Introducing the new Inuwatabetai RoboPlayer 2000! Yes, this fine device can sit in as a player in YOUR RPG sessions. Its operation is perfectly simple:

- Using GM's descriptions and game rules as input, construct a "database" of potential actions and how they relate to each other;

- Using some information about a 'character' to play - either internally generated or supplied to it - together with a 'premise', 'social contract', 'group focus' and similiar, generate a "program" of judgment rules that return score values for potential action;

- When time comes to act in the game, look at all possible/appropriate actions in the database, judge each action using the rules in the program, and emit the one that produces the highest score.

The questions:

- Can RoboPlayer play this way?

- Can RoboPlayer be a good player this way? Could he be one if he had a really good program?

- What can a human player do that RoboPlayer can't? (One answer is "play author/director stance games", I think. So, what can a human player do in an Actor stance game that RoboPlayer can't?)

- Is it possible for a GM *not* to railroad RoboPlayer?

- Is it possible for a GM *not* to railroad RoboPlayer if the GM knows RoboPlayer's program and the program contains no ambiguity? How much of the program can the GM know before this problem arises?

Apart from the obvious logistical problems of a Roboplayer implementation, I have a couple questions.

Are you serious?

I'm assuming this would be a program for use on a laptop or desktop computer?

As far as the GM railroading issue, careful attention would need to be paid to what info was fed to Roboplayer. Leave something out (the location of a door, for example) and you run the risk of erroneously limiting Roboplayer's options.

Could Roboplayer be a good player? Yeah, I think so. Probably a little too good, in that it could tend to be fairly predictable without a sophisticated AI.

I don't think the Roboplayer will be of much use. It may seem like a great convenience, and a lot of people might buy it, but in the end I see them left out or still sitting in the closet. Why?

Initiative.

What you've defined is the responsive ideal. This player is totally reactive, not proactive in any way. I watch humanity sometimes with an 'outside perspective' and one thing I can tell you is they want interaction, not just reaction. Oh it's easy to find people who get a little too much interruption willing to extol the virtues of a simply reactive partner, but left alone with them, it pales.

The subtle thing at work is that, over the long term, no matter how attentive, obsequious, and sycophant-like, the Roboplayer will slowly give the impression that they just don't care. Longer and it actually starts seeming insulting. Everybody needs 'somebody on their side,' but in the complete absence of criticism, the 'disconnectedness' will read patronizingly.

Ron's friend Mario isn't like this, he takes an active role in supporting; I believe he'll jump in with...well, we call them the 'straight lines.' Delivering 'straight lines' is a difficult art, but with timing and the ability to 'see where things are going' they are an invaluable tool towards heightening play. Roboplayer doesn't do this, he merely reacts, does his part, fills in, smoothes things over; ultimately his play will 'flatten' the tenor of the game.

I really wanted to get at some of this in my Emergent Technique regarding Player Ambitions for Scattershot. What you've described for Roboplayer is more or less one step below Passive Commitment and I'd argue that Roboplayer isn't really playing the game at all. If anything he's 'playing the crowd.'

And if that isn't patronizing, I'm not sure what is.

Fang Langford

p. s. Actually, Roboplayer should be equally good at Author and Director Stance; stance isn't tied to initiative, but sphere of control. There's no reason Roboplayer couldn't emit responses in control of larger components of the game. I should think even Narrativism is possible given that 'the proper response' clearly includes the 'right' way to address the Edwardian Premise.

hyphz wrote:

- Can RoboPlayer play this way?

Ok, just to be clear here, I'm not talking about a real implementation of anything like this (the level of parsing required would be far beyond anything we have now, to start with). Hence the posting in the theory group.

Le Joueur wrote: What you've defined is the responsive ideal. This player is totally reactive, not proactive in any way. I watch humanity sometimes with an 'outside perspective' and one thing I can tell you is they want interaction, not just reaction. Oh it's easy to find people who get a little too much interruption willing to extol the virtues of a simply reactive partner, but left alone with them, it pales.

The subtle thing at work is that, over the long term, no matter how attentive, obsequious, and sycophant-like, the Roboplayer will slowly give the impression that they just don't care. Longer and it actually starts seeming insulting. Everybody needs 'somebody on their side,' but in the complete absence of criticism, the 'disconnectedness' will read patronizingly.

ethan_greer wrote:
As far as the GM railroading issue, careful attention would need to be paid to what info was fed to Roboplayer. Leave something out (the location of a door, for example) and you run the risk of erroneously limiting Roboplayer's options.

