Starting guide of Rimworld

Rimworld is a very fun but complex game, with many systems. And it all starts within the starting screen, choosing pawns, location, storyteller, and in some cases ideology, can be game changing and greatly affect the Rimworld experience playthrough.

This is why I'm making a whole sections dedicated to it! There are many options and combinations but overall I'd recommend the following:

There are a lot of customization that can go into pawns, specially with modding, but I'd recommend to use the starting pawns as they are. While also skipping Ideology for now, at least to learn the game fundamentals.

The game is very doable in all sorts of conditions, unless specific scenarios I wouldn't worry too much about pawns. Construction, cooking, plants, medical are usually the first traits you want to fulfill, with burning passions. But if someone doesn't seem to be a good fit, don't be afraid of going for it! It can be doable.

Other traits are very good to have as well, but specially, intellectual, artistic, crafting, animals, social, and sometimes mining can be somewhat skipped, although not having an early researcher will slow down things significantly. In early game choosing the following example can make the game harder, not that it's a bad pawn, but those activities are more late game focused.

Here's another pick, because I've already completed the other areas I gave priority with at least one burning passion on each, I decided to go for this pawn because of the burning passion in Cooking, which is useful early game, believe me when I tell you, you can tell the difference between having a good cook or not.

• Depending on the biome, you may want to have a crafting specialist, or maybe having a melee or a mining specialist (as I lack in this playthrough). My recommendation is not to stress about the missing roles, as more pawns will become available.
  
• Pawns can have addictions or health conditions that you need to watchover! Can be important debuffs, or even they can be incapable of something!
  
• Pawns also have social relationships, so it may affect a certain pawn mood and social interactions.

Well, section 1 and 2 are meant to be an starting manual of Rimworld! A very bare bones manual at that, but I will consider adding more sections and chapters as time goes by. Rimworld can be a really hard game at times, but with persevering it's doable!
Good luck!