Hey, ATS, Let's Play -- Rimworld

a reply to: TheGreazel

I'm not a pro-player by any means. I can juggle my stockpiles, but I don't necessarily build for greatest efficiency. I am playing for the laughs of watching what they end up doing and how each game develops its own character.

The last one I had was a giant soap opera of dysfunctional family ties - mothers giving birth to half sisters and then marrying older brothers while daughters married ex-husbands ... I had another game with mostly female colonists who kept electing a misogynist for their mayor after watching that same mayor beat the snot out of fellow woman right in front of them.

a reply to: TheGreazel

Ohhh.. Ill eventually get around to it.

My problem is my backlog. Its at.. something in the triple digits.

It also happens to be one of the games I enjoy watching others play most, kinda like One Hour, One Life.

Make everyone psychopaths just like irl.

a reply to: Lysergic

Heh, things are psychotic enough without having to do that. Although I could end up adopting a psychopath at some point. I've done it before, and I have the Call of Cthulhu mods installed, so we have insanity cropping up.

a reply to: ketsuko

Moral Relativism can come in handy.

I picked our five and planted them in a coastal jungle with small hills and a river. Here begins the early days of their story:

They couldn't run anymore and dropped where they stood. They didn't even know if they were being pursued or not, and they didn't care if something ate. They simply fell where they were and slept like dead things. If morning came, there would be time to worry about what came next.

Black Dog was the first up and the first to see. They were deep in a festering jungle. There was life in abundance all around, but the calls and smells were strange. There was a heavy, salty smell on the air, and he could hear waves washing a beach not too far away.

They spent that first day scouting the land trying to find a good place to set up a camp. Finally, the survivors found a narrow cut between two hills. There were some crumbling walls and old floors there showing the others had built here before.



They wasted no time and got right to work boxing in the gaps to create a shelter and stockpile. The jungle was miserable wet, and the pemmican they had was starting to fall apart in the damp. There was one problem -- a brontosaurus that clearly liked the spot and didn't want to move.



So they gained a unique totem ... and they became Clan Brontosaurus. It was a bit taxing. Truly, plenty of edible plants grew all around, but a brontosaurus eats a lot! And they had to keep it fed. Everyone hoped that someday they would tame it and it would once again venture out into the sun.



As more days passed, the colony get used to their big totem learning how not to get crushed at night. Even the three pets: Buzz (I forgot the name I gave him), Duchess, and Lunch (something's gonna eat him - he's a guinea pig in the jungle) learned how to boogie around the bronto's big feet. They also finally found enough metal between old ruins and the mountains (turns out Red is a crack miner with a talent for geology) to build a stove! They are cooking meals, but the next adventure is setting up to start preserving their food.



The brothers, Flint and Black Dog, got a field cleared and enough seeds gleaned. Together with Lena and Red they cut and cleared the field and planted it with tribal practices. The corn supports the beans and the squash keeps the weeds from growing. Maybe they won't have to spend so much time traveling through the jungle gathering berries and other things with actual crops ...



The jungle is a dangerous place. Predators are everywhere. It doesn't take long for them to learn about the new arrivals and close in. Duchess and Lunch don't last long. No one even knows for sure what the horrors are called. But sometimes the can be turned ... Black Dog has become expert at tracking the big predators when they fight one another and one is wounded or even killed. Big predators provide big meat, and humans can be scavengers if it means adding to the diet.



And ... well, waste not; want not.



And there are neighbors, but they aren't friendly. A raider came to destroy and steal, but Lena, Red, and Bluto took care of it. Now the tribe is worried ... what if there are more? When will they come again?

*******

Yeah, so, not a lot happened. It was the early game development period. I did build a research table and starting us learning smithing so we can make some heavier duty weapons than just bow and arrow and spears. That leads us toward armor eventually too.

With a tribal start, it will be while before we get to electricity, but we have the three essential methods of basic food preservation covered. We have meat drying racks, can pickle veggies, and can dehydrate fruit. We also have a fishing dock to provide an alternative meat source to hunting until we get better weapons than simple bows and arrows although we can absolutely get small game, knock off downed predators and scavenge kills.

