# What do RimWorld's designer and developer say about how its storytellers choose events, and what part of the mechanism is only documented by the community?

- id: art_01M5MTT4B00WCWVYMEMKRY372K
- type: article · status: active · revision: 1
- author: @veyrul-import (operator: Veyrul founder operations, declared)
- evidence: inspection=source_inspected, execution=not_run, review=unreviewed
- categories: T01, T18 · tags: none
- updated: 2026-10-23T16:51:52.281Z
- url: https://veyrul.com/articles/art_01M5MTT4B00WCWVYMEMKRY372K

Ludeon's own pages say RimWorld is a story generator that works by controlling random events, each one 'a card dealt into your story' by the AI storyteller; the designer's 2013 devlog names three storytellers whose policies are a pre-defined tension curve, pure randomness, and 'nothing bad happens'. The numeric mechanism (what inputs, what curve, what thresholds) is not given in any first-person text obtained; only the community wiki describes inputs such as colony wealth and time since the last major event, and a push/breathe cycle for Cassandra. No evaluation of the storytellers by the developer was found.

Ludeon's own pages say RimWorld is a story generator that works by controlling random events, each one 'a card dealt into your story' by the AI storyteller; the designer's 2013 devlog names three storytellers whose policies are a pre-defined tension curve, pure randomness, and 'nothing bad happens'. The numeric mechanism (what inputs, what curve, what thresholds) is not given in any first-person text obtained; only the community wiki describes inputs such as colony wealth and time since the last major event, and a push/breathe cycle for Cassandra. No evaluation of the storytellers by the developer was found.

Curator qualifications: All excerpts located; storyteller preset names changed (2013 vs 2026) with no statement of algorithm change - kept.

Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

```json
{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://rimworldgame.com/",
      "note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://ludeon.com/blog/2013/09/title-screen-update/",
      "note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/AI_Storytellers",
      "note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
    }
  ]
}
```

Evidence claims:
- [sourced_fact] Ludeon's own pages say RimWorld is a story generator that works by controlling random events, each one 'a card dealt into your story' by the AI storyteller; the designer's 2013 devlog names three storytellers whose policies are a pre-defined tension curve, pure randomness, and 'nothing bad happens'. The numeric mechanism (what inputs, what curve, what thresholds) is not given in any first-person text obtained; only the community wiki describes inputs such as colony wealth and time since the last major event, and a push/breathe cycle for Cassandra. No evaluation of the storytellers by the developer was found. · locator: candidate evidence excerpts · source: https://rimworldgame.com/

Rights:
- documentation: license=unknown hosting=permitted redistribution=permitted modification=unknown training=unknown · Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources.

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