This is like asking "Is Burkina Faso a real place?" We have seen images of Burkina Faso, we know it has people who live there and probably some food to eat too. Burkina Faso probably also has a few rules, or "laws" as they may be known. However, we haven't actually been to Burkina Faso and don't plan on ever going, so can't and won't actually validate, ourselves, that it really is a real place.

The same goes for The Eightpints - we have images of it and some of its denizens, and know it has food because it has a pub and all pubs serve food.

Are we saying that The Eightpints is as real as Burkina Faso? No, because we were telling porky pies when we said we have seen images of Burkina Faso: we haven't, we've only seen the country's name written down somewhere and think it sounds fancy.

The Rules, Lore and Art for The Eightpints are released and can be downloaded from our website.

The miniatures are under development, and we are releasing them here as they become available: https://cults3d.com/en/users/theeightpints/3d-models https://www.printables.com/@TheEightpint_3733872

Currently there are 20 Warbands, 18 Spells, 48 pieces of Terrain, 30 Beasts and 3 Perpetuals that can be downloaded and 3D printed. Also assorted Tokens and Templates. All free.

However we must note that there is no real reason miniatures need to be used to play the game. All you really need is dice and an imagination.

The Eightpints is a campaign (singleplayer vs Beasts or multiple players vs Beasts) and skirmish (player vs player warband battles) tabletop miniatures game. The idea is to form and lead a warband to victories against other warbands and also non-warband foes such as Beasts and Perpetuals. Levelling up as you do so, learning new skills, acquiring new loot.

The idea is to create a game that is easy to pick up and learn (basic rules) but massively deep, broad and rewarding (advanced rules) for players (like us) who have no self control and prioritise Questing and Skirmishing above their own physical wellbeing and "never want it to end". But still take a shower out of self-respect.

They are currently under development and can be downloaded from

https://cults3d.com/en/users/theeightpints/3d-models

and

https://www.printables.com/@TheEightpint_3733872

as we release them.

However, until they are "all up" we would like to point out that there are HUGE arrays of fabulous miniature developers / manufacturers out there and if you buy a few choice sets from a bunch of different ones and go at them like a Surgeon on the battlefield, you will create for yourself some fabulous and unique miniatures that will be the envy of your local gaming group. Its worth mentioning that nothing *requires* that miniatures are used: If you grab a hammer and flatten out some beer bottle caps, punch a nail through each of them, then glue images (print out ones from the website/rules) to the nails, you are in store for a grand adventure, and have already even completed one ("Make a Warband"). Use your Nan's respectables as terrain. Go wild.

A warband is a pretty varied act - a grouping of a range of individuals whose individual "Venn diagrams of purpose" align sufficiently often enough for them to all be considered a grouping of aligned nuisances for the local aggro fauna and flora, when the aforesaid fauna/flora talk to each other when the warband is back at the pub, "resting".

Create your own unique warband and be the most legendary Warband in the whole of The Eightpints! For now, The Eightpints is Lore, Rules and some visually exciting stuff that you need to send to a printer if you want a permanent copy of in the Real World.

...And some models we are drip-feeding to the internet.

Yes. Deliciously so. Our main pillars of balance come from an analysis of Magic The Gathering and single player CRPGs like Planescape Torment and Arcanum. Also Hotline Miami.

"What does this mean?"

Let's define "balance" in terms of two core drivers: Mechanical Balance and Player Experience:

1. Mechanical Balance: All of the warband fighters and leaders are accessible to any player. This means that two players can draft the same warband, but each player's understanding and execution of the rules will dictate who wins. This means that the opportunity to win is available to all, but the achievement of the win is determined by experience and skill.

2. Player Experience: Just like a single player CRPG (Computer Roll Playing Game) every player has the same access to having an enjoyable time. This is within the parameters of the game: The Eightpints gives you your dopamine hit whether you win the game, or have your hulking leader taken out by a grot. The Eightpints celebrates joy even when you are face down in the mud. If you are, stick out your tongue and taste the mud, and think to yourself, "Hmmmm....gosh.... that's some Michelin-level mud, I can't wait for more".

"But the game uses dice, that means its chaotic?"

Dice rolls do not add "chaos", they add "variance", in the same way a Magic The Gathering card deck is shuffled. However, as players do not have access to all of the cards in Magic The Gathering, there is a "pay-to-win" element for Magic The Gathering that we have successfully eliminated in The Eightpints.

