Subject:
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Re: RulesTalk: Fog of War
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.gaming.starship
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Date:
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Thu, 1 Apr 2004 01:22:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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3179 times
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In lugnet.gaming.starship, John P. Henderson wrote:
In lugnet.gaming.starship, Lindsay Frederick Braun wrote about options for
concealing the true nature of hidden systems on ships.
>
> Yes, the "fog of war" that SMs have reaches only as far as their own sectors.
> The current rules make it virtually impossible to hide certain secrets of a Ship
> from the view of other players. However, technically that is an Out Of
> Character fact. In Character, one could argue, knowledge of Ship details is not
> always something that is widely shared. For example, Player Hendo knows that
> Player Richard's HES Sirius has only medium weapons; but IC, Commander Magisoto,
> when he first encountered the Sirius, assumed that she must be more powerful
> than his Terrorformer because afterall the latter is "such an old and outdated
> crate by comparison".
>
> Other than that sort of OOC vs IC honor, there are two other means of
> maintaining the mystery. What I like to do is to not reveal the secrets of some
> of my characters/ships until they are revealed in-game in my own sector. Only
> thereafter will I register and venture forth with the secret being known
> publicly. The other way to go is to register directly to me and Richard only by
> email. As GM, I'll need nothing more than Propulsion ability. And then you can
> cross your fingers that no one bothers to look at the registry that Richard sets
> up until after your secret is revealed. (Naturally, this latter plan doesn't
> have much security.)
I don't think that instances of this will be too common, so there may be another
way.
Players are pretty much free to change their entries in the reigistry at will,
subject to the limitations on the number of higher quality systems, and good
taste. I think of the registry as any popular almanac of fleet specifications -
likely to be largely true for fleets, and very likely to be wrong in respect of
specific vessels. And its only a snapshot of the vessel at registration - lord
knows what's happenned to it since.
You could register the vessel as it might appear (regardless of how it actually
is). As a wolf in sheep's clothing, you might register it as low or medium
weapons, and then on its first encounter with another vessel when its teeth are
bared, update the registry with the actual facts of her systems.
Going further, as long as the local SM knows about the better quality weapons,
you might not update the registry at all, unless the vessel you encounter
survives and tells tales. In this way, you might destroy another vessel or
threat wihout giving up your secret.
I guess this suggestion comes from a recognition of 3 basic tenets of Starship:
The SM must know all in order to be able to do his job. You can't keep secrets
from the SM, and any attempt to do so will likely only nark him, and cause an
unexpected and uncharted small black hole, maybe the size of a baseball, to pass
through your ship, including, unfortunately, your captain's head.
Fleet systems usage for Starship is limited by the agreed numbers on high and
medium quality systems. That said, there is a great deal of latitude within
those limits.
Starship is to be the maximum amount of fun possible.
On this basis, I think you can probably do exactly what you want to do, but
probably only once or twice for any given ship, because old spacers love telling
yarns, and the one about the tiny ship that turned out to have a big gun is
always a popular story.
While this opens the door a little to scurrilous players shamelessly fooling
about with their systems in an attempt to breach the systems limitation rules, I
estimate the risk here as small. Our players are SMs too - as soon as a silly
player is caught doing silly things, all of a sudden his ships start having a
myriad of ugly and low probablility things happen to them. You know, toilets
backing up, spacesick navigators opening windows on the bridge, engines falling
off, weapons suffering spontaneous explosive misfires - that sort of thing.
Richard
Still baldly going...
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: RulesTalk: Probes
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| (...) I think the reason I would vote in favor of not registering is the very thing you hint at in your first comment here. Probes are (or should be) rather disposable. (The player who want to use them currently has a write up with pics that say (...) (21 years ago, 1-Apr-04, to lugnet.gaming.starship)
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