Lore

Started by Vagabond, February 29, 2016, 02:23:10 PM

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Vagabond

So. . .

The lore. We have a primer. In essence it has three main points:

1)There is no fast way around space - it's takes forever
2)There are no sapient alien species
3)Humanity has spread but there is no rhyme or reason to this, no structure, so each settled planet rolls a D20 to see if it regresses or advances in technology.

Now, I've been designing game systems and worlds since I was little, having two D&D nerds for parents. I know this differs from video game design, but I think it shares enough parallels to validate the point I'm going to try and make.

Setting must come before mechanics. Without a fleshed out setting that works, your mechanics are going to be convoluted and ill suited to your world. If you use stock D&D magic, but your magic users draw the power from living things in lore, then that magic system isn't going to make sense.

If you say there is no FTL/Warp/Hyperspace then every ship that launches out of your solar system is basically a one way trip. You don't know what their destination is going to be like when they get there, or even if they survived that trip.

If you say there are no sapient species, then that kinda flies in the face of secular wisdom that states that is highly improbable given how many planets can support life as we know it. That isn't counting for the possibility of sapient life that isn't how we know it.

If you say that humans regress more than they progress once they leave their space travel capable society, then you run into a whole slew of other issues when you don't account for technologies present and the viability of life at all levels of human technology. It is further complicated when you have a bunch of people of all different technology levels sharing a ship and then a planet. How would that work? How did they end up on the same ship and planet without the lesser technologically advanced being slaves? I find it difficult to imagine some glitterworld dudes stopping off at some planet full of primitives and convincing them to hop aboard. Then we have the elephant in the room: Language. If people have changed so much on all these planets, how can we logically assume they all speak the same language still? Even people who left a glitterworld 1000 years ago and retained their technology level, they would probably have seen their language change enough to make communication a pain in the butt.

Then we have this amazing amount of space traffic. . . Populations that are nigh infinite that care nothing for their losses. Humans living on planets so close to the sun that their spacecraft would melt in orbit. Zero personal hygiene, no need to bathe, and apparently get enough water to survive by eating potatoes which are incredibly starchy...

We got folks going one place, but just happen to flyby a life sustaining planet when their ship messes up and they end up on the planet. Then they want to leave. They want to build a space ship. They build a spaceship with a couple of cavemen, some medieval dudes, some dudes who were trying to kill you and take all you own a couple days ago, and a transgender jeweler.

Maybe I'm alone in these inconsistencies irking me - could very well be because of my passion for world building. Just figured this would be a much more reasonable request than some of my other more difficult to implement suggestions.

Boston

That is basically my main gripe with the setting.

-We have "neolithic" tribal peoples that wander around with steel weapons. Hint: if they use metal, they aren't neolithic. Neolithic means "New Stone Age". Oh, and according to the "factions" tab, these tribes are mostly nomadic, following Muffalo herds. That isn't "Neolithic" either. The New Stone Age is essentially defined by the use and spread of agriculture.
-Said "Neolithic" peoples can be contacted in seconds via radio. Somehow, they have radio and electricity, all while being stuck in the Stone Age.  ::)
-Said Neolithic peoples use bows, spears and clubs, while you can trade for firearms pretty easily. In "real life", close to 99% of aboriginal peoples dropped "primitive" weapons like hot potatoes as soon as firearms became available, for a multitude of reasons.
-EVERYONE speaks the same language, even people from off-world, and there is zero possibility of there being a miscommunication.
- You can ask a faction for help, and they show up within 5 minutes or so........ after teleporting over the multiple miles/kilometers of terrain  ::)
- As above, "space travel is hard", yet there are massive trading ships passing over your isolated and far-flung "Rimworld" with alarming regularity EVERY COUPLE OF DAYS.
-You can build an interstellar spacecraft while LIVING IN A CAVE, WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS.

And so on. It is really funny when the details behind the setting don't actually work in the setting.

Vagabond

Thank the nerd gods I'm not alone.

Anyone else think that space trade outside of within your own solar system would be a bad investment? By the time you get to that place with what were fancy high tech guns, they've had hundreds of years to completely make those guns obsolete. Same for food - that food you are lugging to your destination could have developed into an allergy for those people, or a cultural taboo in the time you traveled there - they might even want to trade for your dog when you get there and it's a capital crime in their society to keep animals as anything but food. Slavers? What happens when they are in cryosleep and pass over a glitterworld that wasn't there when you planned your trip. Now they just blew you up because slavery is punishable by death.

