Inferential Game: The Foraging (Ex-)Bandit

abstractapplic11 Nov 2024 16:59 UTC
18 points
4 comments1 min readLW link

The encampment is empty when you awaken. This isn’t necessarily a bad sign, as you weren’t sure you’d wake up at all: there were a lot of ways your fellow bandits could have taken your impassioned impromptu speech exhorting them to “be a bit more Robin Hood about the whole thing”, and departing in the dead of night was by no means the worst. Between your continued existence, and the surprisingly generous amount of weapons and ammo which were left behind with you, you find yourself feeling rather relieved, and even a little grateful.

These feelings last until you visit the nearest town – hoping to trade bullets for food and a ticket home, so you can forget this sorry chapter of your life – and notice WANTED posters featuring your face on every wall. Your brief and understandably tense interactions with the locals clarify that you have been named as your erstwhile gang’s ringleader, that you are emphatically unwelcome in any of the shops in town, that a team of unstoppable mercenaries will be coming for you in a little under two months, and that “I assumed they were dashing desperados when I joined” is not typically considered an extenuating factor.

Your only remaining option is to forage for food and head home on foot, before the bounty hunters show up. Fortunately, your campsite was chosen for its closeness to an abundance of easy foraging sites, and you’ve already figured out how to safely and reliably preserve and prepare the ingredients sourced from them. Unfortunately, you were too busy cooking to help your fellow bandits forage[1], so you have no idea which sites yielded which yields in what quantities; also, the only viable path back has no opportunities to replenish your stockpile en route.

You have sixty days to explore and exploit the sites around the encampment, hunting[2] and gathering enough food to keep yourself alive, and stockpiling enough to reach safety before starving. Good luck!

Notes

  • This game shouldn’t take more than ~10min to play, runs in-browser, and is not intended to be replayed.

  • Unlike in the classic bandit problem, outcomes can be affected by chronological effects and/​or earlier choices. Figuring out where and how this happens is an intended part of the challenge.

  • Data Science skills might be useful here, but will not be necessary.

  • You are warmly encouraged to share and compare completed game records in the comments.

  • Feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated.

  1. ^

    You’d originally thought they were asking you to be their chief, and by the time you figured out your mistake it was too awkward to back down.

  2. ^

    You are sufficiently well-armed that nothing you hunt will be able to harm you. Indeed – you consider, feeling your revolver in its place on your belt between your other revolver and your other other revolver – you could justifiably call your current predicament a multi-armed (ex-)bandit problem.

abstractapplic11 Nov 2024 16:59 UTC
18 points
4 comments1 min readLW link