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The People of Turtle Island -- A Civilization Quest

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BeeBadidoo said:
Whether culture or tech is better in civ quests. Culture versus Tech.
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Ohhh. Okay, sure. I usually do a lowercase v and put a point in the back, like so: X v. X.
Thats how it's usually written in legal documents, I believe.

Yeah, I have to agree that tech is typically the foremost priority for a good reason - I can't even imagine how you'd go about reducing its status as the no-brainer goal for a civ quest.
 
StellarMonarch said:
I can't even imagine how you'd go about reducing its status as the no-brainer goal for a civ quest.
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By making neglecting other areas painful and making it clear that you can't just solve problems by getting more tech. By incentivising non-tech stuff, you encourage the players to go for that other tech and reducing the focus on tech as a result.

Like in Aranfan's Ymaryn Successor State quest where we are too busy trying to survive to worry about getting new tech unless we are lucky enough to have some spare Influence or my civ quest where benefits of infrastructure mean that more often than not, the players will prioritise improving the infrastructure of the Arthwyd over getting new tech. It also helps that innovations are an unlikely occurrence due to requiring a high dice roll while infrastructure has clear benefits and only requires the right action to be taken to get the desired results.
 
StellarMonarch said:
Yeah, I have to agree that tech is typically the foremost priority for a good reason - I can't even imagine how you'd go about reducing its status as the no-brainer goal for a civ quest.
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By using mechanics as a guideline instead of the final solutiion. And redefining what a tech is. Is tech a method to transmit information faster, is tech a method to kill people faster, or is tech a method to build? Can a tech be lost without a civilization being destroyed?

Most of the time though, the QM will guide the players into a tiny box from which the players cannot do anything noteworthy beyond that box. AN used the Hero system (at random times a person is generated who does something boring) to add some culture to the player civ, but the ymaryn were always stuck in a box for thousands of years when their administration was some of the best in the world. I belive AN also used a building mechanic where all settlements had to have the same building for it to be built automatically. This meant that it would take hundreds of years to get 6 settlements with basic walls.
 
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3. Where To Start?
  • Threadmarks
    • Cultural Value Gained!

    We Reach Out Our Hands: Times of hardship are common in these lands, and the People are ever familiar with empty stomachs. In these times, the proper response is to ask for help from your relations, those whose minds are one with your own.
    Results: Diplomatic appeals are more likely to succeed and The People are more resilient in the face of resource scarcity. War weariness sets in much more quickly than in other cultures, and more individualistic groups may think you weak.
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    The People Who Live Under The Red Boughs are a friendly folk. They live in mobile villages in the forest of the Maple People, whose sap keeps them strong. Each village is made up of a few core families, clans that may have twenty or thirty people. Homes are large domed buildings, made of wooden supports with leather gifted by the Deer People laid over them. When winter comes and food becomes more scarce, The People pack up their villages and withdraw to a valley in the foothills of Sky Woman's home. It is a different valley from their ancestral one, but it is also milder and deeper, letting The People pack together in clearings rather than caves.

    So the years spiral on. The People dance, The People hunger. They sing and they thirst. They laugh and they die. Eventually, there is not a soul alive that remembers the days on the plains--and few are the stories that tell those tales.

    Not to say that there isn't quite a bit of talking going on. In fact, talking seems to take up most of The People's free time.

    Every year, meetings are held in the winter valley to decide which course The People will take in the coming seasons: what clearings to settle in, which spots to hunt, which clans need help and which will help them. Voices are loud in these meetings. Elders yell to be heard, mothers bellow that their children are hungry, and hunters cry about the sick animals that are more and more common. But beneath the din, there is a sense of being heard, that each voice is just as important as the one to the right.

    They understand that The People live or die together, so they leave no one alone.

    Government Type Gained!

    Tribal Consensus: The People's Will is prioritized above any individuals' opinion, and through long meetings and vigorous discussion, a consensus is reached. Tradition states that no issue can truly be put to rest until all involved are at least grudgingly agreed.
    Results: Internal divisions are unlikely to get violent. The People are slower to react in times of immediate crisis.
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    So in the summer months, when The People are spread out, runners are constantly flitting back and forth between villages, maple leaves crunching beneath their feet. They ferry food and medicine both, as well as messages of well wishes and prayers for those afflicted. And every once in a while, these runners will pause in the forests of their birth and look up at the trees above them. Sun alights on bronze and spotted skin, and The People know that they are home.

    This is the daily business of The People Who Live Under The Red Boughs. Winter meetings and summer discourse cannot focus on such mundane things entirely though, and throughout the generation there have been through lines, ideas often discussed and eventually acted upon.

