Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > Play By Post

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 12-06-2014, 03:49 PM   #11
ericthered
Hero of Democracy
 
ericthered's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default Re: [IC] Lost in Dreams (Daniel Landvik)

Daniel needs three things: a fire-pit or stove, fuel, and a lens. Though he suspects he'll be happy with just two of them. Finding the cooking areas turns out pretty easy, once he's looking. They seem to use several different designs: most focused on both containing the fire and providing a convenient cooking surface.

He doesn't find the giant lenses he's looking for, once he's looking for lenses, he starts finding them. None of them are very good, much like the bowls he's seen, and they look more like they're made to start fires than keep them going. He's not sure if the poor quality lenses he's found will work, but its at least a start.

The fuel is an interesting problem. Daniel can't find any stored and dried. He does find some pieces of wood that are reasonably dry lying about as various tools. Looking in the ovens it appears these people mostly burned dry grass and over light vegetation. In all, he thinks he can get enough wood to get a fire going.

The trick of course, is starting the fire.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Toptomcat View Post
OOC
Spoiler:  
The using lenses is a good deduction, though they don't use it the same way, as seen above. As for engaging in the speculation, Thats one of the points of lost in dreams. I'm having lots of fun.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic

Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog

Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!
ericthered is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-07-2014, 10:18 PM   #12
Toptomcat
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Default Re: [IC] Lost in Dreams (Dave Landvik)

The first thing Daniel needs to do is choose a firepit. He's got a few options. There's a sunken pit in the open with a nearly-intact ceramic grating over it, between the glass huts. There are a few stoves of varying design in some of the collapsed buildings, and one tucked into the corner of a small, nearly-intact structure.

I still don't know what drove the Brightly-Colored People from this place. If it was some dangerous external threat, like a rival tribe, I might want to be inconspicuous and avoid building a fire in the open, where the firelight will be easily visible and where the remnants of a recent fire will be readily obvious to anyone who comes to look. On the other hand, if it might attract someone peaceable, I want to be as conspicuous as possible.

One candidate rival tribe that springs immediately to mind is, the, uh...the black guys with swords. Maybe that's unfair, though. I thought of what I saw in the vision as a 'raid', but that was Morning Brain thinking and I was having difficulty distinguishing my ass from my elbow at the time. What did I observe them to do, really? They emerge, they farm, they go back underground. Except for a few, who stay to...guard? Ambush? Hunt? A sword isn't exactly a hunting weapon. These...um... these guys...


Daniel feels briefly guilty, then embarassed. Worrying about political correctness here?

Okay, even if the most visually obvious thing about them IS their coloring, I'm going to wince every time I think of them as 'the black guys'. Call them Urists- living underground and farming the surface seems sort of Dwarf Fortress-ish.

Are the Urists dangerous, then? Okay, they aren't safe. But on balance, they seem to be mostly about farming, not warfare...and the murals didn't seem to have depictions of Urist-BCP warfare. Really, they don't seem more dangerous than trying to survive by myself out here. Conspicuous it is.


Daniel then begins to gather his materials. First, he finds fuel, bringing together the splintered remains of some furniture.

Perhaps later, if I have to, I'll burn some of the wooden tools. First, though, I'll want to take an inventory of the things and identify the redundant ones. I don't want to burn my last one of anything, or even my next-to-last.

Next is a pot.

Hmm. I think I want one big enough to cook ONE yam. The smaller the pot, the longer it will take to boil, and the more fuel it will take to do so. And I want to spoil as little food as possible if I screw up. Something with a lid will boil faster, too.

Very few of the pots scattered about seem to have purpose-fit lids nearby, but there are a few. Daniel examines a compact, round vessel, a little larger than a fist and better made than most others.

Will this do? It seems about right...

Oh. No handle: I'd burn my fingers trying to pick it up.


The first hut doesn't have anything that's long-handled, the right size, and not unusably misshapen...but the next one has three. Daniel arbitrarily picks the green one. None of them seem to have purpose-fit lids, but there's a plate nearby that fits almost as well, with a misshapen nodule in the middle that doesn't do much for it as a plate but makes a dandy lid handle. He brings both pot and 'lid' back to the firepit and leaves again in search of lenses. It's not immediately obvious which of them is best, so he collects a half-dozen and tests them out on a furniture leg. The largest of them is too misshapen, the smallest well-formed but not big enough to get the leg to start smoking in a reasonable amount of time. The third one he tries works well enough to produce a thin wisp of smoke, and he sets it aside.

