Ooh thank you so much! Very very helpful, EH.
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Ooh thank you so much! Very very helpful, EH.
My pleasure.
And as a bonus, whodathunk there'd be a link between Capt. Kirk and the filibuster? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R94sRLS0QWI
Question (for either EH or anyrose): Did Collins spend the night in her quarters or w/Ben? I'm not asking for prurient reasons, heh. Just want to know if, now that it's morning, Kylah is waking up with her roommate or is alone in her room.
AFAIK, Collins spent the night in quarantine, then worked her shift, saw the doctor, and is now having dinner with Ben. She hasn't been back to her quarters yet. Unless I am completely wrong.
eta - ah, I see. I also read this first before the game thread. I don't know where Collins will be spending the night yet. It depends how her dinner conversation goes.
I would ask that you, Elendil's Heir, respond to the PMs quickly as I will try to do as well, so that the conversation can be posted soon
Well, good luck to Collins! :)Quote:
Originally posted by anyrose
Regardless of how well Collins's dinner with Cooper goes, there are plenty of good reasons for her to want to spend the night alone in her own bed. But write what you please.
or she may want to stay in the arms of her lover
But of course!
If this were TNG, Collins would challenge Kylah to a game of Parisi Squares - to-the-death! ;) :D
Hee. Hey I wanted to bring some internecine battles to the crew. Y'all were too nice to each other. Collins would kill Kylah at Parisi--the Elasian is no sportswoman by any means.
Kylah should probably sleep with one eye open. And one hand on her remaining dagger.
Mwuhahaha.
A new painting of the Battle of Yorktown, BTW: http://www.historicalartprints.com/v...list.php?id=34
That's Pourtash in the tight white trousers, yes?
we are two months away from the two year anniversary of the start of this mission. How much "game time" has actually passed?
Great question! I can only answer from the actual mission (rather than the fakeout at the start of the thread). For that, I'm guessing fewer than two weeks, starting with our mission briefing. Well, let me zip through the thread for references to double-check...
- Day one: Hayes briefs us on the mission.
- Day two: Collins and crew gang have dinner, talk about mission
- Day five: Two days pass, then we arrive in the Sakathian airspace, we have the endless crisis due to the weapons issue before it's settled and we arrive again on the station, animals are transported, and finally dinner with the Sakths and MU research team.
- Day six: We awaken to discover we're locked in.
- Day seven: The Yorktown informs us of their new orders, so we'll be alone.
- Day eleven: Three days pass after the ship leaves us. We have lunch normally, and then... The Incident Begins. After lots of action, Collins informs the Yorktown of the problem, and we learn it'll be 2 days until the ship can return.
- Day thirteen: After escaping to the Meitner, we wait until the ship picks us up as scheduled.
- Day fifteen: We're released from quarantine. (This time was hard to pinpoint; at one point Collins was told we'll only be in quarantine for 8 more hours, but then 17 hours passed before we were released according to the linked thread. Not sure how much time had passed before then.)
- Day sixteen: Today.
Slightly more time has passed than I thought (I missed that there was so much time before the Yorktown left the Sakathian system).
EH, have I calculated correctly?
For this particular mission, yes, that looks about right. Thanks, choie.
Cool beans. You're welcome, sir.
Just in case anyone gets a notification message with a massive wall of words from Kylah, yet notices how much (blessedly) briefer her comments are in the actual post, the reason for this is 'cause I edited them out since I realized she should wait until she's asked before giving such extensive testimony. So, I'm saving that stuff for later. :)
(Am I the only one who purposely doesn't read my notification emails, by the way? I always delete them and only read the stuff in the actual thread. I dunno, it's more exciting that way!)
I set my settings to *not* send notification emails. I just check in a couple of times a day
It's not Trek, but it's news
The actor is good news, the director remaining isn't.Quote:
Originally posted by anyrose
For more Mello discussion of the new Doctor Who: http://www.mellophant.com/forums/sho...new-Doctor-WhoQuote:
Originally posted by anyrose
Well, well. Great minds think alike: Kylah picking up where Rangin was heading. :)
Crackling dialogue from you all - just like TOS at its best!
