Gemini Crew Members
--BenofZongo 22:31, 2 April 2007 (MST)Stuff for friday. The most important part of friday will be 7-~10pm, when we will be running the prologue. Please be on time so we can get started right at 7. After that will come ship/character creation for those that can stick around...those that gotta go will make their character via Email with me. After that, if peoples are down, we might engage in a quick spaceventure...(how gay of a word is that? Not as gay as gaylord mcphagerson, but pretty gay...)
Next, if all of you could read Thoughts on Running/Playing in Gemini that would be good. Second most important piece of literature is the Mission Types page (forgot link). We will be a little pressed for time, so if the players could at least have a little bit of an idea in what direction they'd like to take the ship, that would be good. Of course, reading character creation, Fortune Points and Storytelling, and Gemini Advantages/Disadvantages would be helpful too, but certainly not necessary. Just have a sense of what kind of character you want to make, and what kinds of points, ship, and ship lootz you might need to make that a reality.
Crew
--Edmiao 12:42, 25 March 2007 (MST) Warrior Zealot Combination of the muscle plus archeaologist plus religious nut job.
--Dieter the Bold 18:25, 31 March 2007 (MST) I'd like to be a grease monkey (more Crew Chief Tyrol from BSG. Preferrably not with a strong history with the corps. How specialized a grease monkey will depend on what card I draw in the Prologue. My other interest is a face-man.
--Gdaze 11:25, 2 April 2007 (MST) Well I guess I could be the captin since we don't have one... I dunno, I like our whole sciency feel.
--Matts 12:00, 2 April 2007 (MST)High stakes gambler and math prodigy, but with that can go whichever crew position is in need of help: captain, navigator, pilot, helot, etc
Ranting and Raving
--BenofZongo 16:48, 3 April 2007 (MST)Are you guys sticking with the "archeological (looting focus)" as your primary ship focus? As far as actually doing "jobs" of some sort, that so far looks like the only thing you guys have your eyes set on. And even for that, there's only one crew member with professed skills in it...
--Matts 16:58, 3 April 2007 (MST)I'm not really sold on it. I certainly don't want to pigeonhole our activities right from the start.
--Dieter the Bold 17:23, 3 April 2007 (MST) I'm still interested in Search & Rescue. I think that would be fun, which can also lead into Salvage jobs and more static "fix-it" jobs (planets, space stations). It sounds like people don't want to do a medical ship, which is cool. If people take a look at the Talk:Ship Creation to see what a largest size mining vessel looks like, we can sorta' go off that. I'm not 100% sure how cargo/personnel space/slots work, so depending on how much room we want to have things would be tweaked, but at least it's a starting point. I think a combo mining/S&R/salvage vessel is entirely possible if we make it as big as possible, then throw on a complicated mining rig that can double as garage/airlock for fixing things and we have a way for making solid money while also having a good base for archeological missions when resources allow or opportunity presents.
--Gdaze 22:50, 3 April 2007 (MST) I actually thought mining was gonna be secondary to digging up K-Tech and pre-seering stuff? I don't really wanna mine rocks primarly less they are crystals of some sort cause those are all glittery.
--Edmiao 23:16, 3 April 2007 (MST) Agree, K-tech sounds more interesting, plus it integrates with my character concept. to Matt, compare the idea of "pigeon-holeing our activities" vs "aimless wandering with no cohesion between the crew". I assert that if we have a concept or cluster of linked concepts for a crew mission that our crew will hold together more firmly.
--Dieter the Bold 00:07, 4 April 2007 (MST) My take on K-tech is a little different. I see it as more of a spice kind of thing to flavor the setting, not the focus itself. I'm a little worried about this becoming just "Scrounge, scrounge, scrounge in the ruins" PA-style. That's fun when it happens every now and again, but not when it's the focus. As this is a more populated universe I could see a more Relic Hunter / Indiana Jones kind of campaign, but I'm not as interested in doing that this time around. If you read over the descriptions for Archeology jobs (#7 and 8 here), then I think you'll see it's not exactly something that will keep up a steady flow of income to the rest of the crew and the ship. This means that either Matt is a great gambler who's incredibly sharing with his winnings, or we have another line of work that brings in the ducats to keep the ship flying and us fed. If you don't want mining, lets do S&R, or salvage or something. I'm fine if Ed and Gabe want to be K-tech hunters, but I don't want to be a K-tech hunter, which means I'd appreciate having something for my character to do besides maintenance on the ship to fly it from Precursor site to Precursor site.
My other concern is that an Archeology focus could lose a lot of the contribution from players in terms of storytelling. Since Ben is the GM, essentially he decides if we find K-tech or not. So I'm worried that it's minimal interaction with the story, followed by lots of Scrounging, Archeology rolls at the various sites were at and hoping Ben lets us have something. Not that that
couldn't be interesting, I would simply enjoy more of us interacting with other characters and elements in the world then having a static focus that relies on Ben to motivate. My 2cents. I'm hoping we can come to some kind of balance. Cards getting thrown around with two strong and separate goals could result in a fucked up group.
--BenofZongo 00:24, 4 April 2007 (MST)Funny, matt and I just discussed this, and basically what Dieter said is what fell out. I think that regardless of what people want to see the crew do, you will all be tied in by the prologue. The only reason to discuss the missions is to make sure that the crew has enough people to do the ones you like and that the ship/lootz include stuff you need for missions (some have more requirements than others: mining, search and rescue, etc.). I don't think it's a good idea to come up with a 100% unified motivation for the ship, especially since having only one kind of job the crew can take, as Dieter says, is going to make you all starve fast (especially if it is archeology: those descriptions are accurate, archeology is basically like playing the lottery. Admittedly, your crew may be better equipped to do it, but it is still poor payoff to cost, especially since it takes weeks to months to years to get out to K-tech sites.) This is what playing fortune points is all about: it's not a war, but if you want a strong say in what the ship does, you should burn some of your fortune points and make sure that the ship is appropriately equipped/lootzed out. If someone else plays points/cards to say that the ship can do other things, that should be cool. You should not feel like everyone has to be committed to one/two types of missions that you can do for the group to work.
Bottom line is: it's more important that you yourself know what you'd like to see the ship do than that you convince anyone else about it...in fact, I'd prefer it if we didn't try to "work it out" perfectly, so that there'll still be some new, interesting stuff that comes out of the prologue (I know this is a bit of a reversal of stance, but hey, I make lots of mistakes). I actually don't think that multiple focuses for the group will fuck anything up, there's a lot of ship points/lootz money to go around for lots of focuses.
Another important point made in my discussion with matt: when you play a card into another player's pile (or burn a fortune point for them), it should represent some sort of "relationship" with that character, that you get to define. Another important point: even though the GM's cards sometimes represent "adversity" this creates interesting stories too, so you don't have to burn away every bad thing the GM plays.
--Dieter the Bold 00:31, 4 April 2007 (MST) Thanks for dropping that in, Ben. I'm just excited for Friday and wanting those who have to leave early to be able to make a full contribution to everything. I also, of course, want to push a little for a set-up that I find most enjoyable in gaming terms.
--Gdaze 00:32, 4 April 2007 (MST) Yes, but then again I don't want to fly arond space fixing up other peoples' ships either... I mean that is like car garage the rp or something... We should just be spies and data miners. MWUHAHAHA! I dunno, I'll try whatever.
--Edmiao 08:45, 4 April 2007 (MST) I think multiple missions is a good idea. Personally, my character is pro archaeology, which seems to mesh very well with mining. Heavy equipment and hauling capacity from mining may also overlap with deiter's preferred search and rescue. I have no concept of how many points we need to trick out a ship, haven't read that page in more than browse mode.
