Smalltime Fimfic Author Steals Ideas From Better Ones (Or: Who Wants To Watch Vids With Me?) · 4:06pm May 12th
So...
I have a Discord server.
Some of you know this. Some of you understandably don't, since I don't advertise it anymore. It was my reward to myself, for reaching 100 followers. I put work into it, researching bots and placing in fun and/or useful ones, setting up areas for all kinds of different chat. I thought it would be nice.
By the time I locked it down, I had two other people in it besides myself and the bots. One was the delightful Rain_Flick3r, who provided me with my first ever fanfic reading.
The other... was the guy who caused my mental breakdown.
The lockdown was part of the process of trying to keep him away from me. Remove the links from my profile and all my stories, and only open the doors again when I felt confident doing so.
I haven't felt confident about much, for a while. So I kept hanging out on someone else's server instead: Estee's. And last night they threw a very unusual party.
Who here has heard of FATAL?
FATAL is tabletop roleplaying game, and the name is an acronym. What it's an acronym of varies between editions. It's claimed now to mean From Another Time, Another Land. Pretty standard fantasy stuff.
It originally was billed as Fantasy Adventure To Adult Lechery.
Those familiar with title have likely been shuddering already. Those who aren't, let me summarize: This is one of the most racist, sexist, homophobic, slavery-apologist, slur-filled, sexually violent absolute nightmares of an RPG that has ever existed. It's also poorly-edited, incoherent, its "mechanics" are a crime against math, and worst of all? Presents its heinous material as existing in the pursuit of realism in gaming.
Yeah, the devs are those kinds of people, and yes multiple people were involved in this.
It's not even all that fun as a hate-read. The writing's super dry, and if it weren't for the subject matter, would be utterly boring to slog through.
What can be fun is watching someone else experience it and react to it. And Estee had found a video series of some poor Youtuber putting himself through trying to create a character in the system, and yes, trying to go through this abomination's character creation takes a whole-ass series. The guy had originally intended to livestream it instead and had to cut it after five hours to do the Youtube videos instead.
The end product of that character creation was a kobold chambermaid with a burning hatred of most other beings, and given that she's a woman in the world of FATAL, that utter loathing is completely justified.
Estee had encountered those videos, and since they're currently raising money for a longterm Ko-Fi goal, said that they'd watch those videos and provide commentary in their server if the percentage went up by a certain amount in a specific timeframe. It did, and so last night a bunch of us piled in to observe the horror. I stepped out of my semi-lurker state to join the peanut gallery of those shocked, alarmed, angry, disgusted, and occasionally hysterically laughing to keep from crying.
I even got a possible ponyfic premise out of it, if you can believe it.
So I found myself thinking, I'd like to do this kind of thing again, maybe even host it myself. But what could I do?
Well, if I want something insane but not developed by awful people, there's always Rimworld.
Rimworld is described by its developers as a story generator more so than a video game.
On its face, it's a space colony management sim. The default scenario has you take control of a handful of survivors of a spaceship crash, who have the end-goal of either finding or building a new ship to get off the planet. The problem is that what they've crashed on is one of the titular rimworlds, planets that are isolated, sparsely populated, and dangerous to live on.
Scattered across the planet's surface are neolithic peoples descended from the planet's earliest visitors, other outworlders like yourself, vicious space pirates, and the remnants of a once-proud hypertech empire, who may make for valuable allies or deadly enemies. Not to mention there's the giant space bugs, the murderous robots, and the otherworldly horrors seeking to infest this reality, all looking to tear you to pieces.
Or you could just end up gored by a wild animal while out hunting. Or die of an infected wound. Or one of your buddies could have a mental break and beat you to death. Or you could die in a tornado. Or a lightning strike. There's a lot of ways to die horribly around here, and after you die, a chance that someone will make you into a gourmet dinner. Or a zombie. Or a hat.
And the members of your colony, referred to as "pawns," are a lot more than just bundles of stats. They have passions, preferences, belief systems, genetics, and backstories, and how they function is a combination of that whole.
For example, say you have a pawn who really wants to body mod themselves. If they get their arm torn off by a wild animal, or shot off by a raider, or need it amputated due to an infection, that new prosthetic arm they get afterward is going to make them quite happy. This could be due to the ideology they follow being a transhumanist one, and so they might not be happy with it anymore if they're converted to another one. Or it could be a purely personal interest, that will stick with them no matter what culture they adopt.
Take another example, and say that you have a pawn that's unable to fight fires. If one of your buildings lights on fire, you can't direct them to put out the flames. This could be because they survived a horrible fire in their past that made them extremely phobic of fire. Or they're a pyromaniac who not only won't fight fires, they'll periodically set the fires as form of stress relief, requiring you to keep a close watch on them.
Anyone reading this who's starting to get Dwarf Fortress flashbacks? It's an acknowledged inspiration. They even have a difficulty setting called "Losing Is Fun." Though difficulty is only half of the equation. They also have "storytellers" who'll change some aspects of the gameplay. Including one who'll throw things at you at random with no regard for giving you proper breather space between threats, even if the threats themselves do still obey the difficulty setting.
It can get absolutely insane, and that's before the mods come in.
Rimworld is extremely moddable. A chunk of it is written in xml, which means that it's really easy to add new objects to the game without needing to know any C#. And those that do know C# have made extensive framework mods that further expand what you can do with that xml. Truly massive mod series have been created, each building on each other's systems. You can turn Rimworld into nearly anything with right modpack.
There's a Youtuber who pretty much builds his brand on doing just that.
Mr. Samuel Streamer has done nearly anything you can think of. He's turned Rimworld into a pirate-themed wave-based-survival experience. He's turned it into a D&D-style RPG. He's turned it into a game of sapient monkeys and apes fighting zombies with banana-based technology. He's built a vampire empire. He's done an extended incredibly unhinged Willy Wonka parody. He's created a tribe of catgirls that worship Lovecraftian horrors. He tried to recreate the mythologized story of the rise of Rome only to have it go off the rails immediately when Romulus got kidnapped and Remus was left on his own.
Samuel takes the crazy train that is Rimworld and removes the brakes with extreme prejudice.
So, why am I bringing this up?
May... isn't looking good, financially. It's a whole lot of "not good" coming to roost and I'm dreading it to the point that I'm starting to have the "anxiety attacks are eating into my writing time" problem again.
But I don't want to just keep asking for help. I want to give something back.
So, for every tip that ends up in my Ko-Fi jar over the course of May, I'm going to add an episode to a list. And we'll crack open my Discord server again and take over the "now watching" channel to watch them. Not necessarily in one day; the episodes are about 30-minutes each and that'd take a while if the list gets long. But I'll set a time for each episode binge, I'll provide a link to each video in case anyone wants to watch along, and make commentary over text, with y'all welcome to join in.
If you're a fan of Samuel's, you can even recommend a series with your tip that we should do.
Estee's referred to last night's gathering as "selling their pain." For my part, I'd like to share a little of the chaos that brings me joy, especially since joy's been a little hard to hold onto lately.
And if you'd like to get in ahead of it... I think I'm finally ready to open the door again.