To "correctly" limit Roboplayer's options would probably require some sort of program that will feed it info that has been painstakingly compiled by the GM beforehand. Which would pretty much make Roboplayer useless in a regular tabletop game in which other humans are involved. When it comes down to it, Roboplayer practically exists in various forms in various CRPGs with varying complexity.

hyphz wrote:
I wonder why you assume this. Nothing in RoboPlayer's system above bars the program from being one that gives proactive actions high scores. Yes, it only performs actions that have been indicated as possible by the GM, but in a non-authorial game all players must do that, because in these games, unless the GM's described it or it can be reasonably entailed from the GM's description, it isn't in the world.

Can RoboPlayer play this way?

Can RoboPlayer be a good player this way?

What can a human player do that RoboPlayer can't?

Is it possible for a GM *not* to railroad RoboPlayer if the GM knows RoboPlayer's program and the program contains no ambiguity?

When I first saw the "Random Dungeon Generation" tables in the AD&D1e Dungeon Master's Guide, my first impulse was to try to create the corresponding tables for a "random player" ideally suited to explore the randomly generated dungeons. But the purpose was satirical, not an attempt to design an actual functional script.

Good thing, too, because it's harder than it looks, even for a constrained and stylized universe like randomly generated dungeons.

The short answer to the question "what can a human player do in an Actor stance game that RoboPlayer can't," assuming unlimited development resources but only presently commercially standard programming techniques (no Media Lab R&D stuff), is apply common sense to situations. This affects everything from RP's ability to understand what is being said to its ability to formulate a reasonable plan of action. For example: "Johnny saw a puppy in a pet shop window. He wanted it." Consider for a moment how much of one's "common sense" knowledge of culture, human nature, and the world in general is required to understand that the "it" in that sentence refers to the puppy and not to the window.

So, does RoboPlayer know how to tell a highwayman from a sheriff? That if one is looking for water, finding ice is probably also good? That when people say that something "just kills them" they usually don't mean it literally?

Sure, for every specific example I can throw out, you can respond "we'll just include that knowledge in the program." And some AI projects are based on doing just that. It turns out that the number of individual facts needed is in the millions, possibly the tens of millions -- and we're not talking about obscure facts about ancient Chinese history, we're talking about things like fire is hot.

Suppose you create a sufficiently ccomplete knowledge base, along with logic engines sufficiently powerful to access and manipulate the data, create plans, compose sentences, and so forth. At that point, "knowing RoboPlayer's program" has long since become useless as far as predicting RoboPlayer's behavior is concerned. Even a program a few lines long can exhibit behavior too complex to predict by (as far as anyone knows) any means short of executing the program step by step by hand -- or just running it.

At the extreme scenarios involving extremely complex and capable programs, your questions merge with central (and unanswered) questions of AI, psychology, and philosophy. For example, your question about railroading, applied to human brains as physical systems, turns into "does free will really exist?"

- Walt

[EDITED to correct a typo that made it sound as if Johnny might be trying to shoot the puppy (perhaps for Satan?)]

Hyphz,

Either I am confused, or I'm not and everyone else is. So I need your help.

If I'm reading you correctly, Roboplayer is a construct/idea you are using to represent how some people really role-play, and you are raising the issue to discuss this mode of real-person play, not some actual or presumed program/implementation.

That would mean ...

1. All discussion of whether a literal, mechanical Roboplayer is real or possible or desirable is irrelevant.

2. We should discuss whether some GMs really would prefer that their players use Roboplayer-strategy, and whether such play is perfectly fun and enjoyable for all involved. (I suspect that it often is.)

3. We should discuss types of play in which Roboplayer-strategy literally breaks the Social Contract, and why.

So, am I right, or am I the confused one? Help please.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: 1. All discussion of whether a literal, mechanical Roboplayer is real or possible or desirable is irrelevant.
2. We should discuss whether some GMs really would prefer that their players use Roboplayer-strategy, and whether such play is perfectly fun and enjoyable for all involved. (I suspect that it often is.)
3. We should discuss types of play in which Roboplayer-strategy literally breaks the Social Contract, and why.

So, then, to rephrase the original post: Is a player like RoboPlayer desirable?

