/r/rational Weekly Challenge

	A	B	C	D	E
1	Prompt	Summary:	Thread Date	Suggested by (optional)	Thread link

2	Portal Fantasy	Someone opens a portal to another world, where things work much differently than our own	6/17/2015	alexanderwales	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3a7ypf/weekly_challenge_portal_fantasy/
3	One-Man Industrial Revolution	A single person is at the center of rapid and startling societal advancements	6/24/2015	alexanderwales	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3b0aqq/weekly_challenge_oneman_industrial_revolution/
4	Buggy Matrix	Reality's a simulation....and it's glitching.	7/1/2015	xamueljones	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3bt5o2/weekly_challenge_buggy_matrix/
5	Ever After	The hero has won. Now he/she must reign.	7/8/2015	qznc	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3clxme/weekly_challenge_ever_after/
6	The Chosen One	"It's one thing to think that you're the center of the universe. It's another thing entirely to have this confirmed by an ancient prophecy." - Douglas Adams	7/15/2015	Chronophilia	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3dftrx/weekly_challenge_the_chosen_one/
7	Rational Horror	Existential horror? Lovecraftian unknowability? Genre-savvy?	7/22/2015	alexanderwales	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3e98lr/weekly_challenge_rational_horror/
8	The Chessmaster		7/29/2015	TVTropes	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3f39xs/weekly_challenge_the_chessmaster/
9	Clones, Clones, and Clones!	Multiple copies of one person interact.	8/5/2015	xamueljones	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3fxp28/weekly_challenge_clones_clones_and_clones/
10	Disney Movies		8/12/2015	alexanderwales	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3gs5ko/weekly_challenge_disney_movies/
11	Science is bad / Evil Science	We're all familiar with Caveman Science Fiction; this is your chance to do it right.	8/19/2015	qznc	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3hnau9/weekly_challenge_science_is_bad/
12	Dueling time travelers	"and there had been an Auror assigned to track down this unknown time-criminal, who had also been given a Time-Turner; and the story ended with both of them in St. Mungo's ward for Total Unrecoverable Nutcases." also Dr Who the curse of the fatal death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-wDPoC6GM	8/26/2015	Empiricist_or_not	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3iiztn/weekly_challenge_dueling_time_travelers/
13	Dinosaurs	Scientists can clone dinosaurs	9/2/2015	qznc	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3jf4jw/weekly_challenge_dinosaurs/
14	Defied Prophecy	You know what? Screw destiny! There's no fate but what we make and if prophecy says that something is impossible, we'll just have to go beyond the impossible.	9/9/2015	eaturbrainz	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3kb87f/weekly_challenge_defied_prophecy/
15	Blue and Orange Morality	It's not good and evil, it's not law and chaos, it's some third axis that (tends to) lie perpendicular to normal human political axes.	9/16/2015		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3l8fkc/weekly_challenge_blue_and_orange_morality/
16	Dangerously Genre Savvy	In short, this is the person that defies genre conventions whenever those genre conventions would put them at a disadvantage. They know how things go in horror movies and don't want to end up as the next victim. They've seen too many heroes escape from elaborate death traps. And they're definitely not going to tell you their plans if there was the slightest possibility that you could change the outcome.	9/23/2015		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3m4s4n/biweekly_challenge_dangerously_genre_savvy/
17	Precommitment	In the classic game theory sense, precommitment means that in a game of chicken, you throw your steering wheel out the window so that there's no element of choice involved and any rational actor will know that you're incapable of changing your mind.	10/7/2015		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3nwfh6/biweekly_challenge_precommitment/
18	Fables and Legends	covers everything from Aesop's Fables to Hansel and Gretel, with a lot of leeway.	10/21/2015		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3pp3lw/biweekly_challenge_fables_and_legends/
19	Amnesia	or more generally, the loss of knowledge. This covers everything from self-editing of memories to antimemetics.	11/5/2015		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3rk5kv/biweekly_challenge_amnesia/
20	Cryonics	pre-suspension, post-suspension, or somewhere in between.	11/19/2015		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3td743/biweekly_challenge_cryonics/
21	Deal with the Devil	the Faustian Bargain between a large, powerful entity and a desperate sucker counter party	12/3/2015		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3v8b1j/biweekly_challenge_deal_with_the_devil/
22	Dungeons & Dragons		12/16/2015		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3x58rz/biweekly_challenge_dungeons_dragons/