    Choose Two Major Projects:

    [] Expand Sap Collection: Currently, trees are tapped near the village clearings in early spring, weeks after The People leave the winter valley. Expand this collection by tapping trees further out.
    [] Reach Out To The Deer People: The Deer People gift the clans much--leather and bone, meat and sinew. But they grow sick and thin. Have your hunters investigate why. [We Reach Out Our Hands]
    [] Establish Annual Ceremony: After the migration from the plains, many of The People's ceremonies were cast into disarray--including the annual trek up to Sky Woman's Home. Restart these traditions.
    [] Expand Gardens: Each house in the villages has a small garden near their entrance, which grows squash and corn. Would it be easier to care for the plants if they were all together?Plant one large garden outside the village center.
    [] Humor The Artisan: One of The People keeps trying to talk about a peculiar kind of dirt she has found at the winter meetings. She's young and brash, and more than a little abrasive, so few listen. Maybe that should change? Give her time to explain her findings.
    [] Settle A Clearing: The People's summer villages change location every year to best follow the Deer People's movement. Choose a clearing for one of these villages to settle permanently.
    [] Something Else: What do you think The People should focus on? Write in a Major Project and I will approve or deny it. Try to be realistic, and even if it doesn't win it will be put on the next turn's option list.
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    Life is a series of struggles. These struggles can be lessened by the helping hands of those around you, but they can never be avoided.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Reach Out To The Deer People
    [X] Settle A Clearing

    They helped us out, time for us to return the favor I think.
     
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    So there's this expectation that you will receive help when you ask for it, and the expectation you will ask others when you're in need of help. Very cooperative.
    Democracy behaving as expected.

    Hunger and animals getting ill seems... bad. Nothing formalized here, eesh. We have the sap collection, the hunting, more meat from the Deer people and farm plots but all of that still isn't enough. Winters don't seem to be too harsh.

    Runners... Typical. They don't appear to have any trouble with the terrain. No point to roads when we're semi-sedentary.

    All in all, nothing's really on fire. We most definitely have room to experiment.

    No mention of bodies of water or rivers or fishing, strangely enough.

    Options:
    Tapping more sap couldn't hurt. It's a fairly decent food source for winters.
    The Deer people are getting weaker, presumably because hunting is getting worse.
    Restarting the ceremonies slants us towards religion. No impetus just yet imo.
    Communal farming is nice and reliable for food. If we're really worried about food we can do this, but it seems a tad boring to me. Squash and corn are decent crops.
    Dirt. Dirt? Could be clay, could be some manner of productive soil. In any case, I'm interested.
    Creating a permanent settlement sounds alright, but I don't know what would be a particularly good spot? We'd have to figure out natural resources.

    [] Reach Out To The Deer People
    Strongly leaning towards this. The Deer people are providing us with leather, meat and bone. Don't want to jeopardize that by letting them die from something, but I'm worried our hunters will come back with a disease. If that happens, we're all in trouble.

    I'll come back later and try and go about presenting some write-ins and making my vote. It's very late right now.

    Can you elaborate on the limitations on write-ins? @Synergy
     
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    [X] Reach Out To The Deer People: The Deer People gift the clans much--leather and bone, meat and sinew. But they grow sick and thin. Have your hunters investigate why. [We Reach Out Our Hands]

    [X] Humor The Artisan: One of The People keeps trying to talk about a peculiar kind of dirt she has found at the winter meetings. She's young and brash, and more than a little abrasive, so few listen. Maybe that should change? Give her time to explain her findings.
     
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    StellarMonarch said:
    So there's this expectation that you will receive help when you ask for it, and the expectation you will ask others when you're in need of help. Very cooperative.
    Democracy behaving as expected.

    Hunger and animals getting ill seems... bad. Nothing formalized here, eesh. We have the sap collection, the hunting, more meat from the Deer people and farm plots but all of that still isn't enough. Winters don't seem to be too harsh.

    Runners... Typical. They don't appear to have any trouble with the terrain. No point to roads when we're semi-sedentary.

    All in all, nothing's really on fire. We most definitely have room to experiment.

    No mention of bodies of water or rivers or fishing, strangely enough.

    Options:
    Tapping more sap couldn't hurt. It's a fairly decent food source for winters.
    The Deer people are getting weaker, presumably because hunting is getting worse.
    Restarting the ceremonies slants us towards religion. No impetus just yet imo.
    Communal farming is nice and reliable for food. If we're really worried about food we can do this, but it seems a tad boring to me. Squash and corn are decent crops.
    Dirt. Dirt? Could be clay, could be some manner of productive soil. In any case, I'm interested.
    Creating a permanent settlement sounds alright, but I don't know what would be a particularly good spot? We'd have to figure out natural resources.

