Subject:
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Re: Starship RPG
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.gaming.starship
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Date:
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Sat, 10 May 2003 14:04:25 GMT
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Viewed:
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1767 times
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Mmm, good questions. I guess these would need to be answered eventually on
the behalf of many people.
Basically, Starship is a very free form game in which one sends ships to
different adventures ('sectors'). The sector mediator, who 'controls' each
sector, sends action emails which describes events that have happened to
you. Here is a real action email that I got during Spraw.
Team Name: OREC (Outer Rim Exploration Corps)
--------------------------------------------------
Last Move: Down/Right
Current Location: D-4
Items Found: Secret Base
Description of Events: Sensors are locked onto the area where the marines
are. They are under attack by a huge, flowing, furry life-form.
Wait...make that THOUSANDS of furry life-forms! They seem to be foaming at
the mouth...they're...RABID SQUIRRELS!
Jake drops in with his glorious 'bots. He rattles down into the battlefield
and disengages the 'bots. They quickly go to work slicing and dicing any
squirrels that come too close to the marines, which by now are very tired
from their long fight and flight. There are so many squirrels that the
'bots are almost overwhelmed.
At the same time, Magisoto's T-bird screeches into the area, guns blazing.
Magisoto shows no mercy to anything that dares attack his men...
Hundreds of squirrel corpses cover the field, yet thousands more are
streaming out of the forest.
Finally, the marines make it to an open hatch in the ground. The hydraulics
hiss closed just as the flood of squirrels reaches it. They scratch and
bite at the steel door with impotent fury. Suddenly, a squeaking call goes
up, and just as quickly as they attacked, the squirrels disappeared into the
forest...and all was quiet.
Jake considered the fact that there was a hatch in the ground. And why was
it open? And why did it close the instant the marines were safe inside?
This was worth investigating...
A few hours and a few introductions later, Captain Hunter introduced Jake
and Commander Magisoto to Commander Reynolds of the Spraw Space Navy.
Hunter excuses himself to go do some investigating of "recently discovered
clues" and returns to the Sirius, at least for the time being. Jake and
Magisoto are led through the base by Reynolds and discover that this was a
testing ground for the real Artifact of Spraw! After it was taken away,
however, Reynolds lost all contact with the outside. He suggests that there
are clues to be found in the capitol on E-3. Reynolds assures his visitors
that the droids are now shut down by his elite slicers. He also suggests
that you investigate a research ship in the area of K-1. This was the last
known location of the ship before he lost contact.
--------------------------------------------------
PLEASE REPLY BELOW
--------------------------------------------------
Next Move:
[Choose: Up, Left, Right, Down, Up-left, Up-right, Down-left, Down-right,
Hold Position]
Use Items:
Other Actions:
///////////
You can see that the sector mediator gives me events that happen, and then I
reply with what I do- where I move, and what actions I do.
Then the SM replies again based on my actions.
The whole game depends on this freeform play style, if everybody gets lazy,
the game gets boring. You have to put in effort to get a good adventure.
There are no 'fixed' rules, like Brikwars, for example. Everything just
depends on the actions of the SM and the player.
As for the rest of the questions..
> 1. what happened
The Sirius discovered that the Artifact, a planet-sized FTL drive, was owned
by an old race of aliens that were absorbing people. Captain John Hunter is
successful in defeating them, but he is transformed into a non-corparal state.
> 2. what gameplay is like
I hope the action email clearing things up...
> 3. what kinds of fun people had
I had plenty of fun, but I guess others would have to speak for themselves.
> 4. how the universe works
Mmm, just a bunch of ships running around to sectors on the Galactic Map so
as to join adventures.
> 5. what kind of community spirit is in place
I guess you can figure out that from our posts...
> 6. what kind of technologies are in play
Practically any, (Ie I found a jump drive in Spraw) but it all depends on
the Sector Mediator. If a player brings in a MEGA super quadrupal
weapon-o-death and threatens to blow up the whole sector, the Sector
Mediator can stop that crazy 'threat' to gameplay by, for example, bringing
in an alien vehicle with an even bigger weapon that disables the ship and
then leaves.
Just try to keep it reasonable, otherwise others will have to do it for you.
As for the quality ratings... they are just sort of recommendations used for
gameplay. There are not really any concrete results from having different
ratings, but they are more like guidlines. Like if a ship attacked with
Heavy weapons a ship with Light armor, the damage (should, it depends on the
SM) be more then if the target had Heavy armor.
The only exception is propulsion. Ships with a higher propulsion rating
move faster in the Galactic Map and in sectors, as decided by the SM.
Any more questions?
-JHK
In lugnet.gaming.starship, Mike Rayhawk writes:
> Hi guys,
>
> I've been interested in this Starship game for quite awhile now, looks like
> there's a good amount of excitement about it, but I've never been able to
> quite figure out exactly what it was. I'm sure everything starts to make
> sense once you're actually in the game, but as an outsider I've spent an
> hour here and there at various times trolling the Starship links and have
> never been able to figure out basically anything. I'd kind of hoped that
> after the Spraw Artifact adventure came to its conclusion, there'd be some
> kind of denouement in which non-paricipants could find out:
>
> 1. what happened
> 2. what gameplay is like
> 3. what kinds of fun people had
> 4. how the universe works
> 5. what kind of community spirit is in place
> 6. what kind of technologies are in play
>
> etc.
>
> But, I still haven't seen anything like that; maybe I just haven't dug far
> enough on the creationcenter boards (I poked around, but the pain involved
> in trying to navigate from post to post is so intense!).
>
> I was wondering whether Starship would be the type of game that I'd enjoy
> playing, but I still have no idea what it is besides its basic genre (Space)
> and medium (LEGO). Even the process for joining the game has me confused -
> I build a ship and assign quality ratings to each of its systems, right, but
> there's no context for what any of those those quality ratings mean. For
> instance I see that the "Castle's Revenge" has comparable stats to the "CRS
> Spartan," despite there being a size difference of a thousand times in every
> dimension.
>
> So is there some critical weblink that I overlooked, or is this just one of
> those "No one can be told what the Matrix is" deals? Even some kind of
> brief weekly "Galactic News" updates would be a giant help.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Starship RPG
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| Hi guys, I've been interested in this Starship game for quite awhile now, looks like there's a good amount of excitement about it, but I've never been able to quite figure out exactly what it was. I'm sure everything starts to make sense once you're (...) (21 years ago, 10-May-03, to lugnet.gaming.starship)
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