Cognisant
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- Dec 12, 2009
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Rimworld is essentially a time management game, from the moment your colonists make landfall you're setting their priorities and telling them how to make the most effective use of their time. In D&D, Pathfinder and I assume most every other TTRPG system a character's downtime is mostly glossed over, hence why it's called "downtime", but in Rimworld there is no downtime, a player must choose what their character (or characters) do for every hour of every day.
For example in a given in-game hour (each daily period is broken up into 24 turns) a player may choose to have their character build a wall and (assuming the requisite materials are available) how many sections that character completes depends upon a combination of the character's stats and how well the player rolls. Characters, particularly those that aren't skilled in the task they are performing can make mistakes and these mistakes can result in lost time and/or wasted resources depending upon how well or poorly the player rolls. Granted building walls isn't very dramatic but player characters will also be performing surgery, crafting weapons, tailoring clothes, constructing machinery, attempting to tame and train dangerous animals, bartering with traveling merchants and negotiating with hostile natives, etc.
Of course this being Rimworld the game isn't all about growing crops and sculpting artwork, there will be events such as raider attacks, mechanoid poison ships, megaspider attacks, herds of man-hunting elephants, etc. During these events the game switches to the more typical six second combat round format as the PCs fend off their attackers. Alternatively the PCs can seal themselves up in their base thus initiating a siege scenario, during a siege (insofar as the PCs aren't counter-attacking) game play returns to the hourly format, giving the PCs a chance to patch their wounds, strategize, plan to wait out the raiders until they run out of supplies, only for mortar shells to start coming through the roof in the middle of the night.
Sound interesting?
I'm curious to hear people's 1000ft perspective, what about this seems appealing to your or doesn't.
I will say that I'll be fiddling with the way certain tasks are handled so that they're not dreadfully boring, for example cooking for an hour will produce a lot of food so character's won't have to be tied down doing it all the time and rather than cooking meals of a specific type (simple, fine, luxurious) the quality of the meals will depend upon the character's stats and the players rolls. Also because there's no computer running a simulation things like hunting for food and chopping down trees for wood will be made more abstract so the person running the game doesn't have to track the location of trees/animals, nor will hauling be its own task unless it's a specific hauling scenario like after drop-pods have landed nearby.