Under Review: A Tabletop RPG about AI in Academia

What is this?

Under Review is a tabletop RPG about being an academic at a university where AI has arrived. The institution wants you to use it. Your students want you to use it. Your workload demands you use it. The question is how much.

You have 3 Action Points per round. AI actions are cheaper and more productive. Human actions cost more but are reliable. Every AI action increases your Dependency score. Every round, the institution shifts its position on AI. At the end, the institution decides what the right amount of AI was. If your Dependency falls in the sweet spot, you survive. If not, you do not.

Use too little and you drown. Use too much and you disappear.

How to play

Print the PDF on standard paper. No cutting required. Grab two six-sided dice and some coins or tokens for tracking. 3-5 players, no Game Master, one session, 60-90 minutes.

Each round: an Event changes the institutional landscape, you choose your actions, and anyone can publicly challenge another player’s AI use. The paranoia is part of the design.

Why does this exist?

The tension academics feel about AI is not about the technology. It is about the fact that the incentives all point one way and the values point another. The institution rewards output. The work rewards care. AI makes output trivially easy and care functionally invisible.

Under Review does not explain this. It makes you feel it. The moment you realise you have been choosing AI actions because they are mechanically cheaper, and that your Dependency score has crept up without you noticing, is the moment the game has done its job.

What makes it different

The mechanics are the message. Dependency is not binary. It is a spectrum from 0 to 10, and the winning range is unknown until the game ends. You cannot game the system by avoiding AI entirely or by embracing it fully. You have to make judgement calls every round with incomplete information. That is what it actually feels like to be an academic right now.

Credits

Design and concept: Sam Illingworth

Built for: Slow AI

Find out more

theslowai.substack.com