--Edmiao 12:53, 4 April 2007 (MST) as to the posiblility of a psycho navigator on the ship, it sounds like a significant resource expenditure and i have no idea what kind of sacrifices would be needed to get a psych nav. i defer this to deiter who has read the rules more thoroughly
--BenofZongo 13:01, 4 April 2007 (MST)Having a psycho navigator means dumping a lot of points, first and foremost, into making a really top notch navigator character, because there are a lot of prereqs. to taking the psycho-navigation skill. Thus, you need a combination of a player that wants to play an ueber navigator and that person getting a fairly high card (face card or Ace, basically) in order to pull it off. As for having a ship that can space jump: you need the highest level nav computer, the highest level sensors, and space jump capability, which comes to a grand total of 60 points unless I make sensors more expensive, which I might (x2 points cost, maybe). So it is a significant resource expenditure for it all.
--Edmiao 14:49, 4 April 2007 (MST) 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - not it!
--Gdaze I think we already agreed we don't want a psycho-navigator?
--Matts 15:40, 4 April 2007 (MST)I'd be willing to make a psycho-nav, but it's a high card for a character who probably won't have much to do until it's time to navigate something.
--Dieter the Bold 16:28, 4 April 2007 (MST) I think we were trending towards no psychonavigator, but if you and Ed are serious about K-tech archeology, it would be a good idea. The reason being: the travel time from K-tech sites to anywhere we can resupply or sell them. With a jump capable ship and a psychonavigator we could do K-tech archeology, but still be in frequent contact with larger civilized areas, giving everyone else on the ship something to do. Matt's character concept would actually fit a psychonavigator pretty well, as psychonavigators are math savants. I think Matt could just throw Gambling +10 onto a psychonavigator sheet and maybe a social skill or two and still be pretty close to what I interpret as his current character. A jump capable ship would mean we could do things that Ed and Gabe want, then easily be back at port for Matt to do some gamblin' while they sell/follow-up on their research. If we don't want to do a psychonavigator on the ship, then I think Gabe and Ed need to be open to some other mission-types/jobs for the rest of us, as travel time between K-tech sites and civilization will be large, forgetting how much time we'd be spending searching the actual sites themselves.
Honestly, I think this group is going to come together nicely. Everyone has interesting ideas that aren't in line with each other, but not opposed, either. I think we'll end up with a very flavorful and interesting group regardless.
Requested Support Character Archetypes
If you've got ideas about who you'd like on your crew as "support characters", put 'em here so I can start planning for them. Also, anyone who wants to make a supporting character this Friday (I'll try to get Salo to post here...Jason, are you coming this Friday? are you still planning on making a support character?) post your character concept(s) here.
--Gdaze 15:08, 3 April 2007 (MST) If we don't have one, a doctor type. Also a communcations expert, IE hacker. So if someone comes they would be given cards to make a support character? Wouldn't that give us more loots/ship points, but at the same time give the gm another play?
--BenofZongo 15:29, 3 April 2007 (MST)If you read the prologue section carefully, there are 30 cards distributed among all the players. So if more people show up, you each get less cards. Their character will be made like a main character, and just switch to support status afterwards. The GM plays half as many cards as the players each round, so that also means that the GM will play 15 over the course of the prologue. Also, remember that you will all be free to switch into support characters at any time during the game if your main is busy/uninterested in going somewhere, etc. Finally, especially for high point characters, it's easy for somebody to fulfill multiple roles: hacker/navigator or pilot, captain/pilot, tech/hacker are all easy combos.
--BenofZongo 00:28, 4 April 2007 (MST)Another interesting addition from my talk with Matt: expect the supporting characters to have numerous dirty secrets and their own agendas: ie, they might be running a few mission types "on the side" for which they themselves are equipped (think assassination, mercenary work, spying, prostitution...anything that a single person can do to raise a little extra dough).
--GdazeSweet! I haven't read anything I guess I really should...
--BenofZongo 22:01, 4 April 2007 (MST)Posting on behalf of Salo: she will be making a computer/electronics/microtech expert, so that is one of the "support characters". I will still permit up to 3 others.
--Dieter the Bold 23:06, 4 April 2007 (MST) If I end up being a grease monkey, I'd like a Faceman for a supporting crew, or vice versa if I make the Faceman. Also some kind of sneaky type. Like a security systems expert.
--BenofZongo 00:02, 5 April 2007 (MST)Salo is also planning to have security type skills.