I don't see why not. A lot of players do this. Arguably, it's a very immersive player who acts in this fashion. As long as they're having fun, what's not to like? All they're doing is extrapolating conservatively from past experience.

Is this player being railroaded? Only insomuch as learning from experience and acting conservatively based on that experience can be considered railroading. The player's actions aren't being forced by the GM, any more so than it would be to use this strategy in, say, a corporate environment.

In fact, I could argue that RoboPlayer's strategy makes excellent business sense, and might even be "creative" in a way -- the action with the highest value might surprise you, and tell you a lot about your own style of play that you're not admitting. In that respect, RoboPlayer could be a sort of "conscience" for the group -- what are we really doing? Well, look how RoboPlayer acts.

Sure, in some sense the GM is "determining" the player's actions -- but a lot depends on how the "score values" are determined. If they're determined by someone else other than the GM, particularly if they're supplied and/or tweaked by other "live" players, there's no saying that GM knoledge of the strategy will detract from his enjoyment of RoboPlayer's play -- which I think is the real question here.

All Role-play is interactive. Railroading means that the GM is reducing the Player's options in order to get somewhere that the GM desires. Merely saying that there is oxygen and that the character can't breathe if he doesn't have any is not railroading.

IOW, you can railroad roboplayer, or you can just set him in an objective environment and let him go. I call this Open Play now, but with Roboplayer as a real robot, the phrase I formerly used, pinball play, would describe things perfectly. The world is the machine, Roboplayer is the ball. Hit the plunger and off he goes.

Consider Walt's statement about the random character in the random dungeon.

Mike

Just to be a bit concrete about this, I recall John Kim describing to me a two-part tournament module (AD&D) he once designed. In the first part, the players were a team of skilled rangers wiping out a "nest" of Kobolds, essentially a very simple tactical dungeon-crawl.

In part two, the players were the leaders of the Kobold community, and they had to stop the NPC rangers. The thing is, the NPCs were controlled by a flowchart, not an actual brain. They worked by simplistic SWAT-style mechanics (for example, they don't move as a group, but leapfrog tactical distance to tactical distance --- "Clear! Go go go go!"). So the issue was how to use your actual intelligence (and your map of the dungeon) to waste these rangers who are, after all, only heavily armed robots.

I think that provided we're talking about imposing pretty severe constraints on this "roboplayer" that amount to a sophisticated flowchart and priority list, this is not going to be the player everyone else looks back on as the fun guy to be around. If you just keep loosening the constraints (no, but we could just add this other subroutine) then you're talking about something that will pass a Turing test, in which case what's the point of the discussion?

Hey, H. :)

I take it your question is what Einstein would call gedanken experiment, literally, experiments in the mind. If so, then it's a damn good question. Let me try to spit out my answers:

Can RoboPlayer play this way?

Can RoboPlayer be a good player this way? Could he be one if he had a really good program?

What can a human player do that RoboPlayer can't? (One answer is "play author/director stance games", I think. So, what can a human player do in an Actor stance game that RoboPlayer can't?)

Is it possible for a GM *not* to railroad RoboPlayer?

Is it possible for a GM *not* to railroad RoboPlayer if the GM knows RoboPlayer's program and the program contains no ambiguity? How much of the program can the GM know before this problem arises?

JMendes wrote: I take it your question is what Einstein would call gedanken experiment, literally, experiments in the mind. If so, then it's a damn good question.

hyphz wrote:

Le Joueur wrote: What you've defined is the responsive ideal. This player is totally reactive, not proactive in any way. I watch humanity sometimes with an 'outside perspective' and one thing I can tell you is they want interaction, not just reaction. Oh it's easy to find people who get a little too much interruption willing to extol the virtues of a simply reactive partner, but left alone with them, it pales.

I wonder why you assume this. Nothing in RoboPlayer's system above bars the program from being one that gives proactive actions high scores. Yes, it only performs actions that have been indicated as possible by the GM, but in a non-authorial game all players must do that, because in these games, unless the GM's described it or it can be reasonably entailed from the GM's description, it isn't in the world.

hyphz wrote:

• Using GM's descriptions and game rules as input, construct a "database" of potential actions and how they relate to each other;

• Using some information about a 'character' to play - either internally generated or supplied to it - together with a 'premise', 'social contract', 'group focus' and similiar, generate a "program" of judgment rules that return score values for potential action;

• When time comes to act in the game, look at all possible/appropriate actions in the database, judge each action using the rules in the program, and emit the one that produces the highest score.

hyphz wrote:

Le Joueur wrote: The subtle thing at work is that, over the long term, no matter how attentive, obsequious, and sycophant-like, the Roboplayer will slowly give the impression that they just don't care. Longer and it actually starts seeming insulting. Everybody needs 'somebody on their side,' but in the complete absence of criticism, the 'disconnectedness' will read patronizingly.

