|
 In 1995, the sequel to the original The Oregon Trail was released. The Oregon Trail II added features, photographs instead of primitive pixel graphics, and the best soundtrack an edutainment company in the 90s could offer. While it lacked the memetic popularity and classroom prevalence of the original, the sequel was enough of a hit that they just kept remaking it! What we have here is The Oregon Trail 5th Edition, which is simply an updated re-release from 2001. This added a few features, removed a few, improved the interface graphics, and continuously interrupted your journey to show the terrifyingly animated adventures of the Montgomery children and their black guide on the way to join their father in Oregon. This game was a staple of my middle school years to the point where the music loop still runs continuously in my head at all hours of the day. Ceaselessly. Forever. Most Oregon Trail LPs have been narrative, especially after the phenomenal creation by Chewbot over a decade ago (also that was over a decade ago holy poo poo). But I've become fond of taking my time on the forum to educate myself and others, such as with my ongoing Let's Read of the original James Bond books. I think we can turn our adventure into a learning experience! We'll be playing this in the typical way for an Oregon Trail LP with goon votes and suggestions, as well as the first 6 goons becoming our family. But to fill in the gaps between posts that may only be a few in-game days apart, we'll be learning all about life on the Oregon Trail. I'll be making posts covering topics like food and drink on the trail, wagons and draft animals, guns, relations with Native Americans, and more. Every place we visit will get a blurb describing its history and fun facts about it. This is also an open forum for historical information that you know of and discussion on it! This is all in the spirit of fun and learning. And, you know, typical poo poo like memes and mocking the awful voice acting and animation. The Oregon Trail often features repeat problems and decisions. To streamline things, I won't make a repeat vote for any identical situation if you've already come up with a working plan before. For instance, if someone suffers a broken bone and you chose the correct option to heal it from a vote, I won't make you vote again on how to deal with another broken bone and will just deal with it myself. The only exception will be if something changes, such as if we're lacking a resource we once had (like medicine or spare wagon parts) and have to try and pick the next best option. If we end up forced to trade because of a lack of food or vital parts, I'll likely make the decision myself because of the sheer number of random possibilities. And just for fun, you guys get to help with foraging and wound healing....without a guide. Normally when foraging for fresh fruits and vegetables you can look them up to immediately be told what they are and whether or not they're poisonous. But where's the fun in that? Instead, you guys get to pick what's edible and what's not purely from the pictures! You'll be told the identity of the item after it's been picked and added to our food stores, so unless you're familiar with the appearance of these plants you might not know that you picked something poisonous until you eat it yourself! I have no idea how long this journey will last, and it might be viable to keep going for multiple runs depending on interest. There's a ton of variation based on the time, destination, and occupation you pick. Hopefully this lovely ISO doesn't break! To start things off, we need to pick a year and month to begin. We can journey any year from 1840 until 1860 and set off in any month. The year we pick determines not only what towns and forts exist as we travel, but also our possible starting points and destinations; in general, the later the year the easier the game. May (followed by April) is the most common month for leaving, as it has the lowest chance of running into massive snowstorms in the west and makes sure that sufficient grass is available for your draft animals on the way. But you guys get to pick the difficulty because what's the fun in just setting off on the easiest setting? Once we know when we're leaving, it's time to pick our character and hit the trail! Historical Interludes The Oregon Trail and Prairie Schooners Life on the Trail Food on the Trail The Donner Party 19th Century Medicine Native American Relations Firearms on the Trail The California Gold Rush 
chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Jun 19, 2019 |
#
¿
May 10, 2019 21:02
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 01:00 |
|
|
The Oregon Trail Before you set off on the trail, the most basic question that should be answered is "What the hell is the Oregon Trail?"  The roots of the trail begin with the Lewis & Clark expedition. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriweather Lewis and William Clark to undertake the journey of a lifetime: traveling all the way across North America and back. For over two years, several dozen people traveled to the Pacific Coast and back. Remarkably, only one person died of appendicitis on the entire trip (though Lewis was accidentally shot close to the end of their return trip). Mountain men quickly began taking advantage of the trail blazed by the expedition to travel out west, often to set up fur trapping companies in the unspoiled land. By the 1820s early settlers had begun trickling into Oregon Country, mostly missionaries and fur trappers or former trappers, but it really ramped up by 1840 as word spread of the massive bounty of land, forests, game, and ocean access in the Pacific Northwest. Treaties signed with Britain established American ownership of a large parcel of land, renamed Oregon Territory in 1848. The gold rush that year made westward migration absolutely insane and further contributed to the Oregon economy building as trade was established with the suddenly wealthy California. Eventually a 2170-mile trail from Independence, MO to Oregon City, OR was mapped and became one of the biggest routes to the west. Over the course of its famous history from the 1830s through the 1860s, over 400,000 people traveled west via the Oregon Trail. It started to decline in 1855 when the Panama Railroad was completed, providing another link between the Pacific Northwest and the east coast by bridging the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the isthmus. While the trail was still heavily used, the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 finally provided a better way. Some migrants continued using the trail into the 1890s and many vehicular roads and highways were built roughly along its length, but by the turn of the 20th century the days of wagon trains were over. Despite this, many modern tourists "travel the Oregon Trail" by driving along its length, stopping in the numerous museums and towns along the way. There are even regular reenactments as people travel portions of the trail with wagons and oxen. The Prairie Schooner   The covered wagon (nicknamed the "Prairie Schooner" after its sail-like white covering) is possibly the single most iconic image of the Oregon Trail that isn't being told that you died of dysentery. They have their roots in the massive Conestoga wagons in use since colonial times, which carried a massive amount of cargo and had a white canvas covering stretched over the top to protect the goods inside from the weather. The average wagon was a beast of 18 feet long, 11 feet tall, and 4 feet wide. Because of the practicality of the Conestoga design, many migrants setting out on the trail made similar wagons by simply adding iron bows to whatever wagon they could get their hands on and stretching a covering over it. Many of the wagons were made by Studebaker, which would become the famous car company of the first half of the 20th century. Despite some depictions, most pioneers simply used the wagons for goods and walked the trail; even if there was a sufficient weight allowance for the animals to pull, the ride was painfully rough and dusty. The only people who would ride in the wagon were usually very young, very old, very sick/injured, or very pregnant. The most common draft animal was the ox. Oxen were plentiful (i.e. cheap), strong, decently tempered, and provided a lot of meat if you had to slaughter one or two to survive. Mules were sometimes used as they were similarly durable (especially in the heat) and could survive on grazing, but are notoriously assholes and cost as much as 3 times that of an ox. Horses were rarely used because of their expense, "thought of ants and died" disposition, and inability to be used without expensive equipment and feed.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2019 21:42