Lastly, he fetches a yam and- after a moment of thought- a flat 'glass' slab salvaged from the rubble of a collapsed wall for use as a cutting board.

...okay, how to approach this?

I've built fires in a wood fireplace, with a lighter. And dried, seasoned firewood. And a big, waxy firestarter brick. Once or twice with newspaper, rather than the brick.

Generalizing, then, I guess there's...big chunks of fuel, difficult to light on fire but burn-y once they get going. An initial firestarty bit. I have both of those: furniture, lens. But those two things are not sufficient: apply the lighter directly to the logs and it doesn't work. There's also something small and easy to catch on fire, which you put under the wood and to which you apply the firestarty-bit. 'Tinder?' Is that what tinder is? I think so. I need some of that. Something easy to ignite...fire is an oxidation reaction, so if I don't want the reaction to be rate-limited by the amount of available oxygen, there needs to be plenty of room for the air. In practical terms, I suppose that translates to 'light and fluffy.' Or maybe impregnated with something flammable, like the waxy brick. Or...is sap flammable? Maybe.

Splinters or sawdust might work. Find an axe or saw? That would be energy-intensive, though. Sort of counterproductive, since the whole idea here is to get calories to eat, not expend them. Hair? Not inclined to cut some off and try. Maybe if nothing else works. Pine cones are sappy, but not all that light or fluffy. And pines are probably not jungle trees. Dry grasses and other light vegetation, like the Brightly-Colored People? That sounds like a good idea.


Daniel sets out to forage once again, looking for some likely-looking tinder. The first place he looks is in the stoves and fire pits: any partially-burned material will probably be dry, and pre-selected for flammability. Barring that, he searches the places where plants grow into ruined houses: any plants that grow under a roof will probably be unable to get direct rainfall, thus be drier than normal. Lastly, if he hasn't already found what he needs, he has another look around the surrounding jungle for likely-seeming tinder.

Uh-oh. I'm getting thirsty.

Last edited by Toptomcat; 12-08-2014 at 09:16 AM.
Toptomcat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-08-2014, 02:19 PM   #13
ericthered
Hero of Democracy
 
ericthered's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default Re: [IC] Lost in Dreams (Daniel Landvik)

Daniel looks around for tinder thats stored. He doesn't find any. In fact, he doesn't find any places that look like they may have once been used to store tinder. He tries scavenging remnants out of the sides of ovens, but even those are either blackened or wet.

He does come across some fuel that looks like it will work -- very thin sheets of wood. They have a slight twist to them, but are otherwise unmarked and dry enough to start actual flames with the lens.

He will need to find fuel to burn for the main part of the fire (though that's really a matter of choosing between breaking off plant matter or burning shoddy tools he's found around here. The choice doesn't effect the part below -- but it will matter).

The lens is not simple to use, and he has to try a few times before it reliably starts burning things. After that his first attempt ends in a failure, with the fire burning out. On his second attempt he takes more time, and gets fuel of all sizes before lighting his paper again. This time it works: he gets a fire burning.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic

Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog

Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!
ericthered is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-08-2014, 03:18 PM   #14
Toptomcat
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Default Re: [IC] Lost in Dreams (Dave Landvik)

OOC
Spoiler:  
Toptomcat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-08-2014, 03:25 PM   #15
ericthered
Hero of Democracy
 
ericthered's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default Re: [IC] Lost in Dreams (Dave Landvik)

OCC: That is correct. I was paying attention to natural or treated wood. using furniture is fine.

Daniel gets the fire burning. The smoke coming off of the various pieces of furniture he uses colors itself the same way as the substance its burning -- and quite strongly. He boils water, scoops some of it out to cool with a cup, and places the skinned and diced yam inside. He's not sure how long to cook the food, but its good to be able to have some.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic

Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog

Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!
ericthered is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-10-2014, 11:09 PM   #16
Toptomcat
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Default Re: [IC] Lost in Dreams (Dave Landvik)

Oh, cool!

