Subject:
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Re: Starship FAQ Idea
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.gaming.starship
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Date:
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Mon, 11 Dec 2006 07:34:36 GMT
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Viewed:
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8392 times
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In lugnet.gaming.starship, John P. Henderson wrote:
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Not to drown out the other threads recently started in .starship, I wanted to
throw this one out there too, to get the brainstorming going.
Inspired by numerous emails and comments over the past year or so, I am
thinking an FAQ page on the Starship website would be worthy of considering.
While perhaps I as GM have been asked and the most frequent questions, I
would like to ask all participants to share their suggestions for questions
and answers that would be appropriate for such a page. What I am looking for
should include the kinds of out-of-character questions that seem to be asked
of players and SM’s rather often, especially by newer players.
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Cool idea too. All this imagination! You want to be careful drinking too much
of the red cordial there, you’ll spoil your dinner.
Questions that spring to mind (with some cautious answers for SMs to consider):
What do I need to play?
I think this is covered well in the rules.
How often does the game move
As often as the SM says, usually once a week, sooner if players and SM like.
Do all players in an adventure get the same emails - how does this work?
No, not normally. Maybe the first email or two at the start of an adventure
will be common, but once you start doing things other players don’t, the SM
drafts a different email for each player based on the player’s specific actions.
What happens if I don’t reply in time?
Its up to the SM - normally you just miss out on that opportunity, and can join
in again next week. Do it too often, and the SM will probably put you on a
course for deep space and leave you alone :-)
How long do games run? (what am I committing myself for?)
As long as you’re enjoying the experience. Players can leave at any time,
either by formally disengaging, or just not replying to emails. SMs make a
commitment to see an adventure through. But there is usually no fixed
timeframe. I’d guess once a week over 3 or 4 months would not be unreasonable.
How do I know what I am allowed to do? What does the SM do?
You can try to do anything you like with your own ship and crew, and to your own
ship and crew. You can change course, look for specific things, shoot at
things, lay out your captain’s mindset for what he plans to do if he encounters
little green men around the next moon. The SMs job is to tell you where you are
when you change course, what you find when you look, what happens when you shoot
at things, and what is around the next moon. You can talk to other players, or
other non-player characters. How other players respond is up to them. How
non-player characters respond is up to the SM. You can’t simply say you’ve
fired on and destroyed another vessel, or your sensors told you that the Key to
All Enlightment is 3 feet inder the surface of the crater to the left. You are
your crew’s minds and hands, the SM is reality and everything in it except your
crew’s minds and hands.
Have a read of the logs of a previous adventure:
http://www.portblockyards.com/spraw/log-sirius.htm
How do I know what the other players are doing?
You don’t, unless they are in reach of your sensors and doing things you can
see. But you could ask them, or try to scan them, try to plant bugs on them, or
try to destroy them (so you know that they are not doing much of anything)
depending on your particular ethos. Some players choose to co-operate, sharing
sensor data and spoils.
I don’t want my crew/captain/favourite tharg killed - how do I make sure this
doesn’t happen?
Tell the SM. The SMs goal is for you to have a fun time, not end up freeze
dried, twisting silently in the space between stars. So you’d probably have to
do something mindnumbingly stupid, or breathtakingly risky to suffer a
spectacular undoing. Even then, there are a thousand ways you can fail an
adventure without your favourite tharg getting killed. You might find your ship
with weapons destroyed, main drive inoperable, minimal life support, and with
the vertical height adjustment on the captain’s chair completely shot, but
fortuitously, the last impact can send you sailing out of the system tumbling
end over end on a course that will take you near a starbase someplace else. And
experience indicates that many players are are only to happy to render
assistance to the unfortunate. Some SMs confer brownie points for such worthy
exploits.
Is there a prize for winning?
Nope. There is a prize for participating (for both players and SMs) - the
expansion of your imagination, a holiday in a shared imaginary universe, where
you get to do things and be things you are unlikely to be able to do and be
elsewhere. Also, fun.
Richard
Still baldly going…
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Starship FAQ Idea
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| Richard, I do believe you have hit the proverbial self-sealing stem bolt on the head. Keep it the way it is, most especially including the example of the adventure of the Sirius which is very helpful in terms of what to expect for adventuring. I got (...) (17 years ago, 13-Dec-06, to lugnet.gaming.starship, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Starship FAQ Idea
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| Not to drown out the other threads recently started in .starship, I wanted to throw this one out there too, to get the brainstorming going. Inspired by numerous emails and comments over the past year or so, I am thinking an FAQ page on the Starship (...) (17 years ago, 11-Dec-06, to lugnet.gaming.starship, FTX)
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