Dwarf Fortress: the Plato’s Closet edition

My most recent attempt at Dwarf Fortress is slowly unravelling.  My fortress of 200 dwarves is in the  beginning stages of  an emo death spiral.  Food production has been interrupted.  Tantrums are resulting in assaults.  Soap has run out and infections are claiming many of those wounded in the assaults or by some of the forgotten beasts roaming in the lower caverns.

Of course any DF player knows, “losing is fun” 

It was one of my better attempts.  I achieved a few firsts in this game:  First fortress over 250; my max population was 270. First fortress to make use of  adamantite.  First fortress to see a dwarf elevated to nobility; we had a baroness for a short time.  I built up five squads and defeated three ambushes in no time without losing a single troop, mostly this is due to my use of the military schedule and assigning patrol routes for the first time in a game.

With all the firsts and wild success over nearly 2 weeks of play you may think I’d be sad to see the inevitable end of Ralshashdon and yes I am a little sad.  However, part of me is not unhappy to see this particular fortress fold up.  For several days now I have been focused on clothing production and old clothing trading.

Hence the title of this post.  I have legendary clothiers producing wonderful clothing and a cleaning team collecting old clothes to be sent to the depot.  My trader pawns the old clothes off on the elves and human caravans and gets more leather and cloth.  I haven’t got any organic cloth production apart from adamantite clothing.  Next game I may swap out chickens for sheep in my embark load-out and see if I can keep a wool production line going.

So soon, probably over the next 3-4 days the once vibrant and proud city of Ralshashdon will degrade into a backwater ruin filled with a few hangers on and eventually a Forgotten Beast of a well armed squad of goblins will claim it for their own…

 

 

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A Brilliant Idea: Savage Worlds Scooby-Doo

The Scooby-Doo gangThis is a brilliant idea.  I was wandering around the Savage Worlds forums looking for extra Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG info and I tripped across this thread.  A Savage Worlds Scooby-Doo adventure.

 

The gang are all wild cards and each player is carefully matched to the right hindrances and edges.  For example, Shaggy has Yellow and Fleet-footed, while Velma sports Bad Eyes and Scholar.   There’s even a rule for Velma to drop her glasses.

 

The adventure setting is an old favorite from the Call of Cthulhu game twisted slightly to align with the plot of the television show.  It’s a haunted house, of course, and the gang is investigating it.

A run away child is in the house along with television show style NPC special guest stars Sandy Duncan and Don Knotts.   The enemy, Old Man Smithers, is a little darker in this game than the normal television show.  So I wouldn’t recommend this particular scenario to younger kids, but it looks like it would be a blast for anyone who grew up watching those meddling kids and their dog on Saturday mornings.

 

 

 

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More bad news about games I love…

In the rule book for the Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG, by Pinnacle Entertainment Group there is a reference to future books that explore other time periods with rich ocean-going themes.  Alas, my Typhoid Mary streak is still going strong.  The Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG line is defunct.  This is due to the restructuring of WizKids.

So RP sessions in Plattsburg Bay with gunboats on the lake or whaling off the coast of Nantucket will have to be home-grown affairs.

 

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The Typhod-Mary of products

I think I must be an unlucky patron or perhaps I’m just not good at picking winners. Futurama is cancelled. Disney is turning off Pirates of the Caribbean Online. EA killed Warhammer Wrath of Heroes. The World of Warcraft TCG is going away. I’m afraid to like or become interested in anything. As soon as I like it or start collecting it, poof! Discontinued. Cancelled. The company is moving in a new direction.

Maybe I can contract out to the completion. Sony could hire me to “like” the Xbox One (aka the XBone). If my track record holds true Microsoft will cancel it. Of course the XBone is already pretty self-clobbering.

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Weekend getaway

So I goofed off a little this weekend and spent some time at one of my favorite places.  The Sea

seacoast

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On-line work for Gamemeisters

I’ve been spending alot of time on the business plan for the store and setting up the on-line presence. The facebook, twitter, web site and customer forums are all up and running. Check us out at www.gamemeisters.com

I’ve been working with the Vermont Small Business Development Center here in Randolph and they have been a great help organizing the plan and getting all my ducks in a row for financing.

We have located a couple of places that might fit the bill as a store and home for Gamemeisters.  We are not ready for a press release quite yet…

 

 

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Using the survey data

I’ve got 56 complete responses to the FLGS Market Research Survey. I’m working today to put several new data points into the business plan. I’m quite pleased with how the numbers came out on several of the questions.

I’m leaving the survey up in case we get any late responders. It’s at http://www.skoda.net/survey/

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New public key

I’ve posted a new public key to the MIT keyserver and uploaded it here as well.  The new fingerprint is 1D2D B4E9 1679 C035 C147  4E27 63CD 9230 C91C 3606 I’ll be revoking the old key, so please switch over as soon as convenient.

VTC students: Don’t fret about your lab 7. I’ll correct them based on what I can see. If you sent me an unanswered question that you really really want answered you will have to repeat that step in the lab with this new key.

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Survey almost done

The two week survey run is almost up.  Please share this https://skoda.net/survey/

Right now I’ve got 52 completed surveys with a ton of great data that will help build the store to provide the goods and services people want.

 

 

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Peg-board flyers posted

I’m still watching the market research survey and we seem to have hit a plateau in responses.  To try to expand the responses I’ve posted flyers on the  community bulletin boards in libraries, grocery stores, pizza places, and other spots in hopes that I’ll get more people to respond and get a better sample for my primary market research section of my business plan.

I’m not convinced this will generate a lot of hits, but I’m hopeful that I’ll hit a few potential customers.

Later on we may use this same technique with discount coupons.  It would be interesting to see if we can get people to go looking for our “golden ticket” discount coupon.

 

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