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[IronyOwl]

Oh hell no. I'm talking stars and weather patterns, not uniform terrain and truck badgers. The actual terrain and such will be randomly/arbitrarily generated when players bother to find it.

Or possibly playermade, in the case of hostile tribes. Still considering that one.

[Caellath]

Stars and weather patterns? Make it a two star system. Or maybe the action may take place in a planet close to a red/blue/white dwarf star, it would be pretty funny. Or a neutron star. Also on weather you can make it rain frogs. Or something.

Edit: Of course that you'd have to ignore the problems suffered by planets orbiting these kind of stars...But it is a RtD. A wizard did it^TM.


On an unrelated note, Sean Mirrsen came back from the dead to take part in a pony RtD.

Also, fun fact: I never read Multiword Madness nor RTRTD. Nor I plan to read them. It is like not having played FFVII in the world of RPGs, I know.

Fun fact, I also didn't play FFVII and I don't want to play it.

[monk12]

I've always been a big fan of multiple moons/debris rings/scary-close comets/etc. Gives the heavens that nice neighborly touch, plus way more eclipses/alignments/whatever than you would otherwise have.

[Caellath]

I've always been a big fan of multiple moons/debris rings/scary-close comets/etc. Gives the heavens that nice neighborly touch, plus way more eclipses/alignments/whatever than you would otherwise have.

I always fancied the idea of a lot of wacky stellar formations. Putting those colored dwarfs, giants and simply strange stars to decorate the heavens seems nice.

[IronyOwl]

So what you're saying is that I should include a Blood Moon Eclipse, a Death Moon Eclipse, a Soul Moon Eclipse, a time when the Screaming Star Nebula gains dominion over the Blessed Mother Constellation, a time when The Wretched, The Unholy, and The Traitor constellations all line up...

I'm gonna need more nightmares for this.

[Caellath]

So what you're saying is that I should include a Blood Moon Eclipse, a Death Moon Eclipse, a Soul Moon Eclipse, a time when the Screaming Star Nebula gains dominion over the Blessed Mother Constellation, a time when The Wretched, The Unholy, and The Traitor constellations all line up...

I'm gonna need more nightmares for this.

Kind of my point, yes. Having a lot of shiny (and potentially dangerous) stellar bodies around is fun.

[Sirus]

How about the Rains of Destruction? Every hundred years or so, the world sweeps through a meteor storm or planetary ring, bombarding areas on the surface with tiny space rocks. Individually they don't do much damage, but throw a few hundred thousand at the ground and you're looking at devastated cropland, cities, whatever.

[IronyOwl]

How about the Rains of Destruction? Every hundred years or so, the world sweeps through a meteor storm or planetary ring, bombarding areas on the surface with tiny space rocks. Individually they don't do much damage, but throw a few hundred thousand at the ground and you're looking at devastated cropland, cities, whatever.

Waaaaaaaaaaaay too rare to matter. Every thirty days or so might work, though I don't necessarily need a celestial body to have an excuse to rain fire down upon the world. A ring of death that you can watch getting closer and closer is nice though...


I was really not expecting this to be this inspiring. It's probably because these ideas are mainly to bring chaos and hate.

[Caellath]

I was really not expecting this to be this inspiring. It's probably because these ideas are mainly to bring chaos and hate.

If you talk about stellar bodies, you are talking to a person who likes them. I love quasars, dwarf stars, red giants, neutron stars, black holes and anything which makes us humans look like an insignificant smear upon the universe.

It is Lovecraft RL. You don't need elder gods when you have the space itself.

[monk12]

Minecraft-esque RTD is one of those concepts that has been niggling in the back of my head for months now, but I've lacked the ambition/insight to flesh it out into its own thing.

As far as regular cosmic events, you could set it up such that X event happens every Y interval, and then set up a simple way to track/predict when such occurrences happen to intersect with other events in interesting ways. So every time the Blood Moon is full, the ravening hordes are much more ravening than usual, or a particular flavor of horde only appears on this date. Every time the Dominion Moon is full, it is easy to mind control the hordes via a particular spell/ritual. Every time these happen on the same day, players spend the night picking fights with otherwise-too-powerful enemies because they have forgotten beasts to ride around on.

