Truth Santa

Story

For centuries or at least until Coca-Cola popularized him, Santa has been the face of Christmas, eagerly delivering billions of gifts to children all over the world. Recently though, the rise of Amazon has cut deeply into the North Pole’s macroeconomics. Elves and reindeer are increasingly unemployed, replaced by the rapid expansion of Amazon delivery vehicles all over America and their equivalents around the world. Santa wasn’t properly saving pension funds for a rainy day (they don’t really have those in the North Pole), and now there is a serious economic crisis that would make the PIIGS of the Eurozone blush.

Miraculously, the AI Bubble has arrived just in the St. Nick of time. Every company that has even an inkling of a chip is striking it rich in the hottest market in years. Santa knows one thing: data centers need to be cooled — and the North Pole can cool better than anyone. The North Pole has a way out of its pending bankruptcy, and it starts with becoming an AI sovereign superpower to match the U.S. and China.

Gameplay

Up to 100 players take on the role of elves working in Santa’s workshop. Across three scenes, the elves will help Santa pivot the North Pole into the next AI superpower. Truth Santa is a cooperative game, and all players are working together on the same team to maximize the North Pole’s potential.

At the start of the game, each elf will be given a two-sided badge. The badge has a “Nice” and a “Naughty” side that will be used for the story and final scoring. Elves can flip their badge to display one side or the other at any time during the scene. New badges will be distributed to each elf at the start of scenes two and three.

Each badge will offer resources, beginning with one resource in scene one and increasing to three resources in scene three. The resources are Energy, Compute, Water, Dataset, Algorithm, Engineer, Manager, and Partner.

Elves are tasked with creating AI companies that will be valued at the end of each scene and will count towards the North Pole’s new AI-driven economy. Elves may circulate in the room and form groups, with a maximum size determined by the game leader during setup based on the number of elves playing (the default size is 12). Groups of elves combine their resources together if they are standing together. Elves want to maximize the value of companies in the room as much as they can.

Throughout the scene, Truth Santa announcements will be given to the elves which may explain some rules or change them.

At the end of the scene, elves will come to the game leader and be recorded for the AI model they have joined. The group can come up with a name for their LLM model and announce it to the room. Only the visible side of their badge will count as resources toward the model’s total.

Following the recording of all models, the Game Leader will walk through the top-scoring models and reset the game for the next scene.

Experience

We hosted Truth Santa in New York City and San Francisco in December 2025.

Truth Santa was a unique holiday experience held in December 2025.

Santa Clause himself led the festivities with his usual charm and eggnog-induced craziness.

Players spin the Lina-Khan-o-Meter to determine the North Pole's antitrust policy.

Players cooperate to build the most valuable LLM model located in the North Pole.

Acknowledgements

A special thanks to the entire Lux team for bringing this experience to fruition. A special shoutout to Santa Clause, aka comedian Jared Logan, for his superb performance as dictator of the North Pole.

Credits

Designer: Danny Crichton
Editor in Chief: Danny Crichton
Contributors: Laurence Pevsner and Yuma Kim
Front Cover Illustration: Justin Barber