|
|
|
NGDBSS posted:Sure, I'll second this. Seeing this in something other than 256-color graphics on an Apple II is going to be a trip. Somehow my edutainment experience largely skipped over this and instead dealt with Amazon Trail and African Trail, which were less about punishing realism and more about exploration. And this game is loving punishing. I’m running a test game to make sure it’s all stable and I can do screenshots fine, so I set it to a teacher in 1840. Probably the hardest year and profession. I’m currently about halfway through and have no food except what plants I can scavenge. I have no gun, no wagon parts, and only 4 oxen left. I ended up with the wagon swamped or tipping in rivers about half a dozen times.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2019 22:56
|
|
|
Regalingualius posted:Do you start out in Illinois in May, 1846? I'm asking for... reasons. I’m pretty sure the game actually creates the historic snowstorm if you take the same route at the same time.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2019 23:36
|
|
|
Meaty Ore posted:I am, as I type this sentence, looking at my wife's CD of this very game. I've only ever played the original, but I might play along for the experience. I recommend playing in admin mode. Compatibility mode may or may not break the cutscenes for some odd reason.
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2019 01:01
|
|
|
We've got a lot of different votes here! Here's the final count: April 1849: 3 April 1850: 8 December 1850: 2 May 1846: 2 June 1843: 2 December 1860: 1 March 1848: 1 So we get to be the Johnny Come Lateleys! Our wagon is led by Commander Keene and will feature CirclMastr (age 5), Poil (age 23), GrandmaParty (age 65), TheMcD (age 18), and SelenicMartian (age 40). The ages here aren't just random! Children are more likely to catch certain diseases, while the elderly are more likely to die if they get sick or injured. Our party here shows a good spread of ages. While everyone wants to head out to California for gold, I'll still give you guys the choice of destination just to make sure. In April 1850 you get the choice of: quote:Oregon City We also have a few jumping off points. You get to choose between: quote:Independence, MO Next up is our wagon! We've got a choice between three wagon sizes. Each costs more out of our starting money but has a greater capacity. Do keep in mind that higher capacity also needs more draft animals to pull, so the cost of a larger wagon might be greater than you think! Your choices are: quote:Small farm wagon ($60, 3000 lbs) Next is your profession. Each profession has a different amount of starting money, a score multiplier if you care about how many points we get if we survive the journey, and some starting skills. We'll pick skills after we pick our profession since each profession may have starting skills already selected. .png) And we have one last choice to make! There are three levels of authority that you can hold over a wagon train, with increasing score bonuses if you successfully make it to the end of the line. A greenhorn is only responsible for their own wagon and gets no choice over the general route the train takes. An adventurer or trail guide gets to actually choose routes, giving the thread the option of deciding which way to go when there's a fork (and potentially risk getting into a Donner Party situation if the wrong route at the wrong time is taken). An adventurer can be fired from the position and continues the game without the responsibility, but a trail guide who gets fired from morale dipping too low will end the game! So choose from: quote:Greenhorn
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2019 15:09
|
|
|
Life on the Trail As I mentioned before, you never rode in the wagon unless you weren't able to walk. The 2000+ mile journey generally took about 4 to 6 months depending on your final destination and any delays along the way. While it would be mostly smooth going across the Midwest, you ran into hills, rivers, and eventually the Rocky Mountains. Ferries, bridges, trading posts/forts, and cleared trails would steadily be added over the years to make the journey easier. The California Trail split off at Fort Hall in what's now southeastern Idaho, leaving pioneers heading that way to also contend with deserts with little to no water. Many trail guides and scouts offered to sell knowledge of "shortcuts" and "cutoffs" or would be encouraged by trading post owners to lead wagons off the trail onto a path that took them past the store; this is exactly how the Donner Party got into the mess they did. There was obviously no light on the trail except the moon and stars, so travel was governed by the sun. The typical day would involve breakfast before sunrise, walking until you took a break at noon, then walking again until it got too dark to see. Some people traveling with pregnant women would be able to bring a feather mattress, but most people slept with a blanket, pillow, folding mattress, and/or a rubber ground cover. Ideally the wagon would be packed with containers of the same height so you could form a sleeping platform inside the wagon, but a lot of times you just got to spend half the year sleeping on the ground every day.  The main fare along the trail was flour and salt pork (usually generically called "bacon") as these were what kept the best. Depending on where you were or the connections you had, you may have also had pemmican or cornmeal as common rations. Canning was a new technology at the time and even by the 1860s jars of preserved food were still mostly seen among wealthier travelers who could also afford the weight. A very lightweight desiccated vegetable product had been created by slicing vegetables thin and pressing them into dry, flat cakes that could be boiled in water to make a soup, but these were also relatively expensive compared to salt pork and flour. Cookware was limited by how much weight you could carry and may have been nothing but a pot or a Dutch oven. If you had the money and space, you could bring along livestock that could be slaughtered in an emergency. Food could be supplemented by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild fruits and vegetables along the trail. Some wagons were forced to subsist on nothing but what they could catch or gather after losing or running through all of their supplies. Being desperate enough to slaughter and eat your draft animals was not unknown. And, you know, there's the Donner Party. We'll cover them in more detail later. The most common drink along the trail was water, often gathered from natural sources along the way. California-bound travelers especially needed to carry sufficient water supplies to make it across the desert. Some families brought along milk cows, but because of how quickly unpasteurized milk went bad it would usually