27lands

[27lands]

Rimworld 1.6 Daydreams

So, last night I was wondering what would make a great addition to a hypothetical future Rimworld DLC, and ended up coming up with a whole bunch of ideas that I figured I might as well share here. Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments, and suggest your own ideas about what the purely speculative “Rimworld 1.6” should add to the game!

(Disclaimer: I am not a sicko; I do not think that electroshock therapy, painful executions or any of the unethical things mentioned here are in any way funny IRL. This is all meant to just be speculation, and if you disagree with anything mentioned here on moral grounds, that’s entirely fine. However remember that Rimworld is a story generator, and very often the best stories can come from gritty, serious subject matter. I like to think that there is just as much potential for lighthearted, fun storytelling in this imagined DLC as there is potential for warhammer-40K levels of immoral dystopian lunacy. Like with biotech and ideology, it would all depend how you wanted to play it.)

My imaginary Rimworld DLC, which I think would be called Psychology, could include the following:

A character editor that allows you to customise the age, sex and backstories of your characters before starting a game, but not their skills, traits or health. I don’t really like to use the character editor mod these days, because you can use it mid-game to give your pawns ridiculous buffs, and I always end up giving into the temptation sooner or later, which really spoils the experience for me. A base-game character editor would, ideally, not be accessible once you loaded into the game, and would also put more limits on the kind of characters you’re allowed to create with it. 

More traits that affect character behaviour and create the possibly of new, dangerous mental breaks, such as suicidal, (causes random instances of self-harm when mood is low) apathetic (quarters move speed, manipulation and eating speed) or cruel (mental breaks are always either insulting sprees or social fights)

A fluid system of trait acquisition; characters can gain or lose traits after certain events or mood. So a character might gain the nervous or neurotic traits after the first few raids or animal attacks. If they are forced to kill many people over a short period of time, they might acquire the psychopath or bloodlust traits. If they work as researchers for long enough, maybe they acquire the academic trait. And if their mood gets low and doesn’t change, then maybe they acquire the apathetic or suicidal traits. 

A better prison system incorporating a simplified form of psychiatric care; you can arrest a colonist or capture an enemy, and select “offer psychiatric care” in their prisoner tab. This allows you to select certain traits to be removed or added to this character. Those assigned to wardening will then attempt to offer psychiatric care to this prisoner, slowly accumulating “points” until eventually the prisoner is brought around to your way of thinking; basically the same way research or VE psycasts’ meditation works. Certain personality traits require more points to remove or add than others, with adding most useful (like sanguine) or removing the worst, (like slow learner or suicidal) requiring the most points. 

A system by which colonists are considered guilty after certain mental breaks such as insulting sprees or berserk rages, which allows them to be detained without affecting colony mood.

New craft-able and buildable items that can speed up psychiatric care, like therapy couches, special soft walls that can’t be attacked during mental breaks, and straitjackets that reduce manipulation to zero to prevent prisoners harming each-other or themselves. 

A way of automating psychiatric care, conversion and recruitment using a device caused an electroconvulser. Electroshock therapy is much faster at reducing will,  resistance and certainty, and continually generates psychiatric care points while the colonist is in bed, but also has a risk of causing burn damage, which scales with time. 

Splitting the “warden” work type into a “counsellor” and “guard” work types, with counsellors performing psychiatric care, as well as delivering food, converting and recruiting, while guards wait outside cell doors to prevent prison escapes, escort prisoners and perform executions. 

Hallucinations! This would be a big one; when characters consume certain drugs, there is a chance of them triggering a hallucination; a mental state similar to a sad wander, except it gives positive mood buffs with weird flavour text, like “the sky is such an itchy green” or “man, who saw where that pig went?!”

New builds for execution, such as guillotines and electric chairs, as well as more painful constructions, such as iron maidens or stakes for burning people.

New, non-lethal weapons, parodying those added in Vanilla Weapons Expanded, such as anaesthetic guns or tasers, allowing you to safely control prisoners. 

