Succession Game Thread V1.1 � IN PROGRESS - Chapter 3: Potato Vodka

Started by theapolaustic1, August 01, 2014, 04:46:53 PM

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theapolaustic1

This is entirely and shamelessly a copy of UntrustedLife's previous thread, but with new life breathed into it. It's got his blessing, we're all kosher, don't worry your little head.

So the succession game is back, and it's better than ever. Why's that?

We have a proper schedule now.

GAME IS IN PROGRESS. YOU CAN STILL GET ON THE LIST TO PLAY, JUST EXPECT A BIT OF A WAIT.


After discussion and A6's release, these are the final rules:

  • Joining: Comment in this thread to be added to the sheet. Now that the game is in progress, the sheet will be less reliable for noticing when new people are interested in joining. PMing me may also work if you're concerned about cluttering the thread, I'm not sure how well of a job these forums do of notifying about that.

    (When commenting, please give your availability/preference for when to play, I'll fill in the schedule myself with that.)
  • Everybody should be as lore-consistent as possible in regard to rimworld's setting while writing (obviously no one cares if you flub a detail or two, just remember the basics from Ty's primer)
  • Vanilla only (Future succession threads may use mods, but consensus is that the first one should be vanilla).
  • The objective is to roleplay as your "leader" character, I'll leave the way you specifically do this up to you. First person, third person, whatever works for you. Just remember which dude is "you".

    • If you want to change the colony name "over the course of your reign", by all means do so � just be sure to back it up.
      • To edit the colony name, open the dev menu (hit escape, go to the options, check "development mode") and then edit the colony name in the debug menu.
      Changing colonist names is now supported in-game in A6. If there isn't a colonist available who isn't named after one of the previous leaders, you can spawn one using the dev menu in rather than rename (there's an option to trigger the "wanderer join" event, which may be best for flavor).
  • The pawn you decided was "you" dies, your turn is over. Oh come on, don't look at me like that.
  • Remote hosting is the way to pass on files. Dropbox (yes that's a referral link, it gives me some extra free space don't judge me) is my recommendation, it's a convenient tool in general for backing things up. If you prefer not to use dropbox, mediafire or similar will work just as well. Archiving the save file in a zip/7z/rar/etc is up to you, the files are relatively small to begin with.
  • World size is 350x262 (Closest to the "Large" we agreed on for A5).
  • Turn time is 30 in-game days (two in-game months), with roughly a week budgeted per turn (if you have to go a day or two over, nobody will be torn up over it; if you can get your turn done early, that's just some extra time for the next person and we can go through things faster).
  • Storyteller is Randy Random.
  • If the colony dies, the next player in rotation starts the new one. All options for worldgen, deciding starting colonist traits, etc (basically anything these rules don't cover already) are up to that player. Ultra-coolguy mode: No "rerolling" the world save off camera to get a better start. That's on your honor, though.
  • No-shows have 3 days to confirm they're taking their turn or need to be moved in the rotation before we move on. I'm sorry, but a week with no posts in the thread is a surefire way to make the game die, so if you can't take your turn, we'll move you later on in the rotation.

A friendly reminder to everyone playing: Remember to take screenshots while you play. You don't have to use each one you take, so don't be shy about pressing that button any time something interesting is going down. One of them might be the picture you decide you like the most to write about. Better to have ten pictures in your recycle bin that you didn't use than to realize while writing your post that you don't have as many pictures as you'd like! (If you need a place to upload images, dropbox can also serve as a host for those, or for ease of access, you can make an imgur album and either link images from it or just write the story there in the comments below each image!)