Daniel stares up at the billowing clouds of red, yellow, blue, and purple, laughing in wonderment.

That's fascinating. Ordinary paints and dyes don't burn like that, do they? What does that imply?

He smiles, watching the drifting ribbons of color wind their way up through the canopy. Then a realization wipes the smile off his face, and he instantly moves upwind.

It implies exotic particulates suspended in the air, feisty little molecules that could very well want to bind to the lining of my lungs and do all kinds of exciting things when they get there. Premodern pigments aren't safe: cobalt blues, cadmium yellows, lead whites, the madness of van Gogh.

The young man stares at the beautiful, many-colored fire he's worked hard to build. His gaze drifts to the slowly-cooling cup, full of diced yams- and snarls in abject frustration.

I've contaminated the cup, the pot, the food and water!

Daniel's fury animates him, makes it impossible to keep still: he paces around the fire, staring at it accusingly, hands clenching and unclenching.

And worst of all: I'm probably wrong! What the hell kind of paint or dye will color wood brightly and make it burn into smoke the exact same color as the dye? Wood smoke is black or grey because it's carbon, damn it! A reasonable coloring agent might turn wood smoke bluish grey, or yellowish grey, or reddish grey. Not like this- not smoke that's vividly blue and yellow and red. So this is additional support for the novel-materials hypothesis- for all I know it's safe enough that the locals can put it on their Brightly-Colored Bran Flakes!

He stares at the cup, sees the rich dark broth it's made. A chunk of diced yam surfaces momentarily, then vanishes. Daniel's stomach grumbles.

But does that help me? No, of course not! Because all of this drivel about how it might be some kind of nontoxic novel material is just speculation... and I've never actually been dumb enough to try to light toxic paints on fire to see what kind of smoke they make, so I don't actually know that this isn't what they do. It's a guess.

And it doesn't make sense for me to take the slightest chance of heavy-metal poisoning on the strength of speculation and guesswork- not when I'm alone in the middle of goddamned nowhere! What, do I think Squanto's going to show up with gifts of maize, fish and chelating agents?


With an exasperated sigh, Daniel darts back towards the fire, careful to avoid the smoke as he quickly gathers up his tools- thin sheets of tinder, the lens, the cutting board. Then he picks out one of the pots he rejected earlier, fetches another yam from where he stored them, and painfully begins the whole process again at another firepit- this time with locally-gathered, unpainted plant matter for fuel, rather than painted furniture.

I'm really getting thirsty. What a colossal waste of time.

...at least brightly-colored colored smoke will make for an effective signal fire. Perhaps that's a common practice among the Brightly-Colored People...aargh, no, not another speculative tangent. I need to boil water and cook food to avoid death. That first: all else, second.


OOC
Spoiler:  
Toptomcat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-11-2014, 11:35 AM   #17
ericthered
Hero of Democracy
 
ericthered's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default Re: [IC] Lost in Dreams (Dave Landvik)

Daniel throws it all out and starts over again. It takes an hour, and his stomach is rumbling, but he does find dry enough plant material in the forest, and manages to cook his yams and boil water to drink. And as all the pots are colored, he had to go and try to find one with the glaze on it instead of having raw colour on the surface.

There are no forks, but there are knives and spoons (of a sort -- very weirdly shaped). Its good to have food in his stomach.

OCC: yeah, I won't throw a stealthy slow poison at you like that. At least not without then providing a cure. A quick poison -- sure. A slow poison with a strong taste? yep. but not a slow one you can't detect and can't cure.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic

Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog

Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!
ericthered is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-15-2014, 11:44 PM   #18
Toptomcat
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Default Re: [IC] Lost in Dreams (Dave Landvik)

All right. I'm fed. I'm watered. What comes next? I guess it still makes sense for me to make that inventory of the tools. Even if I'm not going to burn them, it's still a good idea to know what my assets are. And it'll give me something to do while I rethink the rest of my priorities.

Daniel leaves the fire and begins gathering all the scattered tools left lying around in one place, next to the fireside- shovels in one pile, knives in another, bowls in a third, so on and so forth.

