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The rise of artificial intelligence has sparked a multitude of ethical issues for us to consider. Due to their interactive potential and their ability to facilitate collaborative storytelling, tabletop role playing games are excellent vehicles for exploring these ethical questions. Synthia is a collaborative storytelling game in which players take on the role of employees of a robotics company who have been tasked with creating artificial memories to form the foundation of a personality for a human-like AI. Over the course of a game, players must balance their own moral intuitions against the requests of their employer. In this article, I will detail the critical game design techniques that I used to create Synthia as well as the changes that I made to the game as a result of feedback gathered during playtesting. My goal is to provide a tool that educators might use to explore the future(s) that AI is making possible as well as to offer an example of how the critical design method works for other designers interested in exploring ethical issues through game play.
critical play, ttrpg, collaborative play, storytelling game, artificial intelligence, playtesting