Related Information to Aericsteele's Traveller Questions & Support

Aericsteele's Traveller Questions & Support - Page 36

Rebel over...

Sounds fair. I think, in the interests of flexibility, we might as well pay for double occupancy on all states. The extra Cr 1000 "Lost" by taking a High is made up by the fare - especially if it's a J-1 trip.

I'd prefer to put the GTC on another ship. Low berth 'til Whanga is second choice. Totally against murder. Unless they genuinely try to hijack us again, then it's fine to shoot them.

Support and Questions Traveller Aericsteeles

Yeah, we be in a pickle.

Anyway to remotely ice them from the bridge or sickbay?

Best search for other ships in the area then. Maybe Zenith will take them for an Imperial citizen trade (Ie the ship that came before us).

Aericsteele's Traveller Questions & Support RPGs PBP Fiction Science

This is The Cynic, over...

If Zenith is still in system, that seems like a decent idea. Diplomatic, and hopefully they decide not to give the GTC us in return for anything

We could ice them indefinitely, but I feel like they will put up a fight about that since they would be defenseless for the duration.

Page 36 Support and Questions Traveller Aericsteeles

The Referee relays...

The rooms are filled. Keeping the guards and the agent in low berth without placing them in cryo will tax the life support systems. Oxygen, food, and waste management will probably be an issue that you would need to figure out.

As far as food you can ration your supplies but your mid and high passengers will not be very happy about it. I suppose the guards could use one of the crew rooms to do their business but the waste generated may exceed the ships capacity and in the end you could end up with a rather unpleasant smell (Though I think that would be the extent of it), but no serious consequences other than the mid and high passenger's being unhappy. Oxygen/life support; you may run low but I don't think you would necessarily run out unless you misjump or lose time for some other reason.

Support and Questions Traveller Aericsteeles

This is The Cynic, over...

In consideration of more crew interactions, just a reminder that we did have connections set during chargen. So myself and Njall were pirates together at one point (My third term) and Shuth patched me up once in my first term when I was injured on a mission (My first term). We are allowed up to two (Or three?) skills from connections allowing none to make a skill exceed 3.

So for those who don't have connections yet might want to consider those. I'll update my chargen info to reflect those.

Aericsteele's Traveller Questions & Support

This is The Cynic, over...

In the interest of courtesy, I think we need to discuss agency and narration again.

To be quite frank, this is increasingly becoming more of a Captain Mark "Silvertongue" Frazure show than a cooperative experience. Your posts are long and try to accomplish too much in too little time than Silver would realistically be able to do. In addition, your long narratives have stepped on the toes of two other players just in the past week. And Adelaine has become an increasing crutch in your narratives. Back story is interesting and all, but there are times where it can be explored further, or you can decide to explore the relationship between Silver and Adelaine in lieu of barking orders and assuming we do what you tell us to do. You can’t have it both ways. I know I’m not the only one who is becoming a bit disenchanted about the game lately. In addition, I’ve noticed that pacing has been a bit of an issue with the game. Either things mover super quickly, or they move very slowly. And sometimes, at least to me, it appears to hinge on your assertive narrative control. Aericsteele is a much nicer ref than I would be.

So now that I have critiqued your style. I’ll give some constructive feedback. Because I do enjoy your narration and I think you bring some interesting elements to the game with them. But I think all of us together can make this more inclusive and more fun.

Do more with less. Focus on what you want to do with one post and let other players take care of what they deem is important to them and the crew. You don’t need to traverse the entire ship back and forth in one post because you want to accomplish X amount of things. If you want to focus on the personal story, fine, do that. I think a few of us have things left over in our chargen histories that we would like to eventually be introduced or explored through the narration of the game. So it’s understandable that you want to do that, but don’t do both. Let the other players have active roles in the ship or in decisions. I think we’ve all improved on using the support thread for meta-planning, let’s keep doing that, or we can go another step forward and bring decision making into the main thread. It might slow things down every now and again, but at least players will feel their characters have had a say and agency.

The Wildcard isn’t a military vessel. You don’t own the Wildcard. The crew is mortgaging it together, so we don't even own it. You are not paying us, we are all earning keep to pay the bills and hopefully make a bit for ourselves as well in the process. It is a free trader, so don’t assume the players or even the NPCs will comply with your orders. Silver is the captain because of his social skills, which is a great role for him. But he is not the boss - he is not paying us.