Ideology integration, with precepts that make colonists prefer either counselling, electroshock therapy or no care at all, and which increase the speed of their preferred method when incorporated into your colony’s ideo. Other precepts are added regarding execution, with some preferring painless methods like guillotines and electric chairs, while others prefer more painful methods like the iron maiden. Still more precepts either make your colonists neutral towards hallucinations or exalt them; flavour text suggesting that they believe hallucinations are messages from spirits, gods, archotechs, etc. Perhaps these precepts could be integrated into existing memes; maybe individualists prefer no psychiatric care because of their whole “free expression” thing, while collectivists prefer to make people conform with counselling, and gestalts use electroshock therapy to force compliance at any cost. Ideologies with the “guilty” or “pain is virtue” memes are the only ones that prefer painful methods of execution, and perhaps buildables like the iron maiden can only be unlocked by having these memes. And of course, ideos with “high life” as a meme would consider hallucinations exalted; greatly increasing both their chance of occurring as well as tripling a pawn’s psychic sensitivity afterwards. Maybe also certain traits, like elder or greedy, are gained after colonists acquire certain ideological roles? 

Biotech integration, with new genes that code for particular traits, making mods that add such genes effectively redundant, and maybe also adding unique xenotypes characterised by these traits, such as cruel goblin people and kind faeries, along with maybe a few cosmetic genes that add to these races’ aesthetic (pointy ears and faery wings, etc). 

Royalty integration, with special neurotrainer devices that code for certain traits, which can only be acquired through quests to help or betray the empire. 

I don’t play with anomaly, so for all you anomaly players in the comments, suggest how any of the above could be integrated in a fun or unique way!

[27lands]

This is relevant for all Americans but especially those who are chronically ill, immunocompromised, or are otherwise in a vulnerable medical situation

Posted on TikTok on January 22:

[27lands]

what the heck is a kobold?

Seriously, what even are they? In the past I’ve seen creatures described as “kobolds” in their respective setting that have varied from dog-people to faeries or even tiny dragon people! All in D&D or D&D inspired settings, incidentally. Is there even a basis for these enigmatic creatures in mythology? Or are they a more modern phenomena that is treated as “mythical” in their settings and that we are thus made to assume must have some basis in real-life mythology? Personally, when I hear “kobold” I picture a little dog-headed guy like the cynocephali of ancient myths.

[27lands]

Why am I reblogging this in mid-january? Who knows. My machinations are beyond human comprehension.

Well here's your super dump of murderous guys and terrible monsters for Halloween! 31 total guys for October! Lets start with some festive guys!

Now some pesky undead!

You can't forget some monsters! That's a regular part of every adventure!

Some spunky allies or enraging rivals!

And of course some weirdo wild cards that just mess everything up.

I think I'll put together a little collage with all of them together later! Thanks for bearing with me while I try to figure out how the scheduling tab works again, but happy HALLOWEEN everyone!

Be safe and go out there and have fun and make a ruckus!

If you enjoyed this whole debacle please follow me on Patreon and support me there at the 1$ a month level! If you got the means, the 5$ level gets you access to full digital downloads like games, ttrpg cook books, and printable mtg tokens! The 10$ and up level gets you hard physical goods from me like stickers and mini prints! I'm a full time illustrator now so any support you throw at me really makes a difference!

Become a patron here!

And again happy Halloween!

-M

[27lands]

Huh??

What happened. It was friday evening and i just started watching a show called Delicious in Dungeon. Now its sunday evening and I think I’m in love with a netflix series for the first time in months. What magic it at work here.

[27lands]

Organodalek remastered! Feast poison your eyes on its JIGGLY, COLOURISED FLESHHH!

[27lands]

If you care about stopping animal cruelty, share this link

[27lands]

Anyone got Mortasheen?

so I recently learnt that Mortasheen, (created by Jonathan Wojcik) has been released and is available now for anyone who supported this magnificent project 3 yrs ago. I wasn’t even aware this project existed 3 yrs ago.

I’m just wondering if anyone lucky enough to own the 0.1 digital edition of Mortasheen would like to share a copy of this most excellent and long-awaited RPG with a poor, impoverished baby such as myself? If not, that’s OK, I expect the public version will be available by the summer’s end; I was just wondering.

Bear in mind I am a minor and will cry if you are mean 2 me. 😁😁😁

[27lands]

Taken by the Fascination rover using an on-board electron-microscope, this is the clearest image yet taken of life on Titan. This cryogenic moon of Saturn is so cold that lakes and seas of liquid methane have formed on its surface, while a thick haze of nitrogen compounds in its atmosphere obscures much of the surface. Life on this world operates on an entirely different biochemistry to life on Earth; using liquid methane in place of water. Instead of sunlight, autotrophs derive energy from heat; thriving in bodies of methane that have been warmed by “molten ice” rising up from Titan’s oceanic mantle. Though lethally frigid by our standards, these conditions are positively balmy to the Titanean microbes, which have now formed a complex ecosystem on this fantastic moon.

