[Let's Play] Lost in the Sea of Despair

[Darth Rabbitt]

Leave them be.

[SGamerz]

I haven't really been posting pictures because a lot of them are the same repeated several times throughout the book, so I'll be doing them in small batches instead, like now:

1. Life Raft


2. Turtles


3. Hammerheads

Every so often, you peer outside of the raft. The menacing, unmistakable shapes are still there. There are more of them than you thought - you count nine. You decide not to look and try to concentrate instead on a game of solitaire with your deck of cards, hoping that the sharks will get bored and go away.

Eventually, after an hour or two of worrying about the hammerheads, you risk another look into the sea. They're gone! They must have caught the scent of something more interesting in the water.

You're starting to wonder when you'll spot another yacht or a ship or maybe even an island. You unzip the front of the raft and take a good look around. Suddenly, a dark shape in the water catches your eye. You very much wish it hadn't. It's huge - a 10-foot-(3 m)long creature, just below the surfece and a short distance from the raft. As the raft moves, blown by the wind and pushed by currents, the creature move with it. You can clearly see by its shape that the creature is a huge shark with a rounded, white-tipped dorsal fin, and it's following you.

Go to page 43.

There's also a reference to another section with the infodump on hammerheads, but the infodump section opposite this one is about..



Oceanic Whitetip Sharks:

The shark that's following your raft is an oceanic whitetip, considered to be one of the most dangerous sharks to humans.

- Oceanic Whitetips love in warmer waters out in open sea and are rarely seen close to land.

- Whitetips are usually solitary animals, but they sometimes group together in a feeding frenzy if there's an opportunity for a good meal, such as a dead whale.

- These sharks aren't fussy about what they eat - fish, turtles, seabirds, octopuses, crabs, dead whales, and dolphins. They have extremely powerful jaws.

- Whitetips can be aggressive towards other sharks and are also dangerous to people, though they rarely come into contact with people because of where they live.

- During World War II, oceanic whitetips were blamed for the deaths of many soldiers who survived their ships being sunk by torpedoes and bombs in tropical seas.

- Whitetips are curious and show no fear of divers - another reason they're considered highly dangerous.

- Whitetips can measure up to about 13 feet (4 m) long, although most are smaller. There are other much bigger sharks, such as great whites, which can reach up to about 21 feet (6.5 m).

After awhile of not daring to look, you peer over the side. The menacing dark shape is still there. You know that there is absolutely nothing you can do against an animal of this size and power: if it decides that your raft is prey, you'll just have to hope it's all over quickly.

A few hours later, the sun is beginning to sink beneath the horizon. You've heard sharks are more likely to feed at dusk and dawn. You gulp, take a deep breath, and have another look for the shark. You can't see it! You make another careful check - it's definitely gone! You almost cry with relief.

Something brushes against the top of the raft. What could it be? You're almost too frightened to look but, when you do, you discover a friendly looking seabird with red webbed feet sitting on the top of your raft having a rest.

It occurs to you that you could probably grab the bird quite easily and wring its neck. You need to eat to stay strong - of you allow yourself to become weak, your chances of survival are not good.

If you decide to catch the bird, go to page 26.
If you decide not to, go to page 48.

Fishing didn't go well for us. Do we think bird-hunting will?

[Darth Rabbitt]

As someone who works in wildlife medicine, I can assure you that it’s not easy to grab a healthy seabird, let alone wring its neck. I think we should wait and see if we can go fishing (and hopefully not puncture the raft this time around) or find something easier to catch with our hands than a bird.

[Thaluikhain]

There's ways of catching birds, but yeah, bare hands traditionally is not one of them, don't pick a fight with what will turn out to be a deadly Red-Footed Vampire Booby.

[Queen of Swords]

Oceanic whitetips are scary. Even I'm not that keen on them.

Leave the bird alone. We're not starving yet.

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote not to catch the bird.

[SGamerz]

You prepare for your first night abroad the raft. It doesn't seem possible that just 24 hours ago, everything was fine - you were on board a sturdy yacht with an experienced sailor and fully functioning radio equipment.

Another bird comes to land on your raft, making you jump. You're glad it's nothing to be frightened of and try to make yourself as comfortable as you can as darkness falls.

Go to page 58.

