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Introduction

“Fate of the World” is a turn-based management style PC game with board game elements the theme of which is tackling climate change. Released in early 2011 with an expansion coming out later that year, it was developed by “Red Redemption Ltd” who solely produced climate change themed games, it was sponsored by Oxfam, Oxford University Consulting, TakingITGlobal and the tcktcktck movement. The game uses real world census, economic and IPCC data, and it uses a climate predication model made by the “Climate Dynamics group” based at the University of Oxford.
The Game has moderate reviews, and a 70% Metacritic score, overall most complaints cite the slow gameplay, difficulty, separation between actions preformed and what happens, a clunky and hard to use interface and just generally being overly complicated. 

However, I find it quite fun, and it’s a great example of just having too much information and too much to do, so it does kind of work as a good “if I was in-charge” simulator. I have only won the game once and failed a lot more, it’s not specific about what it wants, and it is very hard to tell what you need to do. Of course, even though it uses real data it also has some unrealistic elements, but in the end, it is just a video game like a paradox grand strategy game. Generally with this game the fun is in the losing.

I intend this to be a sort of “Wintreath Plays” type experience, with anyone that makes a post providing a bit of input into how we play (more info in THE GAME section). I had thought about doing this entirely as a roleplay and mostly In Character, but it seemed that would have got way too confusing, so I’ve decided while I might put a roleplay element here or there, it will mainly be OOC from on-high. 

The Game

The game is turn based, each turn passing 5 years of time, we control of an extremely powerful international organisation. We can use agents to preform actions in the 12 regions of the game (image below), actions are represented by cards and can either be Immediate (coming into effect the next turn), Prolonged (taking multiple turns; either a set amount or variable depending on certain values) or Permanent (actions which will never expire but can be cancelled). Agents cost money to deploy and actions cost money to preform and maintain.

Regions

I’ll pop in here like this after each turn to give an update and ask what people what they want to do. This will be every 48 hours or so (might make it 24 for this first one), I’ll also provide some suggestions, since the game is so ridiculously broad feel free to make specific suggestions or just general statements, also feel free to comment on what’s happening however you wish. If opposing suggestions are submitted, the one with the most support (either likes or proponents) will be chosen at my discretion, if it’s a tie, I will toss a coin or roll a dice. If no one suggests an action I will just go with whatever I want there, trying to keep it in line with ongoing and previous decisions.

I will do my best to keep this updated with the important stuff going on, but this game has something like 1000 graphs and charts and it’s very likely I’ll miss something, sorry in advance about that and I hope it doesn’t bother anyone too much. If you want you could headcannon it as me just being a crappy advisor to you.

As a final note on the game, it can allow us to do some pretty awful things in game, and by it's nature it can get quite political, just to say it is just a video game, and I mainly want everyone to have fun, it if ends up sparking too many heated arguments, I will just shut it down.

Scenario

We’ll be playing on the standard scenario, on a slightly easier mode, (though if you guys want it harder let me know)
The win condition is quite simple:
Reach the year 2200 with an average global temperature rise of less than 3°

The lose conditions are:
If we are banned from 7 or more regions
If we are banned from our headquarters region
If the global human development index falls below 0.5
And obviously if the temperature is over 3° in 2200

The Story

The year is 2020, the past decade has been fraught with ever worsening storms and droughts, animal species are going extinct across the globe and the receding ice caps plus the warming ocean temperature is causing rising sea-levels. Following a recent mega-storm battering pacific coastlines: international organisations and governments of the world have come together for an emergency summit. It is agreed there to found a new organisation with the power and influence to take action where and when it is needed, it's named Global Environment Organisation (GEO), a name as vague as it's objectives.

GEO's founding is surrounded in controversy, with the a heavy presence of security forces around the summit to hold back climate-skeptic and anti-GEO protesters. The summit decides to select a new president of GEO who will oversee all operations and wield absolute control of the organisation. They will have to show the world that they are capable of fulfilling their objective and have many tough decisions ahead of them in the coming years.

GEO Founding

So there we go, the scene is set, and all we need now is a name and a how you wish the president to be addressed by me your entirely trustworthy adviser. This is mainly a formality to try out the process for decision making I highlighted above, and to let anyone ask questions or talk about this.

Naming Screen and Addressing Options

This'll be really interesting. Sorta like your Workplace Adventure game from a while back. If you don't mind, I'm going to move this to the Frostmist Arena since it's more a game for us than a discussion.

As for the decisions,
Name: Hingle McCringleberry
Addressed as: Your Excellency

FOTW is a brutally and perhaps unfairly difficult game, which makes it quite ideal for demonstrating exactly what a thankless and nightmarish task it would be to unfuck the world.
I've spent many a frustrated hour at it so I don't think I'll participate, but I will quite happily lurk this topic.

