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 What is Cultist Simulator? Cultist Simulator is the latest game from Alexis "Great Writing, Divisive Gameplay" Kennedy, writer/developer for Fallen London and Sunless Sea. The essential premise is, you play as a person who founds a cult, and either you go insane, commit suicide, get arrested, go broke, or maybe, just maybe, become something more than you once were. How is it played?  Essentially, you are juggling timers and cards. there are exactly two basic gameplay elements, Actions and cards. Actions are things you can do, like work, sleep, talk, study. The way you do things is by putting cards into them. Put a health card into work to do some manual labour, put a book card into study to read it. Then wait for the timer to tick down for the action to complete. You can be doing more than one thing at once (e.g. you can dream and talk at the same time), so think of these pretty abstractly. Thats it? Pretty much. But the appeal of the game is the lore and the writing that goes with it. Your imagination has to do a fair bit of the heavy lifting in this game to turn the mechanical process of dropping a paint skill card into the work action into a character who becomes famous painting eldritch and non-euclidian landscapes. If you can manage that the game is worthwhile. The LP This LP will have a mix of narrative and gameplay updates. Gameplay updates will explain what's mechanically going on behind the scenes, though you can potentially get by with the understanding that cards go into actions to produce effects. Cultist Simulator is notable for having no tutorial at all, players are expected to learn through trial and error and by talking to each other, and one of the magical things about the game is that a conversation between two players about the game can sound pretty close to the insane ramblings of the mad, sometimes making it a little hard to learn from others. Speaking of insane ramblings, I have found this to share with you, the Diary of a Dr Kate Ravenhurst. She was a doctor at The Institute. The first volume of her diaries are lost, but we can infer from the second volume they contained nothing of interest. But here in the second volume, there is something to be learned. Narrative Update 1 Mechanics Update 1 Narrative Update 2 Mechanics Update 2 Narrative Update 3 Mechanics Update 3 Narrative Update 4 Mechanics Update 4 Narrative Update 5 Mechanics Update 5 Narrative Update 6, Part 1 Narrative Update 6, Part 2 Mechanics Update 6 Narrative Update 7 Mechanics Update 7 Narrative Update 8 Mechanics Update 8 Narrative Update 9 Mechanics Update 9 Reveilled Goes Mad Update 1 Interlude: Lydia What Happened to Lydia? Narrative Update 10 Mechanics Update 10 Reveilled Goes Mad Update 2 Narrative Update 11 Mechanics Update 11 Narrative Update 12 Mechanics Update 12 Narrative Update 13 Mechanics Update 13 Narrative Update 14 Mechanics Update 14 Reveilled fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Oct 24, 2019 |
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May 6, 2019 20:37
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Scrap of a Letter, tucked inside Dear Papa, I left it too long. I left it too, Long. I thought I could do this alone for now. I knew I'd need support, but the secrets were too important to share. I'd share them, someday, like those who shared their secrets with me. It was going so well. So silently. Nobody knew. Except Poppy. I made a promise to Poppy, that helped a lot. But now it's time, and I have no friends to keep the promise in my stead. I could run as the Vagabond does, but I can't yet go where she does. Nowhere would be dark enough to hide from her sight, but I can't get to Nowhere. No, I made a promise. I have no choice but to keep it. Oh Papa, I miss you, but I think I'm leaving, too. Will I see you in the House without Walls?   Diary of Dr Kate Ravenhurst, Vol II Page 1 What a year. Looking back, It scarcely feels like a day has passed since obtaining my position at the Institute, much less an entire year. I've learned so much, such unusual cases. I thought I'd make more friends, I suppose, but my colleagues are distant, detatched. Will that be me, someday? I hope not. They're cold around the patients, too. I know it's hard, but didn't we choose this path, to help those who can't help themselves? Page 2 One of my patients died today. Her condition was incurable, and this was always inevitable, but still, it chills me to watch a light go out. Sometimes the light is already gone when they arrive, but not her, her light shone brightly even though her rambling was utter madness. There was a sort of intelligence, an intensity behind what she said, like she was trying to gift me her madness. She made a last request, as she was nearing the end. She asked me to dictate a letter to her Papa.  Page 16   I thought a few days would help me recover. I looked into delivering the letter she had me write, but I discovered her father had been dead for almost a year before her admission to the Institute. It's been gnawing at me, was this letter really to her Papa?  Was it a letter to me?  I finished work early today, though I doubt that will be permitted again. I'll be back to full shifts tomorrow.  