Intro just to prove I'm not low effort I guess.

As stated in the FAQ the team has (in my opinion correctly) identified that a 'joy boosting' fiction book would just not be interesting enough to add. I have done some thinking about how to realistically add something that would fit in Rimworld's style of chaotic storytelling sandbox colony sim (I really don't know how to describe Rimworlds vibe succinctly) and I came up with what I think is natural additions to concepts already touched on in VBE.

Fiction books that have a chance to give pawns a random inspiration by reading them, High quality books can similarly randomly give a pawn an increase or give a skill passion permanently. Additionally proposed is "Comic Books", a risk/reward variant of the Newspaper.

Fiction Books are for me personally irl something i read to be immersed and entertained. In very simplified terms a fiction book is meant to inspire, be that some sort of message, moral or just leave you thinking on it's story.

My suggestion is adding fiction books that a have a chance of giving the pawn reading it an inspiration, with higher quality books being better at it.

Additional feature I'd suggest is making fiction books of really high quality (masterwork/legendary) be able to give the reader a new passion.

A third feature suggestion on top of this is to make younger pawns more likely to be inspired by books. It would give some fun character to children and be a nice way of giving more ways to improve the colony children's development. This mechanic could also be paired with a new traits that makes the pawn enjoy fiction books more/less and frequently/prohibit gaining inspirations from them.

To give an example for such a trait,

"Escapist - X is very fond of reading fiction books and will more frequently be inspired by them."

you could make a conflicting trait like

"Afantasia - X has a poor imagination and is rarely engaged by fiction books and will not be inspired by reading them."

Afantasia does not work that way irl but it's just to illustrate the point.

Ideally as a fiction book have some sort of cooldown when read where they can't inspire anyone for a while, with high quality books being better at it.

Another suggestion to top this off is a book club ritual for Ideology where pawns gather to read and discuss a fiction book together.


My final suggestion, which i think is maybe excessive or perhaps just an alternative to my "fiction books" proposal entirely:

- Comic Book Magazines - Basically a newspaper but with the mechanics of the proposal above with a risk/reward 'hype cycle' mechanic.


Comic books would function as newspapers in that they rapidly become expired/single use but a pawn reading them gains, over time, depending on quality of the comic, a gradually increasing chance to be inspired by reading them and variable mood buff. This buff would function kinda like an addiction mechanically, making the pawn more and more invested in the story and more impatient for new issues to read.

My suggestion is that the comic book generates (what I will call for a lack of better term) 'hype'. Basically as the pawn reads more comic books they become more and more invested in the story line and is impacted more by it's quality, with decreases in quality being met with debuffs depending on the difference between expectation and reality. This is to create a risk reward system where the more you invest pawns in a comic the greater the potential reward but also generates a growing risk if the next issue is a dud. This would make losing or gaining a skilled comic author a big deal for the colony, it would also introduce some potential chaos that could, if the pawns are really invested, cause major damage to a colony in a similar way to running out of drugs would for a colony of addicts would.

The point of this is to create situations where if your comic dips in quality, even if it's "good" the system will leave the 'hyped' fan pawns unhappy and lose a ton of that hype for any future comics (until they regain those levels). Parallel to this massive drop, a pawn that hasn't read the comic previously would have a positive reaction to the comic since their expectations are low and would gain hype for the next issue. On the flip side, the system will make hyped pawns gain a much larger buff if a consistent, or improving quality can be maintained over a one off reader.

This could be paired with new social interactions where hyped pawns discuss the comic with each other and gain a relationship boost with each other. With potential to make less or un-hyped pawns off put by their obsession with comics and have a decrease in relationship points, creating basically a dynamic system to create a nerd in-group system if you will.

The goal is of my suggestion is simulating dynamically a comic book series gaining and losing fans and becoming a mainstay of the colony over time and allowing your colonists to lose their minds when their favourite comic book "Muffalo Man" is left on a cliffhanger forever as the author dies or because the story was ruined by the new author who replaced them.


I'm aware there are certainly problems with this pitch. I'm not involved with the VE team in any way. I've gone on what I'm reasonably certain with my (although relatively lacking) experience modding Rimworld should be possible. I've had this Idea for a while and while I'm sure the VE team has thought of this before I felt it wouldn't harm anyone to bring it up. This idea has been a recurring shower thought for a week or two now that I attempted to implement but realised I lacked the skills and time to do. So I leave it here for others to find. Again, cheerio and thank you for reading.