Again, why should it be obsequious and sycophantic? You can just change the judgment program to return lower scores for these actions.

It seems to me that most people responding to this thread are missing the point of the thread.

Either that, or I am.

(I have not at this moment finished reading it; I will finish reading before I hit post, but I might not fully integrate everything I read into this.)

Ah, I see that Ron has spotted the same confusion. I hope all this stuff I've written is still relevant.

RoboPlayer 2000 is not postulated primarily as an idea for whether the technology might do this. He is postulated as a foil for discussing what it is about players that makes them different from this. The point of the thread, I thought, was to discuss the player.

Fang was on the right track for this when he was talking about reactive versus proactive play. In fact,

when Hyphz wrote: Nothing in RoboPlayer's system above bars the program from being one that gives proactive actions high scores.

This discussion brings to mind the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Data and Jordy go to the holodeck so Data can play at being Sherlock Holmes. Jordy mistakenly asks the holodeck to create an opponent capable of defeating Data, instead of an opponent capable of defeating Holmes. The result is a super-powered Moriarty with all of Data’s knowledge and processing power.

Let RoboPlayer collect enough play experience and I imagine it would run circles around most human players. No human has the data storage and recall capacity of a computer. I imagine RP would be ruthless when it came to covering all potentialities; checking for traps, taking prisoners, questioning those prisoners, etc.

The RoboPlayer’s downfall would be, as M.J. seems to suggest, its inability to decipher the subtleties of human behavior. The thing is though, once RP was duped, bluffed, or otherwise led astray, it would never forget and would always attempt to plan for those possibilities. I would be inclined, personally, to always give RoboPlayer the 0-level Scribe character sheet, just to keep the damn thing from getting the jump on me.

Two things the RoboPlayer really has going for it:

1. No ingrained prejudice about what type of game it likes. RP is up for anything.
2. Never eats the last piece of pizza.

-Chris

Hello,

May I suggest that railroading is only an issue when those subject to it realise that they are? I do not believe Roboplayer has enough understanding of its world to come to this conclusion and noticeably change its behaviour, but even if it did, such a realisation could be deterministically avoided by the GM who can see into Roboplayer's soul.

Do also bear in mind that the world upon which Roboplayer bases its actions may well be modified by other less predictable players - none of them play in isolation. While the act of creating such a construct may require amazing feats of intellect and technology, the act of outthinking one (or more) which react to (some) stimuli out of your control is an order of magnitude worse.

Regards,

Weeble.

Le Joueur wrote: What I hear is "Using...input, using...information...generated or supplied to...generate rules.... When time comes...look...judge...and emit...." Everything 'used' must be 'received' first, then acted upon. That's strictly responding to stimuli, reactive behaviour.

I am surprised by your comment about non-authorial games; I regularly launch into all kinds of mischief that were in no way offered by the gamemaster without once taking Author Stance. That's what I call 'taking the initiative.' "Can be reasonably entailed" doesn't sound like something a Roboplayer would pursue. (Likelihood of unmentioned data being outside of acceptable parameters = high; do not explore.)

RoboPlayer does have certain advantages in a very setting-heavy game, if the setting is very detailed. That is, if the provided setting is hundreds of detailed pages, then RoboPlayer is actually going to know all of it. Furthermore, it won't make assumptions based on previous games: if you design a game set in a universe that is cosmetically similar to, say, AD&D, RoboPlayer will not assume that slaughtering orcs is necessarily acceptable behavior.

For me, this shifts the focus away from railroading per se. You can railroad anyone, although RoboPlayer is unusual in not minding this, because the more you railroad, the more effective RoboPlayer will get. That is, the more you have pre-determined the possible range of outcomes, the more effective will be a program that similarly limits the range. But even without railroading, if the focus of play is on interacting with known setting detail, RoboPlayer will shine in some respects.