Here's a true story: "Back in Day" there was a kid at our school called Dom (real name). Dom was a wizard (factually unproven) and he would build meta-sensitive Magic The Gathering decks that tended to win. Occasionally, after beating an opponent, he would offer to swap decks with them. They would then play another game, each player with the other's deck, and Dom would win again. Even if his opponent's deck he was now using was shyte. Regardless of what the draft of the deck he was commanding contained, his experience and skill level ruled out.

The Eightpints is a fantastically tactical game that has been designed with modular rules: You can use half of the rules, all of the rules, or none of the rules and go and run around in the sun. As long as you and your opponent(s) know what rules you will be using when you are drafting your warbands, you will all have access to success. Its your execution that will determine how close you come.

If you're a DM/GM looking to "spice things up" for your players then The Eightpints is a treasure trove of death and near-death experiences for all to enjoy.

When Vol. IX comes out you will find the depth that a fan of Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder lusts after. Vol. IX is written, the world just isn't yet ready for us to release it. Be patient. Its got girth.

Vol. IX expands the world in almost every dimension (hint: Eight dimensions) and provides the basic ruleset to do so, as well as exciting applications for these rules.

The question then becomes "What *can't* you do while adventuring in The Eightpints?" and the answer is "You can't catch Chlamydia". We also don't know how the mechanics of this would work using a D6 system. Worth noting that this isn't a gameplay feature that has cropped up on any of our player feedback/requests forms*.

*We did receive an email from a guy called Brian who told us that in fact he *did* catch Chlamydia from playing The Eightpints, and when we did a deep-dive analysis of the exact way this happened we concluded as follows: Brian, you didn't catch Chlamydia *from* playing The Eightpints, you caught Chlamydia *while* playing The Eightpints. There's a difference.

Turns out Brian's a multitasker.

Brian you legend.

We sit around under an umbrella sipping a cocktail, keeping out of the harsh sun of the Chamuscado Glass Wastes, while millions of semi-sentient Glass Shard Scarabs flick their wings open and closed, representing 0's and 1's as part of the world's largest open-air desert computational system. As we sit there in the shade, we strum death metal on a lute. Occasionally, we hum.

We use tools from both Google and Adobe to create the world of The Eightpints. We joke that its so that we can offload all responsibility for this pile of shizz onto a non-sentient being.

Some will know, and many will not, that The Eightpints is a world that sprung up in the Spring of '20 when the "real world" was all going to shizz. We decided to create our own world, which we think was a psychological defence mechanism for us to "control the shizz". The main plot involved a dog, a lot of whizz and a large amount of satire and laughs. It got us, and the people who stumbled across its "corner of the internet", through some strange times.

This creation, however, was based on the IP of a well known table top miniatures manufacturer. We enjoy their games and wish them well, however in order to really flesh out The Eightpints we decided we needed to operate under our own IP, and so have spent some time reworking every single part of The Eightpints so that it can stand on its own two feet, but still pay homage to all of the things that inspired it to come about in the first place. Things like Hotline Miami, Quentin Tarantino / Guy Ritchie / Matthew Vaughn / Martin Scorsese movies, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Afro Samurai, Terry Pratchett's Discworld, Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself and Best Served Cold, Chris Wooding's Tales of the Ketty Jay, and many more. The list is long.

Back onto the topic of AI:

In playing around with various AI tools, it seems that AI can create fairly "deep" and even "complex" notions, however we aren't sure (and haven't tried) to see if AI can generate notions as nuanced, complex and counterintuitive as, for example, the backstories for the Under-Over Scurry and The Foxglove Syndicate factions. There seems to be a sensible level of "morality" that Google and Adobe's AI tools enforce, and we expect that this morality would inhibit or fully prevent the joining of the dots that were joined for these two factions, specifically. In summary: for the really, truly weird bollocks that is still coherent, you need a human.

On the subject of where it is appropriate to use AI, we have one rule we ask ourselves: "Does this enhance, or detract, from the player experience?". If it detracts, we don't do it. If it enhances, we get the wings of the Glass Shard Scarabs fluttering.

