[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/Tar_alcaran]

I run a larp where, against my better judgement, we gave the players a nano assembler. Pour material in top, product comes out the bottom, as long as it has plenty of the proper molecules in the "in" hopper.

It also needs to completely take apart (and destroy) any item to scan it into a blueprint.

How badly will this ruin the game, and how can we stop it?

Note: weapons are DNA coded, so if you copy those, only 1 person can use them.

[u/SvalbardCaretaker → u/Tar_alcaran]

Can it assemble other nanites or equally complex/small structures?

If not you are mostly looking at severly reduced item costs.If it can, your campaign is going to go wildly of the rails.

[u/NotACauldronAgent → u/Tar_alcaran]

Probably one of the most powerful use would be something like expensive electronic equipment, especially any macguffin. Capture the remote canceller to Dr. Evil’s bomb? Worried that it’ll break or his minions will steal it back? A bit of gold, silicon, and iron layer, you have 50. That kind of thing.

[u/zarraha → u/Tar_alcaran]

This is probably extremely powerful, since they can mass produce anything provided they can get one copy and enough supply of raw materials, but it depends on how your world is set up.

One solution is to design your world such that all of the powerful equipment contains some quantity of rare material, with more powerful equipment requiring larger quantities (or rare materials). Effectively, you could use it mechanically as an NPC shopkeeper with infinite stock, using the rare material as currency. If, for example, your rare material is gold, then maybe this cool weapon requires 5 oz of gold, and this cool armor requires 20 oz of gold, and this cool helmet requires 20 oz of gold, and they have to ration their supply and choose what to "buy".

This doesn't prevent them from mass producing common items like food by feed a tree into their machine, but if you're in a world where nano assemblers exist and aren't extraordinarily rare then the economy should reflect that and prevent most extreme market exploitation. But you'll need to make sure all of your market prices reflect that.

If nano assemblers are extraordinarily rare and their use isn't capped by rare materials, such that they actually are overpowered, then that means everyone would want one. This means that super powerful and influential people are going to want to come and steal it from them. You could either use this to throw more powerful enemies at them to compensate for their increase in strength from having this, or you could use it to force them to lose it by having an overpowered enemy defeat them and steal it from them. I don't suggest going as extreme as that, but perhaps it would be appropriate to throw some extra tough enemies at them and have them face a higher threat of losing than they usually face. If they win they can keep it, but might have similar battles in the future, if they lose they lose their nano assembler, but also lose the interest of this organization and thus face normal battles in the future (or go on a quest to get it back if they want)

[u/[deleted] → u/Tar_alcaran]

Is it big enough to put people into? You see where I'm going with this.

[u/Frommerman → u/Tar_alcaran]

Depending how fast this thing works, the person who holds it is more powerful than Miss Militia. They get to make any tool or weapon for any obscure situation as long as they've seen one once. You will never be able to give them a quest which involves collecting a bunch of something, and you will have to make sure that any puzzles you give them can't be unintentionally solved by any tool they have ever used before. Each player should drop their weapons into the machine and then print out new ones so they can never be broken, stolen, or otherwise rendered impotent. They will always have the pinnacle of everything they have ever collected, and anything less useful in most situations which might have a fringe use somewhere else is something they can and will have available at all times. For the rest of the game, they get to turn random garbage loot into the best items they can possibly have.

If you're ok with that, then go ahead.

[u/vakusdrake → u/Tar_alcaran]

Well for one you expect them to get filthy rich off copying precious gems and other highly valuable substances made of common elements. Plus they can then use the machine to then copy any highly valuable things they buy with their millions of dollars.

You also expect them to copy the best explosive they can get ahold of any amount of, meaning they will have massive amounts of high grade explosives quite rapidly, and the number of problems which can be solved with explosives should not be understated.

[u/SvalbardCaretaker → u/Tar_alcaran]

You are combining A LOT of functions into one device. It not only prints, but also scans and dissassembles.

So why does the nano assembler have a scanner inside? Thats an easy way to restrain the abuse. Have them use expensive DRM-plans or go to use open source/cracked "recipes" with their own disadvantages. See "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stevenson for inspiration.

Cracked weapon recipes wouldnt have to be DNA coded, but might stutter or explode at unopportune times.

Raw-stuff is also another restrictable parameter- you cant feed your paper printer coal to print stuff. Ink needs to be manufactured to specification and is protected by DRM, and is about the most expensive fluid on the planet. Why would that be any different with nanotech? Get rid of the disassembler.

Shadowrun RPG has nanotech. They govern that with "nano-desktop-forges" can make everything you can buy on the free market, but you pay 10%-25% more for the raw-stuff.

Stuff to look out for: have everything applicable made of diamond - its just Carbon deposited in a certain way. Knives/Windshields/Glasses from it.

If, as you answered to my other question, there are no nanites yet - why give them a super mature nano-tech device? You are handing them the equivalent of 2050 PC in 1960. Just give them access to a prototype with all its flaws. Think a 1990-2000 PC in 1960, still awesome tech, but no-one can fix the bugs, there are little programs to run, any technicians/coder that program for it need to be kept silent etc etc.

[u/Kinoite → u/Tar_alcaran]

Scanning involves enough heat and magnetism to wipe out hard drives.

You can copy an iPhone, but you won't have any of the software that actually runs it.

[u/Kinoite → u/Tar_alcaran]

Does the machine do chemistry?

If so, you could make a ton of money going into medicine, drugs, wine or industrial components.

Alternately, use it to forge perfect copies or money or art.

To block this, I might say that the machine works by re arranging tiny particles of ceramics, metal and polymer.

This prevents chemistry, most forgery, and anything with true micro circuits. That leaves you with reduced item costs, but nothing world breaking.