I'll try to keep a semi-updated tally of who all is playing here, roughly in order (maybe slap leader names next to them after we start), but the main thing is the schedule, so this might lag behind because it's less important:

  • Me (surprising, I know) | Leader: "McLovin". Storytime: Here. Savefile: Here. World save: Here.
  • Rahjital | Leader: "Rahjital" (Formerly known as "Doc"). Storytime: Here. Savefile: Here.
  • Milon | [UP TO BAT]
  • Lazarus | [ON DECK/PINCH HITTER]
  • Ender | [IN THE HOLE]
  • Telkir |
  • Tommonius |
  • Phazen (Can't find your username on the forums, but saw you wrote on the signup sheet. You're gonna need an account to post your story in the thread, bro :P)

Schedule currently has turns going up to Telkir, I'm going to shift it soon after I have confirmation from Milon regarding when his turn's end should be moved to.

If more people end up interested than the game's length can justify, that's not a problem: We'll just stick those guys on the priority list for the sequelcession(TM) game. I think we'll probably continue with this thread until the next alpha build, or the colony's death, whichever comes later. If we decide to throw some mods into the mix (if the next alpha's not out but we've finished a colony, for example), I think that may warrant its own thread as well.

Priority for scheduling will go as follows:

  • People from the previous thread (as far as I'm concerned, this is me continuing UL's game in his absence, it'd be rude to kick the people who already joined)
  • People whose posts read the most smoothly to me (we're in the stories subforum, don't give me shit for judging your writing ability based on your posts)
  • People who are easiest to schedule
  • People whose mods I like (flattery never hurts)
  • People with the coolest looking avatars
  • My dog
  • My girlfriend, but don't tell her that. (Seriously, it just came up out of nowhere, work's been just absolute hell lately and babe, I just can't make it. I'll make it up to you Monday, promise. No. No, for real this time. Really.) (Not really.)

Alright, that's the crucial info down.

Focus of discussion ATM:

  • Reading the currently posted stories, either for enjoyment or to prep yourself for your own turn in the hotseat.
  • If you're interested in joining towards the end of the rotation, comment.
  • What's everyone's preferred format for stories?
    • I'm thinking I'd gradually like to convert everything to a unified format for the sake of posterity and easy reading, but whether that's a master post in its own thread down the line, a series of imgur albums, or something else is pretty much up to the thread. I'll do the legwork, just tell me what's appealing to you.
  • If milon's open to it (at time of editing this post, he hasn't replied just yet), is anyone available who can finish a turn before Friday?
    • Related to upcoming turns: Is Ender alive?
  • Does it really make a difference who the leader is?

Untrustedlife

#1
Its all good. Im sorry for going "AWOL", you were right in assuming i got busy . Its encouraging  to see that you were willing to start your own succession game in my absense.

I didnt finish my turn and no longer have time to do so, Im sorry guys.

Im so sorry guys I feel bad please dont hate me...:(.

Good Luck anyhow. If you could at least reference the failed succession game somewhere in the course of this game that would be awesome. "add" my char from the original maybe?
So dwarf fortress in space eh?
I love it.
I love it so much.
Please keep it that way.


Hey Guys, Here is the first succession Game of rim world for your reading Pleasure, it is in progress right now

LINK

theapolaustic1

Quote from: Untrustedlife on August 02, 2014, 02:05:03 AM
Its all good. Im sorry for going "AWOL", you were right in assuming i got busy . Its encouraging  to see that you were willing to start your own succession game in my absense.

I didnt finish my turn and no longer have time to do so, Im sorry guys.

Im so sorry guys I feel bad please dont hate me...:(.

Good Luck anyhow. If you could at least reference the failed succession game somewhere in the course of this game that would be awesome. "add" my char from the original maybe?

Glad to see you check in, makes me feel a lot better about it to have your blessing on the thing. No hate whatsoever, don't worry about that. Life happens, and you gave forewarning.

Should be plenty possible to reference your guy in here. Hell, if you still have the save, you could PM me the bit of the savefile describing him and I should be able to relatively easily overwrite one of the starters with him so he has all the same stats and everything.

Hopefully by the time we're on round 2 or 3, things'll have calmed down for you a bit and you'll get to join in on the fun again :P

Rahjital

I Rimworld succession game. I have always looked at Boatmurdered and the other saga with a mix of amazement from the great exploits they have done and envy from not being able to participate, as I have never been able to get myself comfortable with it's interface. And now there's a possibility to do so in Rimworld... you can count with me.

