I have been searching for ways to get people to engage with the risks to humanity created by nuclear weapons.
The whole issue seems to collide with the affect problem: the commonplace intuitive belief that talking about good or bad things causes them to happen, or simply the instinct to move away from and avoid unpleasant issues.
Pleasant or not, nuclear weapon issues need to be considered. With the US-led international security order smashed by Donald Trump’s re-election and extreme actions, the prospect of regional arms races in the Middle East and Southeast Asia has never been greater and the resulting risks have never been so consequential.
To try to get over the ‘unwilling to talk about it’ barrier, I have been writing an interactive roleplaying simulation on nuclear weapon proliferation called Rivals. I am working toward a full prototype and play-testing, and to that end I will be attending a series of RPG design workshops at next month’s Breakout Con conference in Toronto.
I am very much hoping to connect with people who are interested in both the issue of nuclear weapon proliferation and the potential of this simulation as a teaching tool.
That is brilliant Milan. It could become a most useful and sought after teaching tool.
Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro in AI Studio did an interesting job of simulating playthroughs of Rivals in the new global context following the Israeli and US strikes on Iran. It misuses some game mechanics from the rules, but definitely captures the kind of creativity in strategy and diplomacy the game is meant to allow.
It also has very smart ideas for countering the likelihood the game will develop into a race toward the bomb by all parties, though implementing something like this would require having secret parts of the rules or perhaps a ‘player spoilers’ section in the Ref guide…