So what's my next priority? Shelter, I suppose. I think a few of the huts still have enough of a roof to keep the rain out. The rain's not the only thing a shelter needs to keep out, though: how cold does it get at night here? Sure, rainforests are stereotypically hot. But then again, so are deserts, and I think I remember reading something about the Sahara getting surprisingly cold at night. Can I trust the stereotype?

I'm pretty sure that there are SOME climates where people don't need to bundle up at night. So something makes deserts different. What makes deserts different from rainforests?


Daniel returns to the fireside with a handful of spoons and tiny knives for the utensil pile. He glances at his cookpot, still piping hot and slowly letting off steam...and smiles as realization comes to him.

...again, the high specific heat capacity of water. One gram of water heats by one degree Celsius when it absorbs one calorie of heat. Alcohol takes half a calorie, air's about a quarter, iron is an eighth. Sand...can't remember what silicon is off the top of my head, but I'd bet money it's a lot less than one.

So water absorbs a lot of heat. And when the ambient temperature cools down, water releases a lot of heat. Humidity moderates climate, and I don't need to worry about freezing at night in a rainforest.

(Reality check. Name a coastal place and an inland place with known climates at roughly the same latitude. San Franciso and, um, Las Vegas. Frisco has a famously mild climate and Las Vegas is in the middle of a desert. Reality check passed: humidity moderates climate.)


Cookware like pots, vases, cups, and plates seem to make up the bulk of the items by weight, and it takes a lot of trips to get it all together in one place- repetitive, mindless work, perfect for having a think.

So cold's a nonissue. That's kind of nice, since without a stitch of clothing or other cloth to be found, I'd have have a devil of a time bundling up. Shelter needs to keep out rain, cold...what else...animals. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Largish creatures shouldn't be TOO difficult- even if I can't find a building with a door that's still on its hinges, I can probably improvise some kind of workable barricade from all this broken furniture and a few rocks.

But shelter that only keeps out large animals is the bare minimum. I'd really rather find something that keeps rats from getting in and trying to nibble my toes off. And ideally, something that keeps swarms of passing mosquitoes from trying to introduce my bloodstream to the unexpected, life-changing joys of malaria.

Finding that kind of well-sealed building would be too much to expect. It would probably be too much to expect when they were new, let alone after they were abandoned for this long. Still, it's just possible that one of these huts is well-preserved enough that I could keep most of the critters and bugs out by packing earth around the seams.


Now that he knows what he's looking for, Daniel keeps an eye out for the perfect building to sleep in as he systematically ransacks the village for items of use.

OOC
Spoiler:  
Toptomcat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-16-2014, 10:38 AM   #19
ericthered
Hero of Democracy
 
ericthered's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default Re: [IC] Lost in Dreams (Dave Landvik)

Its a big place: there were perhaps 4,000 or more people living here-- too large to be a simple village. This place was likely a social centre of some sort, political, religious, or economic. Its also too large for him to completely search it. His mind goes back to one of his professors and the reaction the man would be having if he found this site-- or if he saw Daniel ransacking it. The inventory isn't complete, but he does get an idea of what they do have. Of course, everything is brightly coloured.

Ceramic bottle (lots and lots. at least hundreds)
Alembic (none portable, but 2 are built into fire-places-- at least he thinks thats what they are).
Water jug (Lots and lots, in varying sizes)

Wooden poles (a few dozen of varying widths and lengths: the largest is 30 feet. They weight like wood, but about half of them are much more rigid)

None of the tools he finds are good for working with wood, stone, or metal: all the the tools listed here seem adapted for leather, or earth. All the tools seem fused together and the weights indicate either a stone or a metal head. Interestingly, he finds a forge, with a few tiny splatters of what might be copper (green with age) around it. The tools that went with it are gone. numbers given are so far in his search
plow (3)
Adze(more like mattock or hoe) (~50)
Awl (7)
chisel? (~30) (more of a spike or stake)
Hammer (~10)
Shovel (~100+) (both hand shovels and spades -- really, they have a lot of shovels. They grow yams)
A variety of measuring tools, including compasses, protractors, and rulers.