I came across my notes from Lydia's case as I was packing up to leave. I left them on the desk for tomorrow, but as I stepped out of my office and turned to close the door, I stared at that sheaf of papers for a while, my office door half open, my key in the lock. I should have marked them for destruction per policy, but something, some buzzing in my brain told me they needed another look, and they needed to be away from here.  I took them home. Page 17   The landlady came by for the rent today. At work I overheard one orderly telling another that he is close to eviction because he doesn't have the funds to survive anymore. Not surprising with the way things are, my sabattical wiped out my savings and rent is half my income. I doubt I'll afford a holiday again any time soon. Page 19   I've completed my study of the notes. That buzzing feeling is still there, and all it's really gotten me is an address of a book shop, and a few scraps of information about other places Lydia was interested in. I've been up for two days straight now, juggling work and study. I'm exhausted, maybe that's all that feeling is. A good night's sleep might help a lot. Page 19+i  Page 20  I think this might be the first time I've committed a dream to paper. I awoke this morning in ecstasy, a pleasure that goes far beyond any sleep, any Dream I've ever experienced. I can Reason about it, of course, so I doubt I'm going mad, surely just a quirk of the mind, a freak occurrence borne from stress. The Buzzing feeling isn't gone, but I think now it's just the feeling of a mystery that needs solving. What happened to Lydia to make her the Way she was?  It was my day off today, so I spent some time tracking down the shop she mentioned.  The proprietor was certainly...a character. She had a sweet charm, but something about her made me feel on Edge.   And here, Dear Diary, I must confess a flaw. I find shopping difficult. I feel embarrased if I walk into a shop and then walk out without buying anything. Like I've wasted the shopkeeper's time. It's silly, I know, but before I left Ms Morland's shop, I felt compelled I should buy something to show my time was worth the effort. So I picked up a book and realised only after I was home I had bought the second volume in a series without having read the first! I told myself for a few moments that I could perhaps return the book, but that's foolish, surely--Who expects a refund for a banned book?   I suppose I might as well read it, since I've bought it. Page 20+i  The Dreams came back, there was something there, just at the Edge, just Beyond what I could Reason away.  In the Dream, I gave up something of Myself, I needed to Know. An Eye, a Door, a Lock, that bled. I gave it some of my Reason, and gained Passion instead. Page 21  I have awoken this morning with a pounding headache and blood on my cheek. My vision is blurred in one eye, did I scratch it in my sleep, somehow? My head hurts less with the eye closed, so I've bandaged it shut. If I remember my first year studies it should pass in a few days.  My dream last night was...odd. I feel like I've learned some things, strange "facts" that I can't forget about colours and wounds. but it's impossible to learn things from dreams...  ...isn't it?   The start of the new week. I collect my pay for the work done, and pay my bills.  A rather strange coincidence today, apparently a patient awoke this morning scratching at her own eyes, rambling about a dream and a door and a doctor. I'll speak to the patient tomorrow. Page 22  I met the patient today, a cheerful woman. I had read her file in advance, of course, and by the accounts of her own physicians she is completely insane. Quite disturbing, then, that this was not the case when I spoke with her. Far from mad, Cat was entirely lucid, though she spoke in a low whisper while we were on the Institute's grounds. She confirmed what I had been afraid to admit, my dream was more than just a dream. Or rather, it was just a dream, but I had never understood what a dream was.   My conversation with Cat stirred in me an odd yearning, unlike anything I had ever felt before, like a light turned on in my soul, a realisation that I had to Know the things Lydia had once Known. Cat told me that she had Known Lydia once, in a past life. For some reason where once this would have made me scoff, now I simply understood the truth behind those words.  We talked for hours, we made plans. We spoke about Lydia, shared sorrow, but resolved not to make the same mistake. We agreed to seek out enlightenment together.   I returned home, feverish with a hunger for knowledge, and practically devoured the last few pages of my book. It finished with six pages, intentionally left blank. The silence of those pages somehow spoke to me, helping me to absorb the wisdom of what had preceded. Page 23   I signed Cat's discharge papers today. It was the only thing I could do, to keep a sane woman in a madhouse for even a moment more was an injustice I couldn't bear.  It will attract attention for me at work, but I must pay a price for knowledge.  All that remained for me and Cat was to decide how best to pursue Enlightenment. 
