This jam is now over. It ran from 2021-09-24 07:00:00 to 2021-11-30 08:00:00.

This is a jam inspired by the field of Psychohistory in the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, which is airing as a series on Apple TV this autumn. Psychohistory combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to predict the course of civilizations and can be used to try to shape the future.

Feel free to also grab inspiration from the real world field of Cliodynamics or spice induced Prescience in Dune or the Time Variance Authority from Marvel.

Game Jam Rules

  • Draw on the ideas from Psychohistory as inspiration for a game or game supplement
  • The game can be any format, length, or genre
  • Have fun with it!
  • We won't tolerate any bigotry of any sort – bigoted submissions will be deleted

Who's Running This Jam?

This jam is run by Randy Lubin, who makes tabletop storytelling games and larps. He also runs Story Synth, a free web platform for quickly designing, playing, and sharing prompt-driven storytelling games. Story Synth is easy to use and great for game jams!

About Psychohistory

Lightly edited from the Psychohistory Wikipedia page (CC-BY-SA):

Psychohistory depends on the idea that, while one cannot foresee the actions of a particular individual, the laws of statistics as applied to large groups of people could predict the general flow of future events. Asimov used the analogy of a gas: An observer has great difficulty in predicting the motion of a single molecule in a gas, but with the kinetic theory can predict the mass action of the gas to a high level of accuracy. Asimov applied this concept to the population of his fictional Galactic Empire, which numbered one quintillion. The character responsible for the science's creation, Hari Seldon, established two axioms:

  • That the population whose behavior was modeled should be sufficiently large
  • That the population should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses because if it is aware, the group changes its behavior.

Ebling Mis added these axioms:

  • That there would be no fundamental change in the society
  • That human reactions to stimuli would remain constant.

Golan Trevize in Foundation and Earth added this axiom:

  • that humans are the only sentient intelligence in the galaxy.

The Prime Radiant

Asimov presents the Prime Radiant as storing the psychohistorical equations showing the future development of humanity.

The Prime Radiant projects the equations onto walls in some unexplained manner, but it does not cast shadows, thus allowing workers easy interaction. Control operates through the power of the mind, allowing the user to zoom in to details of the equations, and to change them. One can make annotations, but by convention all amendments remain anonymous.

A student destined for Speakerhood has to present an amendment to the plan. Five different boards then check the mathematics rigorously. Students have to defend their proposals against concerted and merciless attacks. After two years the change gets reviewed again. If after the second examination it still passes muster, the contribution becomes part of the Seldon Plan.

The Radiant, as well as being interactive, employs a type of colour-coding to equations within itself for ready comprehension by Psychohistorians.

  • Seldon Black are the original Seldon Plan equations developed by Seldon and Amaryl during the first four decades of Seldon's work at the University of Streeling, and define Seldon Crises, the Plan's duration, and the eventuation of the Second Galactic Empire.
  • Speaker Red are additions to the plan by Speakers (Senior Mentalic Psychohistorians of the Second Foundation) since the time of Seldon.
  • Deviation Blue are observed deviations away from Psychohistorical projections with a deviation in excess of 1.5 standard deviation of predicted outcomes (1.5 σ). The Era of Deviations, at the rise of the Mule, produced deviations in the Seldon Plan in excess of .5 through 10 sigmas, and the resolution of this period required a full century of labour by members of the Second Foundation, often with dangerous interventions and uncertain likelihood of success, to return the Galaxy to the Plan.