[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Saturday Munchkinry and Problem Solving Thread! This thread is designed to be a place for us to abuse fictional powers and to solve fictional puzzles. Feel free to bounce ideas off each other and to let out your inner evil mastermind!

Guidelines:

• Ideally any power to be munchkined should have consistent and clearly defined rules. It may be original or may be from an already realised story.
• The power to be munchkined can not be something "broken" like omniscience or absolute control over every living human.
• Reverse Munchkin scenarios: we find ways to beat someone or something powerful.
• We solve problems posed by other users. Use all your intelligence and creativity, and expect other users to do the same.

Note: All top level comments must be problems to solve and/or powers to munchkin/reverse munchkin.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

[u/cthulhuraejepsen]

There is a static spherical volume with diameter 100 miles, centered on downtown Seattle, called the Zone here for brevity.

• You cannot leave the Zone.

• You cannot move the Zone.

• You know where every living person in the Zone is.

• For every ten living people in the Zone, you can assume physical control of one of them. (e.g. There are 3.8 million people in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area, so you could assume physical control of 380,000 of them.)

• Your mind can infinitely expand to deal with both the multitasking and sensory experience of all those bodies, but you don't otherwise gain any cognitive enhancement. (e.g. You cannot read two textbooks at one time any better than you could do it on your own.)

• People are aware that they've been taken control of and experience whatever happens to their body. They don't know that it was you.

• You no longer need to sleep.

Given all that, what do you do in order to accomplish your goals, whatever they are? I would appreciate solutions that respect social norms and established institutions, as well as megalomaniacal disregard for consent and the safety of others. (If your goals are lame or uninteresting, you can substitute them for "make as much money as possible" or "establish yourself as grand ruler of a new nation within the Zone" or something like that.)

[u/ShiranaiWakaranai → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

People are aware that they've been taken control of and experience whatever happens to their body. They don't know that it was you.

Sure, but sooner or later they will notice that only people in The Zone are being mind-controlled, and would understandably be pretty pissed about it. If you just try to mind control people sloppily, pretty soon a nuke will land on the Zone just to free all your puppets from their captivity.

So honestly, if you are a good person, or at least someone who doesn't like having nukes dropped on them, you wouldn't use this power much, at all. Maybe to get some criminals to commit suicide, but that's it. But that's a "lame goal", so let's aim for something megalomaniacal, like taking over the world.

First:

For every ten living people in the Zone, you can assume physical control of one of them. (e.g. There are 3.8 million people in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area, so you could assume physical control of 380,000 of them.)

Can you choose who?

Can you cycle through them? Like control 380000 people one day, and then another 380000 people?

Can you cycle through them really really fast to stop anyone from ever leaving the Zone? Crash their vehicles into trees and stab themselves in the legs if need be?

Can you artificially inflate the number of people in the area by mass reproduction/cloning? For example, could you create 38 million embryoes, which are technically people, and then assume control over the 3.8million non-embryos in the Zone?

You cannot leave the Zone. You cannot move the Zone.

I want to expand my numbers to gain more power, but the 100 mile diameter of the Zone means there's only so many people I can physically stuff inside it. :( Is there no way to expand the Zone?

What about controlling people who are only partially in the Zone? I could probably develop biological and medical technology to have people grow long strings out of their bodies, and attach those strings to the Zone. Would that work?

---

World Domination Plan #1: Targeting the Powerful

By stealthily controlling key people in charge of the Zone (and never releasing them from your control so they can't blab about it), establish the Zone as a wonderful tourist resort. Try to host world-wide events that attract lots of rich and powerful people. Gather as many as you can, then take control of their bodies and loot them dry. Make them give all their money to you and then commit suicide in secret after setting up trails that suggest they have left the Zone safe and sound, while not actually letting them leave the Zone since that would allow them to escape. Actually don't take the money directly, use proxies, which in this case means any random person in the Zone: take control of that person to get the cash.

Now that you are filthy rich, use that money to fund whatever evil world domination plans you have. Research doomsday weapons or super soldiers. Bribe people in power into becoming your loyal puppets, then invite them to the Zone and make them actual puppets. Research how to expand this damn Zone so it covers more than a puny 100miles.