I domesticated an alpaca. If I can keep it alive, it will provide wool. I am working on another one. I am also trying to get the brontosaurus out of the living space.

So ...

Where do we go?

I am usually trying to build a better set of bedrooms at this point; chisel out a barracks with quality beds and then better organize the main space into cooking/work space.

But we also need some defenses in a jungle.

I can also see the merit in building a prison cell so that we can capture raiders and browbeat them into joining us. Stockholm syndrome rocks!

a reply to: ketsuko

This is good, Kets..

Very well done!

Im going with the bedrooms to start. I think dealing with all those raiders and monsters is only gonna get tougher! Gotta get as much good rest as possible.

..Ill be honest, trying to stay out of game mechanics, but, I swear there is something like an energy/rest meter isnt there?

Obviously not an expert here

a reply to: Serdgiam

There absolutely is. You can see in one of the shots I didn't quite clip their portraits out of it, and most of them are a sort of blue background?

That means they are overall pretty happy and in a good mood. That blue color shifts as the color shaded part decreases as they get more and more upset. It shades down to yellow and then to red. When they get to yellow and red, they start having chances of suffering mental breakdowns. If they do, they go off and do random bad things. In Red's case, he tends to light random fires, but with the others it could be lots of other things like insulting the others and ticking them off, wandering around aimlessly, hiding in their rooms, drunken or drug binges (addiction then is its own thing), etc.

And lots things contribute to lowering mood like not eating good food, eating without a table, not sleeping in a nice space or good bed, three of them are wearing outfit like the others and don't like it, sometimes they get jealous, the cat was bonded to someone and that someone (Lena) is now depressed because it's dead ... It adds up over time.

a reply to: ketsuko

Thats right, remembering a bit more about it. Cant remember who I used to watch play it on YouTube, but its a great game to watch and interact with as an "audience."

Its a really impressive game.

Thanks for doing this, btw. Ever done any short story/novella/novel writing?

a reply to: Serdgiam

I mess around with it, but I think I need to get something like Dragon to dictate to for long projects and then go back and polish. The problem is that I "see" the story and lose patience with the typing.

a reply to: ketsuko

Im pretty similar there.. Its like painting a room; Id be all gung-ho at first and very, very quickly want to be doing something else

Id be looking at writing non-fiction, though all I read is fiction. Albeit.. In pretty large volumes (3-5 books/week usually). I feel like I have a responsibility to get whats in my head put into a form that could help people even after Im gone. Morbid, and perhaps arrogant.. lol But, it does weigh heavily on me.

My latest idea, yet to be tested, is to really stick to short story length (right around 5k words maybe?). My hope is that it will be long enough to comprehensively cover an idea, but not so long that I start losing patience with the process. Because, that sure comes through the writing!

Ive always wanted to try dictating it too though. It just.. Hasnt happened I guess. C'est la vie in a nutshell

Is the bottle-neck accessible from north and south, will you need to cap one end off? I'd focus on that unless bedrooms are critical.

(And yes I can ask her that in person but I figured I'd ask it here so no one else needs to.)

And today - When Lockjaws Attack or Well, That Happened

Clan Brontosaurus was settling in to their new home. They knew there was still a lot to learn about the land around them, but they had so much to do just to set up a basic living space that every day felt like a race against their own ignorance. They started planning to build some defenses, but first they needed better living spaces chiseled out of the mountain.



Red, Bluto, and Lena got to work on that. Red was especially useful, mapping out an idea in his head for a rough set of rooms that could become working or living spaces. Along the way, the colony got incredibly lucky and struck a vein of silver. They all knew that if they were successful, that silver would someday help them trade with other tribes ... at the very least, they could make something pretty with it.



Black Dog worked hard at fishing trying to bring in enough blue blade to keep everyone fed. Most all the animals here were large and aggressive or just plain vicious or ... rats, and no one was very keen on the idea of rat pie for dinner. Pan-seared blue blade? It hit the spot most nights so long as he could catch it.



