AI Wargame Playtest

What happens when a room full of nerds gets organizations, uneven resources, access to AI, and permission to reshape the future? This is the first small playtest for Nerds at Play, a new social game series built around wargaming the risks and opportunities created by rapidly advancing AI. You’ll join or create an organization with its own mission, resources, strengths, and liabilities. Then the game drops everyone into a shared near-future scenario grounded in real laws, institutions, economics, and politics. Your organization can pursue almost anything: build technologies, start companies, organize workers, influence governments, propose policies, form coalitions, withdraw from the AI economy, accelerate AI even faster, or invent something none of us anticipated. AI will help teams develop strategies—and help the Game Master determine what actually happens when everyone’s plans collide. There may be breakthroughs. There may be political gridlock. There may be economic shocks, disasters, spectacular unintended consequences, and solutions that turn out to be surprisingly good ideas. The game doesn’t end with a winner. It ends with a future—and a reckoning over who actually shaped it. This is a playtest. We’re still developing the rules, software, pacing, and format, and part of the purpose of the night is figuring out what makes the game approachable, funny, thought-provoking, and worth playing again. Rough agenda Welcome + State of the WorldWe introduce the near-future starting point. Create Your OrganizationForm a team, decide what kind of organization you want to build, and define the future you’re trying to create. Resource RevealThe game assigns your organization unequal resources, capabilities, advantages, and liabilities. Scenario RevealNow we find out what kind of world your organizations actually have to operate in. Wargame RoundsTeams develop strategies, submit actions, negotiate if they choose, and use AI however they find useful. World UpdatesEveryone periodically reconvenes to find out what worked, what failed, what changed, and what fresh problems we created. Final State + Shout-OutsWe see what kind of future emerged and recognize the night’s best ideas, saves, coalitions, backfires, and “wait, this might actually work” moments. Then we’ll hang out, argue about what happened, and figure out what to change for the next game. No expertise in AI, policy, economics, or tabletop gaming is required. Curiosity, creativity, and a willingness to entertain strange possibilities are enough.