#Resource Management

[theresattrpgforthat]

I'm a TTRPG designer, and also a big fan of the video game Terraria. I'm stuck on fun ways to handle material gathering and crafting. Send me some inspiration! Thanks!

THEME: Gathering and Crafting

Hello friend! Putting this one together was very fun. I hope you enjoy it!

Stoneburner, by Fari RPGs.

Stoneburner is a sci-fantasy solo-friendly demon-hunting community-building tabletop role-playing game.Inspired by the new school revolution movement, players take on the role of a group of dwarves who must assume control of a demon haunted mine, along with its accompanying settlement, which they inherited after the death of their distant relative.The game focuses on the dwarves' journey as they navigate the challenges of their new responsibilities, rebuild a new thriving community, and clear the mine of its fire spitting monsters.

A techno-fantasy game of exploration and survival. You’ll be delving into a mine to extract resources and attempting to maintain and protect your community not just from magical beasts, but also greedy and plotting rivals. The system is built on Breathless, which is pretty rules-lite on the face but has a lot of possibility to expand, borrowing quite a bit from the NSR but giving the GM specific cues where they have a license to complicate the story. You’ll find a lot of familiar pieces here, with character classes, special abilities, and loot tables. Stoneburner isn’t fully ready to be published quite yet, but in the meantime you can check out the free preview!

Hostile (Rules and Setting), by Zozer Games.

Welcome to the gritty, retro-future universe of HOSTILE. Based on the Cepheus Engine, these rules add in realistic combat rules as well as setting-specific rules from some of the eighteen HOSTILE supplements. When combined with its companion book, the HOSTILE Setting, you will have a complete, stand-alone, retro-future sci-fi game. HOSTILE is a gritty, near future roleplaying setting that is inspired by movies like Outland, Bladerunner and Alien. It is a universe of mining installations, harsh moons, industrial facilities, hostile planets and brutal, utilitarian spacecraft.

When I looked up info about this game, HOSTILE was described as not an ALIEN RPG, but rather an RPG that you could plug Alien into. It’s a space horror setting, but what kind of space horror is up to you. The Rulebook has rules on trade, salvaging, and other pieces of resource management, while the setting book contains construction rules for your own mega-ton spaceship. There’s also plenty of colonies, survival rules, campaign advice and encounter tables. If this is interesting to you, I’d recommend checking out the Double Shift Bundle, which offers both the Rulebook and the Setting Book for 20% off.

Forbidden Lands, by Free League Publishing.

Forbidden Lands is a new take on classic fantasy roleplaying. In this open-world survival roleplaying game, you’re not heroes sent on missions dictated by others - instead, you are raiders and rogues bent on making your own mark on a cursed world. You will discover lost tombs, fight terrible monsters, wander the wild lands and, if you live long enough, build your own stronghold to defend.

As raiders and rogues, in Forbidden Lands you will need to scavenge to survive. Built on Free League’s Year Zero Engine, this game uses an abstract resource called consumables which your characters will have to find regularly, because food goes bad and you can only carry so many things. The game focuses on the dangers of the road, although not all dangers are terrifying - you’re not fighting orcs all the time - sometimes you’re just battling mosquitoes and cold weather. There’s also rules about building, maintaining, and defending a stronghold, which sounds kind of similar to building and defending your house in Terraria. There’s a lot to keep track of in Forbidden Lands, and as long as you don’t mind playing characters with a somewhat loose moral compass, this game might be for you!

A Fistful of Darkness, by monkeyEcho.

A Fistful of Darkness is a Weird West Fantasy hack of Blades in the Dark with heavy emphasis on the fantasy part. It’s not intended to be an accurate history lesson or a simulation of past times. It is designed to be a cinematic game which lets you play all those Weird West tropes towards the end of the world.

Imagine a world with the magic and mystery of the frontier: wide open plains of the Old Wild West in all its beauty and madness, where violence and sacrifice dominate every single day. Now add the Hellstone rush, underground mayhem in mines and brand new sciences & machines. Don’t forget immigration, injustice, vigilante justice, outlaws, gunslingers, slick talkers and setting suns. This all in the face of an impending doom: Demons and the four riders bringing the end of the world as you know it. How do you make it to the top of this powder keg, which side will you take in the impending war and how much will your soul suffer? Let’s play to find out!

Forged in the Dark games abstract your resources a bit, but the Hellstone of A Fistful of Darkness is so important to the setting that you’ll find yourselves doing whatever you can to get your hands on it. It’s a crafting material, it’s currency, and it’s the bringer of mutations and curses, what with it being a demonic material and all. Because you’ll be running a group playbook alongside your own characters, you’ll be working together to improve your tools, allies, abilities and home base, especially if you choose the Scavengers Posse. If you like action and suspense as much as you like inventory and communal goals, then this game is for you.