That's mostly 'cause you set up a great. courtroom drama-esque situation here. I'm thinking less TOS than one of TNG's hearing/testimony-heavy episodes, like "Measure of a Man" or "The Drumhead." (But that's probably just 'cause I know TNG like the back of my hand, where I have only vague familiarity w/TOS.)
TNG was definitely more talk than action.
am I correct in that tactical is the seat next to helm at the station closest to the main view screen?
No, Tactical is to the right of the Engineering post, two stations to your left as you emerge from the turbolift onto the Bridge. To your right as you emerge from the turbolift are Communications and then Sciences.
The Helm and Navigation are directly in front of the Captain's chair, facing the viewscreen.
Thus ends Mission #2, "Primum Nil Nocere." I hope you liked it. As with the first mission, I never expected it to last this long! I really do expect the next one to be much shorter (famous last words....)
This is your game as much as mine, so please let me know what you thought - the good, the bad and the ugly. What did you especially like or dislike about this mission? What could I do better next time? If you'd rather not post here, please PM me. Your feedback is important to me. Thanks.
As with the first mission, several of the secondary characters' names have something in common. I also included some in-jokes about a favorite recent movie of mine. Anyone have a guess? And did anyone notice when things began to go awry on the Sakathian space station? Heheheh.
We have up to three prospective new crewmembers with whom I've been in touch. We'll start Mission #3 as soon as their Starfleet personnel files are squared away.
when there is action, real action, I'd like to see the characters, and especially the GM, post faster. When it's just exposition, the normal speed we've established is fine.
The mission leader, whomever that is, should post first after a GM post. I know choie checks this site more frequently than I do and she writes her character very well. But if a junior officer is coming up with solutions before the senior officer/mission commander has had a chance to post and maybe come up with the same solution, then it looks like the mission commander is falling down on the job.
I don't expect Singh will choose Collins to lead again any time soon, so it's not just for me that I speak.
If this is an unreasonable request, please make the case against it. I'll listen.
Hi EH! Wow, I wasn't expecting the mission to end the way it did. I'm hoping there'll be follow-up to come in the next one.
anyrose, the only problem with your second suggestion, which is otherwise perfectly sound, is that it possibly conflicts with your first suggestion. I think we'd have loved to post more quickly but we were waiting on players who check the thread maybe once a day, and quite often at least 12 hours after the GM posts (EH usually seems to post after 10PM ET, while you tended to post in the early afternoon ET).
I do agree with the second rule, which does make sense, and which I followed when you mentioned it the first time (though I didn't bother waiting when something in EH's post was only directly addressing Kylah and didn't affect the others). Like you I was anxious to keep things moving and found it frustrating to wait, but once the dictum was made, I'm pretty sure I followed it. Doesn't seem fair to single me out again, but okay. I'm a beginner and heaven knows I screwed up a lot of times!
I will say this, though: with the greatest respect to Collins, girlfriend often made herself look bad without any help from me or Kylah! :) Actually, I think just as Kylah's mistakes made sense for her character, Collins's mistakes--I'm thinking specifically of those after the "choie, stop posting so much, idiot" rule--made total sense too. Collins was blatantly distracted by her personal problems and physical issues, not to mention seeming overwhelmed by her first command, and I assumed you were RPing her that way.