An example of something we don't and won't use AI for: The Eightpints has fabulous art representing a whole manner of awesome warbands and beasts. A small number of them actually exist as models in "the real world", so far. It is very easy to take any of these images, throw them into an AI tool and (we won't give the prompt(s) away) ask that AI tool to generate photorealistic images of tabletop miniatures that would represent those images. Then, players could visit our website/socials and see awesome "photos" of miniatures that don't actually exist. This *wouldn't* be a great player experience, as players would then want to buy/obtain those miniatures to use in their games and collections. Its setting players up for a sort of "emotional fraud" because what they are seeing isn't obtainable with the same relative ease you would expect a wargaming miniature to be.

Thus, if you see any photos or videos from us of things that look "real" then those are, in fact, real.

The rest... well, none of it actually exists. But the subject matter is orcs, dwarves, elves and dragons. So you knew that already.

We did a lot of research before purchasing a 3D printer and decided that the Bambu Lab A1 gives us the perfect balance of what we are after: Prints higher in quality than our painting skills, and without the toxicity / faff of a Resin printer. The Bambu is an FDM printer that seems to break the rule of "you can't print true scale minis on an FDM printer". It can, and it does it with wonderful results.

The reason we still label our minis as "resin", however, is that the majority of FDM-printer owners aren't using a Bambu Lab A1, and thus if they are to put our minis (without increasing the size) into their FDM printer they may get results they aren't happy with. This isn't to say other FDM printers *can't* print our true scale minis in great resolution/quality, however based on the YouTube videos we have watched, it seems that this capability is rare.

Also - you need the settings (or similar) from HOHansen - see our "The Miniatures" page for the download link. HOHansen deserves 100% of the credit for "unlocking"/discovering that the Bambu Lab A1 can print true-scale minis with its 0.2mm nozzle.

What a great guy.

Thus, as resin printers tend to have the ability to print true-scale minis in great quality "out of the box", we are keeping our categorisation to "resin". We figure that anyone with a Bambu Lab A1 who knows they can print true scale minis using it will be searching with "resin" filters ticked on, in any case. We aim to delight them, and not disappoint others.

If anyone has any secrets to share, or wants us to help troubleshoot their prints - by all means, please get in contact: theeightpints@gmail.com

Yes:

1. All minis from The Eightpints are True Scale, not Heroic Scale. This means that all of their body parts are in proportion, instead of caricatured. They are sized to "the same approx height as the dominant tabletop wargame's minis". We personally question if this is the claimed "28mm or 32mm", however if those are, then these are too. Its important to note that that dimension is "6 ft" in the game world (either to eye-level or top off head). Thus, knowing that the Gilded Legion are of "Scandinavian" / Norse derivation, it makes sense that they tend to be taller than "6 ft". Tall Norse MFckers. Also, orcs are large, and humanoid apprentices small. The orc in the Alka-Haulers is "slim" in build as he is a technologist with a "classical" background, and the orcs in the Earth Gnashers are chunky, girthy MFckers with a hunched physique. Both are orcs, both are very different in shape and size. One type eats rocks. We're all different.

2. Being true scale, this means that certain items such as weapons can be "fiddley" when removing the 3D printed supports. If you are struggling, here's a tip: just cut the weapon/part off the main mini, remove the supports, then glue it back on. No sweat. When new techniques to print minis are developed (3D printing vs classic injection moulding) then it makes sense that new techniques to assemble, and also paint them, are necessitated. Each methodology requires certain nuances, and offers distinct benefits and challenges.

3. We print on a Bambu Lab A1 FDM printer use a 0.2mm nozzle for the figures and 0.4mm nozzle for the terrain. The minis take "a long time to print", however if you realise you can start printing in the morning, start your next one in the evening, and keep printing day and night (we do, no kidding) then over the course of 1 week you can have yourself and your Nan a warband each (4 to 8 figures per warband) and the next week you can print around 5 to 10 pieces of terrain. Two weeks: done! Realise this: Even with the 0.2mm nozzle printing very slowly and carefully (HOHansen settings), the Bambu Lab A1 prints faster than you can paint. Thus, it isn't the bottleneck in your warband / world building workflow. This statement is untrue if you are trying to print entire armies of miniatures. Maybe there is a reason The Eightpints is a warband "skirmish-size" game.

4. For figures we do EXACTLY this: Rotate -90 on the Z axis, rotate -60 on the X axis, add supports, then print. For the Transformed Beast we rotated by -50 degrees on the X axis, as it lined up better than -60 degrees: for each mini, use your eyes and decide "does this look like the highest chance of print success" before clicking *print*.