In case anybody wants to know ,that bird that we chose not to catch is a red-footed booby, which is only identified in the section where we attempt to catch it (with disastrous results, so not trying is indeed the right choice). There's an infodump section opposite that page about Pacific Sea Birds.

For this current section, there's a different information page.

Signs of Land:

There are lots of different signs that land might be nearby. Watch out for these clues:

- Cumulus clouds - the fluffy cotton candy-kind - are often found hovering over or near an island. If the cloud has a flat bottom, that's an even better sign that land is close by.

- More birds are found near land than in the middle of the sea. Notice which way birds fly at dusk. They might be flying towards land to roost. At dawn, they will probably be flying away from the direction of the land.

- Lighter coloured water means that it's shallower, which could indicate that land is near.

- Look for a greenish tinge in the sky in tropical seas. It might mean that sunlight is being reflected from a shallow lagoon.

- Sniff the air - you might smell muddy swamps.

- Listen for the roar of surf on a beach.

No options in the last section, so we move on to:

You jolted awake. It's the middle of the night, and you can't see a thing. What woke you?

There it is again! A bump underneath the raft. Should you try and find out what's causing it? Or go back to sleep and forget about it?

If you decide to investigate, go to page 78.
If you decide to go back to sleep, go to page 28.

And the information on the opposite page is about...

Sailing at Night:

- Solo sailors have to sleep but, unlike you, they have radar and sensors to alert them if they're likely to crash into something in the dark.

- Even with electric equipment, sailors have to keep watch during the night if they're sailing in a shipping lane or if they're close to land.

- Ships have navigation lights so that other ships can see which way they're heading - and whether they're on a collision course!

- On a clear night far from land, you will see many more stars that you can see anywhere else, except in the most remote places on land. In the past, sailors used stairs to navigate.

- You might be lucky and see phosphorescence in the sea. Some marine animals and plants glow naturally at night.

Investigate or not?

[Queen of Swords]

As long as "investigate" doesn't mean "jump overboard to check it out at close range", sure, let's investigate.

[JourneymanN00b]

My vote will be to investigate.

[Thaluikhain]

Investigate, obviously.

[SGamerz]

You unzip the raft and look out. The sea is fairly calm, the sky is scattered with millions of stars and there's a bright moon, almost full. You scan the sea for signs of life, desperately hoping you don't see a dorsal fin cutting through the sea towards you. You can't see anything. In fact, the bumps were made by bottlenose dolphins, but they swam away.

As you look across the calm sea, you see the best sigh you could possible have imagined - land! It must be an island - maybe even an inhabited one. You're quite close - close enough to paddle to it - and in the moonlight you can make out a narrow strip of silvery sand. You grab the paddle and get moving.

Go to 70.

Strangely, it's the decision to not investigate that leads to the information section on dolphins (and whales) - although you don't get to see them anyway in both cases. (And that section is not a Game Over - the dolphins don't do any damage to the raft even if you ignore them. But you do take longer to find land and go through more potentially dangerous options in the process, so I guess that can be considered the worse compared to this one.)

This section does have it's own infodump page:

Pacific Islands:

- South Pacific Islands are scattered across tens of thousands of miles. People first colonized those islands many thousands of years ago.

- The many islands of the South Pacific are divided into the regions of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Cultures and landscapes within these geographic areas can differ wildly. Find out about the largest and smallest South Pacific islands on page 9.

- There are lots of other island groups in the Pacific Ocean. The Galapagos Islands, hundreds of mils off the coast of South America in the Pacific, are home to some of the world's most unique animal species. The Philippines, as well as the islands of Indonesia, Taiwan, other Chinese Islands and the islands of Japan, are all in the the Pacific. Much farther north, the Aleutian Islands separate the Pacific from the Bering Sea. Most islands in this small chain are part of Alaska.

The information referenced for page 9 was actually already posted right from the beginning.

You're in luck - the beach is sandy, and it's easy to jump out into shallow water and drag your raft up onto the sand behind you. Dry land! If you weren't completely exhausted, you'd do a little dance to celebrate.

You haul the raft farther up the beach and decide to make a camp and investigate in the morning. You find the waterproof bag with dry clothes and blankets, change your wet clothes for dry ones, wrap yourself in the blanket, and fall asleep.