And, despite being made of entirely different building blocks, this ecosystem still operates on the same principles of life on Earth. Here a pair of amoebas gorge themselves on a cluster of single-celled autotrophs. If they meet, there will follow a brief exchange of genetic material; allowing both cells to eventually produce copies of their species to continue their line. And if, by some chance, the genetic material is corrupted, the resulting offspring may develop a trait that distinguishes them from the rest of their species; a trait that might favour their survival over others, and help them to pass this trait on to their own offspring. And so even on Titan, a world more alien perhaps than any world in the solar system, we see life abiding by the same laws of nutrition, reproduction and evolution that are seen on our own.

The embarrassingly late finale to my life in the solar system art series (sorry everyone!). Seeing as Titan was the least popular choice in the poll, I’ve reduced its resident aliens to the level of microbes; partly because life operating on a cryogenic biochemistry would develop much more slowly than at Earth-like temperatures, and partly due to lack of time! Have a good week!

[27lands]

Reconstruction of areopteryx enigmatica, based on a fossil discovered in Giovanni crater on Mars by NASA’s inquiry rover.

[27lands]

720 million years ago, our solar system is a very different place. The Earth is a frozen wasteland; every continent covered in a layer of ice hundreds of metres thick. But on Venus…

In the tepid waters off the coast of the Aphrodite Terra, a colony of algae-towers releases clouds of spores into the water. Nourished by this sudden abundance of food, the gelatinous veneraspermids have tripled in number, and now swarm in the sunlit waters to feed.

Though simple and soft-bodied, lacking brains or blood, these are among the first multicellular organisms to evolve on Venus. Though the land is still lifeless, in the seas there is tremendous evolutionary potential; given another few tens of millions of years, life on Venus may rival that which exists on Earth at this time.

Alas, this chance will never come. Already the Venusian climate is warming, as the shutdown of vital geological processes causes carbon-dioxide to accumulate in the atmosphere, and as the runaway greenhouse effect takes hold, these virgin seas will boil away. The atmosphere will become unbreathable, temperatures rise beyond all hope of habitability, and by the time Earth has thawed, the planet Venus will be a hellish wasteland; all traces of its past potential lost to the ravages of time.

[27lands]

I’ll work on artwork for all three choices over the next 7 days, and once everyone has voted, we can begin our journey through time and space!

[27lands]

Deep beneath the frozen surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, at the bottom of the subsurface ocean, a pair of predatory Sidesteps closes in on a sickly grazing Radiolope abandoned by the rest of its’ flock. Weakened by the haematophagous parasites that have attached themselves to its body, the Radiolope’s chances seem slim.

Another revamped old picture, this time from February this year! Possibly the first in a series about alien life within our solar system.

[27lands]

Based on an old sketch of mine from 2022. To the right is the original version!

By the light of the setting sun, a pair of carnivorous plants embrace in a lakeside park. Meanwhile their two year-old child seeks to play with a large herbivorous worm; the creature evidently refuses.

[27lands]

“I’m telling you! It was like a kid’s Jack O’ Lantern! Glowing an’ all!”

“Jim, we’re 4 km below sea level; get real.”

Happy Halloween from the depths of the Mariana Trench!

[27lands]

A while ago I tried to draw a Dalek as an organic, naturally-evolved creature, rather than the cyborg mutant squid-nazis that we now know them to be. I created… this.

[27lands]

Hard mode: top 10 spec projects that are at least 10 years old?

AAAAGH…

Okay, um…

1 After Man by Dougal Dixon

2 Man after Man by Dougal Dixon

3 All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet

4 the Future is Wild

5 Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon

6 Expedition by Wayne Barlowe

7 the Snouters: the Form and Life of the Rhinogrades by Gerolf Steiner

8 Greenworld by Dougal Dixon

9 the New Dinosaurs by Dougal Dixon

10 the Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson

again, PLEEEEASE don’t rank these for whatever you need them for! But I will say that, though I have read all of these, Greenworld and Last and First Men I have only read bits of so far. Nevertheless, they are all brilliant and I hope you find them to your liking!

PS Expedition is particularly good, but it is also rather expensive to find these days. It is well worth the price though!