What the Assassin's Guild Taught Me About Distributed Computing

Abstract

Distributed computing and live-action roleplaying share many of thesame fundamental problems, as live-action roleplaying games commonly include simulations carried out by their players.Games run by the MIT Assassin's Guild are particularly illustrative ofdistributed computing issues due to their large scope and highcomplexity.I discuss three distributed computing issues addressed by Assassin'sGuild game design---information hiding, error correction, andliveness/consistency tradeoffs---and the relevance of the solutionsused by game writers to current problems in distributed computing.