Pirates. Dudes who drop pod from their perfectly good space ship to attack your colony. Pirates are pirates to get rich and live hedonistically. Why are they trolling rimworlds - I thought I cleared the tech tree, but maybe I missed the strip club tech.

MarcTheMerc

Maybe the tribal people have electricity and metalurgy but forgo clothes and guns due to void god related worship reasons or social reasons. Also There is a linguistic issue between colonists and tribals (harder to recruit).
"So weird looking, like a twisted hulk of man and machine both scary and... well scary i mean it would look like a crab with limbs on limbs."

Yay i have a mod now ''https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=20513.0''; It adds mercs

Boston

Quote from: MarcTheMerc on February 29, 2016, 08:55:49 PM
Maybe the tribal people have electricity and metalurgy but forgo clothes and guns due to void god related worship reasons or social reasons. Also There is a linguistic issue between colonists and tribals (harder to recruit).
The characters in-game have no issues talking to the tribals, either in-person or over the radio.

erdrik

Quote from: Vagabond on February 29, 2016, 02:23:10 PM
...Setting must come before mechanics...
Incorrect. (emphasis mine)
If your building a game to be centered around the narrative/setting/story, then setting must come before mechanics.

But not all games are centered around those things and thus do not require Setting before Mechanics.
In fact many games have no setting at all. Here is a famous and prolific example:
Tetris.

Simulations and semi-simulations are not excluded from this.
Many flight simulators have minimal if any setting.

I love setting, I love world building, and I love well written narrative.
But it is in no way a requirement for any game, and no developer is beholden to include it.

Vagabond

Oi vey.

You are completely right, I was a little hasty when I said that setting must come before mechanics. I forgot to add "except when the game doesn't have a setting, or world. Or dealing with complex systems such as human behavior, human survival, research, development, and establishment of said technologies and constructs.".

Really? You had to go there with tetris? That is specifically a game with no setting, that never had a setting, and doesn't need a setting. Poker doesn't have a setting, or chess. That is because they are strictly games with mechanics meant to employ player skill and luck with no story to tell. I'm sure you see the difference in a game that releases with a lore primer, has a setting, and deals with real life equivalents to humans, plants, and animals interacting in a worldspace.

I would also argue that most flight simulators had their settings before their mechanics. If it is simulating world war 2 aircraft, you have WW2 planes with WW2 plane specs (acceleration, top speed, armaments, ect). It just so happens that they have no narrative to go along with their setting aside from "fly".

Finally, within the context of my post I'm pretty sure it's plain that I was talking about how this game is seriously lacking in the setting department by mostly having a flawed premise that doesn't work with it's mechanics.
Quote
If your building a game to be centered around the narrative/setting/story, then setting must come before mechanics.

This game is centered around it. So what is the problem? Did you just want to point out how I was wrong in using "must"?

erdrik

Quote from: Vagabond on March 01, 2016, 08:33:49 AM
... So what is the problem? Did you just want to point out how I was wrong in using "must"?

Partially. Ill admit mentioning Tetris was a bit of a reach in context of a Rimworld discussion.
But also because, your post seemed to imply(to me) that any game with even a bit of setting must place that setting before mechanics.

Simply put, I don't agree with that. If a dev wants to make a mechanics based game with only a minor setting attached, then they are perfectly free to do so. And that design choice(With a setting, but Mechanics before Setting) is not a bad thing.

The presence of a setting does not make it the focus of the game, regardless of how fleshed out that setting is.



JimmyAgnt007

Id like to say that technological regression is a bit more realistic than you think. 

Imagine two groups land.  One in relative safety the other into great danger.  Tools and such are left behind as you flee.  Maybe the other group steals them.  Whatever happens they are lost too you.  Your next generation will grow up without those tools and the previous generation will have little in the way of teaching you how it all works.  So the generation after that might only have a passing familiarity with the concept of guns (dangerous, loud, can kill you from a distance) but no functional way to manufacture them.  So if some tribe has been wandering about for several generations we get the tribal we are familiar with in RIMworld.  Then also the more modern colony whos always had access to these tools can maintain that knowledge.

