@Aria said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:

I’ve had to turn the auto-convert feature off in Word for when I do my – (that is two hyphens, often converted to a dash of some kind, be it en or em. I never learned the difference.) because it was getting pulled up by the anti-AI checker on my submitted work and it’s easier to just… not deal with that.

Em Dash (—):

Roughly the width of a capital letter M. It’s used to create a break in a sentence, similar to how you’d use parentheses or colons.

En Dash (–):

Roughly the width of a capital letter N. It’s used to connect two words or show a range of numbers.

That’s literally it.

Monospace fonts mean they are indistinguishable, wheeeee.

@Pavel said in Star Trek Games:

staff run the game and set the tone

So we agree that…

@Jennkryst said in Star Trek Games:

This isn’t Trek-specific, it’s literally every MUSH ever.

I’m not saying it’s never been a problem, I’m throwing out ideas to try and prevent it from becoming one, while also pointing at shows to go ‘see? Its viable!’ Ask lower rank people what their IC career goals are, that’s how 1 pips get assigned to bridge duty.

@Faraday said in Star Trek Games:

I know Star Trek isn’t RL, but just for reference/scope, a US aircraft carrier would have ~3000 enlisted crew and ~200 officers.

Memory Alpha lists THE D as having 1,000 people aboard, including family members and so on. Voyager had… a variable number, but lists 141 as the usual compliment. As always, you can scale down because the computer can follow verbal commands, but we also see problems that could easily be handled by a fully coordinated crew just wreck a ship with people only on the bridge.

While 1st/2nd/3rd class crewmen and NCOs exist (can you tell I can’t remember proper titles or rank structure?), you have significantly less need to balloon the crew compliment with people who haven’t gone to the Academy yet… doubly so in Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism where the poors don’t have to sign up for a chance to crawl out of the bottom rung of capitalist hell.

For Voyager’s crew, Memory Alpha lists 60 people with the rank of Crewman, as opposed to an officers rank (this includes Maquis with provisional ranks). So depending on crew size, you could have half or even more being officers. I dunno. I only counted ‘crewman’ on my fingers, I didn’t check civillians or figure out how many if each rank were around. Mlstly because the list includes people whose names are only ever seen on an LCARS.

Also! As a starbase was mentioned, you can consider different ships, different crews of department heads if you go that route, but still give the lower rank folks time to shine, if people want to play them. It all circles back to ‘staff makes plot, or endorses PRPs so other people can ST things for whomever.’

@Pavel said in Star Trek Games:

If you’re playing Crewman A. Nonymous you better not be anywhere besides a jeffreys tube and not getting in the way of the person we especially chose to play Lieutenant Commander Action “Buzz” Heroguy.

Gentle reminder Harry Kim spent 7 years in the Delta Quadrant with a single pip, and while he may have manned the engineering console on the bridge, he was never a department head. He’s an ensign. There were five people on the ship with a lower rank - Nelix, Kes, Seven of Nine, Naomi Wildman, and Miral Paris (and technically the Maquis, but they got whole uniforms and pips to reflect their Maquis ranks, it’s fine).

And he still got up to some wacky shenanigans.

@Faraday said in Star Trek Games:

Stuff has to happen. There have to be stakes.

This isn’t Trek-specific, it’s literally every MUSH ever.

Some players can be those three people on Voyager who never volunteer for any away missions and just do the social rp. Or be a Dabo Girl on DS9. It’s fine.

@Faraday said in Star Trek Games:

Like, say I’m a junior Engineering crewman. What is my RP about?

Hobbies. You’re in a classical quartet or jazz band that puts on shows at the bar… or do a Doctoro Picardo and recreate old opera houses to do… opera. Go fill up the biofilters on the fuck simulator holodeck with your inceedibly inappropriate hologram girlfriend. Build a racing shuttle. Write holonovels. Save humanity by completing a Q test. Do weird yoga. Invent silly sports. Have sex with a ghost. Visit Risa. Have sex with a ghost on Risa in a holodeck. Do unofficial war crimes.

Maybe you’re on duty. Every time an alert happens, system diagnostics are run, go go go! Even when there isnt an alert, you still need to run regular diagnostics to make sure that the ~~ LCARS is properly filled with rocks so there is debris when it dramatically overloads~~ self-sealing steam bolts are properly bolted in place. Go crawl through the Jefferies Tubes to replace the bio-conduit before it catches the flu from alien cheese. Realize it’s the wrong tube when you meet Jeffrey Combs. Get sent on an away mission.

There is a whole chart, for roll d20 to [science] the [device] for [techbobabble].

There are a lot of options out there.

Edit: Yellow in TNG is also where temporal enforcement lives, so be a time cop when you get too many tachyons, or whatever the current wibbly-wobbly technobabble of the week uses.

@Raistlin I wouldn’t make reports mandatory, maybe treat them like Arx Journals? Or scenes can start in media res with a log voice over giving a brief setup (although technically, the log overview means it isnt in media res, but nya, nya I say!)

Questions are mostly ‘Spaaaaaaace Code?!?’ and ‘What rules?’ Star Trek Adventures is the latest and doesn’t have XP progression, more milestone, as Modephius do, so catchup is easy, ‘anyone with X or lower major milestones, gain a major, anyone with more, gain a minor milestone instead’. Admittedly, I haven’t looked at the 2nd edition yet.

@MisterBoring said in Star Trek Games:

really solid story about the primary crew of a starship

Probably a factor. Sure, the Modephius rules include ‘we dont need the doctor for this mission but dont want the player to feel left out… lets roll up a temporary PC called Chief O’Brien to come along’, but a MU will have probably have a person playing that character. (This could be a neat way to fill out a roster, though, so keep roster game in mind. Can also give people having an opportunity to play guest of the week NPCs).

Tangentially important to point out the entire point of Lower Decks is that we don’t focus on the primary crew, and it has given us some of the finest Trek in decades.

Social Combat when?

@Prototart said in What happened, man?:

i don’t believe you

Eldritch Automata is a Post Apocalyptic Strand-Type game where your RP with others helps you build connections you can lean on in times of trouble to help you survive and maybe even succeed.

There is no mechanical difference between ground combat and mech combat, for Metaplot Reasons, but that’s just handwaving. Your mechs are protected from devastating attacks by an Ego Shield, so as you take damage and battles look closer to defeat, you suffer mental trauma because it’s literally chipping away at your Ego. Healing is as much going to the medics as it is seeing a therapist (or, since this is the post apocalypse, trauma dumping on your friends).

You have archetypes that influence how you recover Ego Damage (and also maybe how you can help others heal theirs I forget).

TLDR, Eldritch Automata is Cthulhutech where there are mechanics for you to yell at Shinji to get in the fucking Robot.

@bear_necessities Random guess as No Man’s Sky, but its been years so I only half remember what their version of the ‘feed animal’ interface looks like.

@dvoraen said in I need an adult:

Is this the true Pilk?

It’s only Pilk if you can use it to replace your car’s oil.

@Prototart said in What happened, man?:

I love gay race communism, where are we doing that

Elite Dangerous, we just have to overthrow all of the capitalist systems.

@MisterBoring Well yeah. Cause it actually is dead over there.

Ghost is really upset he hasn’t killed both boards, huh?

@Trashcan said in What happened, man?:

Blaine Lee Pardoe
Pardoe was a writer for BattleTech (released in 1984) but was not its sole creator. He wrote a number of novels for the series but has not done any game work since 2012. The publisher of BattleTech material publicly disowned Pardoe in 2022 due to “online activities which do not align with Catalyst’s publishing vision.”

The Pardoe thing is weird, I half followed it on Twitter at the time. Someone called his stuff dumb and dude tried to nuke them with an expensive legal battle. I didn’t ever figure out how it finished, though. So I assume a non-zero amount of ‘online activities’ include, but are not limited to, trying to sue fans of the IP into oblivion.

If people have left Elite Dangerous and alhave been considering looking back in, there is currently a trade war going on with 55x markup of certain items. Also depending on how long you’ve been gone, Thargoid war is over (for now) and we have hot rod boosting through FTL. Also space legs/walking around (just not inside your own ship, for some reason).

@lordbelh Pick a pic, describe the pic, wheee

@Raistlin said in Best Games with Roster Characters?:

@Jennkryst said in Best Games with Roster Characters?:

@Buttercup main problem is decision paralysis once I get past the basics, followed by no rush to un-paralyze because no code.

Run it using Ares with the PDF Sheet plugin and use form fillable PDF sheets. I’d honestly love to see more games do something like this.

How well, if at all, does this handle the fancy dice?

@Buttercup main problem is decision paralysis once I get past the basics, followed by no rush to un-paralyze because no code.

@Prototart said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Jennkryst said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Prototart what ever happened to bribing players with XP for desc work?!?

i could’ve been bribed for it and never even asked???

Will pay XP for descs on game, just as soon as we finish kidnapping the coder to make +sheet and +roll and such.