EH, what I'd personally love, though it may not be possible, is maybe more follow-up once the immediate mission is over but before the next one begins? I notice that we have at least two big cliffhangers that haven't been resolved now: the whole Walsingham / murderous Dr. Bucci from the previous mission (and that's a couple of years old), and now it looks like we might never find out exactly what caused the whole Sakathian mess, we don't know if Geb knew about any of this, we don't know what if anything is on that thur'lel thingy that I must assume was included among Porr's items for a reason, we don't know if any of the MU people survived, Waite is still obviously a lying liar who lies but what is he lying about, our comatose crewmate might die or not, we don't know if there'll be reprecussions re: the Sakathians and Starfleet re: the mission's failure... Lots of unanswered questions, I guess. Maybe that's the nature of the beast, I dunno. Of course I totally respect that you may have a "long game" plan for Bucci/Walsingham/Fujishiro/Waite/Porr etc. but bearing in mind these missions take literally years to complete, I wonder if it might risk losing its impact, especially since several of the people who participated in that earlier mission are no longer here.
So as a suggestion... I wonder if there's a way to overlap these missions so that integrated with the later mission is a subplot regarding the earlier one. (Which I was expecting re: Bucci, given the Hippocratic Oath name of this mission.) As a fellow writer I don't want to step on your storytelling ideas, I just wanted to throw it out there as one way to continue older plots while still focusing on current ones.
Anyway I just hope that the next mission starts but gives us time to do some character work. Honestly I had every intention of having Kylah go to Singh with stuff she left off her written report about the senior officers' behavior (including both Collins and Pourtash, the latter of whom really turned into a total spineless wimp), none of which Kylah put down in her report. I also hoped to follow up with T'Var regarding her experiences on the mission, but with the mission's end I have no idea if there'll be time or desire to do that once the next one begins. Oh and I totally hope Kylah gets to get some face time with that transporter engineer Ferguson asshat who made that creepy look/comment to her!
Suggestions aside, I want to thank you wholeheartedly for an enjoyable and suspenseful mission, for being patient while teaching a complete novice about forum RPGing, and for allowing me to create such an annoying and irksome character. And many thanks to the other players for letting me learn along the way.
anyrose and choie have valid points. I think we need to be patient with each other. Since we all post at different times of the day and night, it's a challenge to keep up with the thread as it unfolds. Posts overlap a lot. This can cause confusion and/or posts which don't make much sense. The fact that some folks check the thread several times a day while others only check once (or every other day) compounds this issue. For me, it's hard sometimes to really keep track of what's going on, where we are and such.
And yes, I'd like to see more socialization with crew members in between missions. Not sure how this would play out, but I think it's important to give it a try. It's a challenge when we have crew members leaving in the middle of a mission and new crew arriving at the start of the next.
Perhaps a different thread just for social activities? T'Var has a "playing chess in the mess hall" thread. Could we have a separate thread just for the social aspects of our characters lives? Or would this just complicate things more?
Thanks to everyone for taking part in this mission. I enjoyed it and had lots of fun. :)
I like that idea - the one of a separate thread for personal interactions - we could link to within the game thread when appropriate.
Thanks for your feedback, everyone!
The next mission will start, in game time, immediately after Mission #2, with the Yorktown still just arrived at Starbase 27. We can pick up right where we left off.
The rules require posting at least every other day (see post 1 of this thread). I could require daily posts, but not everyone can do that. Patience and tact among players are definitely encouraged.
It is quite possible that Collins will be picked again to command a boarding or landing party. Don't count her out yet.
Following up on unanswered questions is fine, but your character must take the initiative - inquiring of superior officers, shipmates, the library computer, Federation newsnets, Starfleet Command, etc. I will withhold some answers for long-term storytelling reasons, but others are certainly available.
Personal, off-duty interaction between characters is definitely a plus, and of course the rules encourage it. At the start and end of each mission, there've been opportunities for it, and occasional downtimes during missions, too. I would rather that such interactions remain a part of the game thread, however, rather than being split off in a different thread. They're integral to each crewmember's experience. (The chess thread is different, I think, and perhaps the exception that proves the rule, because those are ongoing games between just two people at a time, and also aren't tied to the timeline or narrative flow of the missions). It could get pretty complicated to have links back and forth between, in essence, a duty and an off-duty thread.