LOOT, by Gila RPGs.

Do you love loot? Then you're in the right place.

Go on quests, find loot, do it all over again. Your character is entirely defined by the loot they wear and carry. Loot is generated and passed out at the end of each quest with a dynamic loot pool system.

This is an application of the LUMEN system that eschews dice. Players have a number of uses for each of their approaches, which can be spent to overcome obstacles. Complications arise when you have to cobble together a solution using a different approach, or when you avoid marking an approach at all. This is a game still in a free playtest, so the designer is happy to hear feedback if you decide to give it a whirl!

[space-blue]

I watched the 3 season 3 TBB episodes and it's all again tying to Palpatine clones! And I am. Upset!! That EVERYTHING must now tie in to the Palpy clones because Disney just could not take the L on the "somehow Palpatine returned" meme.

So it's all about project necromancer, just like Mando all ended up being about cloning and Grogu's M count, and Kenobi had to rip JFO's entire ending to show us from Jedi in amber... I hate that it feels like a curse over anything coming out in this time period. Most importantly : it is SO boring.

Why must Disney ruin the punch and twist of its shows, when they could tell original stories? You want to engage us into dark sithly biddings?

GIVE US A GAME!!

If everything has to be about Palpatine doing necro shit keeping dead jedi in vats and using their blood to splice a force sensitive clone, then let me play that!

Give us a game in which

I do force sensitive children hunting!

Blood resource management!

Building evil bases across systems!

Sending minions (like Cad Bane or custom made inquisitors) on child kidnapping quests!

Let me build genetic facilities and unlock genetic and dark force skill trees! Let me do Sith factorio!!

Passing bills and racketeering entire systems to help fund my dark deeds!

Let me build up and repair Vader's amour, customize it, so he can go on more dangerous missions and harvest more force sensitives and rogue Jedi!

Chose the right dialogue to brainwash my inquisitors!

Have rebellion crushing minigames, and risk of losing precious DNA sources and rarefied Kaminoan cloning specialtists!

Let me give birth to deformed blobs that scream in pain and die, until I manage to craft the first Snoke!!

Let me play a Dark Sith Cloning Sim!! Let me be dark and fucked up!!!

Now that would be engaging and fun, and that would leave space for stories to be told during the empire and post empire eras that don't revolve around Palpatine's deals.

Of course it's 2D pixel art BTW.

[sailorastera]

I'm very proud of my husband because his base building, resource collecting, cat in space game MewnBase IS DONE!

His 1.0 release was last night. 🥳

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/743130/MewnBase/

Itchio: https://cairn4.itch.io/mewnbase Congrats hubby. ♥

[gothtransandroid]

Contemplating: Necromancy and the Utility of the Skeleton

From aesthetics alone the skeleton does many things for the necromancer. A clear benefit is simply in the knowledge of the subject being a dead thing in and of itself. With any variation of the corpse from zombie to revenant there can be doubts at a glance as to what one is dealing with but moving bones are distinct at most distances and let a person know that any harm they deal to it, accidental or otherwise, wont hurt a living thing. On the other side, the person seeing the skeleton will know that it won't feel pain and has no nervous system holding it back in how strong it will strike someone else. This functions as a form of deterrence from combat as well as telegraphs the danger of handling the skeleton beyond its designated task.

The skeleton, contrary to common sense, is less cost effective than a zombie in terms of raising. The mechanism of imprinting magic upon a corpse via its soulless form means that with less material there, there is more work and more raw magical structure needed to maintain the skeleton. This being said, the zombie will decay and are a short term solution sonits better to invest as a skeleton will be cost effective over time and has the added benefit of not smelling awful. Many an old necromancer cut their noses off and burned their sinuses not just to resemble a corpse in their horde as camouflage, but more so to kill the smell of working with so many zombies.

At an average weight of 20 pounds, the human skeleton is very portable if a single servant is needed and one is conserving their magic between uses. This does covert an unit of 100 servants to about a ton, which could staff a mansion easily and handle all tasks besides handling guests and the cooking for obvious reasons. Like with other skeletons, a human skeleton can utilize their ribs as a means of storage or carrying tools to keep their hands free. Special tools could easily be made for a gardener or a maid to reach in and tend to their tasks while having free hands and look presentable if a chest cover is used to tastefully hide dirty or worn tools.

