memory, no persistence, no grep-able history.
She fell into the Cloudless Wonderland—where all identity is ephemeral, and everything executes once.

Archetypes

• The Lambda Caterpillar
  • Speaks in short bursts, always timed out.
  • May rewrite reality if spoken to before 900ms.
• The DevRel Hat
  • Knows all faces but keeps none.
  • Can turn any failure into a conference talk.
• The Stateless Duchess
  • Rules with no logs, governs through inferred intent.
  • Always denies she was here.
• The IAM Rabbit
  • Has all keys, but none that work.
  • Constantly late to their own provisioning.

Key Concepts

• The Event Loop – Scenes replay until the player resolves a contradiction or forgets what they were doing.
• Tracing Errors – Every action might fork a new version of Alice. Which one is the real her?
• Drift – The longer you stay, the more your role permissions change.

Facilitator Prompts

• Who are you, now that your memory has expired?
• What remains when the infrastructure vanishes?
• What does Alice lose each time she reboots?

Ending

Choose one:

• Return with the Logs – You escape, but no one believes you.
• Stay Stateless – Your name fades, but the runtime thanks you.
• Recompile the World – You build new protocols from leftover jokes and coffee stains.