At the same time, my experience is that the most heavily railroaded games, if the GM is good at it, just like the best setting-heavy games, are the ones in which the players can use the same material against the GM, twisting it in ways not predicted. Here RoboPlayer would be at a big disadvantage, unless it's just that the GM hasn't though through his own material. In such a game, however, RoboPlayer might be a useful facilitator.

This is rather like Anya in the run-up to the destruction of Glory, in a previous season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She complains that nobody is doing anything, and eventually they ask her, "So, what would you do, if you're so smart?" She produces a whole range of possibilities, all keyed off of prior events in the season: use this or that magic item, etc. Unlike the regular characters, she has remembered all the provided detail. At the same time, actually putting together a plan out of this takes other characters than Anya.

Hey Hyphz,

Sounds like we're goin' in circles.

hyphz wrote:

Le Joueur wrote: What I hear is "Using...input, using...information...generated or supplied to...generate rules.... When time comes...look...judge...and emit...." Everything 'used' must be 'received' first, then acted upon. That's strictly responding to stimuli, reactive behaviour.

And I think that's all you really can do in non-authorial games. No matter how original your idea is; it must have a foundation in SOMETHING the GM has specified.

hyphz wrote:

• Using GM's descriptions and game rules as input....

• Using some information about a 'character' to play...generate...judgment rules that return [a] score...for potential action;

• When time comes to act in the game, look at all possible/appropriate actions in the database, judge each action using the rules in the program, and emit the one that produces the highest score.

hyphz wrote:

• What can a human player do that RoboPlayer can't?

hyphz wrote: Mind you, I'm somewhat of the opinion that if you can announce you're doing something that's original and then the GM [improvises] to fit with what you suggested, you are in fact playing author stance even if it dare not speak its name, as you are authoring the statement "The world allows me to do (this original thing)" into the world. In fact this seems like a lazy author stance because you author the one statement that gives your character an advantage into the world and then expect the GM to justify it.

hyphz wrote:

Le Joueur wrote: I am surprised by your comment about non-authorial games; I regularly launch into all kinds of mischief that were in no way offered by the gamemaster without once taking Author Stance. That's what I call 'taking the initiative.' "Can be reasonably entailed" doesn't sound like something a Roboplayer would pursue. (Likelihood of unmentioned data being outside of acceptable parameters = high; do not explore.)

This seems odd. When you get up to that mischief, is it in fact unacceptable in terms of playing your character wrong?

hyphz wrote: Unacceptable in terms of breaking the social contract? Unacceptable in terms of the premise and focus of the game? I presume not, since you do not strike me as the kind of player who would do something that truly was unacceptable.

hyphz wrote: But if it is not unacceptable, then RoboPlayer could do it too, and his program should tell him that it isn't unacceptable. If RoboPlayer's program makes him think it's unacceptable, his program is wrong.

hyphz wrote: What can a human player do that RoboPlayer can't?

hyphz wrote:

• Is it possible for a GM *not* to railroad RoboPlayer?

• Is it possible for a GM *not* to railroad RoboPlayer if the GM knows RoboPlayer's program and the program contains no ambiguity? How much of the program can the GM know before this problem arises?

Hyphz, please stop stringing people along. You confirm to several people that RoboPlayer is allegorical for a certain kind of human, yet you continue to debate Fang on the subject of non-human players.

That makes this at least two threads, if not one that's a troll.

Mike

Whoa. This would be the ultimate machine in game theory computations. Anyway.

To me, RoboPlayer seems like the ideal GM aid for NPCs: generate tactics and actions, but leave the actual role-playing up to the GM. It can also seriously help a player with strategy. If they watch RoboPlayer enough, they'll soon figure out how to play their PC as effectively as possible. And, conversely, the GM will learn how to play their NPCs that way. But, in games like TROS, do we really want that? In games like Riddle, learning how to not die is part of the core game experience.

Ok, it seems that the whole RoboPlayer metaphor has got tangled up and confused people, so I'll come out with it directly. I am, in fact, asking about free will versus determinism.

Just to make sure of this, the real-world determinism argument isn't that we have no choice about what to do or that everything is worked out in advance. The determinism argument is that we do indeed have choices, but we resolve them with regard to circumstances whose values are all fully bound at the moment when the decision is made. So, a free will advocate says "He didn't do his essay, because he was too lazy." A determinist says "He *couldn't* do his essay, because he was too lazy", because at the moment he decided to not do the essay, his laziness was established, as was his decision-making strategy.