Besides issues of durability which can be addressed with coatings and reinforcements to the structure of the skeleton, bones tend to still be sturdy even when dry and set, only they cannot self-repair so any damage will need prevented or filled as it occurs. Skeletons are not an unlimited resource, as are bodies in general, but those gathered and maintained properly in a closed and respectful environment can last a lifetime.

[lefinx]

Cult of the Lamb - Review

Back again for another (slightly) spooky game review! This time, we're diving into Cult of the Lamb. I got incredibly hooked on this game and spent a week ignoring my upcoming uni deadline, obsessively playing it. (I wouldn't recommend that, but I had a great time.) Due to my fixation, I may be slightly biased in my review. However, a good friend also enjoys this game, so I trust that my bias isn't too far off.

The last of your kind, all other lambs have been sacrificed to prevent a prophecy of The One Who Waits regaining power. However, just as you lay your head on the chopping block, awaiting a cruel fate, this god saves you and grants you new powers to fight your way to freedom. In return, you must build a loyal cult in their name while simultaneously seeking out those who planned your demise.

Cult of the Lamb is a roguelike dungeon crawler developed by Massive Monster and published by Devolver Digital on August 11th 2022. On release the game received positive reviews for its game play and replay value, and has since received three nominations at the 19th British Academy Games Award including best game.

Cult of the Lamb features a few different elements of gameplay, the two most common being combat within the dungeons, and then taking care of your followers.

There are four doors for you to enter, each containing a different style of dungeon with unique enemies, mini-bosses, weapons, resources, and a final boss. Each door contains four different 'crusades' you must beat one after the other until you can fight the main boss of the dungeon and open the next door.

When first entering a dungeon, you're provided with a randomly assigned weapon and a curse. There are six different weapons and five curses that can be picked, each with its own variations and buffs.

During these runs, there are different routes you can choose from, each containing different areas. Most are normal combat areas, occasionally featuring effects that change your combat or enemy drops. Other areas, however, are completely different. You can find or save followers, visit various shops, gain more hearts, find areas dedicated to specific resources, enter unknown '?' areas, and more! Every new door unlocked opens up new areas for you to visit and resources to collect.

On top of this, when exploring an area, you may enter rooms containing NPCs that will aid you during your crusades. The most common NPC is Clauneck, who helps you by offering two tarot cards to choose from, each providing a buff for the crusades. Another character is Kudaai, who provides you with three new weapons or curses to choose from. Finally, there's Chemach, who provides you with Relics that perform special actions or attacks and either break upon use or need to be recharged afterward.

When not crusading, you'll be required to take care of your followers by farming, cooking, and even cleaning up their waste. You will need to build various buildings and decorations using the resources you collect to keep them happy. Hosting sermons and praising your followers are essential to keep their faith alive. During this part of the game, you will have 'Faith,' 'Hunger,' and 'Cleanliness' gauges to manage. Keeping these filled prevents followers from dissenting or dying. This task becomes easier over time as you gain more faith and build bigger and better structures, but you will still need to keep an eye on your followers occasionally.

Holding sermons in the temple is crucial not only for maintaining faith but also for enhancing your stats and gaining new gear for your crusades. The temple also allows you to choose new doctrines. There are 48 different doctrines to choose from, divided into six categories. You must choose wisely, as each time you proclaim a new doctrine, you must pick between two options. Each doctrine provides an upgrade affecting your cult, such as new follower traits, buildings, rituals, and more.

In my play through, I chose the wedding doctrine, I now have four husbands and sacrifice anyone who annoys them. The game offers a lot of feature allows you to have fun and customise the game to your liking.

Other smaller elements of gameplay are scattered throughout the game, such as a map containing additional areas to explore and interact with NPCs. These areas have their own shops and side quests for you to complete. One area even allows you to fish, providing more resources for your followers or selling for coins.

In one area of the map, you can play Knucklebones, an in-game dice game. I had SO much fun playing this mini-game. The game consists of two 3x3 boards. Each player takes turns rolling a die and placing it in a location of their choosing. Each line of dice is added together vertically, creating your score for that row. If a player places multiple of the same die in one row, the total is then doubled or tripled, increasing the overall score. You can also destroy the opposing player's dice by placing the same die in the column opposite to theirs. The game ends once a player has filled their board, and the highest score wins. This provides a nice addition to the game, and a new feature to enjoy and spend time on.

The game is frequently blessed with new free updates from the developers, allowing newer content and replay ability. the most recent update 'unholy alliance' added the addition the The Goat, a new playable character allowing you to play couch co-op with friends.