5. For terrain and beasts we recommend using your slicer to cut the mini in half along the XY plane. Choose a good spot that looks like you are getting a nice clean cut with minimal parts from each side needing to be glued back onto the other side. Ensure you flip one of the parts so that one of them is printing "upside down" and the other "the right way up". This will save you time, minimise the length of supports (and minimise breakages), and genuinely isn't a hassle. Having supports break can be a hassle, so try to avoid. flipping them in this manner also guarentees that the seam line will line up, even if certain parts of the print fail for whatever reason.

6. As of right now we have printed over 100+ minis, and we reckon we have a failure rate of around 8%, and the number of minis that fail to the point they need to be binned is around 3%. That's a good rate, and we tend to catch the failure within the first 2cm in any case.

7. Regularly cleaning the build plate is essential for larger terrain pieces, but negligible when printing small true scale minis one at a time in the centre of the build plate - its not like you are touching the centre with your fingers: you are using the scraper you printed to get them off, and lightly touching the edges to flex the mini off. Its these light edge-touches you need to clean when printing terrain.

8. For terrain we are using some custom settings that are derived from standard settings, using what we have learned from HOHansen's settings. We're still experimenting with "perfect" settings, but can share these tips: 0.4mm nozzle, ensure your "bottom shell thickness" is at least 2 layers, ensure you are Ironing the top surface. We use an Outer Brim, but given the size of terrain pieces we aren't sure this is necessary.

9. If you would like to translate the HOHansen settings to the FDM printer you own/use, we recommend downloading BambuStudio (its free) and importing the HOHansen settings you can download from our website (the The Miniatures page). Study these, and look for parallels in your own 3D printer's slicer that you use.

Sure, in 11 sequential steps:

1. Big bang

2. Bunch of fish

3. Fish crawls of out of the wet, into the the mud, forms first historically recorded warband

4. Warbands fight until a new faction called Early Man is identified in the Cradle of Humankind

5. Iterations of Early Man Factions fight Beasts and Skirmishes and go Questing all the way up Africa until they get to Europe, finally settling in Scandinavia

6. Early Man Factions start weaving Tall Tales called the Nibelungenlied about fancy notions including a dwarf called Gandalf

7. Warband leader JRR Tolkien is born in Bloemfontein, close to the Cradle of Humankind, creates derivative work from the Nibelungenlied and Völuspá, copies name Gandalf except he's a wizard now, not a dwarf

8. Warband leader Michael Moorcock invents the "chaos star" symbol of 8 arrows pointing outward, symbolising that whatever direction of travel you may take, there is a pint at the end of the rainbow. Symbol is adopted by various warbands worldwide, infinitum.

9. Warband leader Gary Gygax in US creates derivative work from JRR Tolkien's work involving dice and models

10. Bunch of friends / warband in UK create derivative work from JRR Tolkien's work, Gary Gygax's work, and Michael Moorcock's work, involving dice and models

11. Loads of warbands all over the northern hemisphere create derivative works of the above works, across every identifiable media type

12. Dude creates derivative work of these derivative works and calls it The Eightpints

Let's explore what this question actually means, and in the the words of a guy we once met in a pub, "A famous philosopher once said, "All philosophers would agree, if they were talking about the same thing"". This statement has stayed with us for nearly 2 decades, and, having just googled it, it turns out no one ever said that, but it is associated with "The Stoics" and their argument is "that disagreement often stems from false judgments acquired after birth, rather than our natural ability to use reason, implying that if we all used reason properly on the same subject, we would reach the same conclusions." Which is in the same neighbourhood as "the same thing".

Let's pause that there and take a step back: The Eightpints is a mildly philosophical game, where different warbands find differences not in race, gender, geographical origin or any of the "traditional bigotries", but in "source of truth" and "what is used to enact that truth" on the world. Once Vol. IX is released, this statement will be amended to "The Eightpints is a very philosophical game". Played in the mud.

Back on philosophy: we have used a decent amount of the stuff to create the game. Some of the core gods are based on the philosophical workings of various people whose ideas we found thematically suitable both to the game we are making, and contemporarily relevant concepts. Leviak is Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan and the Saturation Doctrine), Nzztche is Nietzsche (The Will to Power), Baudriarch is Baudelaire (superficiality), Archotek is neighbours with Bentham's Panopticon, Schopenfester is Schopenhauer (depression, but inverted: to triumph over it). The other gods of the Outer Circle are different types of "consumption".