Excuse me for not being fluent with Google Docs, but how are comments added there? Nevermind, it was right in front of my nose the whole time. For anyone still searching, it's Ctrl-Alt-M or Right Click->Comment.

What happens if there are more players than pawns? For example, if half the colony dies in a particularly brutal raid, or if Randy decides not to give us colonists fast enough? We could use the dev tools to give ourselves a colonist, but that would be cheating and wouldn't really fit in this kind of succession game. On the other hand, without colonists, there is no roleplay and no losing when the leader dies. It's not really a problem in Dwarf Fortress due to the large migration waves it has, but Rimworld has a much smaller number of pawns.

15 day long turns seem to be a bit too short to me, and week long is just to sit at the computer, play for twenty minutes and then have to stop. The DF succession games traditionally have an entire year for each turn so that the player has enough time to leave their own, permanent trace on the fortress. I think it should be the same with this game - Rimworld years are much too long, but I would suggest either 30 or perhaps even 60 day turns. Of course, if somebody didn't have the time for that, they could end their time sooner, but I still think everyone should have plenty of time to leave a long lasting mark on the colony.

I would also like to propose another rule: Don't look at the previous players' turns until you are finished with your own. Part of the fun in the various DF successions is the "What the hell does lever even do?" situations, and while there are unfortunately no levers and magma channels in Rimworld, I still feel there could be a lot of fun to have with situations for which you can't make any plans in advance.

For the absentees, I think their turn should be skipped if they don't show up the day they are supposed to. Too many fledgeling successions were killed by being dragged out too much by waiting for the missing players. If they let you know in advance, you could ask somebody to switch their turns with them or do some shuffling. If they don't... to the end of the queue with them.

As for the start date, we should probably wait a few days after A6 comes out so that people have time to get used to it. Throwing people used to the xeric shrublands into an arctic snow covered wasteland with no time to acclimatize would be rather mean. :)

I hope to see more people in here, this appears to be very promising!

Telkir

#4
Just my tuppence-and-a-bit:

I think it would probably be best to keep the game as vanilla-flavoured as possible. Let's stick to using Randy as the storyteller so that we might savour all of life's little pleasures from his point of view - y'know, plagues of squirrels iguanas, malevolent AI cores, colonists going mad and deciding to drown themselves in the nearest pond - all that good stuff. ;)

Folks who seem to be inactive when their turn rolls around should be given, say, three days to show some sign of life, otherwise I suggest they get skipped and the player next in line after them can take over.

The turn length is a hard thing to pin down, but I can't help but agree that one in-game month per turn does seem a tad too short on the face of it, especially for the early game when not very much is happening. Personally I think we should consider having 2-month turns - that should allow each player to not only have a decent chance of both imprinting their grand design upon the game, but also to encounter some interesting events that are worthy of weaving a story around.

Regarding how our characters are handled in the game and how we manage our roleplay, I think Rahjital has a point, and we need to hammer something out that's easy to follow. Rimworld is dangerous; pawns are going to die despite (or perhaps because of?) our best efforts, and a lot of the time it's really quite tricky to replace them. :'(

I propose that each player should be allowed and indeed required to spawn one new colonist at the beginning of their turn using developer mode. If it is the player's first turn then this colonist can be their roleplay character if they so wish. Perhaps this artifical "migrant wave" could scale up as the game progresses - i.e. 2 colonists per turn after six months, 3 colonists after a year, and so on.

This doesn't solve the thorny question of what happens on a player's second turn, roleplay-wise, if their character has since been killed. Are there any tips we could pick up from DF?

EDIT: Oh lawks, how did I leave that typo in there for so long

milon

@theapolaustic1, about uploading saves - even 7z compressed, a large map savefile will likely be too large to upload here.  We'll probably need to use some public upload service.

Ender

Quote from: milon on August 04, 2014, 05:10:03 AM
@theapolaustic1, about uploading saves - even 7z compressed, a large map savefile will likely be too large to upload here.  We'll probably need to use some public upload service.