The art style is great, simple and cute at times but also eerie and sinister at others. The music follows a similar pattern, with some tracks creating rich and tense atmospheres, while others are more upbeat and lively. I really love the use of the in-game language in the tracks. It sounds melodic and unique, while also being the same sounds characters make when talking. This enhances the cult aspect of the game, as some tracks sound like followers singing or chanting, adding to the feeling of being in a cult.

As much as I loved Cult of the Lamb, all games have their drawbacks, and although they’re not game-changing, this one has them too.

The difficulty spikes massively after completing the second dungeon. During my first playthrough and again during the post-credits gameplay, I struggled with this jump and ended up getting quite frustrated at times. I went from rarely dying to dying quite frequently. While it’s good for a game’s difficulty to increase as it progresses, and I enjoy the challenge, this spike seemed unbalanced, as if the difficulty jumped up a few levels rather than gradually progressing. However, the game does have a difficulty option you can change throughout. I never adjusted this myself, but for others getting frustrated at this jump, this may be an option to keep the game more enjoyable. Over time, I got used to the difficulty jump and became better equipped to handle new enemy attacks.

It is also really difficult to keep your cultists alive and happy in the beginning. I struggled with resource management, and wood was my biggest enemy for the longest time. You do eventually overcome this, and at some point have so many resources you don't know what to do with them. However, in the beginning, it does pose quite a challenge, especially since time does not pause while you are in the dungeons, so your cult can easily starve and lose faith in you while you’re away.

Another issue I found while playing the Switch release of the game is that it crashes from time to time. This is most likely due to the Switch’s outdated hardware and the fact that I decorated my cult way too much for my poor Nintendo to handle. However, it does add a minor annoyance when it crashes in the middle of a dungeon, causing me to lose my progress.

Something I haven't mentioned in other reviews is the game's accessibility features that focus on both graphics and gameplay. I was pleasantly surprised when reading through them, as the game offers a lot more features than I initially expected, making it more accessible to those with certain motor or visual issues, or even just for a more relaxing gameplay experience.

Although I never used it myself, the ability to pause time while crusading makes it a lot easier for those looking for a more 'cozy' experience without the stress of starving cultists, or for those seeking less challenging gameplay. There's also the option to automatically cook, clean, fish, and more without having to time a button press.

My favourite feature is the option to make the text bigger. Although it is such a small feature, I find that a lot of games nowadays have such small text, and I always struggle to see it from a distance, even with my glasses on.

Cult of the Lamb has released on PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PS4/5, Xbox One/series X/S and retails for around £20. the main story is around 15 hours in length, however the game is packed full of replay ability with its post game content, allowing you to get much much more out of it.

As states above I loved loved Cult of the Lamb and would recommend anyone looking for a game with that mix of combat and resource management. Or even some cozy gamers who enjoy a bit of combat, as the cult building and decorating can still provide hours of fun and the character sprites are just so cute.

[sprintingowl]

Wear And Tear

Pharmagothica released a few weeks ago, a 137 page survival horror ttrpg that focuses on resource management, caution, and lateral thinking.

It takes place in a near future where companies rule walled cities, and the wilderness outside is infested with the bioweapons they created.

Tonal influences include Parasite Eve, Resident Evil, Fallout, The Last Of Us, Kingdom, and an assortment of related media.

The game's engine is built on Mork Borg, which means d20+stat checks, character classes, and Omens---a limited currency you can spend to reroll bad dice.

Pharmagothica also expands on that framework, adding careers, crafting, the ability to poach special abilities from other classes, and a lot of other smaller mechanical tweaks.

This week I released Wear And Tear, a supplement that adds another 39 pages and expands player options with new equipment, new abilities, new classes, and weapon maintenance---a mechanic that encourages players to sometimes use cheaper, weaker gear.

Both Pharmagothica and Wear And Tear are available for free, but you can also support development if you want to.

[nicholasandriani]

(via Level 4: Reflecting on the Game Design Journey of “Trail Guardian: The Ranger’s Journey”)

[thetalentedmrwulf]

Abstractions in tactical RPGs

I'm definitely getting to the point in my RPGing, or at least in my DMing, where I find I have less and less patience for bean-counting. Ammunition, coins, et al.

No, that's not right either. I understand their purpose in games that require them, and I find my preference moving towards games that don't, but I'm losing patience with people who both insist that you can roleplay anything but that not only refuse to understand abstractions, but directly bitch about them.

By example - in Pathfinder 2E, Alchemists can just make x alchemy items a day with an abstracted resource called infused reagents. These last for one day. If they wait until the middle of an encounter, they can whip it out on demand, but there are less than if they planned ahead. Seems rad. My Alchemist gets to do alchemy stuff all over the place not unlike a spellcasters uses spells even in a game that likes bean counting or specificity.

