Wizard Wednesday Recap, 2023-04-19

The meeting kicks off with an enthusiastic welcome back to Bearsnake, who has now returned to the Bear Cave. Bear talks about his excitement for building in Forgotten Runes.

Bearsnake Takes the East Coast

He speaks about feedback that he received regarding Wizards during the duration of his trip and notes an individual who said Forgotten Runes is "the only project [he had] never heard anyone talk shit on." Bear jokes about creating a sticker with that reads something similar. He also talks about the small NFTNYC meetup with Wizards and the high quality caliber of individuals within the Cult.

Bear notes that he had a ton of meetings, but that there was a ton of energy. Bear says it just felt like all the right people were there and that the concentration of people who are in the space for the right reason is increasing. Bear also shares his enjoyment in the time he spent with Jitcy and also notes a few other meetings that took place in Philadelphia and Miami. He says that he's energized, reupped and ready to go.

Bearsnake also shares an anecdote of a conversation with a Punk collector who told Bear that he feels like the Wizards have the same "X Factor" that Punks have. Bear said the comparison gave him goosebumps, and he's here for it.

Cult Questions

After a quick reminder of Sharon and O's lorebuilding workshop on April 24, 10 AM EST, Elf launches into the show with Cult Questions:

Wen Elf Original Nosferatu Art

First, Castamere asks Elf, "Wen some Elf original Nosferatu art?"

Elf notes, "The token itself is an Elf original, number one." But he also says he would love to make another Nosferatu artwork and that he loves what Castamere is doing with Lil Nos. Dotta mentions that the 3D model is actual another Elf original Nosferatu work, and Elf confirms the head and body for the Nosferatu model are done. He also says he would like to work on another piece even beyond that, maybe once 3D launches.

Corporate Structures In the Runiverse

Bill Gains asks if Elf knows where "Mega Moron Mart" is on the map. Elf says he thinks one was built over the bulldozed McWazir's, but also guesses it would likely be at the base of the Secret Tower, as capitalists have no problem building gaudy structures near historic landmarks. Bill also asks what jobs the founders would have at Mega Moron Mart if they needed to work there. Dotta says he would be assembling bicycles. Elf says he would work in the back or have floor cleaning duties. Bear says he would be at the register or giving away free hotdogs.

BlackSand's Runiverse Grand Tour Updates & Elf Leaks News of New BlackSand Mounts

Sharon asks if Elf has his Mecha Pony fixed, or if it's still at the starting line, referring to the BlackSand Runiverse Grand Tour Race. The team go over some of the rules of the Pony races after Dotta admits he isn't familiar with them. Elf commends updates to the BlackSand website such as the live racetrack map. He dreams of 3D ponies running the BlackSand circuits.

Elf also leaks that artists are creating new mounts in the BlackSand Discord. He is told in the Secret Tower these images are not public.

When Were the Runes Created?

Next, Elf is asked if all of the Runes were created at the same time. He says that yes, he created them all at the same time for the collection, but he says that all of the Runes, meta-narratively, probably were not created concurrently.

"The Runes in the collection are just the accumulation of the entire world's history and mythology. These Runes were pulled from the collective unconsciousness of human history."

The Red & Yellow Clerics

Then he is asked if the Red and Yellow of the Cleric outfits connect to the hat color orders. "In regards to the Cleric outfits, they are simply a fashion statement and do not necessarily adhere to the hat color culture and politics."

Bear's Epic Tweet

Bear is then asked to elaborate on his Epic Games tweet. He says he has to answer it in a way that he's allowed to talk about and states that he was just excited about a call that he had just gotten off of prior to the tweet. He says:

"For the Runiverse game, the most important thing — or at least the thing that I'm concentrating on — is making sure that as many people know about this game and play this game as possible. This game is not just built for the people who are already in web3...it's for everybody. It's this proper video game being developed by a huge team of 40 or 50 people...and the way we win is by onboarding regular gamers that don't know about blockchain or don't own NFTs, don't have crypto wallets, so what I'm saying is there are two main storefronts in videogames: One's Steam and one's Epic. And so I would say it's about distribution and getting as many eyeballs as possible."

Runiverse Location Lore

Elf speaks about his chance to step away from 3D for a moment over the weekend. He says he had to most fun he's had in a long time adding descriptions of the locations on the Map to Wizzypedia. Elf notes this information is around 90% complete. He says it's important because the intent behind the descriptions has been there since the day he first put them on the Map.

"The meaning behind all of the places on the map is critical to the larger picture. I didn't just make these up over the weekend. The intent has been there since day one. They're there to explore...to create conflict, to seed stories."

He notes that it is a work in progress, and after 3D is totally done, he wants to jump back in and write some more.

Dotta's Large Lore Machine

This segues into conversation about Dotta's Large Lore Machine.

Iteration Toward a Common Goal

Dotta speaks about GPT agents which are able to iterate toward a given goal, and finds that this beast is, "extremely powerful, but also still can be tamed and can be used in a way that is useful to us." He notes the core of the project of Forgotten Runes is decentralized worldbuilding, and he sees these tools as "a way for our tiny band of Wizards to blow it up to a world that's much bigger than our size." He believes that in the future it will be easier for people to build out these kinds of worlds as AI tools become more understood, but even at present, he thinks that Forgotten Runes has an advantage because the project has a wealth of human-curated lore.

Deeper Location Lore

Dotta has been using these tools to help describe more locations on the map. The language machine is front-loaded with the Book of Lore and it is able to find entries in the Book and expound upon that information to generate new details about queried locations.

"It's not perfect, but what I find is that it's very, very good. It's a tool that we can use to build out the world faster than anyone ever thought possible."

The Dance of Magic & the Machine

Elf notes that unlike Web 2.0 companies which use your data and sell it back to you via advertisements, this is Web 3.0, where the data that you generate is used to level-up characters that you own and build a rich world we all share ownership in. He also recognizes the dance in the balance of magic and the machine that results from the generation of content by parsing human-made works. Elf states that this has been a guiding principle of the project since day one.

This balance can even be seen in the token generator, where human art-direction curated and subdivided coherent traits, colloquially known in the collection as "Affinity". This dance of curation led to color harmony and consistent themes in the characters of Forgotten Runes. "When you find that perfect balance, you find something that is just limitless."

Jung's Collective Unconscious

Elf speaks about Carl Jung's concept of the Collective Unconscious, which is the idea that humans are born with an implicit understanding of universal archetypes and share a connection to each other based on patterns of human experience. He believes these large language models are looking at that and are learning from us while feeding our own information back to us. He hesitates to call AI a tool, as he thinks it will transcend that status in the future.

Teaching the Machine & Future Knowledge Preservation

Dotta also speaks on the concept of reasoning within LLMs and how they are able to discern and learn meaning from groups of words. He states that these language models aren't only predicting the next statistically likely words, but that LLMs can be taught using these words. Dotta says if you want to teach the Large Lore Machine something, just write it in the Book of Lore. If you want to teach it something that doesn't apply to your Wizard, write it on Wizzypedia.

He says that all of the knowledge will then be be preserved for the next genealogical and technological generation. He also speaks to the close proximity of the age of infinite media, and how he believes Forgotten Runes is positioned to leverage that. Elf agrees. He says this Age is coming whether we want it or not. This is the direction that the world is headed. Elf states that the monomyth on which Forgotten Runes is founded may be the original Large Lore Machine, and now the technological LLM is being built on top of that.