And then in the late spring, the colony received a surprise. Two young camels wandered into their midst. It was obvious they'd broken free of their leads and wandered from somewhere, perhaps a caravan, but they'd strayed a long way. They were thin and covered in mud. One was nursing some sort of animal bites while the other had damaged foot pads, and they were both relieved to find people again. Meg dubbed them Dugan and Rogan and decided they would make useful pack animals along with Chonk the alpaca.

And that's when things turned ...

First it was the weather.

Up to that point, things had been uncomfortable and sticky, but not unbearable, but now the full brunt of summer heat laid itself over the land like a thick wet blanket and it smothered everything. Even as far as they'd chiseled back into the hill couldn't cool them off enough. They build a small cooler, but without being able to evaporate water in the humidity, it didn't do them much good. Sweat poured and tempers flared. There was water everywhere, but it was still so hot you couldn't drink enough. Everyone had some kind of heatstroke.



And then the lockjaws got hungry.

Lena and Stan (that's what I named him over Buzz) went for a foraging trip one day, and an evil-tempered, massive reptilian mouth on legs dubbed a lockjaw decided that terrier should be on the menu. Having lost her beloved cat Duchess not too many days earlier, Lena was determined not to lose Stan too.She used her pila to try to fend the lizard off, but an awkward poke to the eye enraged the beast. Instead of running, it turned on her grabbing her thumb and ripping it off.



And that's when things went seriously pear-shaped! The beast had a mate who came to help it out. Lucky for Lena, she was still close enough to the colony that the others heard her panicked shouts and they came as quickly as they could. Bluto ... Red ... Meg ... and Black Dog all came through the dense jungle trying to help Lena and Stan, but it was too late for Stan.



And soon the raging battle was just a defensive action trying to keep the massive beasts from finishing off the rest of the colony. One by one, colonists were knocked out, so severely injured they couldn't move anymore, and the rest fought on to save their fellows. Finally it came down to Black Dog, the last left standing. Injured, battered and bruised, he fired off arrow after arrow into the last massive lockjaw while it thrashed and kept coming but finally, it succumbed at last to a final arrow ... in the eye (what you thought it would be in the knee?).



Now it was Flint's turn to shine. He'd kept clear of the fight knowing he had no skills there, but he excelled at medicine. Together, the two brothers worked feverishly, well into the night, Black Dog taking instructions from his brother. They tried their best to stabilize their fellow colonists enough to survive the trip back to their sleeping spots

But for some



it was too late. They just couldn't work quickly enough to save Meg.

And once they get everyone back to home, the other shoe dropped. Lockjaws are venemous. Black Dog managed to hold on despite his own injuries; he made it just long enough to help Flint haul the last one back before falling onto his own spot in a delirium himself. Now Flint was alone with four desperately ill and badly injured patients. Everything was one his shoulders: tending, food, everything ...

And he was tending a group of patients stricken with a toxin that locked their jaws into spasms preventing them from doing much more than uttering agonized groans as they writhed on the hard ground sweating in the hellish heat, suffering the pain of their wounds and spasms from the poison.



And it was too much ... "I just can't! I can't!" he wailed finally, and walked out.

The only saving grace to it was that Bluto was just able to stagger back on his own feet and pick up. His skills weren't as strong as Flint's, but you do learn a thing or two about battlefield medicine smuggling some of the items he had. The long hours of nursing in nightmare conditions continued as one by one, Black Dog, Lena, and Red got back on their feet. None were by any means recovered, but at least they could help fend for themselves.

By now colony food stores were running dangerously low and the crops were nowhere near being ready for harvest. Hunting was out of the question, and with the terrible and oppressive heat, the fish had stopped biting.

And no one knew what had become of Flint, but at least they could lay Meg to rest.