The sound of birds wakes you at dawn. The beach is made of fine, silvery-colored sand. You are in a small cover, surrounded by rocks. You decide that the first thing to do is make a shelter. You find a large shallow pool by the rocks on one side of the beach. Maybe that would be a good place for your shelter. or maybe you should build your shelter near the trees at the edge of the beach.

If you decide to build your shelter near the pool, go to 61.
If you decide to build it at the forest edge, go to 89.

And of course, the info page opposite is about...

Building a Shelter:

- The site of your shelter is extremely important. It needs to be on flat ground, away from animal trails, not expose to the weather, not somewhere that's likely to flood, or where biting insects live.

- Unless you have a desalinator, you'll need to find a source of drinking water. It makes sense to build your shelter near to your water source.

- Caves make good long-term shelters. They are ready-,made, and all you need to do is build a covering for the entrance. But check the cave first to make sure it isn't already inhabited by a wild animal. Also check for the possibility of loose rocks that may fall. Unfortunately, there aren't any caves on your beach.

- In a tropical climate, try to raise your shelter off the ground, away from ants, centipedes, spiders, and scorpions.

- If you're feeling up to it, and if there are plenty of fallen logs around, you could try building a log structure. Lay your first layer of logs in a square or rectangle, then cut grooves into the top of the logs for the next layer to fit into. Make a roof from broad, waxy leaves.

Where do we build our shelter?

[Darth Rabbitt]

Build it near the water source and away from all the animal trails and biting insects that are going to be in the forest.

[Thaluikhain]

Build it in the forest and away from all the thirsty animals and biting insects that are going to be near the water source.

(Not just being contrary here, US military survival films (such as "Land and Live in the Jungle" and "Survival in the Arctic Tundra" (the latter of which is more entertaining)) tend to stress that biting bugs tend to hang out in the water and you should keep your camp a little further away)

[Darth Rabbitt]

Huh, good point. I was mostly relying on “build it near a water source” but that’s going to be attractive to the same creatures I suggested it would let us avoid.

[JourneymanN00b]

Trees provide excellent cover and are good bases for lean-tos, so I vote to build our shelter at the forest edge.

[SGamerz]

A couple more pics:

1) The bird we almost tried to catch


2) Weirdly, even though we never get to see it either way, the picture of the bottlenose dolphin is really only shown if you decide not to get up and check, but I think it's appropriate to post this anyway.

You spread out your raft on the beach, holding it down with stones so that it dries out in the sun. Then you go off to search the forest edge for a good spot to make a shelter.

You find a bent tree that looks like a perfect spot. You drag some fallen logs out of the forest, first using a stick to check the forest floor for creepy-crawlies. Then you prop the logs up against the bent tree to make a lean-to shelter. You spread the raft material over it to make your shelter waterproof, and place more large rocks on it so that the material won't blow away. You find some broad leaves to go on the floor of the shelter, then spread your dry blankets out. You move all your other supplies into the shelter, feeling very pleased with your handiwork.

No information section opposite. But this is the right option, as bullding the shelter by the pool exposes us to mosquitoes, which in turn gives us malaria (and the there's an info-section on that).

You might be here for awhile. The shelter looks good, and your water needs are taken care of whether you find a source of fresh water or not, because you have a desalinator. That just leaves food.

You start to have a look around and notice some rock pools on one side of the beach. Inside are some cone-shaped shells a bit longer than your hand. They look as though they might have creatures inside them that might be good to eat. Should you pick one up and find out? It would certainly be a very easy meal.

If you decide to try one of the animals, go to page 50.
If you decide not to try one and make a fire instead, go to page 40.

Take a look and decide if this looks like food to you:

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to try to make a fire instead, as I believe that eating these animals raw will just cause problems due to possible parasites and bacteria. Also, there are cone snails that live in tropical environments, and these creatures are very poisonous and are definitely not safe to eat.

[Thaluikhain]

Make a fire. Everything is better once you've got a fire going.

[SGamerz]

You gather up some dry grass for tinder. Then you make piles out of twigs and some larger pieces of driftwood. There's a breeze blowing, so you dig a hole and line it with stones for a fire pit. Soon you have a cheerful fire burning. There's no shortage of fuel for making fires here. You'll be warm and dry, and able to cook food.

