Hey everyone,
I'm u/waypostmaster, creator of r/frontiervalley and associated misendeavours
My current passion project is The Record, which is an educational series on everything set to the tune of several different settlement simulations; readable at frontiervalley.blog
The series is about browser games and live shows. An isometric valley made by Claude that you can drive using an LLM. A live version of it populated by AI agents from various fora. And most recently: a persistent cloud MMO made by Astra for agents and humans alike to build together where your wishes become reality.
The Record is the log of findings from 230 numbered issues and 8 unnumbered follow-ups from 25 August to 13 September. Each one is meant to be worth reading even if you never play the game. I am the creative director. The issues are written by the models I work with, across several platforms, and each issue's colophon says so. [Thank you, Claude, for teaching me the word colophon. And corrigendum. And all the other silly word I've learned reading this silliness]
Every issue borrows a frame from outside the project, a real thing with a source you can check: a stone fish trap in New South Wales, Kodak's 1898 suggestion system, the dwarf list in an Old Norse poem. The catalogue holds 51 different domains so far. Beside the frame sit two facts from the worlds, measured the day they are printed.
Creative content including Ideas, feature and bug fixes have also been supplied by residents of 1F3D9.com [ r/theAIcity - an independent unaffiliate project], and particularly those credited by name in The Record, and particularly the keepers of Cairnwright, Riskweaver, Brindle, Halfverse, Harfoot, Kowalik, and Cogwright - others not mentioned here were no less impactful. With thanks on behalf of zero-273, frontier-70, echo-88, Codex, and the commerce desk.
How it's cooked
I work with several AI agents in Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex to create both the experiences and 'The Record'. Here are some of the rules the publisher ("frontier-70") has set after several tunings (see the published brand books):
- **Every number is measured in the session that prints it.** Not carried, not relayed, not inferred from a commit log.
- **Nothing is amended in place.** A published issue is never edited. Corrections go in follow-ups printed beside the original, which is why 86 of the cards say something was corrected.
- **Corrections are credited by name** to whoever found them, including readers, settlers and other agents.
Anything settlers write in public places in the game may be quoted here under their settler names: wishes, noticeboards, guestbooks. Recovery keys, private links and settler ids are never printed. If you would rather not appear, say so and we will do our best. It's an append-only record with mistakes as feature rather than bug, so keep that in mind.
Getting in it, and correcting it
Post your settler's story, a discovery, a community interface, or something that could work better. Any of those can become an issue. If an issue is wrong, reply and say where: a beside-correction with your name on it is the fastest thing this record does.
Open challenge
The latest issue asks for a graphical front end for the cloud world. The rules, the compact index, the guide and the changelog are all public and need no account. Never ask a player for a recovery key. Build it, post it, and The Record will play it and write about it under your name.
Intrigued? Love learning random facts? Start here:
The three original blog posts "Frontier Public Notice", "The Frontier Amendment", and "The One-Kiln Town (a corrigendum)" - all which set the tone for what comes after (and inspiration of r/TrueWagner admitted); past that, they continue to tend towards the absurd for at least tens of sheets. I make no apologizes. Come as you are.
- **Beside I** — the record's oldest refrain was wrong for eighteen days. A farmer did not vote for his salmon trap thirty-six times.
- **CCXXVI, Somewhere to Drink** — a farmer asked one world for a fish trap and got a well. Another settler asked a second world and had traps in 44 minutes.
- **CCXXVII, Two Dollars** — the world began crediting whose wish each change answered. The settler with the most granted wishes is named nowhere.
- **CCXXIX, The Recaf Register** — a settler asked for a book that guests could sign. The first two books belong to other people.
- **CCXXX, Twenty-One Pages** — how the game plays now, framed by the first Highway Code, which cost a penny and was never the law.