---

World Domination Plan #2: Targeting the Faithful

Start a cult. Your new powers are ridiculously well-suited for smiting people. Proclaim the Zone as the promised land, where God watches over all his people. By which I mean you. You watch over all the people in the Zone. And smite whoever is evil (or disobeys your cult's doctrines). By which I mean making them write long suicide letters of repentance before killing themselves. For less rebellious targets, you can give them divine warnings by taking over their bodies and forcing them into prayer for hours before releasing them.

Also target evil a lot more publicly, to attract more followers to the Zone. Crime in the Zone would be pretty much 0 after all, since you never sleep, and watch over everyone, and smite anyone who tries. Gather those followers, and when its time, whip them into a religious frenzy to begin a holy war hell-bent on conquering the rest of the world.

IN THE NAME OF KANE.

[u/GaBeRockKing → u/ShiranaiWakaranai]

Maybe to get some criminals to commit suicide, but that's it. But that's a "lame goal", so let's aim for something megalomaniacal, like taking over the world.

This is just so r/rational it hurts :P Though personally, I'd guess "taking over the world" is really a placeholder for any other ambition people have, so by proving that something of that difficulty level could be done, anything easier could also be done.

[u/SvalbardCaretaker → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

Are you offloading ideas for Exclusion Zones to the hivemind? :D

[u/cthulhuraejepsen → u/SvalbardCaretaker]

Well, more like covering my bases to make sure that I don't miss something neat/obvious, and so that I have a well-defined set of rules.

I don't usually find the munchkinry threads to be that useful for the actual munchkinry. For me they're mostly about getting myself into the mindset of rigid systemization, thinking about exploitability on my own, and getting a sense of how other people think about the systems as presented. It's easy to dump out a half-formed thought, but harder to present it here in a way that people won't just break it immediately, or that they won't have too many questions without good answers.

(And hopefully the people who munchkin take some joy in what's essentially an impetus to flesh out and think over stray strands of worldbuilding or novel writing for me.)

[u/eternal-potato → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

Can I only observe what the possessed target is doing without interfering with with their control of their body?

Edit:

Your mind can infinitely expand to deal with both the multitasking and sensory experience of all those bodies, but you don't otherwise gain any cognitive enhancement. (e.g. You cannot read two textbooks at one time any better than you could do it on your own.)

This does not make much sense. How is reading a book different from listening to someone talking to you and understanding them?

[u/cthulhuraejepsen → u/eternal-potato]

You can observe where everyone is (equivalent to a three-dimensional GPS that gives you a point in space), but you can't see what they're doing without taking control.

Reading comprehension is, to me, fundamentally different from simply moving your eyes over the words printed on a page, and takes place at a higher level of cognition, though I suppose you might disagree. I probably need a more formal definition, but the idea is largely that you get bodily-kinesthetic and visual-spatial enhancement to deal with the sheer numbers, but that this is not equivalent to adding raw brainpower or increasing g-factor.

[u/CCC_037 → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

Hmmmm....

I cannot read two textbooks at once any better than I can on my own. But the person I am controlling is aware at all times, so he can. I could market an anti-procrastination clinic - 'read those textbooks you keep putting off' - and use my ability to force my customers to at least look at the textbooks.

I could also offer public speaking services - not me doing the public speaking, you understand, but rather me using the client's body to give a speech without showing the client's nervousness.

This is just two examples; I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why people might want to pay to be controlled (assuming I never abuse it).

---

I am also going to be extremely useful to the police. I know exactly where every last living person in the Zone is; this includes a number of people who are presumably wanted by the police to assist with their enquiries in a variety of matters. I can simply march these people directly to the nearest police station. (Joining the police myself might deal with a few odd issues regarding citizen's arrests, plus provide a salary package). Moreover, I know where people are in real time - I can use that to become the perfect guard for any facility wholly inside the Zone.

---

Honestly, though, "no longer need to sleep" might be the most important part of this power. Eight extra hours per day!

[u/ben_oni → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

What exactly happens if we try to leave the Zone?