FOTW is a brutally and perhaps unfairly difficult game, which makes it quite ideal for demonstrating exactly what a thankless and nightmarish task it would be to unfuck the world.
I've spent many a frustrated hour at it so I don't think I'll participate, but I will quite happily lurk this topic.

Awesome, you've tried it out and suffered too. 

I really enjoy fotw spent many a futile hour looking at it's myriad of charts trying to get the game to work for me; but I thought it would be interesting to see what people think about how it reacts to your input here. My favorite thing about my CYOWA was the reactions the events elicited and I hope to get some of that here too.

I have my dice dolled up and raring to make poor decisions, if the format makes it at all possible! Which seems unlikely, given how it looks pretty complicated, but I'll give it a shot. Or rather, a roll. Maybe a rock.

Name: Barty Barringson
Addressed as: (1d10=7) Darling.

This is already a spectacular idea.

Name: Hugh G. Payne
Addressed as: Master

I love this.

This sounds like it could be fun!

I don't have any name ideas, but Master sounds like a fun title

President: Potatoe
Addressed as: Your Worship

NO! Anything but Potatoe! Keep your heathen religion out of our game!

President: John Smith
Addressed as: My Lord

Previous Actions

Thanks everyone for your interest and responses, I hope this turns out okay. I've been really enjoying writing the stuff so far, hope that comes through.

So just to show how the decision making will work, in future I'll keep all the dice rolling and adjudicating behind-the-scenes.
Names:
Hingle McCringleberry
Barry Barringson
Hugh G. Payne
Potatoe
John Smith

Generating a random number between 1-5, getting 3, guess we're Hugh G. Payne, how apt

and Addressed as:
Master
As two people supported that one. And using that isn't going to get weird at all.


So, there we go President Hugh G. Payne all these documents seem in order, how are you finding your new office, I hope everything is to your liking. I don't want to stress you out to much Master Payne so I'll pass you these reports on our current status and what options we have, but if you don't want to worry yourself reading them I'll also summarize it in a few key options.

Status Update

We have $918 billion (all the prices are in billions, so I am just going to go with $ from here on ) available for the next 5 year plan (turn) and we have a lot we can do with that.

I'm sure I don't need to fill you in too much on the current state of the world but, some key points of note are: the rapid population growth in the Indian subcontinent paired with strain on agricultural resources may have severe implications in the coming years.
The depletion of forests in Northern Asia, South America, South Asia, and Southern Africa is increasing with each passing year; instability in the African regions and the Middle East will get in the way of any of our operations and it may be beneficial to provide security assistance in order to stabilize these areas.
In slightly better news scientists in Japan and Europe may be nearing a breakthrough in Energy, Infosec and Material Science, large advances in any of these areas could be extremely useful for our operations.

More specific data is shown broken down here, any further information can be provided per your request.

Data Breakdown

Options and Information

It will cost $50 per agent that we want to establish in each region, with 12 regions that would be a total cost of $600! And all that before we've even built an office, it might be a good idea to go for that, but I do have two different suggestions, one we could focus our initial agents in the more developed regions, reducing their emissions first since they contribute the most; or alternatively it might be beneficial to focus on the developing regions and work on improving their economy, this would increase their contribution to our budget, and allow us to nurture those economies to be much more environmentally friendly.

Additional Information on Actions:
Projects:
These are general, long-term and wide-reaching projects available in most regions. They tend to be somewhat expensive but as they focus on efficiency they can be very effective.

Commit to Nuclear

For as long as we keep this action active, our agents will subsidise nuclear power plant construction and uranium extraction, we’ll also focus on distributing the latest in nuclear energy technology increasing the efficiency of the existing plants over time.

Commit to Renewables

This action will last until we have maximised the capacity of renewable generation in the region. Overall, we’ll spread renewable technology and subsidise its deployment heavily the amount of each specific renewable that can be deployed will depend on the specifics of the region, some regions will struggle to fulfil their power demands solely on renewable power while improving economic output.

Protect Land, Soil and Forests

A very important endeavour if I do say so myself, this will begin our agents’ negotiations with local governments and companies to start to stop deforestation in the region, we’ll also try to increase agricultural efficiency reducing the demand to cut trees and expand farms, also reducing the need for fertilisers and pesticides.

Switch Transport to Electricity

This will be ongoing until all transportation is switched to electric vehicles, subsidising and setting targets on EV adoption will rapidly increase it, but it can add strain to the power supply and may lead to countries requiring more polluting power plants to supply the new demand.

Cap and Trade Scheme

This is a Permeant action, that will set the countries within the region emissions targets that they have to meet, if they come in under the target they can trade the difference to a country that’s struggling to meet its goal. The effectiveness of this will depend on how aware the people are of the importance of cutting emissions. This can be a good way of encouraging efficiency without sacrificing much economic development.

Coal Free Industry

This is a prolonged action that will be ongoing until coal is no longer used in industry, pretty self-explanatory, we’ll incentivise electrical machines with subsidies and grants, though this will just exchange the need for fossil fuels with a need for electricity, which could lead to no net gain.

