Aw shucks... :)
Thanks for your patience!
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Aw shucks... :)
Thanks for your patience!
As we approach the 2nd anniversary of the current game day (which dawned October 2018), and have already passed the 10-year mark (albeit with none of the original crew of PCs, alas!), I thought y'all would be interested in a look at a D&D game that's lasted 20 years! And sixty players, good lord I can't even fathom how that would work. But good for them!
It has been a rather long day at Novy Rostov, hasn't it? Thanks for sticking around.
And yeah, jeez, having 60 players is just insane. I don't know how the DM could give them all interesting things to do. That's not a party of adventurers, that's a platoon. I started playing D&D around 1982 too, while I was in prep school. I was part of a great campaign DM'd by my friend Jon. My character, a swordsman, rose to become a duke of the Elven-led kingdom he served (although he wasn't an Elf himself). Had a lot of fun. I'm playing a similar character in a LOTR D&D campaign on the SDMB now.
Hey, can someone go to Sickbay if they're hit by metaphorical phaser fire? Asking for a friend... :wth:
Heheheh. She's not only a beautiful English rose....
Hey Chief, is it kosher for me to describe Nia as heading to the turbolift? I don't think Nia and her entourage have been described as changing decks since dropping Graham off. I'm relatively sure he's been described as having one of the more popular Deck 7 cabins, vs. Deck 4, where Nia resides. (Specifically, #4A14.)
BTW I've been enjoying the Graham scenes opposite various NPCs! Well done, gentlemen.
Yes, that's fine.
And thanks!
Raising my hand again. Did the secret stowaways eat the food on the tray that Johnson left there? I would imagine they did, since Ruth was kvetching about being hungry, but want to make sure.
Another question, this one from the peanut gallery. By "monosexual" do you mean they all have a single gender, or that they're attracted to one gender? (I am, like, 99.95% you mean the former--monogendered, like the Jinaii in TNG's "The Outcast." CIAS just wanted me to double-check.)
Yes, they ate their meal. And monosexual does indeed mean they have only a single gender.
Gotcha, thanks!
Belated happy returns of the day to you, too! That's fascinating. So strange how little I associate our ship's name with the "Yorktown" battle so close to where I live in NYC. :hist:
Quote:
Originally posted by Elendil's Heir
Sorry for the delay, but I'm still reeling from the utterly disastrous choice from SidonianGal, who knowingly decided to ensure Nia's character continuity/consistency over the bigger picture, knowing Kylah and the guests' lives are at stake here. Just couldn't let Ensign Li leave, oh no, she just had to make Nia push the question of what Li felt was wrong! Arrgh. :devil:
Anyway. Both of us will need to do some major tapdancing to get out of this quicksand--assuming it's possible at this point. It's just taking me a bit to think of how to get out of this mire. I'll get it done today, but whatever the plan is, it might take every bit of Kylah's high CHA and PSI scores... And some extreme generosity by TPTB. :angel:
As always, I look forward to what you come up with!
Holiday season is upon us, and hopefully we'll have other things to celebrate. general_urko, I'm not sure if you celebrate Chanukah--EH, I know you're not a Red Sea pedestrian, to quote Monty Python--but I had to post this appropriate greeting!
http://falling-sky.com/strpg/chanukahtrek_sml.jpg
If Nia were aware of Vargas's call to Graham, she would totally be wearing a "Toldja you so" expression right now re: how much Vargas needs his ACoS despite his claim that no one was irreplaceable.
...So, lucky for her that she doesn't know about it. :devil:
No indeed, not Jewish, but I love the ChanukahTrek graphic, choie!
Trekkie Christmas to all, and to all a good flight!!!
http://www.falling-sky.com/strpg/trek_christmas.jpg
Best holiday wishes to all!
Likewise!
Sorry for the mega-scenes there. My girls had a lot of ground to cover!
What's the polar opposite of "No Drama Obama????" :)Quote:
Originally posted by choie
:LOL: Hysteria Kylah-and-Nia? No-Smiler Kylah? (The rhyme only worked in a Boston or British accent, alas.)
LOL. No apology necessary! Good stuff.
I would like, however, to bring this mission to a close in the near future. Would five more posts (or so) apiece in your characters' current situations suffice?
Hiya sorry for the delay! Enjoying our country's regime change made me lose track of time.
Yes, of course, we'll adapt as needed to end the mission. If Kylah successfully reaches Rangin they'll need a bit of a conversation but I can work on that as a joint thing w/His Nibs to save time. Thank you for your patience!