be immediately turned into butter or cheese. The most common alcoholic beverage was whiskey, but this bore little resemblance to what we know it as today. The most common grains were corn and rye, but some low-quality "whiskey" could be rotgut made from the cheapest molasses available. Distilleries (which included many farmers turning their surplus corn crop into an easier format to sell) would just sell their colorless neutral grain spirits to rectifiers who would often adulterate the product with flavorings and colorants to make it look more like whiskey, then sell it on to wholesalers who would in turn sell the bottled product to stores and saloons. Any barrel aging done was often incidental as it traveled. All sorts of nasty poo poo was used to make it seem stronger or more legit, from prune juice to sulfuric acid to lanolin. There are tales of whiskey being adulterated with gunpowder and snake venom! Travelers still tried to live it up whenever they could. A party would often be held to celebrate holidays like July 4th and Christmas (though if you were smart you'd be in your destination before winter) and people with musical talent would bring along guitars, banjos, harmonicas, and other musical instruments to entertain the rest of the wagon train when stopped. Wealthier travelers especially wanted to bring as many creature comforts as possible and would fill their wagons with washing equipment, mirrors, grandfather clocks, jewelry, and rugs. These items would rarely make it to Oregon or California due to the need to lighten the load when traversing the mountains. During the gold rush, Fort Laramie was nicknamed "Camp Sacrifice" because of how much junk was abandoned along the side of the road. As you can expect, lots of people made a tidy profit off collecting abandoned items and taking them back to sell. Mormons would send scrap collection parties out along the trail to bring back anything valuable to their colony in Salt Lake City.
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2019 16:21
|
|
|
Well drat, we've already got 5 votes for an entire package deal! I think that's good enough for us to go with!.png) Because we're a gunsmith, we get the Sharpshooting skill for free. You don't have to spend points on skills (and you'll get unspent skill points added to your final score at the destination), but they'll definitely make the journey easier. Medical (50) lessens the chance of illnesses, injuries, and deaths among the party. Riverwork (50) reduces the chance of the wagon tipping or being swamped when crossing a river. Blacksmithing (40) makes it easier to repair broken wagon parts. Carpentry (40) also makes it easier to repair broken wagon parts. Farming/animals (40) makes your entire party immune to smallpox and makes it less likely for your animals to get sick or injured. Tracking (30) makes more game appear when hunting. Botany (20) makes it more likely that you'll find non-poisonous plants when gathering. Commerce/trade (20) gets you better deals when trading. Cooking (20) lets you stretch your food supplies longer. Musical (10) boosts morale if you also bring along a musical instrument. Sewing (10) makes your clothes last longer. Spanish (10) translates any Spanish dialogue from people you encounter.
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2019 16:33
|
|
|
lofi posted:TLDR: Raw meat is the shits.
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2019 19:31
|
|
|
Currently doing a test game with similar settings as you guys vote. I'm finding hunting surprisingly hard because the game runs at an extremely low resolution (befitting its 2001 status) but my screen is 1920x1080, so the reload button is way down by my hands when clicking on it.
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2019 19:39
|
|
|
Also an important thing to note when buying supplies: poo poo like grandfather clocks seem useless, but you can actually trade them for money or more valuable goods! I just traded a clock for 176 pounds of pemmican. Helpful since poor Sally died of cholera so that’s one less mouth to feed.
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2019 19:50
|
|
|
And now my test run made it to Fort Laramie, then my wagon refused to move any further and the save just crashes the game. Hopefully the same doesn't happen to you guys!
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2019 20:09
|
|
|
So it looks like there's no one skill block that anyone has voted for, but there's definitely some skills that keep popping up. Our count for that is: Spanish: 3 Musical: 4 Sewing: 1 Botany: 3 Cooking: 5 Riverwork: 2 Tracking: 3 Medical: 1 Farming/animals: 1 Carpentry: 1 Blacksmithing: 1 So to pick the skills, we'll go down the list from what got the most votes! Adding up all the points, our final skills will be Cooking, Musical, Botany, Spanish, and Tracking. This takes up 90 points, leaving us with an extra 30 points added to our final score...if we survive. .png) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39_MGaq8Pks We begin our journey with the tale of the Montgomery children. These cutscenes are universally horrid, but they do have some level of educational value. .png) .png) And here we are! Independence, MO was built on land bought as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The town was founded on March 29, 1827 in honor of the Declaration of Independence and quickly became a major town due to its position at the farthest point west where steamboats and other cargo vessels could travel. Joseph Smith, the infamous founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (better known as the Mormons) bought a spot in town in December 1831 and declared that it was where they would build the gathering point for the Mormons in the final days of mankind on Earth, but tensions grew as the Mormons failed to get along very well with their suspicious neighbors. It all reached a head in July 1833 when Mormon leader WW Phelps published the legal requirements for free blacks to come to Missouri in his newspaper The Evening and Morning Star. Local slaveowners were enraged at the Mormons attempting to publish anything that could lead to even a single black person in Missouri not being a slave, so they burned down his newspaper plant and tarred and feathered two Mormons they caught. Later that year, the Mormons were evicted from Jackson County and would continue violent conflict with Missouri residents until Joseph Smith escaped charges of treason and purchased a small town in Illinois to rename Nauvoo. Phelps himself would be at odds with church leadership and testified against Joseph Smith during the conflict, leading to him being excommunicated three times and rejoining every single time. After Smith was killed in 1844 by an angry mob storming the jailhouse he was in, Phelps supported Brigham Young as the new president of the church and lived until 1872. Independence is currently the main jumping-off point for the Oregon Trail and others that utilize its length, like the California Trail we'll be taking. It's a prosperous town full of merchants ready to take our substantial cash. .png) I can't save during the prologue so the price will probably vary by a few dollars, but when you start off you're given the option to buy a pre-arranged package of supplies. This gives you all the things that you need for a journey of that length, assuming nothing goes wrong (like tipping in the river 6 times). So our first choice is: 5 month package 6 month package Let me make the purchase, with some goon suggestions for mandatory gear We also need draft animals, which aren't included in any package deal. There's a stable selling oxen, horses, and mules. 6 oxen is a typical amount for a wagon of our size, though we can go as low as 3 or 4 if we're willing to go slower. What draft animals do we use and how many?