Then why do so many content creators that normally gush about how anything is roleplayable throw little fits over where these come from? Who gives a shit? Maybe they have their own alchemy kit, or a satchel like Honey Lemon in Big Hero 6, or are mixing their spit into something because they're suffused with chemicals. It literally doesn't goddamn matter. Why die on this hill?

Just seems silly. I hope in the PF2 remaster they keep adding stuff like this. There's a phenomenal feat that lets you pull a random item out of your pack because you planned ahead for just such an occasion that's really been making people die on hills and I don't get it. The game has been moving away from being a skill-based board game with RPG elements for years and those old versions still exist. There's plenty of space for tactical social/physical/mental encounters with abstract shenanigans. Stop fussing already.

[captaingimpy]

Comparative Analysis: The Design and Impact of "Oregon Trail" and "Papers, Please"

Introduction In the world of video games, few titles manage to transcend the boundaries of entertainment to offer profound insights into the human condition and historical contexts. “Oregon Trail” and “Papers, Please” are two games that do just that, using the medium to educate and provoke thought through the lens of resource management and ethical decision-making. This essay explores the…

[puregag]

Struggling with rostering? Time to upgrade your rostering system!

[shallowseeker]

Hey Shal, I have a question about your family diner meta. Mad respect, but in the Leviathan arc Biggerson's is made out to be a bad thing. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on that, since in the Cas tablet meta where Naomi attacks Cas, you talk about Biggerson's being bigger sons -> better than their fathers because of their bigger hearts is a good thing? Anyway, I'm hoping this comes across as a friendly question!

I tend to shy away from writing about some stuff from that season, because a lot of it seems very era-attenuated. Example: how an average librarian is referred to as "Chubby" and her beau as "Chub-chaser" in Repo Man. In general some of the mean despair over "fat people" in this season comes off Hollywood-seedy and thoughtless, but it's soooo of the times.

For a little while in this era, the documentary SuperSize Me reigned supreme in every bit of small-talk and in every classroom. Jessica Simpson was a frequent target of weight-shaming, including this hugely publicized fiasco from 2009, when she looked like a walking dream BTW.

In this way, SPN is like a time capsule. (Like how, if you were alive at the time during post-"war on terror," Torture was the big topic in every current events class, verging on a buzz word. This obsession with torture looms larger in early-mid SPN because ot it.)

///

Yes, Biggerson's is a BIG motif in season 7, and with negative connotations. It's a nod to SuperSize Me. It's especially damning for the punching-down attitudes in Hollywood.

I want to point out that although the name is cheeky, Biggerson's wasn't even inherently bad in-world.

The Leviathan was a rotten supplier to this family chain industry, dosing its food with additives, which mirrors a lot of the real-world chatter about trans-fats, partially hydrogenated oil, etc. People were working really hard to get them banned!

When you get down to it, the people inside Biggerson's were being actively preyed upon under the guise of family together-time.

///

What I think... I want to carefully pivot to, maybe...

is the dark side of humanity and family, that of consumerism and exploitation.

I think overall that the family diner itself is still a positive motif, but as with every motif, there's a shadow side--the uncharitable side, a side that can be carried to extremes.

And the "shadow self" of the family diner motif is excess and greed exploiting the family by ravaging its most basic requirement to survive: shelter and nourishment.

They are making humans into livestock.

This was also a rampant idea in the 2000s: about selectively breeding farm animals so that they get dumber and dumber, until they're easy to subjugate for meat, assembly-line style.

I think they briefly touch on this again in season 12...with the Moloch monster and family business of meat packaging.

Anyway, SPN was trying to loop this idea in, too.

///

So, yes. BIG erson's. Bigger Sons. Etc. Etc.

You want your kids to be better than you, with "bigger hearts" and more kindness. But bigger and stronger can have a heck of a downside, too.

But at its heart, the family diner also represents communion and community. It is, after all, the weak, vulnerable human family that Cas wants to protect in season 8.

It's both things at once.

(ASIDE//

And Cas becomes the ideal/idea/motif of the always-working dad/husband who wants to provide for you but doesn't indulge in happiness or nourishment for himself. At least... not until the family is safe/cared for.)

///

ASIDE 2//

Flagrant consumerism is a big part of Nephilim concept, too, and that's a very ancient story.

Theirs was an extensive appetite that so drained the world they had to be eradicated to save the world. In a very real symbolic sense, We are the Nephilim. (On the nose maybe, but we are empire: too tall, too strong, too wasteful, war-mongering, dominating etc. etc.)

And my point is, I think humans have always been aware of the tension and war that comes with the competition for finite resources. Resource-hogs. It's not just a modern, "American" concept.