It looks like we will have one new player joining us after all. Another has declined, and a third has not responded to several recent emails, after earlier expressing strong interest.
Any other thoughts?
Dammit EH, closure is required. You can't just leave us hanging like that with so many questions unanswered. Oh and adding in Miskatonic U and a doctor called Waite - where was the body swapping? :P
Ok, for real this time. first off I enjoyed playing along even though I had not much of a clue of what was going on and started half way through. Regardless it was fun to play along and see what Rangin could get up to.
In terms of people posting, its a problem that's never going to be solved. I thought the pace went pretty well, in most situations, people are always going to cross post and waiting for someone is not always going to happen. I don't tend to post at weekends, so I can't do the once a day, but I'll still contribute when I can.
The only main suggestion I would make, is that if someone manages to post an action that predicts how something turns out in the next GM post or two, then I would suggest including it rather than make them wait for the action before posting again. It might help to speed things up slightly, even though things might get slightly out of order as people read it.
Quote:
Originally posted by Elendil's Heir
Ha. No body-swapping... this time. Of course several of you noticed the reference to the notorious Miskatonic University, site of so much creepiness in H.P. Lovecraft's stories. And, indeed, each of the MU staff mentioned in Mission #2 had some Lovecraftian predecessor: Waite and Upton ("The Thing on the Doorstep"), Pierce ("The Colour Out of Space"), Dyer ("At the Mountains of Madness"), Olmstead (The Shadow Over Innsmouth"), Wilmarth and Akeley ("The Whisperer in Darkness") and Holt ("The Picture in the House"). Each is taken from a favorite HPL story of mine; each ended up about as unpleasantly as he or she did in the original works, I'd say.Quote:
Originally posted by CatInASuit
As to in-jokes from a favorite recent movie: the planet where the Yorktown had shore leave before its Sakathian assignment was Morra III, named, as I mentioned earlier, after Edward "Eddie" Morra (played by Bradley Cooper) in Limitless. Burger, Glynn, Lindy and Dixon, all characters from the movie, were also mentioned as places on Morra III, and the serum about which Dr. Waite spoke, ntLd, stood for "not the Limitless drug."
Finally, as to when things started to go seriously wrong on the Sakathian space station? Take a look back. When the first scream was heard, here in the real world... 'twas Halloween, my friends!
Here's your new shipmate; I'll post this in the Character Profiles thread, too. Bryan is an old Trekker friend of mine - please join me in welcoming him aboard!
Starfleet Personnel File
CHARACTER NAME: Booker Graham
USERNAME: general_urko
CURRENT RANK: Ensign
CURRENT ASSIGNMENT: Security Specialist, Security Department, USS Yorktown, NCC-1717
SPECIES: Human
RACIAL/ETHNIC SUBGROUP: Scotch-Irish, with the admixture one would expect from a family with a history in the Boston area on Earth dating back to the early 1900s
AGE: 50
SEX: Male
HOMEWORLD: Earth
ATTRIBUTES:
• Charisma 8
• Dexterity 11
• Endurance 12
• Intellect 8
• Luck 4
• Psi 2
• Strength 10
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Although on balance he looks every bit his age, Graham's scores on fitness tests are better now than when he was in the Academy (and better than most cadets half his age, as well). He is relentless about both cardiovascular and strength training. Although not a large person (about 1.75 meters and 80 kilograms), he comes across as someone who naturally weighs less, but has added muscle to come up to his current weight. His eyes are green and he has a slightly ruddy complexion. Graham’s hair has gone completely gray, but is still full and nearly shoulder-length; at times he pulls it tightly back into a ponytail. A long thin scar runs from just under his hairline to his chin on the right side of his face.