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2019 20:50
|
|
|
Of course the game has to work perfectly the day I get it, then decide to stop loading save files when I actually try to do the LP.... Gimme a bit folks.
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2019 02:35
|
|
|
Looks like "6 months and 7 oxen" is the most popular vote here, so that's what we're going with! In honor of adventures past, I made sure to purchase the only grandfather clock in town as well. Our current inventory: quote:Cash: $779.48 All in all, this is quite a haul! However, its status as "6 months of supplies" is dependent on us basically never losing anything. As our wagon tips or gets swamped in the river, we'll likely need to continue purchasing, hunting, and foraging on the trail. .png)  "The bylaws and regulations drawn up by your self-elected council will be your only law on the trail. You got to keep out the bad element and make arrangements for settling disputes. I have here a completely and elegantly scripted constitution, suited to all upright citizens. Drew it up myself. I had a year in law school, you know. If you let me join your wagon train, I'll be glad to offer this here constitution to you free of charge!"This quirky top-hatted man appears in many guises throughout the game. They had maybe two or three dozen actors who appear to have one costume each, so they all appear repeatedly as different characters. While you can't add anyone to your wagon train, the presence of constitutions for wagon trains was not an unusual one. Wagon trains would usually settle into one of three types of governance: monarchy (one person controls everything), democracy (the train or their representatives vote on what to do), or anarchy (every wagon for itself). Some companies drafted bylaws and serious legally binding paperwork before ever setting out, while others developed informal rules as they traveled. Many trains changed leadership repeatedly as families fell behind or leaders got ousted from conflict or died on the trail. After a few weeks the train would usually elect its captain (of course only the men got to vote). There was rarely any kind of secret ballot, so there was a lot of campaigning and manipulation to become the leader of the expedition. The usual method of election was for each candidate to walk off in a different direction and have the men supporting him follow behind, with whoever had the most people winning. .png) Because you can't save during this prologue, I chose Train 2 for us. .png) And now we're off! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgW5l-mWrJY Jed has a strange tendency to always seem like he's staring above your head when he talks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ6CVAe1rqI Make sure to play this on an endless loop when reading the thread for the proper experience. .png) We've only made it 5 miles out of Independence before hitting our first obstacle! The conditions of the river are displayed in the bottom left corner. It's a pretty easy river, one of the easiest on the journey, but the random number god can be a cruel mistress. We have two options here. We can ford the river and hope we don't swamp or caulk the boards in the wagon and float it across. Later rivers will have ferries or bridges that we can pay money to use, usually just a few bucks. Whenever we reach a stopping point like a landmark, river, or spring we'll also have some other options that you can suggest we take. Hunt: Lets me go out and hunt for food. You need a gun, gunpowder, and bullets (or shot for shotguns) to hunt. Gather: Lets me go and try to gather wild fruits and vegetables. You won't know the identity of anything until you pick it, so hopefully your own botany knowledge will come into play! Trade: Talk to another member of the wagon train to trade. You're given a limited number of items (including money) that you can offer them and they'll tell you what they want in return. You can haggle, but too much haggling will rapidly get you an awful deal that isn't worth taking. Turn Around: Turn the wagon train around and go back down the trail. This obviously doesn't help get you to your destination, but it might be the best option if there's a vitally needed doctor or supply post nearby. Dump: Just throw poo poo out to lose weight. Rest: Spend however many days you want just resting. While fishing would ordinarily be available, my copy of the game is currently bugged and I can't get fishing to work for the life of me. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 02:46 on May 12, 2019 |
|
#
¿
May 12, 2019 02:41
|
|
|
Food on the Trail While I went into a good amount of detail on the average diet of an Oregon/California Trail goer, now that we have an actual inventory I can start explaining in more depth exactly what the hell we have.  First off, you'll notice all 510 pounds of bacon (divided among the 6 of us and assuming a 4-month journey, that's roughly 0.7 pounds of bacon for each person every day of the journey; considering that one of the family is literally 5 years old, all of you would realistically be getting a pound or more per day). Far from the thin slices you're familiar with frying in a pan for breakfast, these were huge slabs of salt-cured pork in sacks of about 100 pounds each. It was recommended that in hot climates that they be packed into boxes and surrounded with bran to keep them insulated. The slab in the picture is 4 or 5 pounds, so imagine about a hundred of those and you'll understand how much loving bacon we've got.  The common alternative to bacon was salt pork. This was pork placed in barrels and covered in an absolutely ridiculous amount of salt until no microbe could ever survive in there. Salt pork kept for months, but it required more extensive preparation than bacon; it's recommended to boil it for several hours, changing the water once or twice, to boil off the excess salt. As you can see from the picture, there's far more salt than you could ever try to eat raw.   Milk spoils very quickly in the years before pasteurization, especially in hot climates. It was much more practical to make it into cheese and butter, and hard cheese could keep for a long time. Some families drove milk cows with them and would make cheese and butter on the go. Butter was commonly clarified by boiling it until it was thin and oily and soldered into tins, helping it last longer.   After bacon and salt pork, the most common food was flour (or cornmeal for southerners). The women would take advantage of stops to bake simple biscuits and breads, though they would try to make sweeter treats for special occasions when they had the resources.  