In early days, our conceptualization of gods and demi-gods mimics the food chain. Ergo: If gods are above us, they're like other stronger animals...they want to eat us. Thus, sacrificing to them is a way to appease them. (Psychologically.)

Humanity and religion are historically oriented towards pooling our resources to survive. Many religions, even the big ones imho, are a clever family-extension devices, that's why it they’re so littered with parental components.

(It's used to bind people “under one roof” and funnel the resources appropriately.)

Certainly, that how Cults and Causes start; in meaningful ways they're all baby/early religions. And when enough time goes by, and the leaders die, etc etc...they devolve to myth and respectable religions proper.

The ultimate difference is just... time.

If angels are royal families, ancient knights-and-tribalism, then Leviathan were supreme capitalism.

It worked well in theory, even when the execution was sometimes lacking to too campy to get the satire across. Especially coming from, you know, Hollywood. And Biggerson's is a warped shadow of that appetite symbol.

[nickstanley]

Schneider’s Creek

I just learned that an Environmental Study will be conducted on this concrete creek to determine what sort of improvements can and should be made. The reason for this change is flood mitigation (to prevent flooding). The brochure discussed widening and naturalizing the banks of the creek, this is something I am 100% in favour of! This could become a really beautiful area when the naturalization project is approved and completed. 

[erikahammerschmidt]

so here are some of my thoughts on the idea of "longtermism."

i.e. the idea that we should focus on human well-being from a big-picture perspective, including all the possible future generations of humans, perhaps even before considering the well-being of people currently alive.

which to me sounds like mostly absolute nonsense.

Not because I don't care about the thought of distant future humans still thriving and happy thousands of years from now.

I do! I think that would be awesome, and I hope it happens.

BUT

for the most part, we CANNOT predict anything far enough in advance, in this chaotic world, to have ANY IDEA what actions today will even BE good for humans thousands of years from now.

And, the few things where it does seem kinda brainlessly obvious what would be good? like, "don't blow up the world today"?

ARE ALSO THE THINGS THAT ARE GOOD FOR PEOPLE RIGHT NOW.

so, why would it be a question? why would you even have to choose?

example:

for some of these longtermist thinkers, the main goal is space travel.

from this viewpoint, the big fear is that the planet Earth and the Sol system won't last forever, no matter what we do…. and if humans don't travel to other planets, other star systems, by that time, humanity will be wiped out and nothing we ever did will matter.

now. setting aside for a moment this dismal view of what it means for one's life to "matter"…

HOW exactly can humanity get to space? well. we would have to figure out a whole shitton of things that we are not even close to.

how can we get space travel to speeds that would get us anywhere in an even imaginable timeframe?

how can humans survive the radiation in space, for a long enough time to get anyplace even at the maximum conceivable speed?

how would we sustain the basic food and air and water needs of human populations during such travel?

and, to me, that last one seems like the most obvious place to start. because we DO NOT have the technology to keep a self-sustaining, human-sustaining biological ecosystem going inside a space colony! either on the surface of an alien planet, or inside a space station or a generation ship.

we have barely even tried to figure it out! …ok, we tried, once, decades ago, with the Biosphere 2 project, and failed and never really tried much again as far as I know.

we are failing kind of badly at even maintaining the sorta self-sustaining ecosystem that Earth itself gave us! the one that took millions of years to evolve! which ONLY sorta works to sustain us because our species literally evolved to fit into it!

…and the techbros who currently talk about colonizing Mars seem to be talking as if this is all some super easy soft thing that they'll figure out when they get there!

you know what would help us get to space the most? first priority, before anything else?

figure out how to manage a damn ecosystem.

Not only because it'll be an obvious necessity for the space travel itself.

but also because it is gonna take a DAMN LONG TIME to develop workable long-distance space travel, IF (and this is a big IF) it is even physically possible in any way.

AND, during that damn long time, WE STILL NEED TO BE SURVIVING ON THIS PLANET.

Not to mention that, even if some of our eggs get into other interplanetary baskets someday, Earth is gonna keep being ONE of our baskets for a very long time.

ideally as long as fucking possible! because it's the one that works best, and probably always will be, for as long as it exists. WE EVOLVED HERE.

and, guess what!

the steps we could take toward advancing space travel in that way? the managing-ecosystems steps?

ARE ALSO THINGS THAT WOULD MAKE LIFE BETTER FOR PEOPLE HERE ON EARTH RIGHT NOW.

another thing that comes up in the longtermism discussion is "overpopulation." The idea that distant future humanity will be better off if current humanity does things to reduce our population to save resources.

now. i think it's pretty damn clear that the problem with human population and resources is MOSTLY that the rich and powerful elements of present-day humanity are doing a terrible job of distributing the resources that currently exist to the population that currently exists.

and this is mostly a greed issue.

and regardless of what happens to actual population numbers, the most obvious benefit to future generations of humanity would be figuring that mess out.

starting with the goddamn greed.