Reveilled fucked around with this message at 20:40 on May 6, 2019 |
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May 6, 2019 20:38
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Mechanics Update 1 Let's start at the end, as The Moth might. Most LPs tend to start from completely fresh save files, but we're not doing that here, we're coming in fresh off my recent loss to start a new run.  Here we pick a legacy for our budding new cultist. This affects essentially three things: your job, your starting attributes, and what I'll call your "prologue", which I'll explain in a moment. We have three choices, influenced by how my last game ended. On the left is "Bright Young Thing", a socialite from a wealthy family (this was my previous playthrough as Lydia), in the centre is Aspirant, the "default" start you'd begin with on a fresh save, and Physician, which is what we're playing as.  This is how the game looks. A table, some cards, and a square block. Each card is a thing you can manipulate, whether it's an attribute like "Reason" or a job like "A Position at the Institute" or any other number of possible cards. The square block is an action, something we can place cards into to create effects. Everyone starts with Work.  Here, I am placing my job card into the Work action to perform my job.  When you place a card into an action, the text for the action can change based on the context. Here is the only other thing starting from an existing save changes, the game will occasionally refer back to the previous run's character in a subsequent one. If this was a fresh start there'd be some slightly more generic text here about an unnamed patient.  And this is the core gameplay mechanic, actions are timers. When we start work, the timer counts down to produce an effect. The game is sometimes described as spinning plates for this reason, as the complexity ramps up you'll have more and more actions all ticking away as you try to manage things. However, because you can always pause, there's no real time pressure except that which you create by your own mistimings. This is a very quick timer because we're going through the prologue right now, most timers are 30-60 seconds (though you can fast forward).  For our efforts at work we receive back our job card and a few new cards. We get some Funds, a Health card, and some additonal Reason cards. Cultist Simulator has four basic attributes, Health, Passion, Reason and Funds, which you can see down the bottom. They have various uses which we'll cover over time. You can also see a new action, obscured behind the work panel. This is Study.  This is how the prologue works for each legacy. There are five primary actions: Work, Study, Speak, Explore and Dream. The prologue is a mostly linear section at the start which establishes how your character got into the culting business in the first place, and gradually unlocks the five actions over time in a varying order. This mechanic of spawning new actions from existing actions is also relevant for the special case of Time.  Time is a bit different from the other actions. It takes no input from the player, but each minute that passes it will suck one funds card into itself (note the magnet symbol on its slot). As you can imagine, if we want to win we don't want to run out of funds. Fortunately, as a Physician our job gives two funds for every minute we work it, so we should have the funds to avoid that. Generally, assume for now that if we're not doing something specific with Work, we're using it on our job to generate funds. Time will also periodically spawn Seasons, which are secondary actions that can suck up other cards on the table, usually to create bad effects. You don't want to have (or alternatively, be missing) certain cards when those seasons pop up.  Skipping ahead a little, we unlocked Morland's shop, one of the fixed locations, and Explore, the action for locations. Most locations in the game are usable only once for exploration, Morland's is an exception. We can buy books at Morland's, which we can then study for Lore. In order to buy a book, we have to pay funds. The little flame under the funds slot indicates that the card will be consumed by the action.  We bought this book...  ...and then took it for study...  ...which produces lore and erudition. I'll explain erudition in a future update, but here's the basics of lore. Lore comes in types and magnitudes. In the narrative update we've seen Winter, Lantern and Knock, three of the nine types. Our three bits of lore are all of the second magnitude, which is the lowest. It goes up in twos to the fourteenth magnitude. We'll learn more about Lore and how it works when the time is right.  