Sewing needle (13)
Thimble (3)
Fishhook (~45)
Fishing spear (not sure if spear or fishing spear -- see weapons)

Fan (wooden slats) (~100)
Burning glass (~10) (only ones that work counted. There are dozens of failed attempts)
Comb (~100)

Wooden or stone chests/strongboxes (around 60, but all of them are either sealed shut with no visible lock or have been broken open.)

clay dolls (~40) fairly common. quite colorful, and lots appear to have been 'scribbled on' for their skin patterns.
Dice (~30 bad. 20 good --found as a set with cups)
Dominoes (5 sets in various conditions, and various styles. not sure if they are complete, but they are certainly colorful)
Various markers and tiles that seem similar to the dice and dominoes in function: Some use pictures, some use symbols -- rather Chinese looking symbols (or kanji, which is pretty close).
a few dozen crappy marbles
The incessant decoration makes it difficult to identify board games, but there are a number of tables and smooth spots in the ground that could certainly be used: the Chinese checkers, Go, chess, and backgammon patterns are all present in one form or another. There are even a few on actual boards. Of course, they could just as easily be decorated cutting boards.


Ladder (~10) fused together, flaws are in balance and straitness, not strength of joints.
Climbing pitons (9)
Climbing spikes (3 sets)

three small boats, made seamlessly from wood. They resemble very wide canoes. There are four paddles (not oars)
If he finds any medical gear, he doesn't recognize it.

Weapons:
one handed spears (11)
Knifes as daggers (~20)
maces (incan style) (8)
Short sword (1)
Staffs (5-20, defending on quality-- the last 10 are really crappy, two are average quality)

Atlatl (6)
Darts (18 poor,2 average)

No proper armor is found, and none of the objects really have the flexibility to do much beyond hang as breast plates on either side of his chest -- he is able to find objects with holes in close to the right places. An improvised buckler is also possible, as is the possibly of pulling a Jonny Appleseed and putting a pot on his head-- though he thinks for that he'll need padding and the thickness of the pot is a tricky balance between too heavy and too weak.

He comes across items that might be useful: he's pretty sure he's found at least one loom, and one rack for stretching hide. Kilns are conspicuously absent though.

Finding shelter takes a while, but he finds a hut that still has its roof, four walls and door -- even if one of the corners is cracked and falling off. He can probably seal that. It has a place for a fire and a chimney, which is certainly nice.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic

Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog

Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!
ericthered is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-20-2014, 01:07 PM   #20
Toptomcat
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Default Re: [IC] Lost in Dreams (Dave Landvik)

Daniel collects, and sorts, and enlarges his piles, and gathers and arranges and enlarges the piles again, and scrounges and sifts and classifies until eventually he just has to give up.

Damn, did I ever misjudge the scale of this place! I've been thinking 'village', 'hut', and 'tribal primitives' where I should've been thinking 'small city', 'building' and 'quite an impressive civilization, really.'

This makes the mystery of its abandonment even more acute. It's one thing for a small village to be wiped off the map through plague, a bad harvest, jaguar attack, or the like- but a place like this?

I suppose it could be a one-industry town, abandoned once its industry gave out. Like a mining settlement. Or, basically, Detroit. Perhaps their one industry was Mystery-Material toolmaking, and whatever stopped the toolmaking first degraded the quality? That would explain why there are crappy tools scattered everywhere- only unsalable goods were left behind. But that makes no sense! I know that they farm because I found their crops. And I know they make tools because here they are.

The only other thing I can think of is war. Real, large-scale, genocidal total war is what it would take to completely depopulate a town this size- but then where's the bodies? ...or, for that matter, the armory? If this place was on a war footing I'd be finding more than a small handful of spears and knives.


Confounded once again, Daniel abandons the mystery for now and sorts through what he's gathered, replacing his twisted walking stick with something straighter and sturdier and adding an improvised shield to his improvised web gear. For the task ahead, he selects a full-sized shovel and a broad mallet.

Then he turns his attention to the task of sealing up his little chateau. Where possible, he puts the original shattered pieces back into more or less their original place: where it isn't, he replaces them with earth, dug from some nearby place with the shovel and packed as tightly as he can manage- first with the flat of the shovel, then with the mallet.

OOC
Spoiler:  

Last edited by Toptomcat; 12-20-2014 at 01:11 PM.
Toptomcat is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
lost in dreams

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 03:58 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.