23	Paperclipper	A paperclipper (or paperclip optimizer) is a hypothetical unfriendly artificial intelligence (UFAI) which has a utility function set to "optimize for paperclips". The shortest path to doing this is to make paperclips out of everything on the planet, which includes all of humanity.	12/30/2015		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3yuejk/biweekly_challenge_paperclipper/
24	Immortality		1/13/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/40uw4i/biweekly_challenge_immortality/
25	Star Wars		1/27/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/430hg8/biweekly_challenge_star_wars/
26	New Age	Homeopathy, crystal healing, astrological signs, tarot readings, palm readings, spiritualism, etc.	2/10/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/430hg8/biweekly_challenge_star_wars/?sort=confidence
27	First Contact	The first meeting of two cultures previously unaware of one another.	2/25/2016	Chronophilia	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/47g108/biweekly_challenge_first_contact/
28	Mere Reality	Taking agency in the here and now, with modest means and some smarts.	3/9/2016	imuli	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/49qw3o/biweekly_challenge_mere_reality/
29	Precognition		3/23/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4booom/biweekly_challenge_precognition/
30	Anime/Manga		4/6/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4docs7/biweekly_challenge_animemanga/
31	Cat and Mouse	Survive while fleeing (or pursing) your foe	4/20/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4fq36r/biweekly_challenge_cat_and_mouse/
32	Romance	A rational agent's instrumental or terminal goal is to secure a romantic partner, by which is meant a partner with whom the agent shares love characterized by agape (and optionally eros). Think rational Jane Austen, if confused.	5/4/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4hx2rs/biweekly_challenge_romance/
33	Plane of Garbage	There exists magic which can create objects ex nihilo. Over time, this has led to a build up of garbage, as wizards create a set of chairs for a dinner party then never use them again, or discard their leftover magically-created food. A counterpart spell was created which vanishes unwanted things. Your story should involve the discovery, exploration, or exploitation of the Plane of Garbage some centuries later.	5/18/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4jzc06/biweekly_challenge_plane_of_garbage/
34	Power Failure	Phlebotinium stops working	6/1/2016	Evan	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4m41h1/biweekly_challenge_power_failure/
35	Space Battles	Battles! In Spaaaaaace!	6/15/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4oa5ti/biweekly_challenge_space_battles/
36	Reverse Portal Fantasy	A character from a fictional setting is transported into our world, where things work according to physics rather than what they're used to.	6/29/2016	Xevothok	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4qie80/biweekly_challenge_reverse_portal_fantasy/
37	Happy Stories		7/13/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4sq04k/biweekly_challenge_happy_stories/
38	Superheros		7/27/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4uxg75/biweekly_challenge_superheroes/
39	Black and White Morality	pure good and ultimate evil	8/10/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4x4w7v/biweekly_challenge_black_and_white_morality/
40	Black and white morality		8/16/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4x4w7v/biweekly_challenge_black_and_white_morality/?sort=confidence
41	Underground	Takes place mostly underground, whether it's in a cave, a bunker, a basement, or during a journey to the center of the earth.	8/24/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4zfbud/biweekly_challenge_underground/
42	Moloch		9/7/2016	qznc	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/51o2cs/biweekly_challenge_moloch/
43	Memory Modification	Involves the alteration of memories in some way, whether through memetics, anti-memetics, erasure, neural tinkering, or anything else.	9/21/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/53w0yx/biweekly_challenge_memory_modification/
44	Elves	http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurElvesAreBetter	10/6/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/562p2g/biweekly_challenge_elves/
45	Androids	Humaniform Robots	10/19/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/58dfvg/biweekly_challenge_androids/
46	Politics	Treat with caution.	11/2/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5atbbp/biweekly_challenge_politics/
47	Magic Systems	Adapt a magic system from a work of fantasy, or create your own from scratch, then show at least some subset of the consequences or tricks.	11/17/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5dd49p/biweekly_challenge_magic_systems/
48	Sherlock Holmes		12/1/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5ftk0q/biweekly_challenge_sherlock_holmes/
49	The Gamer	Your protagonist (or antagonist, or at least one of the characters in your story) has some or all of the abilities of a character from a video game or possibly board game.	12/14/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5ie3aw/biweekly_challenge_the_gamer/
50	The Heist	The basic premise is that people are stealing something from somewhere. Think Mistborn or Inception or Ocean’s 11.	12/28/2016		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5ktjoj/biweekly_challenge_the_heist/