Meanwhile, by sacrificing a reason card to give into our dreams, we gained our first passion card, a few other scraps of lore, and our temptation.  This is our win condition. We need to upgrade it, somehow (the game deliberately does not explain exactly how). We can convert it to a different win condition if we want, but we'll stick with what the game has given for now.  We've unlocked all the basic actions now, so that effectively conlcudes the prologue and the game proper begins. We've already met someone, so we can found a cult together. We'll explain about people once we've met more than one.  Part of doing that is selecting founding principles. We can slot in any piece of lore we have to establish a cult dedicated to that lore. Each of the nine lore types has its own cult. Five of the lore types have a victory condition associated with them. This doesn't mean you can't win the game with only those cults of course, but it's a little bit harder to assemble the pieces needed for a win if you're playing "off-brand". Next time, we're going to found the Mirror of Glory.
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May 6, 2019 20:38
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I really enjoy Mr "I am trying hard to make my games much more enjoyable as LPs then as games"'s work. Haven't really gotten around to look much at cultist simulator. From the videos I have seen this is his most direct attempt at discouraging people from actually reading the amazing flavourtext. That true?
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May 6, 2019 21:46
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VictualSquid posted:I really enjoy Mr "I am trying hard to make my games much more enjoyable as LPs then as games"'s work. I wouldn't say that, no. I'd say its more that the flavor text makes very little sense in atomized little blurbs, but paints a disturbing picture of the whole when you have it all unlocked, especially how lores interact and how you attain them. It's actually one of the better examples of game mechanics and game story reinforcing each other, IMO, its just the story is: you're the antagonist of a Lovecraft novel.
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May 6, 2019 22:46
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The timer mechanic is remarkably addictive. You end up with enough plates spinning that you never really hit a natural point to decide to stop. Which is itself remarkably thematic for running a cult. Also once you know a few things about this game, talking about it you start to sound like a raving loony. Say what you will about Kennedy's skills at designing games, he's fantastic at writing for them.
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May 7, 2019 00:00
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I was really curious as to how a game like this could be LP'd. Gotta say you've done a great job so far! Looking forward to where this goes
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May 7, 2019 00:11
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Oh cool! I'm a big fan of sunless seas/skies so this should definitely be interesting.
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May 7, 2019 00:13
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Interested to see the stuff I miss when skimming text in this game and generally how you explain stuff. I also fully expect to explode in rage at how you arrange your cards, but will not post about that. :P
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May 7, 2019 00:14
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I wanted to like Cultist Sim, since I really liked Alexis' work at Failbetter and donated to the kickstarter, but everytime I tried to play, I bounced right off. Looking forward to someone else sitting through all the busywork to bring us that sweet, sweet lore. Your narrative also does a great job fitting the tone of the game. Speaking of, are you going to be showing alternate win conditions, prologues, and playthroughs, or are we going to be following Kate and only Kate?
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May 7, 2019 00:31
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Cultist Simulator is the only game I know of that makes conversations about it sound like the participants are actual legitimate crazy cultists.
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May 7, 2019 00:51
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wiegieman posted:Cultist Simulator is the only game I know of that makes conversations about it sound like the participants are actual legitimate crazy cultists. Yeah, trying to even explain the game to someone else is hilariously (insanely?  ) on-brand.