Obviously, I'd need to know more about the actual mechanics to suggest what kinds of things you could get going on. It would also be groovy if joint celestial acts had altogether unexpected consequences, in addition to or in lieu of the normal effects. I'd also note that you could (nay, should!) hide this information from the players, and have astronomic tomes be one of the rewards of exploring the world- it would certainly pay to know when to avoid outdoor excursions because the Stars are Right.

[Caellath]

I like the ideas of astronomic tomes. I would also like a spell caled Event Horizon. Try and guess what it does.

Hint: It has no relation to spaceships and eldritch abominations. It is the phenomenon itself.

[IronyOwl]

Minecraft-esque RTD is one of those concepts that has been niggling in the back of my head for months now, but I've lacked the ambition/insight to flesh it out into its own thing.

For me, one of the biggest decisions was trying to figure out whether you should have relatively preset buildings, like a Hovel and then a Hut, or Shack L3s or what, or whether it should be more literally MCish in that you can build basically whatever and then calculate out the costs and such. Unfortunately, I had to lean towards the former option because updating posts other than the each-turn-status thing is a pain in the ass.

As far as regular cosmic events, you could set it up such that X event happens every Y interval, and then set up a simple way to track/predict when such occurrences happen to intersect with other events in interesting ways. So every time the Blood Moon is full, the ravening hordes are much more ravening than usual, or a particular flavor of horde only appears on this date. Every time the Dominion Moon is full, it is easy to mind control the hordes via a particular spell/ritual. Every time these happen on the same day, players spend the night picking fights with otherwise-too-powerful enemies because they have forgotten beasts to ride around on.

Obviously, I'd need to know more about the actual mechanics to suggest what kinds of things you could get going on. It would also be groovy if joint celestial acts had altogether unexpected consequences, in addition to or in lieu of the normal effects. I'd also note that you could (nay, should!) hide this information from the players, and have astronomic tomes be one of the rewards of exploring the world- it would certainly pay to know when to avoid outdoor excursions because the Stars are Right.

I do like this stuff. The only issue is that then it'd be getting towards being a pain to keep track of, since instead of just incrementing the season counter or whatever I've got to look up the progress of five different celestial bodies, increment them all, ponder just how these effects interact, and so on.

Of course, this is more an issue for innate effects, like more monsters coming out. Stuff like easier rituals of a given type are a bit easier because I only have to look them up when the players try to use them. I guess if I was dedicated I could also just come up with a little calendar to glance at and figure out if there's anything special this turn.

I also do like the notion of the players knowing nothing. I think I'll be going with trial and error and brutal, brutal experience for figuring it out though, rather than books. I suppose friendly tribes or rare cases of lost knowledge might also give you hints. Like, I would kind of assume everyone would know about a ring of death showing up every month or two. That tends to be a thing.

[Skyrunner]

Even though you walk through the valley of the pain of tracking things, fear no evil, for Excel/GoogleDocs are with you; Their spreadsheet and Their cells, they comfort you.

[monk12]

Yes, my "silly complicated astral alignments" idea only works if you plot it out ahead of time- thus, in the course of updating the game you just increment the day, and check what happens on this day. It's a little work up front (especially if you want patterns that aren't straight "every X days") but it should have a fairly low maintenance cost, especially if you're already using a calendar for other things (crops, tribe attacks, whatever.)

As long as I've got your ear, what were you thinking for the time step? Is one turn an hour, or six hours, or twelve, or a day? And have you had thoughts on how you'll be handling the map?

[IronyOwl]

I fiddled with the concept of dividing the day up into stages, but decided that would make it odd when you never really needed sleep. And of course, taking a turn out every now and then to sleep was right out, as was having something like four-five actions per turn. Thus, turns are currently slated to be a day long, though I might absent-mindedly track day stages for the purposes of location during events (for instance, whether someone's out harvesting crops or sleeping when raiders hit).

These are, however, somewhat Minecraft-like days, in that they don't necessarily match anything else especially well. Crops aren't going to take a full season to mature, a season's going to be a lot less than 90 days long, and so on.


For a map, to be honest I hadn't intended to have one. I'd intended to handle most stuff fairly abstractly or not really worry about it.