Yes, I'm very pleased and relieved by the change in the White House myself.
Huh my response didn't stick ... I said something to the effect of "sure so long as the fiendish GM doesn't throw some new curveballs our way..."
Just so long as Graham and Nia get a chance to...er, something...about what's happened either at the end of this mission or beginning of the next!
Yes, of course, I hope you will. Thanks.
Hey EH, just checking--in the Rangin portion of the dual Kylah/Rangin post, did you spot that Velir used the door chime to see if Xiang could let them in? Or was her not responding intentional?
No, sorry, I missed that. I will take another look.
Man, Graham is a lot more chill than I'd've expected him to be about Nia sending him a personal message through Rangin, of all people! :devil:
Quick logistics question: Would someone less familiar with ships and their various sounds/vibrations than folks like Nia and Graham--oh, someone like Kylah, for example--notice the fact that the Yorktown is moving faster? Is there any tug of movement when a ship changes momentum and direction, e.g., from regular orbit to warp speed? We've all seen the "tilty camera" effect when the Enterprise was hit by enemy fire--or trying to evade it. So the artificial gravity doesn't make instantaneous adjustments. But is that just for drastic changes?
Yes, the effects of evasive maneuvers or taking hits from enemy fire can certainly be noticed by everyone aboard (especially if you're thrown across the Bridge - still no seatbelts!). But moving from sublight to Warp 1 is also perceptible, or from a lower warp factor to a higher one, from what we saw on ST:TOS, by the sound of the warp drive if not from any actual change in the "feel" of the ship. I suspect a deaf person would not notice, come to think of it.
That death of Novy Rostov was some awful, sobering and gripping imagery, EH. A tiny, embarrassingly sentimental part of me held out hopes of a deux ex machina, even though that would have been so wrong, dramatically and realistically speaking. But, great writing there. All the more powerful for its almost clinical nature. Just animation on a screen, but so much more.
Thanks, choie. It was quite sobering to think through and to write, knowing what it meant, even though fictional.
I would like to wrap up the current mission soon. Please get your last posts in by Sunday night. Thanks!
Sure, thanks! I think R&V can wrap up by then in a joint post.
Quick question--how does everyone onboard know the destruction's already happened? Was it broadcast all over the ship? I'll do a quick reread, I might've missed an announcement from Singh.
No, there has been no shipwide announcement. Hmm. Perhaps there should be?
LOL--suddenly I'm imagining Singh's voice coming from the speakers like a flight attendant: "...And now, passengers, if you look over at the port side of the ship, you should juuuust be able to see the green flashy thing that got your friends and everything you knew fried and annihilated."
Sorry for the three megaposts, but Rangin & Kylah had an emotional and plot arc to tie up and to lay grounds for the future. Hope it's okay! :)
Yeah, and Nia wanted a final moment as well. So I sneaked in there. (Is it clear that she's not actually talking to Brooks yet? I didn't mean to start a new conversation at the last minute. She's just mulling all this over.)
So ends Mission #6, almost four years to the day after it started - far longer than I ever thought it would be! Thank you all. We'll start Mission #7 in a week or so with a wedding, which should lift everyone's spirits. I also have two possible new recruits for the crew, and will keep you posted.
Woohoo, that's fantastic about the possible recruits! Fingers crossed. Thanks so much for overseeing this epic mission, Cap'n! We started at a very difficult time, not that long after losing dear Naomi/anyrose, and for several months we were w/o Rangin, which changed the whole focus of the mission not to mention losing a vital partner in one of our subplots. It was painful to deal with their absences, and I think that drained some enthusiasm and creativity.Quote:
Originally posted by Elendil's Heir
I'm relieved we were able to move out of that dark period, though of course Naomi is still deeply missed. It's been a long nearly-four years (for everyone!), but throughout there were a lot of angles to play and you created plenty of obstacles for the PCs that were challenging but fun to see through. Thanks so much to you, EH, and obviously to the other gents for all the teamwork & brainstorming.
As for the spoiler tidbit... yeeeah I don't think that wedding will lift everyone's spirits. :devil: Speaking of which, how much time will be passing between now and then, in-game? Because Graham's telling Nia about all this is a huge beat to lose--I'd imagine general_urko would agree with me there. :) (Maybe we can write it as a flashback?)