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May 7, 2019 03:05
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Sinner Sandwich posted:I wanted to like Cultist Sim, since I really liked Alexis' work at Failbetter and donated to the kickstarter, but everytime I tried to play, I bounced right off. Looking forward to someone else sitting through all the busywork to bring us that sweet, sweet lore. Your narrative also does a great job fitting the tone of the game. Yeah I found it to be annoyingly easy to miss-time something and have the character you've been spinning plates on for an hour to go insane and die. Then you'd have to START OVER to get back to that point. On the one hand maybe I am just garbage and what the good players could do quickly it took me an hour to do; but then again it was god damned annoying.
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May 7, 2019 04:18
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Excellent. This was one of my favorite games of the last year. I've found myself absolutely obsessed with it and have played it into the ground at this point. Spend most of my time chatting on the discord with all the other nerds. Will be interested to see how your play style goes. Do you have any particular rules for discussion or lore or mechanics that haven't been revealed in the Let's Play yet that I should keep in mind? Don't want to disrupt the narrative. The writing is very good so far.
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May 7, 2019 06:26
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Mercy is found only in shadow. Where you are going, there is no room for mercy and none for shadow.
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May 7, 2019 06:49
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Sinner Sandwich posted:I wanted to like Cultist Sim, since I really liked Alexis' work at Failbetter and donated to the kickstarter, but everytime I tried to play, I bounced right off. Looking forward to someone else sitting through all the busywork to bring us that sweet, sweet lore. Your narrative also does a great job fitting the tone of the game. I haven't decided just yet, for now all I'm committing to is a single playthrough to a standard victory, but we'll see how it goes! I am going to go a lot faster than my preferred playstyle of "sit back and grind stats to max before properly beginning" so it's entirely possible we'll lose our first playthrough. Zengetsu posted:Excellent. This was one of my favorite games of the last year. I've found myself absolutely obsessed with it and have played it into the ground at this point. Spend most of my time chatting on the discord with all the other nerds. Will be interested to see how your play style goes. I think for now what we'll go with is "don't explain anything we haven't seen yet", at least for now. That might change past the Stag, once we all Know.
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May 7, 2019 07:04
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Reveilled posted:I haven't decided just yet, for now all I'm committing to is a single playthrough to a standard victory, but we'll see how it goes! I am going to go a lot faster than my preferred playstyle of "sit back and grind stats to max before properly beginning" so it's entirely possible we'll lose our first playthrough. This game does a really fantastic job of pulling you in, but it does have the one flaw that once you know what you need to do to win (at least for a "standard" victory, I don't know about more advanced stuff), the mystique kind of falls away and you're stuck going through the motions watching a bunch of timers tick down until the right events fire. It's one hell of a journey to get to that point though, so I'm curious to see how you handle it.
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May 7, 2019 07:16
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Reveilled posted:That might change past the Stag, once we all Know. *inhales deeply* Though I will not, nthing that it's actually kind of difficult to literally describe this game even with malicious intent--it just sounds like a crazy person raving! You could spew the endgame run right now and none of it would make sense to someone who wasn't already in the Know. If anything, the spoiler warnings come when you have enough pieces of the puzzle that you can start independently working it into some kind of progression... towards.... ???? Also I'm 100% with you on that preferred playstyle. So many games lost to sneaky random events that slipped past my preoccupied awareness. 
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May 7, 2019 07:25
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Reveilled posted:
I maintain that knife cult is the best choice
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May 7, 2019 07:51
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Crane Fist posted:I maintain that knife cult is the best choice That's a funny way of spelling "grail"
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May 7, 2019 13:37
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hail hydra, actually. promote everyone to disciples as soon as you find a mithreum
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May 7, 2019 19:54
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Crane Fist posted:I maintain that knife cult is the best choice I will second this. Always useful to have some extra good stabbing ability. Moth and Hydra are also very useful as well, although they lend themselves better to slower play styles.
