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 15:05:32 GMT
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Viewed:
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2198 times
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In lugnet.gaming.starship, Mike Rayhawk writes:
> Hi guys,
Hi Mike, and thanks for your interest. I am going to try to answer most of
your questions, but I ask all other participants to help with these answers too.
> 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.
Even though I played a roll in the development of this game, I have been
equally confused how to define it in a small number of words for outsiders
to understand. The definition on the top of the sidebar here still sounds
to me like it is missing something, like it is legalese, even though I wrote
it. I compare this to the recent discussion on the Lego®/Lugnet community,
where even those who are a part of it feel unsure how to define it.
> 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
There is some historical perspective on Spraw here...
http://www.ozbricks.com/portblock/spraw/welcome.htm
...especially under the history section of that page. However, let me
answer your next question before I really try to answer this one.
> 2. what gameplay is like
This is one of the aspects of the game that is tough to report on. The
setup, the building of ships, the maps of galaxies and sectors, that all
makes sense to an outsider. But the concept of how the game is played is
easily missed because 90% of in-character interaction is done by email and
not publicly displayed. There is no easy way for action emails to be
collected and posted publically after an adventure, unless a player
voluntarily collects them and edits them down to a ship log to be viewed.
I also attempted to give examples of play in this early post:
http://news.lugnet.com/gaming/?n=1301
> 3. what kinds of fun people had
This would be good to see. In the final days of the old-Spraw message
board, the more active players did say, "woo-hoo! that was fun" or "yay!
what happened?!", but there was no major feedback or public discussion where
players shared stories about their favorite parts of the adventure that had
transpired. (For example, OOC, I might have mentioned how exciting it was
when my marines got ambushed by rabid squirrels while on the planet of
Spraw, and then how fun it was to be in communications with the PBY ship and
having our captains always talking about getting together for beer and
pretzels.)
> 4. how the universe works
I'm not sure what you mean by this. OOC, it is limited by the Galactic
Rules so there is continuity. No ship can be in two places at once. There
are certain basic stats that all fleets must follow for game balance. IC,
the universe works like our own, or perhaps more like a fantasy universe
like in Star Trek or Star Wars. Most of this is not defined and is up to
the storytelling and creativity of those involved.
> 5. what kind of community spirit is in place
Currently, I'd say that there is good spirit here. The number of
participants is growing, slowly. But still the majority of those involved
had some hand in the development of the game. So there is still that
excitement of sharing an idea and now seeing it actually happen. There are
a few personal differences between a few of the members, but it has not
caused any problems that I know of. We have players from (I believe) three
continents now, and they vary in age from about 13 to 32 (maybe older?), so
we do have a mix of perspectives. Most significantly, I feel, is that
regardless of these differences we all seem pretty mature OOC and range from
serious to silly IC.
> 6. what kind of technologies are in play
This, like the nature of the game universe, is very open to the creativity
and desires of the Sector Mediators, and even somewhat the players who
develop the setting as the game grows. There are some particpants who have
established their home planet as very advanced with huge future cities,
teleporters, and perfect people-like androids. Others have developed crude
spacecraft of lower techs. My own homeworld is only in its first century of
space colonization and its technologies are behind everyone elses (yet there
was a rumor that they might have time travel). On planet surfaces, a
mediator might offer adventure on a world that has Castle technology or Town
technology or alien technology.
Some of these things about setting are being discussed in the thread about
the Starship Bible. Participants are trying to decide whether such things
should be better documented, or whether documenting too much restricts newer
ideas from being included.
> 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!).
Those boards could be a pain to navigate. It kills me that the early
discussion on Spraw, from which the galaxy emerged, was truncated due to
age. If only you could have read those discussions!
> 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.
This was a point of contention during rules creation. In the end, we agreed
that a player who doesn't build in microscale, or one who has a small
collection of brick, or one who uses CAD should not have a disadvantage or
an advantage in the game. We want to encourage people to join, regardless
of what ABS they have to start with. The solution was to say that every
ship fell into the three tier ruling
(http://www.valyance.com/starship/rules.htm#Char). Which of a player's
ships gets the good ratings and which gets the bad is up to the player. A
player might decide that his little spiffcraft is so small and nimble that
even a giant battleship could not easily target it, and thus give it a high
rating for defense or for speed. A player with a big battleship might say
that it is old technology and give it a low rating for speed, and save the
higher ranking for something else he builds. This may seem unrealistic in a
way, but it is a way to keep the game balanced. It doesn't matter whether
you build a spaceship MOC the size of a real-life car or one the size of
your fist, in the game they are balanced. ....Even so, the rankings are
just a guideline for players and SMs to interact. There is no ruling on how
an SM must interpret the rankings (except in the case of galactic travel
speeds).
> 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.
I like the idea of a Galactic News Network, and had at one time toyed with
developing such a thing (basically a page of recent headlines from around
the galaxy, IC). But the transparancy of gameplay by email makes it so that
no one person really knows what is happening in each and every sector. As
GM, all I know is which sector each ship is in. As SM, all I know is what
the last event was for each of a few ships in my sector. As player, all I
know is what my crew encountered in the one sub-sector they were in last.
For someone to write a weekly (or even monthly) journal covering headlines
around the galaxy would require some effort of communication between them
and everyone else[1]. Personally, I'm swamped with what I have. ...But if
someone else wishes to take on the task of being the Galactic Message
Reporter, just say so. :)
Well, I am only scratching the surface of this here. Anyone else want to
help answer Mike's questions?
-GM Hendo
[1] Actually, it might be a neat in-character concept if a new player were
to establish, say, a homeworld so obsessed with news media that every ship
they send out is a Press Boat, and the news stories they report on are
dependent on where their ship goes. If they build a big enough fleet, they
could be pulling in, compiling, and sending out news reports from several
locations at once. That would be a really great concept. I'd consider it
myself if I didn't already have my homeworld well defined already. Someone
else is welcome to take this idea and run with it...
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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 (...) (22 years ago, 10-May-03, to lugnet.gaming.starship)
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