Also just curious about how Kylah's breaking her confinement, and her stowaway situation, might be dealt with in a time jump.
Good points, choie, and thanks. I expect a week or two in-game will pass before we resume. Flashbacks for both scenes will probably fit the bill; I know that I, for one, would like to read them.
BTW, as always, I included five references to characters from the works of a non-ST sf author (past examples: Heinlein, Lovecraft, Asimov, Clarke and Bradbury) along the way. Did anyone spot them over the course of the mission...?
Thanks for all the work, EH, and the writing, fellow PCs. Who the hell would have guessed we'd have to carry on the story through the conditions of the last 12-ish months?
Not I! Ignorance was truly bliss on that front. But I think we did OK.
As far as guessing the names/author puzzle, I never have a clue. Even taking the authors already used above, I'd've only recognized each if the character names were Farnham, Cthulhu, ___, uh Dave or HAL, and... the lead guy from Fahrenheit 451 I guess. (I just reread it last year and already I forgot his name again.) And yes I am acknowledging that I don't know a single Asimov character even just through cultural osmosis.
I'm embarrassed that frickin' Farnham is the only name I remember, and that's just because I randomly found a 1st-edition version of Farnham's Freehold at a bookstore and my college roommate recommended it, so I picked it up to see what Heinlein was like. And immediately regretted the hell out of it because WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK is with the incest crap? (Later my roomie urged me to try Stranger in a Strange Land, which I did prefer, but let's face it, Freehold set the bar extremely low.) I still have FF just because as the daughter of a book collector I hate to toss away a first edition, even of a book I truly despise.
Anyhoo. Since the bulk of names here were Russian, I'm just gonna take a stab of the two Russian sci-fi authors I remember. And actually I don't remember their names but don't wanna cheat via Google. Is it either the Roadside Picnic author or Solaris author? Wait, was Solaris even a book?
(And I only know Roadside Picnic because i fricking' loved the videogame S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.)
All this goes to show you that I am not a science fiction reader by nature. I enjoy it in visual forms, but readingwise I get lost in the tech stuff (if it's hard sci-fi).
Now, if you ever toss in names like Arroway, Drumlin, Hadden or Joss, I'll be able to pick that one up!
Heh. I actually included a throwaway reference to a starship Arroway in another ST writing game some years ago. (Contact is one of the very few movies that I thought was actually better than the book, and Jodie Foster was terrific in the lead role).
No, the five names came from the writings of current sf author John Scalzi, a favorite of mine:
Holloway, the capital city of Beta Antares IV, is a name from Fuzzy Nation
Ruiz, co-maker of the malfunctioning orbital divesuit, is from Old Man's War
Perry, the other co-maker, is from The Ghost Brigades
Shane, the Beta Antares IV doctor whom Dr. Bennett consulted, is from Lock In
Weinstein, the president of the NR Colonial Council, is from Redshirts
All very good books. Redshirts, in particular, is a snarky but affectionate homage to ST that I'd recommend to any Trekker.
I'm still trying to recruit additional players, so I'd like to postpone the start of the next mission for another week.
I'm now reading Patrick O'Brian's The Nutmeg of Consolation (1991), part of his terrific series of Napoleonic War naval adventures; it's mentioned that one of the crew of His Majesty's Ship Diane is a young master's mate named Bennett. Possibly an ancestor of our own navigator...?
No luck finding new players, unfortunately, but I did get four "I can't do it right now, but maybe/possibly/could be/I just might if you ask me sometime down the road" replies, and made note of them.
New mission thread to start soon.
Woohoo! New game thread! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!
Haven't heard back yet from my contacts, but hopefully this will bear fruit.
Now... how are we to pronounce "Irkhuit"? I know I'll never say it aloud, but in my brain I could use the assistance. I still have no idea how Jan Svelha (misspelled, I know) or Ruth Soerdajayaorwhatever (already forgot that name!) or Hwuen or Alyerr were meant to be said. In fairness I wouldn't be able to tell you what Nia's full name is either. SFF names are my Kryptonite apparently.
Anyway, another WOOHOO for the new mission!
Edited to add: OMG I can't believe we're still in March. Kylah's been aboard since late December, IIRC. So all her angst has taken place in just under three months? Yowsa. Then again the whole past mission (starting with the arrival at Novy Rostov) consisted of a single day. So the timing makes sense.
I feel a little better about my online serial, written from 1997 - 2015 and comprised just 2 years of fictional time. :angel: