General Chat

Maybe this is my fault?

I was under the assumption that we want to get to the ship heist without too much of a distraction along the way. I thought this was the idea from the start. I remember you saying something like "why are we playing another day when we can just go to the ship right now?". So I took that as, vague wants us to get to the actual ship mission. My initial idea was that we each narrate the 20-ish hours we had left before the mission. Quick and easy, maybe one or 2 rolls and we're at the ship.

But then you threw in the computer 'side-quest' and getting to the ship (in real life time) seems to be getting delayed more with every step. Hence I figured I'd try to speed things up with a few suggestions :)

I'm not against playing it all out, it was purely a time-saver idea.
But I guess I may have misunderstood the intent of that comment?

---

I also realize that all this discussing things is delaying everything even more. Sorry about that ;)

No need to be faulting anyone. I really do mean it when I say I don't mind how much detail we have here, and that you guys get to decide (roughly) how long any scene should take.
This is the Ship heist, it is all part of it.
That was in-game. Your characters decide to wait another in-game day and squander their advantage of being the first people to know there was trouble brewing. I was literally asking why we wanted to do that. But it was a question, and I don't mind the decision.
If you choose to think of getting the ship as your main quest, then everything is a 'side-quest', getting there is a side-quest, powering it up and hot-wiring it might be a side-quest, getting away might be a side-quest. Or each step needed (collecting the team, getting the hardware and software we need, and so on) could be thought of as parts of the main quest.

This is something you 'need to do' before going to the ship, so it is a step in the main quest. It is, however, optional --Abby will make do without the specialised software or hardware-- so it could be viewed as a 'side-quest'.

I say again: We can spend as much or as little time on any of this as you guys want. We can engage as many or as few mechanics, Skills, or rolls, as you guys want. I am literally asking the question "how much playtime do you want to give this?"
Yes. I am getting the impression people are feeling that way (I do not feel that way). If that is the case we can skip this. But, we are actually playing the game, this is part of the game not a 'delay'. We only need to speed it up or skip it if we don't want to play this part. But then you guys do need to tell me what part you want to play, so we can focus on that. I am happy with whatever is decided.
Everyone else can voice their opinions as well. It is no problem at all for me.
Not really. It is not like people are waiting to see the outcome before posting their replies. If it clears up our understanding of how the game should run that is good.

Oh, okay. I took that as "why do you want to play out another day?". I see now what you meant. So, I did misunderstand it. But that ship has sailed :D

Ok, dear fellow players(by that I mean also GM - of course)? What we do next? As getting this computer and the hacking software can be as simple as in example: "buying specific gun for the heist with a simple dice roll" or indeed some side-quest.

But let's assume that we have only those two things to do before going to the city starport and Bob's Gig, ok? Let's not add other side quest? As I feel this is current intention of most of us?

I guess there can be only one poll per post???

Gosh... those are not easy questions... even thou I have written them myself:D

I think it will be more fun if everyone is there. Doesn't mean everybody has to be inside, we can always communicate remotely.

Character Sheet

In looking through the character sheets to collate Skills and Characteristics I found that the layout might need a little tweak. I think, in play, we will need to reference the Skills and Characteristics at the same time, and the block of Finances spills them off the screen from each other on slightly smaller screens.

I suggest we move that second block to below the Skills, that way the Finances and Other live with the Weapons and Equipment.

What say you guys?

I can easily do the copy paste for you if you don't want to fiddle with the BBCode. Once the incision point have been found it is easy to do more.

Makes sense
I changed mine in the way I think you mean. Is that correct?

Yep. That is what I was proposing.

I have not given any thought to the bottom part of the sheet. If we do a lot of Combat we might want the Weapons and Damage part closer to the Skills? I think we might need that more often than the Finances block? (On other sites I sometimes recommend having the most often referenced parts at the top and bottom since it is easier to move stright to those two locations than to a specific part in the middle, but GP has a large footer that make that less useful, so a top focused sheet makes more sense).

Done. But I have put Finances even under Equipment as I think that could be the priority order:
-skills,
-weapons,
-equipment,
-finances

Can I leave it that way?

That looks good. We can decide on the right layout as we use it, but your order does seem appropriate. There are benefits to having everyone on the same layout, it makes it easy to quickly look something up at a glance, but we don't have to keep them the same if we don't want to.

---

I am thinking the Weapons and Equipment tables should maybe be single column, they contain long lines that might be neater if they don't wrap onto two lines. What do you think?

For me "Other equipment" seems as waste of space. One could put these items in Abilities or Equipment sections. Armor feel the same, as probably like 95% of time there will be no or 1 position. So my proposition is:
- changing Weapons section into "Weapons & Armor" - one-position table of Armor should be under Weapons table. Whole section could be 1 column.
- Equipment and Augments sections could be 2 columns in the same row.
- I would delete Other Equipment section entirely.

It is hard to tell how valuable each separate section is till we have played a bit more. They do each have their own 'columns', but those can easily be listed in text form right after the name of the Gear item.

However, keeping Weapons separate from other stuff could allow us to turn that table into a 'Roll Table' where we can click on the item to enter its damage value straight into the roller. Having 'damage' and 'range' columns can be useful for comparing, but only if we end up with a lot of choices.

There is plenty of space to scroll down.

I have edited my sheet to show what I meant. But I still think armor is taking/wasting too much space, so I would move it above "Characteristic DMs" snippet. What you think?

That Weapons table looks much better, no? Did you happen to take a screenshot of the before? Yours was the only one with enough detail to spill over into two lines per item, so we don't have something to compare against.
That might be true, but we should assume there is a reason they laid it out like that. Some people may have many sets of Armour or many Armour items, just because we have only one item does not mean the table is not needed.

We are not bound by the paper size of the sheet, so there is little harm making this longer and needing to scroll. But, as we see with the Skill summary tables, there are some places where we care about that, so having the Skills in multiple columns is good, but the rest should each fit well enough on their own screen.

I'll adapt mine when the order is set ;-)

Of course I did: Full backup of the sheet:)

In my current sheet I did with armor section what I really meant - it looks good in my opinion. And has some place for other armor sets. What you think?
Additional bonus is that keeping armor near the stats - which are HP in Traveller - makes a lot of sense IMHO.

Less scrolling will not hurt in may opinion:)

That is true. Armour and HP sorta go together.

I just worry that that list might get long.

What does everyone else think?