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May 7, 2019 22:14
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Grail is the best cult because who doesn't want to join the cult of sex, drugs and rock & roll? Also game mechanics I guess
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May 7, 2019 22:19
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Tenebrais posted:Grail is the best cult because who doesn't want to join the cult of sex, drugs and rock & roll? Objection. Rock and roll is Heart.
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May 7, 2019 22:39
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Objection. This is true. Also cocaine is definitely heart. Sex is Grail though. So you can't be a full rockstar only under Heart. Gotta get yourself multiple Principles.
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May 8, 2019 01:43
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Grail is a lot of things. Hungry things. Sating things. Then hungry again.
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May 8, 2019 01:55
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I got far enough into this game to have 0 idea what was going on, or even supposed to happen, so it's nice to have someone walking me through on it.
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May 8, 2019 02:21
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I had a couple of what felt like good games, but ended up finding other ways to waste time before I got too much further than what I expect'll be update 3ish from what we've seen so far. Cool game and idea, and I do love a good yarn, but I don't have the imagination to fill in the blanks myself. So this is kinda ideal 
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May 8, 2019 02:37
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Zengetsu posted:This is true. Also cocaine is definitely heart. Hail Hydra once again. Study hard, party hard.
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May 8, 2019 06:58
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Taking real, old school notes when playing this game is good because when you finish you have a very good facsimile of a cultist notebook.
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May 8, 2019 07:12
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Regallion posted:That's a funny way of spelling "grail" drat what use do I have for a gang of hedonists when the police come knocking? That's when you learn to love your stabby lads
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May 8, 2019 07:36
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Fat Samurai posted:Taking real, old school notes when playing this game is good because when you finish you have a very good facsimile of a cultist notebook. Considering doing this so if I die suddenly and my family are going through my things they'll be all wait, what the gently caress
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May 8, 2019 07:38
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Crane Fist posted:drat what use do I have for a gang of hedonists when the police come knocking? That's when you learn to love your stabby lads gently caress the police.
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May 8, 2019 10:46
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Regallion posted:gently caress the police. I suppose that's one way to get out of trouble
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May 8, 2019 11:23
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Page 24 Cat and I spent a while this evening discussing our organisation, tenets, rituals, et cetera. All such groups have a leader and followers, such is the way of things. We debated who would be whom in our little clique, but we both knew who would ultimately consent to lead. Cat suggested the name, I admit it rather took me, very evocative...nostalgic.  Nostalgic? It's been barely a few weeks since Lydia passed and this all began, it shouldn't be possible to be nostalgic about such things. Then, it struck me, that glorious light has been at my back my entire life, every shadow in my path cast by its influence, the burning heat of ambition that pushed me forward to where I am, driven by its glow. That night of my first dream, I merely looked back over my shoulder. I have cast myself into the composition of a doctrine, of sorts, to be built on as we learn more. We will be to this light as Fabricius was to the Sun, fearless observers, who can stare at the truth without flinching. Page 26  My work on the induction rituals complete, Cat and I baptised each other in light this morning, in beams of true knowledge as we said the words. An ecstasy of illumination.  "OUR RISE BEGINS". It was Cat who said those words, and we held a pause for a moment before giggling at the melodrama, but the words were still sweet, burning with truth like the sun on pale skin. My vision swam for hours after as my eyes ached with the colours only visible near blindness. I struggled through work, though I heard a few complaints that my handwriting on the charts seemed more illegible than usual today. Page 27  Cat seems...changed by the experience. She has a new intensity, a new alertness. There's a hunger to Know behind her eyes now, a vow never to forget. I like that. Looking in my mirrors it is hard to truly judge myself, but I hope I have that same hunger in me, too. ...Cat brought the snake home, as I requested. Tonight I think I'll learn something. Page 27+i     Page 28 It worked! It worked! I saw The Wood Illopoly described in the book I bought. I saw the walls, but I knew instictively this was the House without Walls Lydia described. And it was a dream, but it felt more real than even the waking world does. And above The Wood, twinking through the small gaps in the leaves, That Light I saw in my first Dream, those rays shining down filling me with ambition. I've been crying all morning, that fear I had finally banished: I'm not mad. Oh, it's true. It's all true. It's all actually true. Page 30   Locked Doors. Blocked Doors. Doors that open into Walls. I've been dreaming more, and keeping notes. I know the way, but I can't get back. The Buzzing has returned (did it leave?), louder, more intent. I feel angry, anxious, like there's an Intense Drive I can't quite articulate.  And still I have to work. work work work. WORK, WORK, WORK. I'm the leader of a cult and I still have to go to my regular bl--dy day job like my search for the ultimate truth IS SOME D-MNED SEWING CIRCLE OR SUNDAY MORNING ROTARY CLUB.  I'm sorry, my dear diary, I shouldn't have written such thoughts on your pages. But still, it vexes me. Hopefully someday soon I can devote myself to seeking the truth full-time, but it would be immature to have a tantrum over what needs doing in the now. Page 31  This evening, I spoke with Cat about my outburst yesterday. She suggested that maybe I could paint my dreams instead, and perhaps something new would develop.   As I painted, I channeled that restless energy into the canvas. I saw my conscious self peel back to reveal the truth: I'm afraid. I Dread going back to my old self. Mine is a Charmed soul, it has to be, it has to be. I'm going to succeed. I'm Destined for Glory. But in the back of my subconscious, there's a little voice whispering to me: You're just Kate. You're just Kate. Doctor, Daughter, Dreamer. Delusional. ...But I Know that's not true. I asked Cat what she thought of the painting. She wept with joy. Page 32  It was my day off today. There was an art fair at the gardens; Cat's reaction to my painting gave me a whim to take the painting along. Perhaps this is a viable source of income? I've never thought myself skilled enough to make this a living.  But there's no denying now I feel closer to touching something than I have in days. I think I can't find the truth by reason alone, feelings and emotions are just as real as facts in dreams.  On my way home from the gardens, I stopped by a little craft shop. I picked up some pencils and an art pad. I think I'll suggest we try art therapy with my patients at the Institute, turn my practice into practice. Page 34   My painting is coming along surprisingly quickly, it feels different now than it did when I painted as a child. The light on canvas feels like a doting parent, each colour like a brother or sister I know more intimately than a lover. Hours pass at the tip of my brush. Perhaps now I have what I need to make my way back.   Page 34+i  Ahh!-- I'm through!
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May 8, 2019 23:28
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Mechanics Update 2 OK. Let's found a cult, learn to paint, and send our brains to another dimension (pay close attention) When we found our cult, we have to expend one of our attributes. For our Lantern Cult, we have to use Reason. Using an attribute like this doesn't destroy it, but it puts it into a dimmed state where it cannot be used for 60 seconds. This isn't an issue so much for our reason, because our background as a physician gives us a lot of reason to start with. But it will become an issue for passion and health, of which we have one of each. If we exhaust those, we're stuck waiting for it to recharge. This is especially bad for health--some timers require a non-exhausted health card to avoid loss by becoming unalive. Whoever we choose as our first member gets an instant promotion to believer. Future acquaintances have to go through their own ceremony to join the cult.   So here's our cult, in card form. We also get a HQ card. I haven't played Cultist Simulator in a few months, the most recent update made it possible to change your HQ, so we'll look into doing that at some point. For now, we'll be meeting up in Kate's dining room, or maybe a local tea room. Like a sewing circle, or rotary club. Glamourous! Each follower has different texts as their positions in the cult change. Again, we'll explain more about this once we have a few. For now, let's just have a nice nap and relax... When I first played Cultist Simulator, this was a major stumbling block for me. There are four basic attributes, as mentioned in the last update. If you dream with reason, you get a random card back from a pool of good and bad emotion/skil cards. If you dream with health, you get more or less the same. If you dream with funds, you take drugs get high and maybe get sick But if you dream with Passion an entire new section of the game gradually opens up. Our dreams are a gateway to the Mansus, a sort of strange eldritch dimension. We'll learn more about the Mansus