Vegetarian Revolution

Depending on the outlook of the people in this region, this could be very popular or very un-popular, this will be ongoing until the meat industry is effectively non-existent in the region. This will promote and subsidise vegan and vegetarian diets on the consumer end while simultaneously incentivising farming to switch to growing more crops. This can dramatically increase farming efficiency and reduce farming emissions, but it has the potential to cause food supply problems in poorer regions.

Tobin Tax

This idea was originally proposed 1972 by Nobel Prize winning economist James Tobin, but we are thinking of reusing it for our purposes here. The idea is a general tax on all monetary transactions, from consumers paying for goods, to stock trading, to governments paying off debts; all this income will enter our budget directly, overall this could gain us an extra $100! However, everyone in the region will quickly come to hate our guts and it has potential to cause significant damage to the economy, enacting it is entirely up to you though, Master.

Offices:
Offices will expand our available actions in a region considerably, but can be difficult to build everywhere so it is best to specialize, all of them will take 5 years to establish. All offices will slightly increase the support that region has for GEO, as they will be able to see us directly fulfilling our mandate
 

Environmental Office

This office will be very useful for our visibility and popularity, allow us to enact policy for disaster relief and protection, deploying protection against water and food shortages, floods, hurricanes and excessive temperatures will be greatly appreciated by the people of a region and could save many lives. 

Technology Office

This office will allow us to better spread and fund advanced technological developments and direct the research institutions of the region to focus on specific areas of development, this will be expensive but could prove very useful.

Welfare Office

Here we could focus on societal changes in the region, running awareness campaigns, promoting free, open and effective education, housing, healthcare and work.

Resources Office

This will let us directly order reductions and bans on certain resources, it can also allow us to prioritise those resources for extraction, in regions that don’t currently agree with green politics this could spark significant outrage at our organisation and no matter what it will affect the economy.

Political Office

This office allows us to take more “direct” action on the region, through here we can deploy out security forces as law enforcement or to deal with agitators that would impede our actions, this would also allow the funding of black ops and clandestine operations to subvert the power of the existing authorities in the region.

With all of that explained, I'm going to make a few suggestions, based on current information it may be good to work towards promoting Renewables and Nuclear in every region, alternatively I'd suggest implementing Cap&Trade in the more developed regions and protecting forests in the less developed ones, finally building welfare offices in less developed regions to help them with essential healthcare/education and environmental offices in developed ones to build storm and drought defenses to our most valuable creditors, this third option would also allow us to deploy security forces to certain areas via political offices increasing stability.


OK, sorry for the huge post and tonnes of spoilers, I just thought it could be informative, both for the game and general knowledge to go over what everything is. Most future posts will be a lot smaller and this will be around as a reference.

To briefly reiterate what you can do:
-You can ask me any questions you want.
-You can make any suggestions for actions, broad or specific.

-You can choose for agent deployment:

• Deploying everywhere evenly
• Primarily focusing on the developed regions
• Focusing agents to less developed regions

-You can choose for actions:

• Focus on improving Energy sources
• Cap&Trade and Land protections
• Diversifying with offices, not immediately helping out but securing our position

Wait so how many actions do we do at a time?

Wait so how many actions do we do at a time?

Deploying agents happens instantly, after that's done they need something to do, so it breaks down into two sets of choices, where to put the agents and what to do with them there.

Ofcourse you could tell me to do very specific things "I think you should make the US vegetarian" would be a command that I would follow to the letter. I wanted to leave it open for specific stuff like that by providing all the theoretically possible actions.

But I know most people wont want that level of involvement, so I also simplified it down into two choices from 3 options each for everyone else.

The amount anyone wants to invest in those choices is entirely up to them it's very open ended, and even if I don't get a single response, I can keep it rolling but that wouldn't be very fun 

Do we know what regions Commit to Renewables would be most and least effective in? Maybe we can commit to renewable in regions where it would be effective and commit to nuclear where it wouldn't be.

Would also support opening a technology office in North America and distributing agents evenly.

Do we know what regions Commit to Renewables would be most and least effective in? Maybe we can commit to renewable in regions where it would be effective and commit to nuclear where it wouldn't be.

Would also support opening a technology office in North America and distributing agents evenly.

That is actually a really excellent suggestion for an early move you sure you haven't played this before.

And yeah, I can get the information on renewable capacity super easily, any info like that I can use if anyone wants me to. I'll run over it briefly here: Regions with low renewable capacity are: India, China, Japan, The Middle East, and Russia. These would be the one's I'll deploy nuclear in instead, though the instability in the middle east may cause some problems there, but I'm sure it will be fine.

This will also use the entirety of our budget, while still falling short of a few regions, would I have permission to employ a Tobin Tax in the more developed areas to make up for it? Oceania, Europe and North America I'm thinking. If not, I won't be able to commit to something everywhere. Tough decisions on day 1.