Now, let's focus on Nietzsche: if this is the first time you have ever come across the word then you haven't played Arcanum. "Yet". It's a great game, we recommend it.

Anyhow Nietzsche, or "Uncle Neets" as some call him*, was a guy who did a whole lot of thinking, talking and writing. Quite a bit of it was thinking, talking and writing about how great he was at thinking, talking and writing. In modern English, we might call him "a bit of a nob". However his works stand the test of time, and that's what all great philosophy does: it doesn't matter what you apply it to, because it's themes are infinitely applicable, because they are about things like logic or human nature, which have core tenets that are eternally recurring.

So, now we're going to have a bit of fun: in order to simultaneously explore both the AI and Anti-AI sides of the argument, we are going to use both AI and manual means.

Let's start with the AI part: open up a Gemini tab (it's free) and type in, in your own words, something along the lines of "Please summarise the concepts of Nietzsche's essay about the Knight and the Priest"

Once you have read Gemini's reply, then ask, again in your own words, something along the lines of "Please now apply these concepts to the tabletop miniatures AI/Anti-AI debate", and read that reply too.

Now, don't get too hung up on the whole Knight/Priest thing. There's "a lot going on" there. What we want to focus on is that the output of our own two Gemini prompts here added an insightful analysis that what the AI/Anti-AI debate is actually about is where the perceived Value is. The Anti-AI side of the argument maintains that the value is in the object: the miniature, how it was created, the final visual result, and the hours of human effort that went into it. The AI side of the argument maintains that the value is in the companionship, comradery, and social exchanges that are enabled through the action of playing the game that the miniature is intended for.

Whether one side of this argument is right or wrong isn't the point: the point is that each side of the argument places value in something different, and thus, based on the argument being a manifestation of the principles of an argument that transcends place and time, and is eternally relevant (Nietzsche's Knight/Priest), we infer that the AI/Anti-AI argument is, also, never going to go away or be fully resolved: while macro and micro trends in tabletop miniatures gaming will change the percentage of players that belong to each "side" and the "gradient" between, there will forever be gamers who actively seek games that use AI, gamers who don't care if a game uses AI, gamers who prefer games that don't use AI, and gamers who actively boycott entire studios if they even sniff one drop of AI in the "factory runoff".

We're going to, again, pause the proceedings to share an abbreviated exchange we had with a 3D model download site. It was a series of emails that functionally and tonally went like this:

3D model site: Hello The Eightpints, are you using any AI in your workflow for any of your models?

The Eightpints: In fact yes, 100% of our models use AI in at least one step in our end-to-end workflow, and our reasoning is this [we stated our reasoning]

3D model site: Ah! Thanks for being honest, we respect your reasoning, here is our reasoning for our Anti-AI stance [they stated their reasoning]

The Eightpints: That's totally cool, you have a great site and we wish you all the very best.

What you can see is that two parties on opposite "sides" of the argument, who each see the value as being in a different part of the overall tabletop miniatures experience, each have mutual respect for the reasoning and positioning of the other. This is important.

Now we move onto the next part of our discussion: the part where we use manual means to learn some new things: find yourself a copy of the book Rat Roads by Jacques Pauw. It's a non-fiction book about a man called Kennedy Gihana who was "caught up" in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and then walked to South Africa and worked as a security guard while he studied law and ended up becoming a lawyer in the high court. It's the best book that's even been written. Even better than The Hobbit. We promise.

Now, what we are doing here, which, as we stated earlier is quite "fun", is earlier we encouraged using AI to accelerate the process of learning about Nietzsche's Knight/Priest essay, and now we are encouraging not using AI, but using a manual method to learn about the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 and part of the life story of Kennedy Gihana: buying the book, waiting through the purchase/download/delivery steps, reading each page, including the ones that include photos of massacred bodies.

Which method leads to a better [learning] experience? Which leads to a more thorough and satisfactory outcome? We would position our thoughts as follows: all we want from the exploration of Nietzche's essay is the general gist and the useful analysis/takeaways, so it's better to use AI to get this result than wade knee-deep into Nietsche. It's hard stuff. However, if you've got this far and didn't actually buy Rat Roads and manually read it cover to cover, but if you have done any research on it at all, then we assure you, to the core, that anything aside from reading the actual book has been a surface-level engagement with the materials within, and you are missing out. None of an AI summary, Wikipedia entry or Amazon webstore blurb will enable the outcome that is intended or achievable: it is only achievable by dragging your eyes, word by word, over every printed page. The genocide is truly horrifying. Kennedy Gihana's story is truly inspirational.

