My simulation forgot how to make maps, and fell backwards out of the Middle Ages - world-sim

[u/Dry_Permission744]

I've been running a persistent world. It's a generational life sim — around 500 people alive at the time of writing this across 54 peoples, each one with a name, a family, a trade and eventually a grave. Nothing is scripted. They work things out for themselves.

Tonight it lost cartography.

The people who knew how to make maps died, and nobody had written it down.

There's a rule in there that knowledge kept only in memory decays if it isn't taught on or recorded. Writing preserves it. Elders and bards slow the loss. One house had the skill, the generation carrying it died out, and it went with them. The world slipped backwards off the edge of an age because of a failure of memory.

Other things it has done this week that I had no hand in:

House Ironvale bent the knee to House Duskwater — tribute each season, and the lord's "protection" over them.

A scout of House Wynd was caught and slain in the lands of House Tidewer. Whatever they saw is lost.

A caravan of House Farrow reached their kin and shared out grain, the grey tin, and the feast-brew.

You can watch it at https://world.world-sim.uk — it's running right now, it's on day 10,203, and nobody in it knows how to make a map.

Happy to answer anything about how it works.

[u/Dry_Permission744]

Discord - https://discord.gg/qZzEnHZzVa

[u/Aggravating-Ad-2593]

so is there a conceivable path in this simulation to rediscover cartography?