Sure the tribe might eventually crawl its way back to scientific understanding faster than it took us to do the first time but maybe it just hasnt happened yet.  Id like to see trading with tribals to slowly change them.  Keep giving them shotguns and stuff and maybe they become modernized. 

As far as aliens are concerned, until we actually find life elsewhere we have only one point of data for life and cant make any kind of accurate judgement.  There might be factors we havent thought of.  Even Earth itself spend a lot of time as a lifeless rock even though all the other conditions were right.  So its not unrealistic to presume the possibility that either we are alone because we are simply the first life or that the previous life is all gone.  Or that its simply so rare that maybe they are just in their own galaxy and RIMworld hasnt gotten there yet.  Just because a thing might exists doesnt mean it has been discovered.

Limdood

space trade has already been established as a half-measure until planetary based trading is implemented in game.

Hygiene?  Water?  there is a limit to the number of things people want to micromanage.

The ship just happened to crash on a hospitable world?  you're telling a story.  For every story that gets told, there are probably 100 ships that...just explode.

Primitive people building a spaceship bothers you?  You're managing the colony...why are you having them build a spaceship instead of simply establish and improve an agricultural village?  The "win condition" was also kind of tacked on to the game for those people that wanted to "win."  Nothing is stopping you from playing an open ended game.

The different tech levels is something of an issue....While i don't see the medieval being slaved to the glitterworld, i DO see the medieval indirectly and inevitably advancing several technology levels just by existing near the glitterworld folk (on ship or planet)....a la star trek.  The only explanation i can come up with here is that the different society levels crashed, landed, or settled independently with minimal interrelation.  Individual advancements or catastrophes wouldn't affect their distant neighbors, resulting in tribals and settlers and technologically advanced pirates.

Language is an issue of course....it could also be simplified though...maybe there is a reason that tribe is hostile?  they don't understand you?  Maybe thats why the prisoner has a recruitment difficulty of 99?  Yes, i'm fully aware that there are OTHER reasons in the game that those happen, but the OP at least has stated he's D&D experienced....pen&paper RPGs rely on participatory storytelling.  There's no reason the PLAYERS as opposed to the GM (or game designer) can't come up with the reasons for why stuff happens.

yeah, there are lore concerns, but there are also explanations already given or easily conceived with some minor suspension of disbelief for many of the concerns listed.

MarcTheMerc

in earlier versions (not sure if still present) by default tribals are harder to recruite because of the language gap.
"So weird looking, like a twisted hulk of man and machine both scary and... well scary i mean it would look like a crab with limbs on limbs."

Yay i have a mod now ''https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=20513.0''; It adds mercs

Livingston I Presume

Quote from: Vagabond on February 29, 2016, 02:23:10 PM
So. . .

The lore. We have a primer. In essence it has three main points:

1)There is no fast way around space - it's takes forever
2)There are no sapient alien species
3)Humanity has spread but there is no rhyme or reason to this, no structure, so each settled planet rolls a D20 to see if it regresses or advances in technology.

Now, I've been designing game systems and worlds since I was little, having two D&D nerds for parents. I know this differs from video game design, but I think it shares enough parallels to validate the point I'm going to try and make.

Setting must come before mechanics. Without a fleshed out setting that works, your mechanics are going to be convoluted and ill suited to your world. If you use stock D&D magic, but your magic users draw the power from living things in lore, then that magic system isn't going to make sense.

If you say there is no FTL/Warp/Hyperspace then every ship that launches out of your solar system is basically a one way trip. You don't know what their destination is going to be like when they get there, or even if they survived that trip.

If you say there are no sapient species, then that kinda flies in the face of secular wisdom that states that is highly improbable given how many planets can support life as we know it. That isn't counting for the possibility of sapient life that isn't how we know it.

If you say that humans regress more than they progress once they leave their space travel capable society, then you run into a whole slew of other issues when you don't account for technologies present and the viability of life at all levels of human technology. It is further complicated when you have a bunch of people of all different technology levels sharing a ship and then a planet. How would that work? How did they end up on the same ship and planet without the lesser technologically advanced being slaves? I find it difficult to imagine some glitterworld dudes stopping off at some planet full of primitives and convincing them to hop aboard. Then we have the elephant in the room: Language. If people have changed so much on all these planets, how can we logically assume they all speak the same language still? Even people who left a glitterworld 1000 years ago and retained their technology level, they would probably have seen their language change enough to make communication a pain in the butt.