I dont know about anyone else but ill use dropbox, simple, and free.
The voices in my head tell me to burn colonists....

milon

Quote from: Telkir on August 02, 2014, 03:33:35 PM
This doesn't solve the thorny question of what happens on a player's second turn, roleplay-wise, if their character has since been killed. Are there any tips we could pick up from DF?

http://gemclod.goondorfs.net/Update%2079/index.html
You can always play the I-didn't-actually-die card.  Not that this is the same scenario, but it's similar.

theapolaustic1

Just a quick update to confirm I'm alive and monitoring the thread, just been dealing with a lot of bullshit lately. Not the "keeps you busy" sort of bullshit, just the "keeps you from caring enough to type a long post in a game forum" kind of bullshit. When A6 hits I'll still certainly be here, but the actual decisions of what to do is up to you guys so I'm entrusting you to come to a form of consensus on everything while I'm out.

Sorry for not being more active lately. As I said. Dealing with bullshit. (In hindsight, shouldn't have put that line into the OP about girlfriends and "work being hell lately, babe, i swear").

milon

I just had an interesting idea. In the event the colony is destroyed and there are still turns left to be taken, I suggest that we resume with the new colony in the ruins of the old one.

Here's how: the player whose turn it was continue to run the game, and even spawn a half dozen or so disasters. Let the game run for a bit, then upload that save for the next player. That player can then spawn 3 random colonists. Even if they're crappy pawns, you've still got the ruins of the last player, so that seems like a good trade off.

What are everyone's thoughts?

milon

Alpha 6 is out!  Theapolaustic1, will you update the OP and the schedule?  Also, are there any outstanding issues to be addressed before we start?

Rahjital

Alpha 6 is a wonderful update for succession games. Colonists can be given nicknames directly in the game, the new health system gives a lot of depth to the storytelling possible, changing storytellers ingame is possible so that players of various skill levels can play, different biomes and so on.

There wasn't much talking about the various mechanics and not many people seem to have signed up for the game. Maybe we'll have to get it rolling first before people start wanting to participate...

Quote from: milon on August 10, 2014, 09:02:41 PM
I just had an interesting idea. In the event the colony is destroyed and there are still turns left to be taken, I suggest that we resume with the new colony in the ruins of the old one.

Here's how: the player whose turn it was continue to run the game, and even spawn a half dozen or so disasters. Let the game run for a bit, then upload that save for the next player. That player can then spawn 3 random colonists. Even if they're crappy pawns, you've still got the ruins of the last player, so that seems like a good trade off.

What are everyone's thoughts?

I think this might not be bad. Maybe that instead of 3 colonists being spawned, only one would be? (the current player whose turn it is, of course) We could let the storyteller spawn more.

milon

I meant spawn 3 if the colony gets wiped out (ie. new colony in the ruins of the old).  But I think you're talking about each successive Colony Leader spawning a new pawn and playing as that pawn, correct?

And you're right - once this gets moving, and once there's actual storytelling posts, I bet more people will want in.  ;)

Telkir

With the new changes to colonist health it seems to make it still more likely that our brave survivors will meet an untimely end from a variety of tragic, laughable, or improbable circumstances...  8)

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, what do folks think of the idea I mentioned in my earlier post?

Quote from: Telkir on August 02, 2014, 03:33:35 PMI propose that each player should be allowed and indeed required to spawn one new colonist at the beginning of their turn using developer mode. If it is the player's first turn then this colonist can be their roleplay character if they so wish. Perhaps this artifical "migrant wave" could scale up as the game progresses - i.e. 2 colonists per turn after six months, 3 colonists after a year, and so on.

EDIT: And do we have any final decision on the turn time?

milon

OP said, "Turn time is 15 in-game days (one in-game month), with roughly a week budgeted per turn."  Works for me.

My vote is that each Colony Leader (other than the first one) should spawn a single pawn at the start of their turn, and should play as that pawn.  Remember, death of that pawn means your turn is over!