The "crackers" mentioned are likely hardtack. This is a very simple baked cracker made from flour, salt, and water. The resulting crackers are edible for ages but are extremely hard, especially if old and stale. It was common for Civil War soldiers issued hardtack to break it up with a rifle butt or hammer and soak it in water or fry it up with some leftover fat from their pork ration rather than try to bite into it.  Beans and rice were usually eaten while stationary for a long period of time, such as in forts, due to the need to boil them. Beans would later become one of the primary foodstuffs of the west due to how easily they kept when dry to the point where the diet on the frontier was "The Three Bs": biscuits, bacon, and beans.  There's no way to really know what the dried vegetables in the game are like, but this is a recent reproduction of the desiccated vegetable ration that was recommended for pioneers in 1859 and issued to the US military at the time. It was a mixture of various shredded vegetables (turnips, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, greens, etc.) that was pressed in a massive screw-press and dried until you had thin cakes about half the size of your palm. You could boil up one of them to create a filling soup portion; one cubic yard was estimated to contain about 16,000 servings. Some liked them, but many Civil War soldiers ended up despising the flavor and could never find a decent way to prepare them. Fruit and vegetables remained extremely important for one reason: scurvy. A lack of Vitamin C over about a month would cause this deficiency disease to start up. Even if pioneers didn't know exactly what caused scurvy, it was pretty apparent that having fruits and vegetables staved it off.  Lard was the principle cooking fat of the time. If you needed to fry anything, pig fat is where you went. This added vital calories to whatever food was cooked in it.  Pemmican is a Native American food that was quickly adopted by colonial explorers and fur trappers. It's made from shredded meat (traditionally buffalo or deer depending on the area) and fat in equal volumes, mixed and dried. You could add berries to sweeten it, but this isn't traditional for plain survival food. Pemmican can last for years in the right conditions.  Saleratus is better known today as baking soda. In addition to yeast, it would be used to leaven bread and allow for yet another taste of home on the trail.  Tea had lost a lot of prestige thanks to the American Revolution and intentional efforts to distance American identity from Britain, but it still maintained some level of popularity throughout the 19th century.  Coffee had replaced tea as the predominate American non-alcoholic beverage. The caffeine jolt was a major morale booster that kept people going on hard days. The usual method of making it is what we would today call "cowboy coffee": boil the grounds in a pot for a while, then try to pour it off without getting any grounds in the cup. This often resulted in a brew that was too weak or too bitter unless the person making it was experienced, but coffee was coffee. Most coffee would actually be carried "green", or unroasted, as it kept better. Coffee beans would be roasted in a pan over a fire and then ground up in a coffee mill or by crushing the beans in a cup with whatever you had on hand before boiling.
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2019 03:35
|
|
|
Truthkeeper posted:I never did figure out during my playthroughs of this game if there's an actual benefit to carrying a variety of food vs. nothing but bacon and beans. The game suggests that a great variety of food increases morale, but it never seemed to be a significant increase. And spices don't seem to matter a dammn but (outside of salt to cure my mighty hauls of buffalo and bear meat). You get warnings if you have no fruit or vegetables, so along with poor morale I believe you also run the risk of scurvy if you go too long without Vitamin C. In real life it takes about a month to see the symptoms. And yeah, fishing is broken in my version. I might try to fix it but all the fish are totally frozen and refuse to move to the bait. Hope nobody wanted salmon.
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2019 05:54
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAoE_P7SA3g.png) We didn't even make it 5 miles before our first mishap! While we didn't lose a huge amount of food, you can easily see how multiple accidents at rivers and hills could easily cause a cascading problem. .png) Another 5 miles down the trail is Westport, MO. This little town hasn't even been incorporated yet, but in the next few years Westport and Kansas City will displace Independence as the main jumping-off point for the trail. By 1897 it'll be annexed into Kansas City as a neighborhood. Should we replace lost supplies or keep going?
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2019 15:26
|
|
|
.png) Thanks. Never thought of that before. .png) Westport is tiny, but their general store stocks most of the essentials. Unfortunately, they have no coffee to replace what we lost. .png) It cost less than $10 to restock all the supplies we lost. Being a high-paying starting occupation really helps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs7RZxYghFk Jed is actually slightly anachronistic here. The Montgomery's story takes place in 1848. In February of that year, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed that ceded a large amount of territory to the United States. Santa Fe was newly minted American, including the relabeling of Mexicans as "white" to grant them voting rights (something that racists in neighboring states didn't take kindly to). At the time we're traveling, Santa Fe is still a remote desert town with little of interest. New Mexico wouldn't even become a state until 1912. .png) And right on time we run into New Santa Fe! This town started as a simple log cabin tavern in 1824 at the eastern terminus of the Santa Fe Trail, which was the biggest commercial highway between Santa Fe and the rest of the United States until they brought the railroad in 1880. The town only grew bigger by 1859 when a bridge crossing the Blue River (*shakes fist in anger*) was built, allowing travelers to avoid the rocky roads around Westport and go from Independence to New Santa Fe. Today the town is just another neighborhood of Kansas City; the only survivors of its time as an independent town are a granite marker from 1906 and a cemetery.