Then we have this amazing amount of space traffic. . . Populations that are nigh infinite that care nothing for their losses. Humans living on planets so close to the sun that their spacecraft would melt in orbit. Zero personal hygiene, no need to bathe, and apparently get enough water to survive by eating potatoes which are incredibly starchy...

We got folks going one place, but just happen to flyby a life sustaining planet when their ship messes up and they end up on the planet. Then they want to leave. They want to build a space ship. They build a spaceship with a couple of cavemen, some medieval dudes, some dudes who were trying to kill you and take all you own a couple days ago, and a transgender jeweler.

Maybe I'm alone in these inconsistencies irking me - could very well be because of my passion for world building. Just figured this would be a much more reasonable request than some of my other more difficult to implement suggestions.

Nonsensical nit picking rant. 

jzero

Quote from: Livingston I Presume on March 03, 2016, 08:57:58 PM
Quote from: Vagabond on February 29, 2016, 02:23:10 PM
So. . .

The lore. We have a primer. In essence it has three main points:

1)There is no fast way around space - it's takes forever
2)There are no sapient alien species
3)Humanity has spread but there is no rhyme or reason to this, no structure, so each settled planet rolls a D20 to see if it regresses or advances in technology.

Now, I've been designing game systems and worlds since I was little, having two D&D nerds for parents. I know this differs from video game design, but I think it shares enough parallels to validate the point I'm going to try and make.

Setting must come before mechanics. Without a fleshed out setting that works, your mechanics are going to be convoluted and ill suited to your world. If you use stock D&D magic, but your magic users draw the power from living things in lore, then that magic system isn't going to make sense.

If you say there is no FTL/Warp/Hyperspace then every ship that launches out of your solar system is basically a one way trip. You don't know what their destination is going to be like when they get there, or even if they survived that trip.

If you say there are no sapient species, then that kinda flies in the face of secular wisdom that states that is highly improbable given how many planets can support life as we know it. That isn't counting for the possibility of sapient life that isn't how we know it.

If you say that humans regress more than they progress once they leave their space travel capable society, then you run into a whole slew of other issues when you don't account for technologies present and the viability of life at all levels of human technology. It is further complicated when you have a bunch of people of all different technology levels sharing a ship and then a planet. How would that work? How did they end up on the same ship and planet without the lesser technologically advanced being slaves? I find it difficult to imagine some glitterworld dudes stopping off at some planet full of primitives and convincing them to hop aboard. Then we have the elephant in the room: Language. If people have changed so much on all these planets, how can we logically assume they all speak the same language still? Even people who left a glitterworld 1000 years ago and retained their technology level, they would probably have seen their language change enough to make communication a pain in the butt.

Then we have this amazing amount of space traffic. . . Populations that are nigh infinite that care nothing for their losses. Humans living on planets so close to the sun that their spacecraft would melt in orbit. Zero personal hygiene, no need to bathe, and apparently get enough water to survive by eating potatoes which are incredibly starchy...

We got folks going one place, but just happen to flyby a life sustaining planet when their ship messes up and they end up on the planet. Then they want to leave. They want to build a space ship. They build a spaceship with a couple of cavemen, some medieval dudes, some dudes who were trying to kill you and take all you own a couple days ago, and a transgender jeweler.

Maybe I'm alone in these inconsistencies irking me - could very well be because of my passion for world building. Just figured this would be a much more reasonable request than some of my other more difficult to implement suggestions.

Nonsensical nit picking rant. 

beautiful response old chap. Just wee bit too heavy on the ol' criticism eh?
Actual cannibal shia labeouf.

skullywag

I dont want you or Tynan to make up most of the story. This game is about creating a narrative and i as the player want to create that in my head how i see it. Having loose rules is fine but detail isnt needed.
Skullywag modded to death.
I'd never met an iterator I liked....until Zhentar saved me.
Why Unity5, WHY do you forsake me?

Toggle

Quote from: skullywag on March 07, 2016, 03:02:37 AM
I dont want you or Tynan to make up most of the story. This game is about creating a narrative and i as the player want to create that in my head how i see it. Having loose rules is fine but detail isnt needed.
Skullywag laying down the law.
Selling broken colonist souls for two thousand gold. Accepting cash or credit.