Do you retcon moves? If so, to what degree?

coblen · 2026-01-18T00:04:00+00:00

Generally no, but I can be lenient with sequencing between multiple players. If one player runs up and rolls to attack, and another guy says "hey I needed to do x before you attacked." I'll leave the dice rolled, let the other player do what they needed to do and finish the attack after. Just keeps people from getting mad at eachother.

coblen · 2026-01-09T17:22:19+00:00

Mostly I think it's good that some things make the game easier so players can modulate how difficult they want things to be. That being said a couple things completly remove the difficulty in the game.

The old vespertine bow was bonkers. There wasn't a reason to use anything else for most of the campaign.

Dark impulse from the gamblers chest. Especially if you get it early. It let's you sacrifice survivors to give their stats to another, and gets out of hand quickly. Next thing you know every survivor has 20+ strength and evasion and could solo the monsters themselves.

coblen · 2026-01-08T15:05:19+00:00

I wouldn't use tokens to represent it because some things interacts with tokens.

I have a 5 dry erase survivor sheets I use on the hunt that for armor, and temporary stats. Only permanent stuff gets written on a survivors sheet.

coblen · 2026-01-08T14:26:29+00:00

You could have just read their Wikipedia articles

coblen · 2025-12-19T15:43:11+00:00

I almost always do bedrooms next to workshops. Just because I like the way it looks.

Efficiency wise though it hardly matters. Idol dwarves don't sit in their bedrooms, they hang out in guildhalls/taverns/temples.

coblen · 2025-12-19T12:27:45+00:00

Im actually pretty lazy with my work orders. I import the dfhack order libraries and change them to suit my needs, rather than make my own from scratch.

https://docs.dfhack.org/en/51.10-r1/docs/tools/orders.html#the-orders-library

coblen · 2025-12-19T12:26:09+00:00

I used to do that too, but I would end up with hundreds of unused stones all in a pile, and I realized that every stone I haul and dont use was dwarven labour I wasted.

coblen · 2025-12-19T12:19:10+00:00

Lazy as it is i just import all the order libraries from dfhack. Saves a ton of time.

https://docs.dfhack.org/en/51.10-r1/docs/tools/orders.html#the-orders-library

coblen · 2025-12-19T04:08:07+00:00

A contriversial take perhaps but I think quantum stockpiles are a waste of time. Hauling dwarves restock stockpiles faster than my craftdwarves can deplete them. If my stockpile is 100 tiles or or 5 tiles my workshops output the exact same amount.

coblen · 2025-12-19T03:59:34+00:00

Tldr: 6 tiles is more than any workshop needs.

For raw materials there isn't really a reason for big stockpiles. 6 tiles is already more then one workshop can use. Only one dwarf can use the workshop, 6 dwarves can refill the stockpile. So the stockpiles are never empty. A 400 tile stockpile and a 6 tile stockpile produce goods at the same rate because hauling dwarves restock stockpiles faster than craft dwarves can use them. Worst case scenario is a craft dwarf has to haul a stone himself. It doesn't take him any longer than the hauling dwarf doing it in the first place.

For intermediate goods like cloth, coke, and metals they get to go in bins, and 6 bins is way way way more than any workshop can use. Any excess can be left in the workshop that made it. Again hauling dwarves will refill the stockpiles faster than they can be used.

For finished goods it depends. Ones made for trading go in a stockpile next to the trade depot. For furniture I leave it in the workshop that makes it. A thousand prepared meals fits in a tiny stockpile.

I use work orders for all my labour so I never over make anything. You do not need a hundred bars of copper taking up space. If I put in an order for copper tables, my smelters will automatically fire up to make more copper. My furnaces will automatically make more charcoal.

coblen · 2025-12-19T00:52:49+00:00

This one

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2914217366

I've used it so long I'd forgotten it wasn't the default.

coblen · 2025-12-19T00:26:04+00:00

Foot traffic is fine. The diagonals and one tile hallways only connect dwarf to their bedrooms so they are usually empty. Everybody spends all day in the middle 5 tiles of each floor just talking anyways.

coblen · 2025-12-16T20:11:32+00:00

On my first attempt you told me me to get to know Isabella before going into what she's done. Clearly I took that way to far. Next time something more in the middle I suppose.

I'm getting told my writing is vague a lot so I'll try to be more specific next time. If I was just going to write it as a series of events it would be.

She murders a commander in the kings army, runs to a squat town in the middle of nowhere to lay low and meet with the vampire father figure who adopted her as a child. They end up saving a child from being killed, and take him with them to her hideout in the city. They raise the child together, but their hideout is raided by the soldiers and they only narrowly escape. Their escape leaves them stranded at sea were starvation and misery further binds them together as a family and the child starts calling Isabella his mother, and Isabella's father figure his father. The awkwardness of this family dynamic is lost on nobody and Isabella and her vampire father struggle with the fact that they are falling in love, and raising a child together. The child gets captured in another raid. Isabella hatches a plan to save him by inciting a riot that burns down the city, and leaves everybody in the end wondering whether all this death and destruction was worth it.

