a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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After 29 generations of halfhearted coexistence, the Hyon family came crashing to a miserable end. I was born in the waning days of the village to a lovely mother named Belle. I noticed even as a child that the village was in a state of disrepair. The berry bushes were dying, no one was composting, the former nursery building was half rubbled and there was no wheat or carrots in sight. Still, I had a happy childhood. My grandmother introduced me to one of my cousins, Hooper, who I settled down with in a small villa on the south side of town. We grew to care for eachother and our little piece of property. We tried to peacefully coexist with the other branches of our family, but they envied our humble home, even though they had much larger houses.
By the time my grandmother was nearing her deathbed, and there were only two branches of our family left, they struck at us and penetrated our fence. Anotnio, an olive complected man and his kin stole our tools and provisions. Grandma died cursing their name. Not long after, my son Myles was born. He tried hard to save our village through rabbit hunting and general maintenance activity, but by the time my daughter Safer was born, Antonio and his kin were at our gates with bows drawn. We were blessed with a berry garden inside our property, and we managed to wait him out. We would gather defensive materials and supplies when we could, and quickly retreated back to our house. He threatened us in this manner for years, his family did the same. Eventually though, he succumbed to old age. I emerged from our estate and went to his home to make a truce with his branch, but I soon found that they had died as well. A lone little baby was all that remained. I tried to feed him berries (I had hit menopause) and incorporate him into our family, but he ran away, tainted with hate for us even though we had never fired a shot.
My family celebrated our victory in the war, but that victory had come with a cost. The already troubled village had completely collapsed. Everything was broken, there was no food outside of our estate and all my daughter's babies suicided. The pain of losing so many children and the state of the village made her take her own life, just at the same time that my husband passed away from the effects of age. My son and I went to the berry garden and said our goodbyes as I hit 60, he would soon follow me in death, and with that, 28 generations of work had evaporated.
The moral of the story is that when a village no longer works for the common good, it is doomed to fail. Only time will tell where our societies go from here, but the picture is not looking pretty.
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The moral of the story is that when a village no longer works for the common good, it is doomed to fail. Only time will tell where our societies go from here, but the picture is not looking pretty.
Unfortunately, I have the same feelings. Cities will die even earlier than they used to be. Who needs private property in a game where the hour is spent and never goes back to the same place? It does not make sense and only causes conflicts.
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I was Hooper! That was an... interesting life.
I was the last kid of my mom. She didn't like her property, so she married some random single guy so she could pass his property on to me (the property where we lived). As a baby, I was annoyed. I didn't want to deal with the property nonsense and planned on growing up, leaving, and doing normal city stuff.
But I was trapped there and decided to go with it. She had already passed inheritance to me and told me to get a wife. She left me in the berry bushes and came back with you. At that point, I figured, "why not? This could be interesting." From there, we had our life. And I had a lot of fun.
I know Jason has been trying to induce conflict and create stronger family ties. What surprised me most was how... this actually happened. I really felt like husband/dad, and I felt the need to protect the property and protect the family from anyone who wished us harm, above everyone else in the city. Even if it meant war.
But... at every step, I could feel how unsustainable it was. I remember leaving the property to go get a basket of pies and thinking, "this is a dick move." I was feeding off the work of others, while literally spending my whole life repairing the property fence, trying to expand, and guarding. I didn't produce anything. And, as you mentioned, the rest of the town crumbled away while I did that.
But it did create this greater sense of family, at least for me. I really enjoyed that life. But early societies need communal goods to grow. How this game, with such a short playtime, can successfully transition communism to capitalism... I don't know if it's possible. Or desirable. I enjoyed our family, but I don't want to play a game where everyone's just combative the whole time. Real life has enough of that.
I don't know if property fences can be used to break late cities up into a bunch of smaller cities. In theory, that could be interesting, and could foster trade/wars/truces/etc. But idk. The property itself requires maintenance. It saps away time that should be spent creating.
Additionally, I couldn't yum in that life. Not as important because I was a man, but still notable.
I want that feeling of protecting my family. But not if it destroys the town in the process.
It was a really interesting experiment. And definitely a memorable life I will remember for awhile.
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The moral of the story is that when a village no longer works for the common good, it is doomed to fail. Only time will tell where our societies go from here, but the picture is not looking pretty.
Basically what I would have expected, really. It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out, but I'm predicting more famines and failed towns and at least a slightly lowered average lineage depth, post-fence. It would be cool if someone could compile some statistics on that.
But at least you had an interesting story! Which is also a good part of the game. So I still don't know quite how I feel about any of this. Other than that I can't help mourning our old hippie paradises a bit.
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Good to talk to you again Hooper. Pretty sure that was my most unproductive life in a long time. I did next to nothing. It was nice to learn gate making though.
Thats another problem with fences, they promote laziness.
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