30 hours per 2 weeks is 2,14 hours a day, or something you can just barely sacrifice a single weekend for.
I don't think that's a lot of free time to have - in other words, it's also low-balling it, as I know the overseers who write excellent turns put all their free time into writing it, to the point of sacrificing their other duties at times (and some sacrificing of real life is to be expected with Battlefailed curse).
I'm not quite sure how much time I spent on it, but putting vast majority of my free time into Succession world for my turn at it yielded 172 pages of updates with total of 1039 pictures taken in the 13-25 nov period iirc (granted, multiple takes and not everything about it).
Of course, from a different perspective, 30 hours is enough to, say, watch PMMM five times or read 720 thousand words ~ 7 novels at 400 words/minute - absolutely large things to spend time on - so merely having it available doesn't mean you want to spend it making updates. Compared to other games, DF does take insane amount of time, and the narration of it takes it up to eleven.
(Granted, I've only worked on two successions so far, and the second one had over four times the pace of production as the first, though at cost to quality; I expect skilled overseers can produce more interesting content far quicker than me.)
The good thing about dwarf fortress is that its so detailed that if you monitor your turn somewhat regularly
(take screenshots regularly, note down key events), there is almost always some insane or mildly interesting dwarf business to write about. Enough to fuel a narrative I would reckon, well, depending on the narrative you are aiming for. My own experience with succession forts invariable comes down to:
1. point out nonsensical stuff previous overseers have made/ done.
2. ridicule/worship it
3. make own ridiculous stuff on top off previous overseers ridiculous stuff
4.
5. profit!
Unless you are starting the embark, there is almost invariable something to build the narrative on top off. I highly recommend READING previous turns
(or at least perusing) to get a sense of the narrative, and either build on top of it
(easier to do) or deviate away from it in another direction
(harder to do). As always practice makes perfect, but practice takes time
Still, I totally understand the mentality where you sit down to play DF, DF chugs along slowly
*choo choo neckbeardss*, and you just lose interest in it because nothing interesting happens and it takes a long ass time for even the season to finish. Its even more pronounced in succession games because you have to figure out and then deal with all the shit that happened before your turn came around. Then you have to figure out what shit you want to do during your turn, then you want to write abou-
Its just a shit lot of work. On a 2 week time limit. Once I started working in earnest, I just didn't have the time to pour into DF at all, let alone succession fortresses.
My suggestion Ghills, is to keep it brief. Only chronicle the interesting and NEW things. Or the things that made you go WTF DF? Having a megaproject you want to finish before your turn ends invariably makes writing easier as you can focus on the project. Have you decided on anything yet? If not, here are a few suggestions:
1. Relocate Hospital from dirt levels near the top to the safety of rock and stone down below
2. Expand Tavern, make more rooms for visitors.
3. Speaking of visitors, pit all the captured undead into magma.
4. Flood caverns with magma
(not a good idea for FPS)5. Obsidianize the surface completely.
GLH!F!!
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Topic: Bloodyhells - Succession: Battlefailed #5 (42.06) (Read 140907 times)