PERSONALITY PROFILE: His Starfleet record notes that Graham has “a bias for action; pays attention to detail, but can be impatient; sometimes taciturn or withdrawn.” Even the most casual acquaintances tend to start asking themselves, “Which Booker will show up today – or in the next five minutes?” At times he comes across as devil-may-care, nonchalant, even insouciant, but at others switches to an intense, hyper-vigilant demeanor - sometimes for no obvious reason (at least not obvious to anyone but Graham).
FAMILY: Wife, Jane Haighton-Graham, deceased. Daughter, Elizabeth Haighton, doctoral student on Earth.
HOBBIES OR INTERESTS: He has a large collection of historical memorabilia associated with his family that tends toward (but isn’t limited to) the martial – old Earth-style boxing gloves, a police officer’s billyclub, a giant claymore supposedly used in 15th Century Scotland. He is game to try most physical sports or martial arts (and is always looking for combat traditions or techniques that can give him and his colleagues an edge), but prefers boxing and racquetball. He enjoys good food and drink and favors traditional Earth dishes over alien cuisine. He makes no secret of his opinion that whiskey is the best breakfast. He has a soft spot for big dogs (or dog-like animals).
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND: Starfleet Academy Class of 2241
SERVICE RECORD: Graham has a 25-year service record. Over the past eight years, he has repeatedly volunteered for combat assignments, most often but not exclusively focused on interdicting Orion pirates. He has a number of commendations, but over the last ten years reprimands and a number of disciplinary actions for which records have been sealed or redacted substantially outnumber them. His Starfleet record indicates that Graham once held the rank of lieutenant commander for ten days; he has held the rank of ensign for the past six years. Some instructional tapes he created, entitled “What You Need to Know to do Maximum Damage if Your Opponent is _______,” are still available in the Starfleet training database. Subjects include Klingon, Romulan, Orion, Gorn, as well as Tellarite, Andorian and Vulcan. Graham has received supplemental training in law enforcement and forensic investigation from the United Earth Police Commission.
CAREER GOAL: This section of his Starfleet file is blank.
Ooh fascinating and slightly mysterious history there. Welcome aboard, general_urko and Mr. Graham!
New mission thread here: http://www.mellophant.com/forums/sho...-Paradise-quot
Welcome aboard general_urko and Mr. Graham!
There's a character profile thread? :dubious:
Thanks for the welcome wishes...it's been a pleasure reading the previous missions, glad to be "aboard."
Yes. See posts 606-609 in this very thread.Quote:
Originally posted by anyrose
Welcome on board, hope you enjoy the game.
Welcome aboard! Glad to have you with us. :)
What shops and recreational facilities does this Starbase have?
Ask around in the game thread.Quote:
Originally posted by anyrose
Boy, did I misread this line by mistaking that first semicolon for a comma. My immediate thought was: wow, the Rigellians must have quite a unique interpretation of "Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air."Quote:
Originally posted by Elendil's Heir
Punctuation really counts!Quote:
Originally posted by choie
I've always believed EH was a fine family man and upstanding citizen, but the truly chilling depth of smarmy evilness communicated in post #13 channeling Aldaan has made me think that perhaps this was all an elaborate ruse...
Heh. I can't take credit - choie wrote that! I only approved it.Quote:
Originally posted by general_urko
Ooh, chilling, eh? I'll take that as a high compliment, general_urko! It's the smooth ones you have to watch out for. Aldaan's a politician to the core. :)
Crapples, I'm sorry, and I'm such a continuity whore, too! How did I forget that?! I don't suppose it could please be changed from:Quote:
Originally posted by Elendil's Heir
to:Quote:
Originally posted by me being stupid
(I realize it should be since they 'entered' rather than 'left' quarantine, too, considering they weren't quarantined together.)Quote:
Originally posted by me trying to fix things
I guess it's not a huge deal and of course if it's too much trouble/waste of time please forget I asked. I just hate leaving that inconsistency out there, glaring at me with its baleful, disappointed gaze.
P.S. I'm really slow on the uptake--just realized what the title of the mission refers to. Uh oh! What an interesting callback... very curious to see where this is headed!