In the real world this is an infinite debate, but in RPGs we have a few differing factors that change things around. First of all, all of the "circumstances" involved are a far more limited range and come from a much smaller range of sources. Second, as a player you can make choices that you couldn't in the real world, like deciding that you've fallen in love with the queen when previously you only knew there was a head of state of unknown gender. Thirdly, at least some RPGs which have personality modelling mechanics involve the player exposing at least part of their decision-making strategy for the character at chargen.

My questions then, were: can a conclusive proof of determinism/free will exist in RPGs? (I suspect not) Can a player tactically choose to play deterministically, and is it a good idea for them to do so? If a player is playing deterministically, is every adventure a railroad? How many (and what kind of) personality modelling mechanics can a game have before a player cannot avoid playing deterministically if they are to remain within the game system?

I apologise if people don't think that these are useful questions - I acknowledge that they're fairly disjoined from anything in the real world (thus the theory post). But I assure you that I did not intend to troll (yea, I know that doesn't mean much because trolls say it too, but I hope it means something)

Part of the problem with this question is that I don't think you can escape the real world level of the matter. That is, with a real player running an imaginary character, you can never get the one hundred percent separation that such an exploration seems to require.

I don't often lead my players where I want them to go; but I do it sometimes. Sometimes it is done by baiting the character; but it is more often and more effectively done by baiting the player. I've known a score of guy players who cannot resist rescuing the fair maiden in distress, even when they're playing female characters. I remember commenting to a friend once that I was thinking I wanted to verse out a certain player's character because I wanted him to test play another world for me, and our mutual friend immediately suggested that the player was a sucker for a trap--it didn't matter what character he was playing, as he would walk right into it with his eyes closed. Sure enough, I set up a rather obvious trap at the next session, and he blew himself up.

I'm of the school of thought that holds that your choices are to a large degree determined by factors of who you are and what you've done in the past; that if you come to the choice between A and B and you choose A, we could rewind time a billion times and run it again and (as long as you were unaware of the repetition and no factors changed) you would never choose B. I don't think that's contrary to free will. In the end, you would argue that you understood the risks and consequences on each side, and you applied your values to the choice, and made your decision. Just because doing that would always yield the same result does not mean the choice wasn't made freely. No one made you choose something other than what you wanted. It's just that what you wanted was ultimately predictable.

Therein lies the flaw in the RoboPlayer example. RoboPlayer is not merely ultimately predictable, he is ultimately predictable by the referee. My players may all be entirely predictable for some divine omniscience who knows them more completely than they know themselves, but for me there will always be that aspect of unpredictability that surprises me. It will come from unexpected sources. For example, I must assume that if I kept running those players into lose/lose situations when they go to rescue the fair maiden who turns out to have been the villain all along, eventually that hook isn't going to work. If I set traps everywhere, the player who always falls for them will become at least occasionally a bit more circumspect. I don't know them well enough to know when they are going to break the pattern and do that which to me is unexpected. It may be completely predictable to someone who knows them well enough, but that omniscient person is not me.

So if you keep leading the players around by knowing them well enough, they're going to realize eventually that you're manipulating them, and this becomes a factor to be accounted when you attempt to manipulate them--knowing at what point to reverse it so that when they see the path you would normally be recommending and they avoid it, they'll be on the path you really wanted them to take. I'm not that good, not even with my own kids. Are you?

--M. J. Young

Well said, MJ. I'm in agreement on all points.

As I once wrote in an essay on the subject of Free Will, who cares if the universe is deterministic or not? It doesn't seem that way, and so reacting to it as though it were is senseless. You can't determine a course of action based on a phenomenon which is unobservable. Heisneberg is our savior from the enuii of determinism.

Here's an easy test. If you have roboplayer set up, and you give him two routs which are both equally viable choices (which you can determine because you have infinite nowledge of him), which way will he go? How can you predict it? So we see that even with infinite knowledge that the results cannot be determined.

Much less with a real GM who, not being omniscient, has less than perfect knowledge of Roboplayer.

Sure there may be a point at which knowledge is sufficient to make us feel that way. Ignore that feeling and carry on with having fun. Or get less predictable players.

Mike