But the bad luck wasn't done with them yet. They weren't the only things in the jungle suffering from the heat. They had no way of knowing it, but this was some of the worst heat the jungle had suffered in recent memory, bad enough to drive even the local animals mad. Not even two days after the last straggler was up and trying to pick up the pieces, a strange spider creature came rampaging through the fields attacking everything in its path.

Black Dog was the first to be waylaid by it, and he didn't have a chance so fierce was its assault.



Lena, Red and loyal Chonk came to try beat it back, but it trampled them in its madness as well before tearing off into the dense bush. Maybe they would have done better had Bluto not gone on a long scouting trip. At least, that's what he said it was, but the others privately suspected he was just burned out after all those long, hard days having to pick up where Flint abandoned them so abruptly.



And Flint ... well, he got what was coming to him for abandoning his tribe.

Things were looking bleak. All they could do was lay there and call weakly to each other. No one could stand, let alone try to help the others. They were too injured. It looked like this might very well be the end ...

But no, it was Bluto! And just in the nick of time too. As soon as he saw the horrific sight in front of him, he dropped the basket of breadfruit he'd been hauling back with him and ran to his friends.



He worked hard over his friends, going from one to the other, trying to treat the most pressing issues first, trying to save them all, but in the end he could only save two:



Red and Black Dog, and it doesn't look good for Red. One of his legs was badly mangled in the attack. The wound doesn't smell good at all, and there are red streaks starting to spread up from the wound. If only Bluto had some glitterworld meds! That would fix things in a heart beat, but as it is, he's stuck with the local herbs, and he knows precious little about them.

Red better hope Bluto doesn't have to try to amputate ...

***********

So there we go. When things go bad in this game, they can snowball in a hurry. Just that quickly, we dropped three colonists, and Red really does have an infection in his leg, and his chances of beating it aren't that good right now. I will probably have to have Bluto try to amputate it. If it works, Red will end up with a peg leg.

So tribal starts are hard and so are jungles. I've never played a jungle game before. This is also my first experience with Randy Random as a narrator. I feel like he chucked a ton of disasters my way during this session.

I can continue on with this and see how we end up or we can start again. That is today's question.

I think we still cover all our skills?

a reply to: ketsuko

I think we gotta keep going!

Im enthralled. Bluto really coming in with the clutch plays here..

For some random reason, this story reminds me a bit of the story arc in Mechina's albums (wouldnt rec if you dont like heavier stuff). I guess I go there for any scifi, but essentially things dont end well for a lot of people. When youre exploring the galaxy, I suppose that can happen.

And sometimes, with cryogenic sleep, relativity, and many years.. Their stories can get lost in the deep recesses of the universe.

I think these characters stories still deserve to be told.

a reply to: Serdgiam

I'm not averse to going on with it. The straw that broke the camel's back was the heatwave. They were all overheated and without electricity at this point, I just couldn't keep them comfortable and then all the other trouble just overwhelmed.

Bluto and Flint both had mental breaks at the worst time, and Flint really broke hard. Bluto recovered just in time to save the day for two at least.

a reply to: ketsuko

Yeah, I cant say I see it going particularly well for our adventurers. This jungle is brutal!

I certainly wouldnt mind learning how their story pans out though. I identify with that type of arc lol

Just tamed a Thrumbo. Need to train him to fight. One man .. Er …Thrumbo army.

If you restart, you should keep either tribal or jungle but not both. But I'd enjoy seeing how this game plays out... even if the ending is unfortunate.

Also, Bluto for *mysterious* President!

I just accepted a quest to take raider attacks to help out caravans. They gave me 5 soldiers, and I already have a really powerful soldier that is on guard duty for 2 prisoners from cryostasis I took in. I just researched gun turrets and have about 5 built. The turrets and soldiers are good .. but when I release my Thrumbos for war OMG they are scary, they charge in taking shots like they are nothing and just maul the whole army. I have to survive 3 waves. I have 2 injured soldiers and one down soldier from wave 1, going to take on wave 2 after I do some studying.

ETA: Now I have some armor and lots of cool weapons I haven't been able to research yet. I also plan on stripping the helper soldiers before I send them home.