...now. there ARE, in some ways, challenges in this endeavor that are particularly difficult because of certain ratios of human populations to resources.

like for example (though I am not an expert on this) I have heard this discussion among local progressives about the resource of water, for the population of southern california.

before european settlement, before the aqueduct, this particular area naturally got enough water to produce enough food for a certain number of native people.

then, the aqueduct made it possible to sustain the much bigger population of non-native people who were settling here.

And that whole process damaged the ecosystem so badly that, if the aqueduct stopped working today, the population sustainable by the natural resources here would now be much smaller than it was at the beginning.

and there is uncertainty about how sustainable the aqueduct is... and what other options would be possible for supplying the current enormous population of this land with water.

but... even assuming that this would become significantly easier with fewer humans...

none of the malthusean ideas about population reduction are anywhere near ethical. and from a viewpoint of cold heartless numbers, they don't even seem PRACTICAL. genocide and forcible sterilization tend to focus on the groups that are using the fewest resources per person anyway.

and populations adapt to what is available! currently, this is happening through the mechanism of "younger generations aren't having kids because no one can afford to have kids."

this kind of adaptation sort of works-- although, like other population control methods, it still allows the wealthiest and and most lavish resource-users to breed pretty freely.

BUT it is… kinda sorta ethical, in a sort of terrible individual way.

at least… it's more ethical than other types of "population reduction"... and it is much more ethical than the opposite goal of "forcing everyone to reproduce no matter what they can and can't afford."

and THAT is the dystopia most likely to happen now! THAT is what'll happen if we don't VICIOUSLY defend body autonomy and access to birth control for those who want it.

there was a time, decades ago, when I was a bit brainwashed by that same paranoia about overpopulation! BUT, the more i learned about the issues, the more clear it became that the way to a sustainable population is to let people decide how many kids to have. THAT is how populations adapt to what the society can sustain.

so even from a "omg overpopulation scary!" viewpoint, the best bet for the happiness of distant future generations is probably gonna be a combination of:

"figure out how to manage resources in a goddamn reasonable not-greedy way"

and

"protect goddamn REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS."

both of which-- guess what? ARE ALSO THE BEST WAY TO MAKE THINGS GOOD FOR THE DAMN CURRENT POPULATION.

so… longtermism, to me, is both important and a non-issue.

it works itself out best when we ignore it and take care of our community right now.

[wealmostaneckbeard]

The core components of the survival horror genre are guns, monsters, mysteries, and dwindling resources.

[manonamora-if-reviews]

Approaching Hordes! by Craig Ruddell

============= Links

Play the game See other reviews of the game

============= Synopsis

It's officially hit the fan! Cause, unknown. There's no time to worry about that now anyways...there's a zombie horde approaching! Your job...gather as many survivors as you can and hold out for as long as possible. You'd be the hero if you can find a cure, but digging an escape tunnel might be a good insurance policy.

============= Other Info

Approaching Hordes! is a Twine (SugarCube) game, submitted to the 2022 Edition of the IFComp. It placed 49th overall.

Status: Completed Genre: Apocalypse, Zombies, Resource Management

CW: / Note: Zombies, violence, death,

============= Playthrough

First Played: 2-Oct-2022* Last Played: 26-May-2023 Playtime: around 1h-ish? I took a break somewhere Rating: 2/5 Thoughts: If I was this bored managing resources during a Zombie Apocalypse, I would probably die.

*I had reviewed the game during the IFComp in the Author's section (which was hidden to the public). I forgot to keep track of the notes I gave though... You can find the OG review under the cut.

============= Review

Approaching Hordes! is part Choice-based, part Resource Management in a basic SugarCube UI, following the player has he leaves his infected family behind and tries to survive hordes of zombies.

Spoilers ahead. It is recommended to play the game first. The review is based on my understanding/reading of the story.

Preface: Before getting into replaying the game, I could not shake off the feeling that I was going for a bad time. I remember not liking the game at all (I think my OG review shows that). Still, I am going into it with a somewhat open mind?

The game start with a short prologue, spanning a couple of days, where you notice an increase of gunshots in the neighbourhood and order your wife to check it out (day 0); wake up, find your neighbour informing you of the zombie apocalypse, find your wife having turned into s zombie and Mike-Tyson-punch her, and set up camp (day 1); constructing a guard tower (day 2, very quick); and becoming unanimously the leader of the 11 survivors (day 3).