    [] Reach Out To The Deer People
    Strongly leaning towards this. The Deer people are providing us with leather, meat and bone. Don't want to jeopardize that by letting them die from something, but I'm worried our hunters will come back with a disease. If that happens, we're all in trouble.

    I'll come back later and try and go about presenting some write-ins and making my vote. It's very late right now.

    Can you elaborate on the limitations on write-ins? @Synergy
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    It doesn't sound like a plague to me, it sounds like some kind of issue on their end that is slowly occurring over a somewhat long period of time. Besides the obvious benefit of repaying them for their help, whatever they are facing might end up coming to us eventually and personally I would rather find out what it is now.
     
    [X] Reach Out To The Deer People: The Deer People gift the clans much--leather and bone, meat and sinew. But they grow sick and thin. Have your hunters investigate why. [We Reach Out Our Hands]
     
    [X] Reach Out To The Deer People: The Deer People gift the clans much--leather and bone, meat and sinew. But they grow sick and thin. Have your hunters investigate why. [We Reach Out Our Hands]
     
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    Concerning The Peoples Of Turtle Island
  • Informational
    • One of the cultural quirks of The People is their view on the plant and animal species that surround them—or maybe, more accurately, their view of themselves. The People do not stand apart from the natural world, above it and superior. Rather, they are just one group of inhabitants of Turtle Island.

    You share this land, not only with your human neighbors, but also with the Deer People, the Squirrel People, the Maple People, and every other kind of People that trots, swims, scampers, and grows over the island.

    In other words the Deer People are literal deer. But their sacrifice of meat, bone, and sinew is respected to such an extant that they are treated like just another tribe. In the same way, the Maple People are literal maple trees, seen as the leader of all trees for how important the sap is, and so on and so on.

    This is why you call yourselves The People Who Live Under The Red Boughs, rather than the Maple People.

    Sorry for the confusion this may have caused, I'll aim to be more clear when describing idiosyncrasies of these friendly hunter-gatherers in the future.
     
  • Informational
    • Twiggierjet said:
    ...Ah. I actually thought the deer people were another human tribe this whole time lmao.
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    Yeah, that's what I was worried about. I tried to make it clear in the text what they meant, but I think I was just like 2% too opaque.

    StellarMonarch said:
    Can you elaborate on the limitations on write-ins? @Synergy
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    A basic no-no for write ins is no scrounging for tech developments. "Develop Ceramics" wouldn't be viable as an option, for example. It must be something the tribe can reasonably picture themselves doing, and then put into action, like "Go Talk To These People" or "Go Build This Thing Here."

    Conversely, you can choose to spend time studying things, in an effort to proc something. The effect is semi-random though. Like, "Study the Stars" might get you basic celestial navigation, or it could lead to early astrology becoming a part of your people's faith.
     
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    Regardless, I won't be changing my vote as figuring out what's wrong with our main source of protein sounds like a very good course of action.
     
    [X] Reach Out To The Deer People
    [X] Humor The Artisan
    Hey it's clay and we can potentially invent pottery for storing food.

    Just wondering are we human?
    Also what happens if there are groups that are carnivore like lions and wolves? How will we coexist with them? Will it end up as a situation similar to Zootopia or Beastars?
     
    [X] Reach Out To The Deer People: The Deer People gift the clans much--leather and bone, meat and sinew. But they grow sick and thin. Have your hunters investigate why. [We Reach Out Our Hands]
    [X] Establish Annual Ceremony: After the migration from the plains, many of The People's ceremonies were cast into disarray--including the annual trek up to Sky Woman's Home. Restart these traditions.
     
    [X] Reach Out To The Deer People: The Deer People gift the clans much--leather and bone, meat and sinew. But they grow sick and thin. Have your hunters investigate why. [We Reach Out Our Hands]
    [X] Establish Annual Ceremony: After the migration from the plains, many of The People's ceremonies were cast into disarray--including the annual trek up to Sky Woman's Home. Restart these traditions.
     
    Adhoc vote count started by Jack Jack on Nov 29, 2020 at 10:38 AM, finished with 8 posts and 6 votes.
    • [X] Humor The Artisan
      [X] Reach Out To The Deer People
      [X] Reach Out To The Deer People: The Deer People gift the clans much--leather and bone, meat and sinew. But they grow sick and thin. Have your hunters investigate why. [We Reach Out Our Hands]
      [X] Establish Annual Ceremony: After the migration from the plains, many of The People's ceremonies were cast into disarray--including the annual trek up to Sky Woman's Home. Restart these traditions.
    Click to expand...
     
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