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2019 16:42
|
|
|
It's okay, we have 26 pounds! Assuming we never lose any coffee ever again, that should last *checks notes* about 3 months at most.
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2019 17:01
|
|
|
Speaking of coffee, these Civil War reenactors show off two different methods for how soldiers would make their coffee. This is likely identical or close to how pioneers on the trail would have done it with nothing but a coffee pot if they didn't have a mill like we do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIKxZCxqXjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T22KXgp0VNo
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2019 17:14
|
|
|
Black Robe posted:That seems like quite a lot of stuff to have lost in not much over knee-deep water. You can drown in 1.5 feet of water on a bad roll.
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2019 22:28
|
|
|
I remember when the general TFR chat thread was called “Don’t mix up your coffee sock with your lonely sock.”
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2019 04:49
|
|
|
Amazingly, New Santa Fe has no grandfather clocks or laudanum! I even checked the drug store. I guess previous travelers bought them all..png) The going is a little slower as the trail gets muddy. After 6 days we've traveled 55 miles and made it to Blue Mound. Today there's a tiny township with less than 500 people here. Back in 1850, the only thing of note is this big hill that looks kinda blue when viewed from afar. .png) It's a cold, foggy trip. As far as I can tell there's absolutely no benefit to slowing down or stopping in fog or dust. It just slows you down for no reason. .png) The river is fairly deep, though not super wide. We might be able to caulk and float across, but we could also just pay to take the ferry.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2019 15:24
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1UuvPzO4rM Taking the ferry means no muss, no fuss. .png) The next landmark we pass at the 121-mile mark is St. Mary's Mission in Kansas. You may notice that despite crossing from Missouri to Kansas we never saw Kansas City. This major metropolis wouldn't be founded until June 1st and it wouldn't become the City of Kansas with a population of 2500 until 1853. At the moment there's nothing but the small towns we just passed through. A settlement would slowly congregate around the mission, resulting in the city of St. Marys, KS being officially laid out in 1866. While the original mission building no longer exists, a pay station built in 1855 to pay an annuity to Pottawatomie natives who had moved there from the Great Lakes is still around as a museum.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2019 17:20
|
|
|
RBA Starblade posted:Jimmy seems like he's an rear end in a top hat You'll find out later that Jimmy is a complete idiot.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2019 17:29
|
|
|
One more update before I leave for work..png) With a toll of only a dollar, it's a trivial decision to take the bridge. .png) Scott Spring is today part of the St. Marys city limits. They have a small park with a replica wagon and some oxen statues. During the time of the Oregon Trail, legends say the place was absolutely filled with camps as travelers passed by and gathered water and wild edibles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44hoxh3NvKI Jed here doesn't go into nearly as much detail as he should. We'll be dedicating a whole history post to these poor bastards.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2019 18:33
|
|
|
The Donner Party The Donner Party is the most infamous story to ever come out of the Oregon Trail. It's the story everyone knows, even if they know absolutely nothing else about the Oregon Trail beyond that it existed. It's the story of some of the most depraved conditions that any American has ever been subjected to. It's the story of people who did things that would haunt them for life if they lived long enough to make it back. To begin, it was more than just the Donners involved. In the spring of 1846 a train of almost 500 wagons took off for the west coast. At the rear of the train were the Reed and Donner families, led by 60-year-old George Donner, totaling 32 people heading to California. They lost one member, the 70-year-old Sarah Keyes, to tuberculosis on the way. They had some delays but made it to Fort Laramie in good time. As the video says, they had brought along the "Pioneer Palace", a gigantic two-story wagon with a cast iron stove and chimney, cushioned seats, and sleeping bunks. The problem was a shortcut. Lansford W. Hastings was one of the earlier emigrants to the west and wanted to further develop California. He proposed that a more direct route could be had by leaving the Oregon Trail, passing through the Wasatch Range, and crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert before rejoining the California Trail. As you can guess by the name "Great Salt Lake Desert", this may not have been the smartest route. Indeed, Hastings never traveled a single mile of his proposed route until just before the Donner Party arrived and had done it by himself without a wagon. The journey would require over 100 miles of travel through the undeveloped Sierra Nevada mountains, which are extremely steep and receive a ton of snowfall. Nevertheless, Hastings began sending letters out to travelers to encourage them to take the Hastings Cutoff. The Donner Party reached Blacks Fork on July 27 shortly after Hastings left with another wagon train. George Donner was a nice old American man so he was allowed to speak for the group, and when given advice on the Hastings Cutoff he gladly took it. The Donners and Reeds were relatively wealthy and lacked many pioneering skills, so when he was told that the Hastings Cutoff provided a smooth route with plenty of water except for about 30 or 40 miles across a dry lake bed he jumped on the opportunity. What they actually found was completely impassable territory. No roads had been developed, forcing the party to waste time on creating them. Hastings left letters stuck on trees advising them to stop and wait for him to turn around and help them find a better route than he had originally suggested, but they kept moving on at a slow pace of 1.5 miles per day. Some men rode ahead to try and meet Hastings but never found him and ended up nearly starving to death before the main wagons found them. Another member of the party died of TB right as they found another tattered letter from Hastings warning them that the worst was yet to come.  With no alternatives, they pressed on across the Great Salt Lake Desert. Over 6 days they traveled 80 miles across the completely barren desert, with hot days and frigid nights. The salt crust concealed mud that the wagons sank into up to their wheel hubs. They ran out of water and nearly died of dehydration, losing many animals to abandonment or escapes. And they still had a mountain range to cross. As tensions grew and they lost animals to violent Native Americans, James Reed tried to take control of the party. A fight on October 2 turned deadly when Reed stabbed a wagon driver to death, leading to him being banished; he ended up reaching Sutter's Fort after 22 days of travel. The parties splintered, everyone distrustful of every other wagon. They made it through the desert into the mountains after losing many animals and eating them to avoid starving...just in time for the snowfall.  