51	Megastructures	You're free to interpret what scale qualifies, but most of my favorites go really, really big.	1/11/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5nfrlg/biweekly_challenge_megastructures/?sort=confidence
52	Utility Monster	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster	1/26/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5q71ml/weekly_challenge_utility_monster/
53	Games	It's your choice of either games in the sense of gamification, or games as conflict resolution, though ideally I'd like to see a mix of both.	2/28/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5wmkww/biweekly_challenge_games/
54	Conflict: Man vs Nature	story should depict a person pitted against an animal or some other external force of nature. The most common type of Man vs Nature conflict is a natural disaster, though simply surviving in a hostile environment counts and some varieties of hunting stories do as well.	3/16/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5zobkb/biweekly_challenge_man_vs_nature/
55	Weirdtopia	A story set in a world which defies sensibilities rather than confirming them in a positive or negative way like (most) utopias and dystopias do.	3/30/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/62byv5/biweekly_challenge_weirdtopia/
56	Anime/Manga	Any submission needs to be fanfiction of some anime and/or manga.	4/3/2017	/u/kishoto	https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4docs7/biweekly_challenge_animemanga/
57	Twenty Minutes in the Future	A story set a relatively short time in the future, where changes to society are extrapolations on what's currently going on in the world of science, technology, politics, etc. The term "eerily plausible" often comes up for this kind of story.	4/13/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/657rkh/biweekly_challenge_20_minutes_in_the_future/
58	Monster Mash	Your choice of mummies, vampires, werewolves, or Frankenstein('s monster). For extra credit, use them all together.	4/28/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/67zt5y/biweekly_challenge_monster_mash/
59	Fanfic Grab Bag	Must be a fanfiction of a recent work, ideally popular to lower entry threshold	5/11/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6agtna/biweekly_challenge_fanfic_grabbag/
60	Low Budget	Prose fiction doesn't actually have budgets, so pretend that you're writing a short story that's intended to work as a pitch for either a short film or indie movie on a shoestring budget.	5/26/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6def1q/biweekly_challenge_low_budget/
61	Gods	If you're writing a story that involves a real world religion, try not to be a dick about it.	6/8/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6fxuzy/biweekly_challenge_gods/
62	Barrier Maiden	The girl is alone, holdling back the darkness. She's too young to die...	6/24/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6iqyxi/biweekly_challenge_barrier_maiden/
63	Quantum Immortality and Suicide	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality	7/6/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6lpb1z/biweekly_challenge_quantum_suicide_and_immortality/
64	Moore’s Law	Moore's Law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. It is widely considered to be a driving force in technological change. Similar observations have been made for things other than integrated circuits, such as quality adjusted price for IT equipment.	7/21/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6okl44/biweekly_challenge_moores_law/
65	Eschaton	A story about the ultimate fate of the world, whether that's its utopic, dystopic, weirdtopic, or apocalyptic.	8/3/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6r8w0o/biweekly_challenge_eschaton/
66	Metafiction	A story which in some sense acknowledges that it is a story.	8/17/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6udfhy/biweekly_challenge_metafiction/
67	Effective Altruism	In short, using your resources to do the most good.	9/2/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6xj599/biweekly_challenge_effective_altruism/
68	Emulated Intelligence	Whole Brain Emulation is a hypothetical technology which would allow a human mind to run on a computer simulating neurons rather than on physical neurons. This would allow things like time dilation, copying minds, reverting thoughts, and all sorts of other things that currently apply only to data (because a brain, in this scenario, becomes data).	9/21/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/71ke1m/biweekly_challenge_emulated_intelligence/
69	SCP	pertaining to some kind of horrible anomalous thing. These documents usually hint at the shadowy SCP Foundation and are redacted for either effect or verisimilitude.	10/4/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/749k9r/biweekly_challenge_scp/
70	Slasher Movies	horror	10/19/2017		https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/77bdep/biweekly_challenge_slasher_movies/
71	Actual evil	Usually we don't see actual evil—people usually have some internal positive justification for their actions. This is about true evil, evil for evil's own sake.