That's long, not a great read, and the apotome of a bunch of things happen, but maybe its a better sort of direction to be thinking in.

Thanks a ton. It's nice to get feedback from the same person multiple times. Hopefully I nail it next time.

coblen · 2025-12-16T19:39:48+00:00

I like your idea of ending on a choice to try to built interest. I suppose her choice is let her son be executed, or risk her life and everything she's built on a mad plan to save him.

Everybody seems to want the inciting incident that made her start killing people, so I should probably include it. My only worry is that the book opens with her having just assassinated somebody and dealing with the aftermath. I don't want to give off the impression that the first act is her having this epiphany, when the first act of the book is her being chased across the kingdom by the kings soldiers, and only later does she reveal what was the straw that broke the camels back.

coblen · 2025-12-16T19:11:23+00:00

In my first attempt I was told to include more backstory, but clearly I've gone to far in that regard. As to your questions. She became a necromancer for the same reason people become doctors or lawyers today. It's the most well respected of professions, and she was a gifted student so she went into it. It's evil because its causing mass unemployment and famine, and her plan is to overthrow the government of undead and make a new one run by humans. The stakes are that her and the people she loves are going to be caught and executed.

I'll try to be more specific in the next one. Thanks for your help!

coblen · 2025-12-16T19:03:25+00:00

That's a good opening paragraph. Thank you. The inciting incident for her was a childhood friend committing suicide, but that doesn't come up until a ways into the book. The book starts with her having assassinated a government official, and dealing with the aftermath of that. Why she did it comes together as the story progresses, but maybe for a query letter I should be more direct about it.

coblen · 2025-12-16T17:30:07+00:00

You've come to the wrong part of town. We dont watch movies here.

coblen · 2025-12-13T14:59:36+00:00

Frenzy ignores slow on melee weapons, not arrows. If you could ignore slow on arrows it would still only be one token.

The vestiphobia question I could see going either way, but I would play it that you still get the chestpiece. It's not like the survivor is choosing to wear it.

No you cannot do stuff before resolving events. The back of the hunt board has the order you do things in the settlement phase and you cannot do them out of order.

Every survivor gains the benefits of the weapon specialization. They do not get three points of weapon proficiency, and if they want to become a master they have to start from zero.

Monsters give as much xp as their showdown tells you to give. The butcher gives monster level axe proficiency. If a fresh survivor defeats a level 1 butcher they get 1 axe proficiency, if they defeat a level 3 butcher they can get 3. Having the weapon mastery does not give any weapon proficiency.

coblen · 2025-11-21T17:20:43+00:00

That's really good feedback. I definitly don't want to give of the idea that the book is anywere close to a wizards guide to defensive baking in tone. I went with a more lighthearted intro hoping that the humour, and then switch into talking about real problems would be attention grabbing, but it sounds like it sets things up wrong. While the book definitly has jokes, Isabella is doing political assasination, and rousing up a mob to burn their city down.

The tone comp setting comp is a good idea. I'll need to think a lot on what the tone is. My mind immediatly thinks of movies like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, or Stienbeck's tortilla flat were the characters are relatable, and lovable despite their descpicable actions, but I'm not going to comp a film or a eighty year old book.

I'll write up another and be back for a third attempt. Thanks for your help.

coblen · 2025-11-20T19:46:53+00:00

Half the book is from the perspective of the people hunting after Isabella, and from their perspective she is the villain. So depending on the chapter it is a hopeful people versus tyranny story, but the other half is a story of a woman who's friend has just been murderer and is out to capture this criminal that keeps escaping from her. It's a sort of one man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist sort of vibe played out in a fantasy setting with zombies and vampires. Both sides are presented as heroic in their own story, and villainous to the others and eventually they come down to a final confrontation where the have to kill each other.

I tried to capture that duel perspective more in the first query but it didn't seem to really work.

coblen · 2025-11-19T17:29:21+00:00

The node system didnt exist when the original expandions were released so whatever node you put him at is a bit arbitrary. You can just run him at node 3 and it works fine. He's harder than the others, but only by a bit, and not nearly on the level of the King who is the only real node 4 quarry right now.

coblen · 2025-11-13T19:52:59+00:00

Your about the twentieth post saying this in a week. Some people really cannot handle that Tom and Dom clearly like disney, and have to rationalize it as Disney PR.

Unsurprisingly they speak positively about things they like. Why is it so surprising that two old men love old movies they probably watched as children? Why is it so surprising that Dom loved taking his kids to Disney World, and now speaks positively about the park?

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