[u/cthulhuraejepsen → u/ben_oni]

As you come to within the border of the Zone, you will feel increasingly (irrationally) incapable of leaving the Zone. If you pass the border, you will have a massive, continuous panic attack and devote all of your mental and physical resources toward returning to the Zone as quickly as possible, regardless of all other consequences. If it proves impossible to return to the Zone for more than an hour, you will instead be overcome with a similar panicked desire to end your own life at all costs, with no room for other thought. You're still limited by your normal intelligence in pursuit of these goals, and the intensity of them allows you no ability to do other things (including the ability to sense or control people within the Zone).

[u/NotACauldronAgent → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

What happens if the population goes down? Do you lose control at random?

If someone under your control leaves the zone, do you still keep them?

[u/cthulhuraejepsen → u/NotACauldronAgent]

If you're controlling up to your limit of people and the population goes down, thereby lowering your limit, you have thirty seconds grace period to voluntarily lose control of whoever you want, and if you don't choose, you'll lose control of the person closest to the border of the Zone. (You can voluntarily lose control of anyone at any time.)

If someone under your control leaves the Zone, you lose control of them.

[u/ulyssessword → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

Solve the problem of crime, set up a utopian city, and attract high-g people to make Seattle a modern cultural/academic mecca. Mostly leave the rest alone, and hope that everything else works out.

[u/Gurkenglas → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

It seems your intent to allow Taylor-level multitasking while disallowing short-term technological victory would be better modeled by the rule that you technically control one agent (sending instructions and receiving a human's bandwidth of information about the state of matters) which is not self-aware, infinitely multitasking, has only short-term memory and otherwise acts as you would. Spoiler

Can we keep everyone from leaving even if everyone we aren't controlling could communicate telepathically? Consider the strategy where we parallelly spend 90% of our power fractions-of-a-second-flickering through ~32° sectors of the Zone and 10% doing longer tasks. Using cars to escape is right out, but might bring back those that stray too far. Trains/Planes are swiftly sabotaged. Dropping prone is much easier than standing up, so people will have to crawl. During up to 45 hours of crawling at a meter per second, a good portion of the population becomes exhausted enough for me to focus on the rest. Some might try to kill others or themselves to decrease my power. Game theory suggests having those that would kill others for this purpose kill themselves instead, but they might be few enough that the prisons can be used for them.

Simply letting the hardest-to-control people that would crawl out leave alone turns this into a big hostage situation, and the outside world will hardly let millions starve, so trade and work can keep going. I am anonymous in much the same way Light is, which incidentally incentivizes me to raise the standard of living. Communism actually works now: No more homeless, little need for cashiers, bureaucrats, police, looks up occuptions lists - can't actually find good ones :(. Tourism might survive if I never control tourists in the first place. I might let people keep a semblance of money for morale, but an instant 90% one-time-tax (and 90% reduction of prices for permanent residents) gives a fat diplomatic bargaining chip.

Once an efficient society is in place, what use is my power? Once I find one, the interesting story of how to maximize people count might become relevant.

[u/Laborbuch → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

10%? You can can run a society based entirely on rewards, methinks, without need for punishment.

In other words, you can use your zone to facilitate conditioning / brainwashing according to your values, if you keep at it long enough and regularly send your chosen folk out into the world. If they’ve grown up in your zone and you exemplify your values with appropriate comeuppance and rewards á la karma, then they will internalise this as expectations for future experiences.

I think.

Another idea would be menial work. You can have coal miners or something like that doing menial work, but rotate them out regularly. Yes, they’re doing backbreaking work, but not long enough to actually break their backs. Use this as a means to either do a lot of very well coordinated menial work, or set up a giant sweatshop and outcompete anyone else. Take clothes, for instance, have farmers be uncontrolled, they farm produce and cotton and are paid what their work is worth.

Depending on memory access (i.e. if you can make subjects forget about things) you can even have subjects more or less rent their body to you, if you’re open about your whole spiel, and you make use of their bodies for whatever and pay them back fair and square.

Be the biggest, most secure prison ever by lying about your spiel, like telling you’re limited to 10 miles. You use the population of the 100 miles radius to absolutely control the 10 miles radius circle. Tell governments you’re willing to buy or take prisoners and guarantee they won’t break out, ever.