Let's move back to lighter matters for a bit: Around a decade-ish ago we read the stat that "only 20% to 40% of people who own tabletop wargame miniatures actually "play the game"". Whether the stat is slightly higher or slightly lower is immaterial: the point is that a good proportion of tabletop miniatures owners play the game, and a good proportion do not play the game.

The people who own the miniatures but do not play the game see value in the miniatures themselves, the people who play the game are somewhere on a sliding scale between seeing value in the miniatures themselves and seeing value in the game experience itself. Likely a healthy mix**.

Back on track: Now that we have established that there are two clear categories of miniatures owner - one that plays the game and one that does not - we can start taking a windy-walk back up through our thought progression:

1. There are partakers in the hobby who see value in owning miniatures and there are partakers in the hobby who see value in playing games involving miniatures, and there is a sliding scale between these two groups. For one group the value is the effort, art and/or ownership, for the other the value is in the social engagement and social expression of the hobby. Again - there is a sliding scale between these groups, they are not mutually exclusive.

2. AI does not cater for every type of experience: it is great for efficiency, but lacklustre for genuine depth of experience.

3. Thus, we need to define what the actual "experience" is:

4. Depending on the experience you, personally are after, AI may suit you and your mates very well or very poorly: if, for you, the outcome is art resulting from effort, then AI is not for you. If, on the other hand, the outcome is social engagement and delightful conversation with your mates then AI is able to accelerate your ability to obtain this, and widen the array of social flavours to choose from, and then AI is very much for you.

5. As there will forever be groups of hobby partakers in the different Pro-AI/AI-Agnostic/AI-Avoidant/AI-Inquisition camps, let's all try and be respectful to each other and not actively defile other people's expressions of the way they personally see the hobby and personally want to engage with it and their mates/community.

To wrap up, and in the context of the comparative weight of Kennedy Gihana's journey in Rat Roads, we are going to leave this thought on the table: If we are asked the question "Where do you stand on the tabletop gaming AI/Anti-AI debate?", then, with exactly the same psychological outcomes intended, we respond with the words of Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix: "There is no debate".

*Pretty sure no one calls him this. **Side note: When and where we first encountered wargaming, the game experience regularly had players pushing empty wooden rectangles around the board, pretending the rectangles had miniatures standing on them, anticipating that when they had enough money, they would buy the miniatures these boards represented.

Certainly: Our stance can be seen by following these exact steps: 1. Open up Gemini

2. Type in "Please summarise Jean-Paul Sartre's "Bad Faith" concept"

3. Read the response, then type in "Please apply this concept to the tabletop wargaming AI/Anti-AI debate"

4. Read the response, then type in "Would you say then, that bad faith is pointing a middle finger at each side of the debate, and saying "define yourself, do not let the debate define you"?"

5. Read that response.

The final few sentences that resulted from Step 4, for us, read as follows: The "Authentic" Wargamer

To Sartre, the "Authentic" wargamer is the one who stands in the middle of the storm and says:

In this view, the "debate" is just background noise. The only thing that is "real" is the individual consciousness making a decision. If you let the debate define your identity, you’re just the "Waiter" again—performing a role (The Pro-AI Guy or The Luddite) rather than being a human who creates.

It’s a call to radical responsibility. If your lore is boring because you used AI, that's on you. If your hobby feels stagnant because you refused to adapt to new tools, that's also on you.

Thanks, Jean-Paul.

We have run this same set of prompts a few times ourselves and each time a slightly different result, results. This is exciting. One of them left us with the following last thought(s):

The Existentialist "Win"

In a Sartrean world, the "winner" of the AI debate isn't the side that proves they are "more moral" or "more efficient." The winner is the person who stands in the middle of the chaos, looks at both options, and says:

"I know nothing is forcing me to pick either, but I choose this—and the consequences are mine alone."

Its almost as if its saying "Be a leader".

We then say, "Be a leader, and start a warband".

[smiley face]

In designing the social stats for The Eightpints we knew we wanted to have two social stats that were broad enough that they could be applied in many different contexts, and suited the types of interactions that warbands tend to have with the world. Clout was fairly easy although we dabbled with the exact word we wanted to use. Clout has the right blend of both "reputation" and in-person "physicality" that suits the thematic DNA of a warband.