over time. We might even understand a litle of what we learn. In order to open the gateway, we need an appropriate piece of lore. Lantern is the lore associated with doors, Knock is the lore associated with opening, so either will work here, with slightly different text. Ultimately both lead here, to The Wood, the first layer of the Mansus. We get a card which we can use on the Dream action to return to The Wood, and do stuff. We also get this. A Buzzing in the Brain is an Influence. Influences are fleeting feelings or half-remembered hunches. Like Lore has Magnitudes, Influences have Orders, and both have types. A Buzzing in the Brain is a Moth Influence of the Second Order (note the moth symbol and the 2 in the corner of its description indicating the type and order, and the half-mask indicating it is an influence). Moth is the Lore associated with Change. Unlike Lore, which is permanent unless consumed, an influence never lasts more than a minute in its current form. Some influences decay into other cards, like lower ranked versions of themselves (a level 10 Lantern influence decays into a level 6 Lantern infleunce, for example), others into negative status cards if not used. Influences can be used in things like rituals, but it's hard to reliably obtain particular influences at particular times, so often they will go frustratingly unused when they arrive exactly when you don't need them. Time passing has triggered a Season, as I mentioned in the last update (in fact, several seasons have triggered, but this is the first one that's actually affected us). This is the Season of Ambition, and it immediately sucks up the temptation card. The Season of Ambition seeks to push you to completion, it takes your temptation, reminds you how to progress it, and gives you this new card, Restlessness, as a kick in the teeth. Restlessness can be a challenge to deal with. If we don't dispose of it in some way, it will decay to Dread, a bad news card. Too many dread cards at the wrong time and it can be game over. Fortunately there's quite a few ways to get rid of it, as you'll notice from the symbols it is actually second order influence for multiple lore types. This means we can use it in rituals, if we have one prepped to go. There is something else we can do with it, though. We can paint our restlessness away. Painting with restlessness will destroy it. Also of note here, placing a card into an action pauses the timer on the action. This will be important in the future, we can exploit this to save cards we know we'll need in a minute or two. Our first painting also gave us two Glimmerings, which is just what we need right now, and Funds. When we're better at painting we might become a full-time artist, though being famous comes with its own perils. That's a Future Kate problem, right now. Lots of things use passion. Recruiting followers, painting, dreaming of the Mansus. It sure would be nice if we had more than one, and this is how we do that. We can take our two Glimmerings for study... ...and produce a new passion card! We also get a skill which allows us to paint better pictures. In future the process for upgrading Passion is slightly more complex. We'll need to study two glimmerings together to make a "Lesson Learnt", then study our skill with two Lessons Learnt (then three, then four), further increasing our pool of attribute cards and the quality of our skill. We'll be doing the same for Health and Reason. The "optimal" way to do this is to grind the stats to their max before you even found a cult, since all it technically requires is some skillful management of the timers on the various cards, but that's not exactly good TV, so we'll do it in a more gradual way as we go. Now that we have that spare passion, let's dream on The Wood card. We're through! Next Time, shy nerds, secretive sects, and some stories about strippers.
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May 8, 2019 23:29
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Moth lore will also open the way to the Wood, as Moth is the aspect of the Wood itself. It won't help you get any further in, though, while Lantern guides you to the light above the world and Knock will open the way.
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May 9, 2019 00:00
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One minor point, exhausted health still counts for the (very minor mechanics spoiler) season of sickness. Running out of health cards completely is what corpsifies you
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May 9, 2019 04:00
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The Wood grows around the walls of the Mansus, but the Mansus has no walls. Yeah, that's a pretty solid distillate of dream logic.
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May 9, 2019 13:26
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| # ? May 3, 2024 17:57 |
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I personally don't like how they made skill increase more complex than it was before with the Lesson Learnt system, grinding skills in the early game was already the least fun part of the game and they threw in even more moving parts.
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May 9, 2019 15:47
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