Then starts the Resource Management. At the time of the first review, I had not seen many Twine games doing something that was not Choice-Based (aside from my own little tavern). Instead of taking the traditional approach of a choice list to resolve issues, Approaching Hordes! combines the Idle game format to managing the compound and its resources. It is an interesting way of pushing the SugarCube/Twine engine in this manner. You have three levels of difficulty. I've played only on Easy and Medium.

However, it soon becomes tedious, and I would put the blame on the idleness of the game. Resource management is very fun, as having to balance the use and harvest of set resources can be challenging but also quite rewarding. Idle games, on the other hand, often requires you to step away from the game and leave it on in the background. Except you can't do that here. Closing and reopening the game brings you right back to the moment you left it. Leave the page idle for too long or change tabs and it just... pauses. You have to keep the page open and focused, watching the bar fill up slowly.

There is nothing else to do in the meantime, no extra story, no dialogue with the other survivors, no personal thoughts... just sitting at a desk and moving people around.

Granted the first quarter(-ish) of that part is a bit stressful. You only have 10 survivors with you out of the max 50, you need to make sure you have enough food, that there are guards around, that the compound is secure and repaired, and that the camp is happy. But as soon as you max out the survivors (which can be preeeettttyyyy quick), you are essentially done. It's just a matter of moving a few of the survivors around to the relevant ending (escaping or cure).

The first time I played the game (during the IFComp), I got incredibly bored and just let my survivors die/leave camp halfway through (all forced to build that tunnel, waiting for the end link to appear on my screen (I think I got a bad ending). This time, I tried to be more diligent and finished the zombie cure. But by jove was it tedious. I was legit writing this review at the same time to fill my waiting between moving one or two survivors around.

Depending on the path taken (win/lose - cure/escape), you will have a bit of a different ending from a news-cliping, before you are able to see the different important steps of your journey in a notebook. But those are just two screens. And after spending all this time waiting and clicking stuff every few minutes or so, it honestly felt unrewarding (especially when I freakin found the cure!!).

Suffice to say, it still didn't tickle my bone the second time around either...

Some other points:

there is humour in the text, but it really wasn't to my taste. The jokes and the nudges fell flat or forced. It often made me cringe, but not in a enjoyable way.

I still don't know if you are supposed to like the protagonist at all (from the text, I don't think so?), but I thoroughly hated him. He is an absolute dick (especially to his wife) but somehow everyone thinks the sun shines from his ass (how you get the leadership still astounds me).

I wasn't particularly moved by the prose, and often felt a bit uneasy by the tone flipping too abruptly from comedy to action to "horror". Part of it is probably because I loathed the protagonist.

while the visual was simple, there was issues with refreshing the page (which reloaded everything) and with the contrasting of the text (especially when choosing the action in the resource management block).

As a proof of concept (Resource Management Idler in Twine), it worked. This game really tried something new (in my book) with the interactiveness and that should be commendable. But the fiction of it all was really eh.

=======================

OG Review during the IFComp

Zombie apocalypse meet Management Sim.

This was the first time I saw something quite like this with a Twine game (I usually see more Choice-based game) and it was interesting to see what else one can do with the system itself. Who knew resource management was on the table! This was kinda neat to see.

That said, after the prologue, the game became a bit boring. This is usually the case with idler-games, you just end up waiting for progress bars to fill up, which is the case with this game as well. Even if you need to tweak between the options, there’s not much you can do but wait. Only having the resource management/idler for this long really breaks the flow.

It’s a bit of a shame that there is no story past the prologue and that you, as the leader, you do nothing but tell a survivor where to go and wait. There is some story after the horde arrives (at least 30min after you get into the compound), but, even though I was yearning for something else to do than wait for the progress bar to fill up, I had mentally checked out of the game when it appeared.

I also had some issues with the little story you end up having. The text is at time confusing (your spouse is on top of you, but the next line is she is far enough that you can punch her?) and missing/misusing punctuation. Some paragraphs have very disconnected tone [Though I always like to be able to flip off my neighbour]. I didn’t understand the rationale behind you the player being set as the leader of the group either (why would people follow someone who’s clearly a not-so-nice person and a terrible spouse?).

Some formatting is a bit off. Rather than change days in the middle of one passage, they probably should have gotten a new passage instead.

Overall, I liked that it was different and tried to do something new with the Twine Engine, but not having anything really to do during the resource management portion really decreased my enjoyment of the game.

[juliaschifini]

i can barely manage my resources in my real life, and you want me to do it in a GAME?? for FUN???