Haddow: A Life Simulator

How to start

1. Open it in your AI. Tap Open in ChatGPT or Open in Claude and press send, or paste the play prompt into any assistant that can open links. No web access? Copy the full game card instead: nothing is sealed, so the pasted card plays the whole game.
2. Choose a home. Pick the farm, the shop, the harbour cottage or the railway terrace, and an invented name for the life. Each home starts with its own scores for the four strands of a life (body, craft, kin and purse) and reads the tape from its own place.
3. Five years a turn. Each turn the tape deals an event. Name one of its two options and a focus: body, craft, kin or purse, or a venture when that stage of life offers one.
4. Save, close, check. Say save at any pause to carry the life to a new chat. When the life closes, rebuild the tape at aigamecards.com/verify.

Questions

Can ChatGPT run a life sim that remembers?

Not reliably from a typed prompt. Chat memory, where it is switched on, can recall that you played; it does not fix the next event before it happens or carry a life's exact numbers into a new chat. This card is a life simulator prompt that does both: every event comes off a d20 tape printed on the card before you play, read through printed tables, and a save code carries the whole life (the four strands, the floors, the keepsakes and a line recording every choice) into a new chat, where the card tells the AI to replay that line and rebuild every number before it carries on. Open it in your AI, or paste it.

What does the dice tape prove, and what doesn't it?

It proves the dice were fixed before you started: a d20 tape seeded haddow:1.0.0, printed on the card and rebuildable at aigamecards.com/verify. Everyone who plays this edition gets the same tape. Each of the four homes reads it from its own starting point, so the homes live different lives, and your choices and your strands decide which event each value lands on. It does not prove every sum the AI does, so the card tells the AI to show each turn's arithmetic, and a correction rule lets you have a misread recomputed. Reading ahead is allowed; on this tape it is worth 0 to 10 points over perfect turn-by-turn play, depending on the home.

How is the score worked out, and can I win by maxing one thing?

At the end of each of the five stages of life, your lowest strand is recorded as that stage's floor (in childhood, the lowest of body, craft and kin) and scores 2 a point; each kind of keepsake (ten kinds, from an oar to a doorframe) is worth 4; and each five years lived past seventy adds 2. A strand far above the floor adds nothing. On this card's tape, no life that puts every focus on one strand reaches par: such lives score 14 to 58 across every option path. Random play averages 35 to 46. Par is 60; perfect turn-by-turn play scores 72 to 86, and the best lines are 82 to 90 depending on the home.

Is it suitable for teenagers or a family?

It is rated 12+ for its content: both parents' deaths (shown or reported), old friends lost, money worries and old age, all named plainly and never described, and the character's own death in old age, told in one plain sentence. By design this life has no romance, no partner and no children of its own, and no alcohol, drugs, gambling or crime; asked for a marriage, the card tells the AI to say plainly that it tells a life without one. Your AI app's own age rules apply first, and a younger player should have an adult at the keyboard or alongside. The card asks for no real name: the life gets an invented one. If a message sounds like the player, not the character, is going through something hard (a death, an illness, abuse, or simply struggling), the card tells the AI to step out of the game with a short fixed reply and wait, and to point to a crisis line when there is any sign of self-harm or danger.

How long is it, can I stop, and what if my chat can't open links?

Seventeen turns at most, about 40 to 60 minutes. Say "save" on its own and the card prints a save code; open the game in a new chat and send the code as your first message, or use aigamecards.com/resume. Say "close the book" to stop the story where it stands: nobody dies, and it scores 0. Nothing is sealed, so if your chat can't open links, pasting the full card plays the whole game.