Consider other players. Does it appear that other players want to become more active with their ships roles or their own character narratives and development? It certainly does to me. Perhaps Gaden wanted to be more involved with the interaction with the Imperial LT, but ended up being overlooked and your last post literally destroyed any dialog options he might have had with the NPCs. In short, let other players do stuff aside from cleaning our weapons or doing ship maintenance. I know many times I’ve felt like my agency and choices have been constrained.

I hope this critique doesn’t come off as overly harsh. It’s not personal and I don’t want you to think I don’t want you to participate or enjoy the game as much as the rest of us.

For Aericsteele, I’ll be doing a review to post in the review thread in the next few weeks. Thanks for your hard work and efforts in running the game for us.

Aericsteele's Traveller Questions & Support - Page 36

This is The Reaper of Ships, over...

I second this. A good example is the ref's last post. Gaden has spent most of his time dealing with the agent and his crew. I didn't inform the rest of the crew that they hadn't disarmed. I was in the process of explaining it to the marines. However this was completely ignored. Silver meta'd information he didn't have and completely cut Gaden out of the narrative.
It's like our crew is composed of Capt Silver, pilot guy, Doctor dude, comms girl, that guy with a gun, etc. Our characters come into play only when there is something silver can't do. There is seemingly no incentive for me to post anything other than gun combat checks.

Aericsteele's Traveller Questions & Support Science Fiction PBP RPGs - Page 36

The Referee relays...

I can appreciate the frustration expressed here and I do appreciate these things being brought to my attention. If players do not inform the referee, game master, etc. That there is something bothering them then it is often assumed that everything is fine.

Obviously everything is not fine in this cases, so we need to hash some things out. If there is an issue with pacing in the game then ultimately the Referee is responsible for that. I can see where th pacing in this game may feel a bit jarring at times because a lot happens and a great deal of focus is placed on a ‘scene’ and then large stretches of time are essentially skipped over. I admit that some of this is nothing more than me trying to establish pacing on the fly; trying to figure out what sort of scenes need more attention and what details should be glossed over and generalized. This isn’t as easy a task as some may think it is.

In Malcombshaws defense I think that in some ways he is simply trying to do what I, as a referee, expressed as one of my expections of players in that I expect more significant posts that consist of more than one or two sentances. Maybe there does need to be some further clarification regarding player agency and understanding that actions/intent usually need to be resolved by the Referee rather than assuming things go as planned because I think the limits were pushed a little bit regarding Adeline. She is an NPC, not an extension of Silver. That does need to be understood.

But, I don’t think it is fair to expect Malcombshaw to be responsible for ensuring that the other characters are more active in terms of their ship roles and/or character narratives. In a face to face game a player can run the risk of hogging the spotlight and taking up all the narrative, but in a play by post this is less of an issue because the other players do generally have an opportunity to post a response (At least [four] hours because the site won’t allow another post by [the same] player until that time has passed).

In general, I try to give each player a chance to respond to a post that I’ve made (Unless they go past the 48hr rule), whatever the player posts, that is what I try to respond to. I will admit that there are times where I overlook something that was said in a post and I apologize. But, in my opinion the player, in thier post determines the level of their characters involvement in a scene. If one or two sentances is posted to the effect of “I’m going to go clean my weapons” then that is what your character is going to be doing, and as Referee I’m probably not going to set up a scene around that.

If you want your character to be more involved in a scene you need to push your character into the scene through your post rather than wait for the Referee to give your character an opening. During the most recent interactions I thought that this was being done to some degree by the players having their character interacting with each other. Those interactions though were short and brief exchanges that, had they been fleshed out a little bit, could have added a great deal to the game and worked toward developing character relationships with each other. The interactions between crew members may not be filled with excitement but they do serve a purpose, if nothing more than to keep the characters involved and give the reader some level of attachment them.

As mentioned in the policy

I do not believe that it should be the Referees responsibility to ensure that each character is well represented in each scene. The player is the one that ensures this by posting detailed and concise posts. Not every scene can be exciting for every character, and it can be difficult for the Referee to establish scenes that do involve every character.

I feel that it is the players responsibility to flesh out their character and prevent them from being generic “Doctor dude, pilot guy, comms girl and that guy with a gun.”

I did establish a scene of sorts for Gaden to interact with the agent, but there really wasn’t any response there. In the next post Gaden was telling the LT that the agent and his men were not giving up their weapons unless it was to the marines. So, I figured that scene was basically concluded, and that this was something of a prompt to move the game forward. Get the GTC guys off the ship and move on to the next thing.

FInally, and I apologize for writing a book here, I think the manner in which Silver is percieved to be treating the crew as though he is their boss is probably something that should be addressed through in-character interactions.