72	Again. And again. And again...	The prophecy starts over every once in a while		pickten
73	Alien Gate	"Long ago, beings from beyond the stars visited this place..."		ShannonAlther
74	Amnesia	You wake up in an unknown place, with no memory of who you are
75	Angels	People have personal guardian angels watching out for them		qznc
76	Anti-predator adaptation	A single shapeshifter is being hunted by the world.		Dykster
77	Antimemetics	How do you fight something that you don't remember exist?
78	At the Cross	The One was just killed and the prophecy became void.		qznc
79	Book of Spells	Something has just been found, something that will give the one who finds it incredible power
80	Cartoon Physics	All the rules of a cartoon universe apply, make the most of it
81	Cassandra's Plea	Almost everyone ignores the warnings of the prophet. Can the heedful avert disaster?		ZeroNihilist
82	Collapse	The benevolent empire is collapsing, the edges are falling into barbarism. (Any time period)		NotTheDarkLord
83	Competence Porn	The protagonist isn't a superhero -- they're just that good
84	Conspiracy	The conspiracy theories were true. All of them.
85	Corruption	Bits flipping, money changing hands, your take on c̥̗̻̭̫̜ͤ͆̊́o̵̖̺̒ͪ̏͜r̆ͮ̾̋̎́̍̈́̽҉̶̯̞͓̤r̷̨̥͙̣̺͓̋͂͠ͅu̍ͦ̇̓̍̾̿̀҉̥̣p̥̲̝͙̬̲̖ͮ̏̀ͦ̇ͭt̷͓̺͉͉͒̈́̓͒̂̌͊ͬ̔i̶̮͓͉͇̪̓ͣ̅̒̓̉̈ͦͦ͟oͯ͋͐ͯ̎͝͏̰̹nͭ͌̃̃̇҉̧̪̲̯͎.
86	Dealing with Villains	Everyone's a villain in someone else's story.		xamueljones
87	Death Book	You find a book. If you write someones name in it, that person dies		qznc
88	Demon Invasion	Portals to Hell open and ugly demons run amok		qznc
89	Elementary!	All the facts are known; it only remains to make the deduction.		jalapeno_dude
90	Enforced Mental Block	How do you act rationally when you have been engineered not to think of the correct answer?
91	Exodus	Earth is about to be destroyed. Some humans can take flight to Mars.		qznc
92	Fantasy movie plot	We all say that low budget fantasy flicks have horrible plot. So write a rational plot for a fantasy movie with a lwo budget (should be decided if budget is 200 000 o 2 milions)
93	FOOM Post Apocalypse	Singularity happened, badly, (trans?)humanity endures. E.G. The flower prince trillogy, Pre-diaspora Accelerando, Eclipse Phase		Empiricist_or_not
94	Funny	Humor
95	Game Theory	From prisoners dilemma to more complex situations, how will the protag deal with what looks like a zero-sum game?
96	Genjitsu	Sort your way through the illusions to find reality
97	Genre Savvy	The antagonist knows that they're the antagonist, and isn't about to fall for any of the traps that antagonists fall into		alexanderwales
98	Greater Scope Villain(Bigger Bad)	There is the Big Bad, a character directly responsible for the plot but what about a greater enemy that is indirectly responsible for the plot?		TVTropes
99	Grim Reaper	Death itself follows you
100	Haunting	Trying to be rational as a ghost is hard, especially when your every attempt at communication seems to turn out more like a horror story than a conversation.