The party was trapped by snowfall and made camp at Truckee Lake. Food ran out almost immediately, leaving them eating oxhide and bones. The inexperienced pioneers were barely able to hunt or fish and the Donners were as far as a day's walk away from the rest of the group. They turned on each other in ways that seem almost irrationally greedy; the Graves family charged the Eddy family $25 for the carcass of an ox that starved to death, then came back and took all of their remaining food to collect on the debt. They died one by one. A party of 17 men, women, and children set out (becoming 15 when they weren't able to make snowshoes for enough people) to try and get help. After running out of food they began proposing sacrifices, duels, and lotteries to decide who would die and be eaten. They eventually decided to just keep moving and see who died first. By the time of the third death, they had started eating the bodies. Eventually it progressed to survival of the fittest as they shot and killed the dying to eat them before they could starve. After 33 days on January 17, the seven survivors were found by a rescue party. Meanwhile, the exiled James Reed had been pleading for a rescue operation after it became apparent that the party was late. The Mexican-American War had sapped manpower from the fort, but they were able to get some volunteers. They arrived at Truckee Lake on February 18 to emaciated survivors, cabins buried in snow, and rotting oxhide roofs. The smell of decomposition filled the whole area. People continued to die on the journey back, especially children. George Donner had suffered a seemingly superficial wound while chopping wound months ago and his arm had gone gangrenous; he was unable to move from the pain and was left behind to die. It was discovered that the survivors at the camp had also resorted to cannibalism and Lewis Keseberg was suspected of murdering others to eat them. Of the 87 people who made it into the mountains, 48 made it out. Many children who survived were left orphans and William Eddy was the only survivor of his family. Keseberg was awarded $1 in a defamation lawsuit after the other members of the party accused him of murder, though he had to pay court costs. He eventually became a pariah from the widespread suspicion. The Hastings Cutoff was all but abandoned until 1847 when Brigham Young's group traveled through it and made substantial improvements to create a trail, though by 1850 the Salt Lake Cutoff would bypass the desert. Today the site can be visited as the Donner Memorial State Park. The legend of the Donner Party became widespread shortly after the survivors' arrival in California and is now one of the greatest lessons for any traveler on the Oregon Trail: don't take anything that's called a shortcut. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Jun 19, 2019 |
|
#
¿
May 13, 2019 20:21
|
|
|
inflatablefish posted:Do we know what happened to Hastings? Or has he been lost to history? He started as a lawyer before his failed attempt at being an adventurer (and he had somewhat of a reputation as an incompetent blowhard at the time of the Donner Party). He dreamed of starting an independent Republic of California with himself in a position of power, but the US easily took care of that by winning the Mexican-American War. He never left this dream behind and actually joined the Confederacy specifically to encourage Jefferson Davis to let him raise an army to conquer California and make it a Confederate state. That never even got off the ground. He was one of many Confederates who left the US to go to Brazil and began working with the Brazilian government on the resettlement, but died of yellow fever in the Virgin Islands in 1870. In short, nothing of value was lost.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2019 00:09
|
|
|
.png) We make a quick stop at alcove spring before our next visit. .png) It's a crowded day at the river. So many people are on the trail that we actually have to wait our turn to cross! .png) This one's a little deeper and trickier. Even with a careful choice, we could easily end up in trouble. But you know what? I feel like you guys haven't been learning enough. So let's pick some plants! .png) We have here a selection of foraged goods nearby. But you don't know anything about them except that they look like they might possibly be edible, at least more than the grass and bushes around them. They're each numbered 1 through 4 going clockwise from the top left (so that big cluster of red and black berries is 1). Choose what to keep and what to throw away using your own botany knowledge and best guesses! You'll be told the identity of any plants you pick. If you pick something poisonous, you won't know until you eat it.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2019 00:38
|
|
|
Vavrek posted:Why do you think I need anything other than Bacon, Beans, Cornbread, and Coffee? I can’t stop you from Googling, but it’s more fun to do it on your own.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2019 00:58
|
|
|
In case these votes seem to come quickly, it's because the game actually doesn't let you save on this screen! I need to keep the game running as you vote and tab back in when you're done, which locks my computer into 640x480 resolution. I was fortunately able to leave it running while dropping off some posters for my show. Our current vote: Keep 1: 1 Keep 2: 3 Keep 3: 2 Keep 4: 5 Throw away 1: 2 Throw away 2: 3 Throw away 3: 4 Throw away 4: 3 Balancing the keeps vs. the throw aways, we will keep 2 and 4 and throw away 1 and 3.   Blue-bead Clintonia, or blue-bead lily, is a perennial plant that produces blue berries. They're not poisonous but they taste quite foul. Fortunately for us, "foul-tasting" is just as good as "awesome-tasting" when it comes to edibility. Hopefully we can use some of our sugar ration on them... Currants are a small, seedless wild grape cultivar commonly dried to make raisins. They have a sweet and intensely grapey flavor, making them popular for pastries.Don't forget to vote for how to cross the river! chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 02:21 on May 14, 2019 |
|
#
¿
May 14, 2019 02:17
|
|
|
The really fun part of this minigame is that there are some plants that are really obviously edible (like sunflowers), but there are also plants that look extremely similar to poisonous ones. In the actual game you can immediately look up any plant to be told its properties so there's really no point in guessing, but when you have to rely on just your own knowledge and intuition it becomes surprisingly easy to accidentally poison yourself.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2019 02:23
|
|
|
Amazingly, we cross the river on the first try!.png) While it's possible to take the wrong trail here, it seems a bit obvious which way we're going. .png) Oh poo poo! We have our first disease! What do we do?