Metvél-Kaltos was a bit more of an exciting challenge. Other games have various ways of phrasing Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma, however that is three different stats and we want one stat that can simultaneously indicate the driving stat behind a powerful mage's cognitive ability, a street-thug's street savvy and a rogue's kinetic understanding of how to interact with the world to get results, and fast. Dexterity is "how to pick the lock", Metvél-Kaltos is "how the lock works and the exact steps to pick it, why picking the lock is a good idea, and when is the best time to pick the lock, based on your summation of the full situation in the room". Dexterity is simply how good you are at wiggling the lock pick.

Intelligence has, for much of history, been confined to definitions that constrain it to what you might broadly call "cognitive abilities like arithmetic". However, in the past few decades things like "emotional intelligence", "kinetic intelligence" and the yarn-old "street intelligence" have been identified. They've always been there, but the people who spend their time writing things down don't seem to have spent much time considering or acknowledging them.

So - we needed one word that encapsulated all of these different types of intelligence, as well as wisdom. Charisma is more thematically defined as just one of the colours of the rainbow that results when you refract a beam of Metvél-Kaltos through a glass triangle of Clout.

We looked at a variety of different languages, current and ancient, ranging from Europe across to Asia, isolated certain syllables that were contained in words from those languages that encapsulated aspects of the concepts in the preceding paragraphs and nailed them together onto a word which gives the right level of mystique and intrigue we are looking for, as well as encompassing definition of what we are after.

We're delighted with it.

No idea. We don't actively track our stats, however on occasion we click into our analytics and are delighted to see players from countries we have never visited, visiting www.TheEightpints.com.

Places like Kenya, Nigeria, Singapore, Argentina, Türkiye, Egypt, Falkeinstein. Had to Google that last one. Lots of US states we would love to visit and eat a juicy hamburger in. Its delightful to see that with our free PDFs and free 3D Printable models, we are giving access to players all over the world who would otherwise not be able to play tabletop wargames due to logistical or financial barriers.

While we don't know for sure, we like to think that someone somewhere is using the pieces of a second hand chess set as their warband miniatures. Carved from Jacaré teeth.

We came across a news article the other day that was very much "our vibe": The developers of "Helldivers 2" have publicly stated that its very hard for them to get player feedback, because, instead of spending time posting about the game online, their player base actively spends their time playing the game. Enjoying what the game is intended for.

This is "our type of player": a person who finds The Eightpints' "corner of the internet", delights, and decides, "Fuxk yeah this is the shizz for me", downloads it, plays it, brings joy into their life and the lives of the people the interact with, and just gets on with it. No doomscrolling, just dice rolling.

We've never played Helldivers 2, but have seen a graphic from it, and based on this and this alone, our assessment is that 1. It Looks Cool and 2. It Is More Real Than Burkina Faso.

IF

You truly understand the phrase, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"

AND

You enjoy sitting at a table with your mates, chatting shizz, with everyone having a good time

THEN

The Eightpints is very much "For You".

So glad you asked. We should have a pint or a tea & a biscuit together sometime. Maybe both. Here you go:

Open up Gemini and type in: "Please can you apply the philosophies of Anthony Bourdain to www.TheEightpints.com"

Open up another Gemini tab and type in "Please can you apply the philosophies of Marco Pierre White to www.TheEightpints.com"

You now have some guidance on how these two great and influential "modern philosophers" would interact with the The Eightpints.

To layer your depth and breadth of experience, tell Gemini a bit about yourself, ask Gemini to then find a philosopher whose work relates to your own general world views, and then have those philosophies "applied" to the world of The Eightpints. When you play The Eightpints, you are now actively holding a palette from which to enact your narrative will and colour Your Eightpints.

You have probably realised by now that while The Eightpints is mechanically wholesome, the real point is not to enact your mechanical will on The Eightpints, it is to enact your narrative will on the story you (and your mates) are procedurally creating.

You paint the canvas. We just provide the paints.

We recommend From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp.

It is used across the world by communities who are oppressed by dictators, to learn how to overcome tyranny and drive their communities forward through peaceful means. It was a component of the Arab Spring, and possession of it is genuinely illegal in at least 3 countries.

We haven't read it, however if we ever meet you in a pub over a beer and/or tea & a biscuit, we look forward to hearing about it through the lens that you view the world.

Play it and tell your nan how much fun you had. Also all of her friends.

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