Topic on Talk:Backstories

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In the age of hyper-information, having a lot of data is useless unless you understand the purpose of such display. Ask yourself, how do readers use this page? Personally, while I play the game, this list only becomes useful when we get "Chased Refugee" requests to evaluate if having a pawn with certain skill attributes would help the colony and if risking the current population would be worth taking him/her in or not. For example, the refugee is an Exotic Chef... Do I need a cook or another cook?

The list was created 5 years ago and I have been watching over it for a full year now. Even as of today, I still don't understand the relevance of the columns: civil, raider, slave, trader, traveler, tribal. All those seem completely pointless to me. The description on the other hand, is helpful because some backgrounds share a same name, so the stories can aid in distinguishing between them. But the most important part of all are the skill attributes: Cooking +8, Disabled at nothing. Making columns for each skill would probably stretch the table too much but may be possible. If rearranging the whole list, attribute skills I would place first and stories after as it is mostly irrelevant for "gameplay".

The Alphabet has 26 characters, so if the table needs a split that would be (A to M) & (N to Z). Now if a backstory is either "regular" or "special" it holds absolutely "no" value for me. As I play the game, I will never care for as who in real life created that background, or to whom it belongs to. Again, the only thing that matters to me are the stats. Tynan, on the other hand while he cooks B20, only needs to improve the message window and provides us both childhood and adulthood stories so that we can get the full combination of both backgrounds to see the full overhaul of a character.