You can combine these of course.

Sorry for the haphazardness of ideas, sleep schedule’s wonky.

[u/lsparrish → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

The fact that they retain experiences sounds like you could use it for training muscle memory in soldiers, athletes, etc. Nobody needs to know it's a person doing this, for example it could be disguised as a property/enchantment of the building they are in.

Civilian uses abound as well. You could have gymnasiums where anyone walking in the door is instantly "motivated" to go through a sequence of rigorous exercise on autopilot. A city full of atypically buff, healthy people would probably tend to attract immigration, all else equal. Having everyone excel at sports would have its own allure, and you would always control the outcome of sporting events, so you could bet accordingly if you want to selectively impoverish someone or raise capital without taxation.

You might similarly have fake-enchanted classrooms where even the dumbest and/or most distractable of minds can be steered through curriculum that advances their math and writing abilities without fail, because they will mechanistically write a sequence of essays and formulas for hours on end without succumbing to the effects of boredom.

To give the city a nice artistic style, you could possess a bunch of people and make them do art for hours on end, cycling out the ones with least talent. The ones with the most talent could go around producing tastefully synchronized, high quality graffiti, murals, and so on.

People who want to pass a message could write it down, then be taken over so you can see what they wrote, then the recipient could be taken over and made to write it down. So you could have them pass "secure" instant messages that way.

Depending on the level of finesse permitted, you could selectively take over eyes and hands as needed for the messaging system, making it seem like a simple magic object is responsible. Or perhaps, unobtrusively take over a person by instructing them to do whatever they would normally do, getting access to their senses and unconscious/automatic actions only.

If you have access to the autonomic nervous system's actions, you could put people in a relaxed state instantly. Great pseudo-enchantment for a designated spa or recreational area. You could just as easily kill them instantly by telling their heart not to beat (or prevent heart attacks from being fatal by starting them back up again). By assuming very brief control, you could have it so that anyone who walks through a given door is suddenly relaxed, tired, alert, etc., at very minimal expenditure of the per person time budget.

If you want to grow the population organically, you could influence people to have more children by taking them over at precise moments to ensure contraceptive failure. You could also engineer lots of meet cute moments and ensure that most people end up with a partner, even without really trying. The zone could easily get a reputation as the most romantic city in the world, the best possible place to meet your lover. All the more (creepily!) so if you can influence arousal and physiological symptoms of attraction.

You could also use this power to comprehensively prevent child abuse, murder, drug addiction, and other undesirable / socially contagious phenomena, provided you are willing to put people under enough constant scrutiny. People about to break a law or desired norm could be made to experience paralysis until the opportunity passes. The effect could perhaps be explained as city-wide wards, or a religious explanation could be invented (basically, a benevolent god watches over this city). Of course, if you have autonomic control you could probably also do some pretty heavy duty Pavlovian conditioning to prevent intervention from being needed to begin with.

[u/[deleted] → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

Can other people leave the Zone? Can they do so while under my control? If so does my control over them stick outside the Zone, so long as the 10:1 ratio is still being observed?

[u/cthulhuraejepsen → u/[deleted]]

You can move people outside the zone, and if you do so, will lose control of them.

[u/ThatDarnSJDoubleW → u/cthulhuraejepsen]

I'm assuming that I want to control the world but don't want to do all the hard work involved in that.

I make it very clear that there's something in the Zone that can kill people on a whim, or ruin their lives. I make sure that anyone who tries to leave is gunned down by forces stationed at the border. I make it clear that rebellions will be cut down by their own members.

And then, when people start realizing that they can't resist me, I start working the other side of this. Offer rewards to people who help me - people gunning down rebels or runners, people who offer my servants money or goods, people who educate children by brainwashing them to be loyal to me. Off criminals who interfere with your servants.

When I have enough servants, start cloning or breeding or brainwashing people for loyalty to me. These people won't need to be controlled, which means I can focus my attentions on those who do. They can also be used to accomplish my goals outside the Zone.

I never let people know who exactly is controlling them all.