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2019 05:53
|
|
|
Vavrek posted:Question: Just how much laudanum do we have? I'm tempted to use it to solve every problem, but I don't want to run out. One 4 oz. bottle.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2019 06:19
|
|
|
With peppermint administered, we continue on. It'll take a while before we know whether it's done anything to work..png) A thunderstorm slows us down slightly, but we continue on. .png) The Narrows is a section of the trail that passes through a narrow valley in the flood plains. And here's where we start to see the first problems with the Montgomery kids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crtvstt6IRs
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2019 13:15
|
|
|
19th Century Medicine If you got sick or injured in the 1850s, you were probably hosed. While the idea of "humors" had long passed, there was still widespread misinformation about how the body and chemicals worked, often to dangerous degrees. The germ theory was still controversial; even the idea of boiling water to purify it wasn't really practiced by most people! The dominant theory about sickness is that it was caused by miasma, bad air generated by rotting organic matter. Others believed that disease was transferred by touch, so they thought it was perfectly okay to hang around sick people as long as you didn't touch them. While the theory of humors was gone there was still a lot of guesswork that went into curing disease, often based around "restoring balance" of some kind or assuming that you had "bad blood". I'm pretty confident that a lot of doctors just started making poo poo up at a certain point and assumed that they were right because they were doctors. When it comes to injuries, basic knowledge like splints and bandaging are present. The bigger problem is that you're often being treated in a dreadfully unsanitary environment and will be likely to suffer gangrene; George Donner died because a minor wound got infected. If you suffered a gunshot wound or similar major injury to a limb, the usual treatment was amputation because there was no way to actually repair the damage. At least you had plenty of painkillers! Many substances that are now illegal or known to be toxic were commonplace in drug stores, from opium and cocaine to mercury and gold-coated pills "to make them easier to swallow" (and coincidentally prevent the contents from being digested).  One of the most popular medicines of the time was laudanum. This is simply a tincture of opium in ethanol, equivalent to 1% of the same amount of morphine. Laudanum was used as a cure-all for just about everything from coughs to insomnia, or used as a painkiller for surgery or serious injury. Many unscrupulous manufacturers mixed in all sorts of material, from mercury to cayenne to belladonna. Didn't matter what you had. You'd be given laudanum. We have a few other medications in our bag. Aloe vera extract is commonly applied topically for burns, rashes, and other skin conditions even today. Alum is a sulfur salt of aluminum and potassium often used for tanning leather that can also be used as an antiseptic or for stopping minor bleeding (such as cutting yourself shaving). Iodine is a good disinfectant that's still in use. Sulfur, peppermint, and other elements or strong-smelling compounds were widely believed to have some form of medical benefit; the Lewis & Clark expedition carried spices simply for use in medicine. And of course, you always have whiskey. Strong liquor was often prescribed as a cure-all.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2019 15:17
|
|
|
.png) As TheMcD sleeps off his cholera, we reach "the Coast of Nebraska". This is a ridge of sandy hills that separate the Platte Valley from the open prairie that we're now going to be trekking along. A number of grave markers sit along the trail here where emigrants died of disease. .png) The next day we reach Fort Kearny. It's a very new fort, having been founded in 1848. The fort is a major way station, supply depot, and message center for travelers on their way out west. Over its 23-year history it would serve as a Pony Express stop and a telegraph station. At the height of travel down the Oregon Trail, as many as 2000 people would pass through every day. The nearby city of Kearney, NE is named after it (people kept misspelling the name until it became permanent). Anything we want to do here?
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2019 23:48
|
|
|
.png) Many of the people you meet have only a single line of dialogue. This is most prevalent if you stop on the trail; you'll often get 2 or 3 people who just say "Let's keep going!" .png)  "They're taking advantage of us! If I had the chance to do it all over again, I'd buy more supplies at the beginning of our journey! Well, we might as well get what we need right here. Goodness knows it'll probably be even more expensive down the road!"I wish I could get Fraps to work with this because this woman has the most awful quasi-Canadian accent I've ever heard. When it comes to longer dialogue, most of it is either educational or basic tips like "Supplies will get more expensive the further west you go" or "Maybe you should try caulking and floating the wagon on this river." .png) .png) Unfortunately, there was no laudanum or furniture available. The supplies that each merchant has are randomly generated not just for the game, but when you reload a save. Yes, this means you can save scum until you get the store inventory you want. If you're a little bitch. .png) At the moment, Plum Creek is an unassuming little creek where you can fish and gather water and wild edibles. This would all change in 1864 when a coordinated ambush by Native Americans attacked a freight wagon train and killed 12 people and kidnapped two adults and the 9-year-old son of a teamster, temporarily shutting down traffic along the Oregon Trail. The Plum Creek Massacre led to the Union splitting off soldiers from the Civil War to push back the Indians and reopen the trail. These conflicts out west would continue all the way until 1923. .png)  This is a good example of the kind of terrain we're going to be on for most of the trip. As anyone who's been to Kansas and Nebraska will tell you, it's absolutely flat out there. O'Fallons Bluff still has wagon ruts left from the trail next to I-80, with 8 iron hoops placed in them to symbolize a pair of wagons. .png) A dust storm slows us down temporarily as the trail is coated in deep sand, which also denies our oxen some time to graze until it passes. .png) Yes, the 1.5-foot-deep river might be somewhat difficult.
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2019 00:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 01:00 |
|
|
By the way, is there any archive of The Taxman's LP of the game that has the images working?
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2019 03:12
|
|