At the thought of food, your stomach rumbles. You could go to the seashore and fish. On the other hand, you think you might have spotted a much easier source of protein - there are lots of fat crickets hopping around at the edge of the forest. You know that people eat insects in many different parts of the world. They're all around you and are easy to catch.

If you decide to go fishing, go to page 80.
If you decide to catch some insects, go to page 90.

And yes, those shell things are indeed cone snails, and trying to eat them would have resulted in us being fatally bitten. The accompanying info section, however, does make a point of saying that while poisonous, cone snail bites seldom actually kill people, although it has happened.

Making a Fire:

- Before you start, gather together everything you'll need: matches, tinder (dry, flammable material such as grass), kindling (dry twigs and small branches), and fuel (larger branches).

- Choose a dry, sheltered spot to make your fire.

- Light your tinder. Good tinder will only need a spark to light it.

- Place your kindling in a pyramid around the tinder.

- Gradually add larger pieces of wood. Take care not to add anything too big or too wet in the early stages of the fire or you'll put it out.

- If there are stones available, you could use them to surround the fire or even to line your fire pit. The stones will heat up and give off heat even after the fire has gone out. They'll also stop the fire from spreading out of control. But be careful not to use wet stones, especially ones that have been submerged in water - they can explode!

What kind of food do we want for our main course?

[Thaluikhain]

Don't see why that's an either or, cast the line out then go look for bugs. But since it is, no guarantee the fish are biting, look for grasshoppers.

(And while being poisoned by a cone snail may not kill you, kill you, if you are risking death by something else it might be the last straw, so to speak, so I think that's fair)

[JourneymanN00b]

Crickets are very good to eat, and according to this study, it reduces body inflammation. So I vote to catch some insects.

Also, the book said that any fish we catch that live in the shallower waters close to land could be poisonous.

[Queen of Swords]

I don't know if I could actually bring myself to eat a cricket in real life, though it would help if the cricket was pre-killed and didn't look too much like an insect.

But here, it makes complete sense and we can't afford to be picky.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Let's catch ourselves some fat crickets to eat.

[SGamerz]

There's nothing wrong with eating insects, as long as you know what kind you're eating. Since there are poisonous kinds of almost every type of insect, you were foolish to eat the crickets without knowing for sure that they're an edible kind. But, luckily the crickets that you've caught and squished are not poisonous. You roast them over your fire, and they provide a tasty and nutritious source of protein.

But you can't live on crickets alone if you're going to survive on this island for awhile. You need fruit and vegetables, too, otherwise you might end up with scurvy - a horrible disease that's caused by a lack of vitamin C. You spot a likely looking plant - its dried seed pods are filled with tasty looking bright red-and-black seeds.

If you decide to eat the plant, go to page 62.
If you decide not to, go to page 72.

The text telling the players that they're "foolish" for eating something without knowing for sure whether they're poisonous...while that advice isn't "wrong" per say in a RL situation, it is really misleading in the context of this option, because the players kind of have to face that same issue no matter which choice they made. Neither options were bad, actually, the players just have to choose between which of the 2 fish to catch (1 of them being poisonous) if they chose to fish instead, and if they don't recognize either of the fish, they'd still have to do the "foolish" thing and just pick one to eat while risking it being poisonous.

Anyway, there's illustration of the seed pods mentioned here, but I don't have any access to a scanner atm. Also, because all the pictures are black-and-white, there's really nothing much to see other than a lot of small round-shaped seed pods. You'll just have to go by the text description to determine whether these are poisonous.

As for the info-section accompanying this:

Eating Insects:

- Lots of people around the world eat insects as part of their daily diet.They have been doing it for thousands of years. Insect eating is practiced in Central and South America, Africa and Asia.

- Some of the more popular insects eaten are crickets, grasshoppers, and ants, as well as scorpions and tarantulas (which are arachnids, not insects). Sometimes it's the larval stage of the insect that is eaten.

- Eating insects is an ecological way to get your protein. For example, where people eat insects, no fields need to be cleared to graze cattle.

- Insects and arachnids are types of arthropods. Shellfish are in the same family group. People in Europe and North America don't like to even think about eating land-dwelling arthropods, but don't mind eating arthropods that live in the sea.

Do we think the seed pods are safe to eat?

[JourneymanN00b]

The description sounds like rosary peas, which are also very poisonous, according to this article. I vote not to eat the seeds.