Where do we start?

It is worth a lot. Mechanical it means you owe less on the ship payments (each month). In the fiction it might mean you have some vested interest in the ship, a reason to help take it, or a reason to stay with it, or nothing at all, this is up to you.
Can do. This is up to you and we can work with whatever you decide.

If you want --see 'veto' later-- it could be so much 'right after' that the paperwork has not gone through yet? But that might cause you official problems later, so maybe we don't explore that route.
This was only a suggestion about how we start. If you don't want to do this you are welcome to veto this idea and we can come up with something else. No harm done.
Those all have strong potential to break later when you discover what was going on, or have other choices, or are are done 'owing'. It might be best to find a reason for you to fully agree with the plan --even if you don't like it.

At least two of the others have the excuse that 'they have to get out of this system at any cost'. It would not hard to say that you are in the same boat. Maybe your Navy is loosing this Civil war, and, since you left them they have abandoned you? The 'enemy' know you were Navy and still hold a grudge.

Maybe this is an 'enemy Navy Depot', so you are not 'stealing from your friends' but from the enemy? It also makes the ship less familiar and more strange and quirky.
Easy to add such a thing... is it maybe Cat? Or should this be an NPC you need to escort somewhere? Maybe for medical reasons?
Indeed. You should still be good enough to follow instructions, but we can add an NPC hacker that you need to take with you.
'slow down' or just 'decrease in volume'? It can be hard to post after we fall behind, which makes us fall even further behind.
All good so far.
We can come up with 'reasons' if you --the player-- are happy to go this route. But if you don't want to push your character into this direction at the start we can scrap this and do something different.

We can arrange it such that no criminal liability attaches to Lio (or any of the Crew) from this desperate action.

I'm quite sure that my "feelings" weren't hurt:) I was just angry that you implied that I wanted to say what other should or are doing. As that wasn't certainly my intention. But intentions, aren't always clear I presume:) I think I just wanted to start the game and do the rest of planing in fiction and have some concretes to work with. But indeed it could be perceived in different way.

For the rest of your reasoning - I simply agree. It seems that RP was simply "too much for now".
Yeah. So deleting this post wasn't a bad idea it seams.
I did my breathing... and it indeed helped:)
I can post it elsewhere or send you if that would help with anything(I saved it, just in case) - but I don't think it will. Yes, there were such things as you mention. Those were my tries to "puzzle" all things that I thought were already established in logical way... but reading how you perceived them... some of them indeed sound like "crossing the border". But...

"Ronny/Cat can provide ship shares" - can, don't have to. A proposition dressed as plan.
"Lio has some scores to settle with the Navy" - it was based on the last event when Lio was promised promotion and didn't get it.
"Lio is currently at the Depot" - I explicitly said after that, we don't know that for sure and Raf thinks Lio could be there.

But... I understand your message:) No point to argue about single words now.
I don't have problem with people "don't liking my post" - good opportunity to improve for me with time. But that's true, that not everyone would be willing to say that openly. And that could be a hidden problem. Good catch and/or being experienced with the topic of you:)

I still don't think I told anyone what their characters should do. But I presume it's how my post was received, not written... so no point to discuss it any further.
To be honest I completely lost "heart" for that scenerio if it was so "dictatorship perceived" - as you are saying. So I hope others will come up with something else. If company needs a pilot or someone who know how to connect coffee machine to the power plant... Raf is looking for a job, I think...
I will slow down a lot.
Yes: it was also very late at night when I wrote that. Let's state it openly: that post had bad form - indeed.

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If you feel the need I'm always open for that, but don't know right now what else I could write.

I agree with all points made above (both by Pedrop and by vagueGM) ;)
Text can make it hard to see intentions and such. The conclusion I'm coming to from all this is that we all want to make it work. Which is great!

To be honest, I didn't mind the RP post that much. Even though there is something to be said about the way it came across, it served as a kind of summary of all previous posts (with Pedrop's vision of things). It was a big block of text though, as you both agreed :P
Could you maybe rewrite it as a list of events in bullet points? Then we can keep what we like, cut out parts we want to change and insert new bits until we get a starting situation everyone is happy with.

So something like
- Raf wants to leave because...
- Raf knows a ship that could be his ticket out
- Raf contacts Ronny to see if he can help
- Ronny is also looking for a way out, reason....

What do you think about that idea, vague?

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Speaking of changing things... If Lio really doesn't want to be on a stolen ship, any ideas on how we solve that?
Could it be a ship that we're allowed to take until we get a call to return it? Like somebody we know had it laying around and wasn't really using it.

Hmmm. The missing the promotion thing might be something to work with.


Gonna think about it.

Sure. If we think there is value in that.

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Simplest would just be to scrap that idea and start the game on a ship you own. Don't feel obliged to stick with this starting suggestion just because we have invested this amount of effort into it, we should not have some that till we had agreement from everyone (so it was only our own time we were wasting :).

The rest depends on what @Airshark would find acceptable for Lio. Maybe his Navy condone this, or even sent him to get it, but he can not do that as an active seaman, so he has to retire and find a spy and someone with contacts in a war-zone? Maybe this is why they did not promote him, to keep their support under the radar?
That's sorta what they imply about the 'free' Scout Ship, though I struggle to see why you would pay full repayment costs on such a ship if you might have to give it back at some point.

What If we stole the ship from 'a bad guy' a ship that is in the possession of the navy, but belonged to a criminal organization.

- A ship acquired by the Navy unrightfully
- Lio gets denied a promotion (again) and is pissed off: ''THAT'S IT, I QUIT!''
- someone else (PC) approaches Lio with the question: '' do you know of a ship nobody would miss if it got hmmm... lost''

Or is that too far fetched?

Quite doable... but it is a lot more complicated than it needs to be.

If you are stealing it from a criminal organisation there is no need to have the navy be involved, you can just take it from the crims.

If you want the navy to have the criminal ship then we can say it is in an impound lot rather than a Depot.

But you were in the navy, that means you used to fight the enemy and blow up their ships and kill their people, why not just steal a ship from the enemy? Your navy would not object to that, and would even congratulate you if you told your old friends.

Sure, though. If you want it to be your navy you are stealing from, we can say they took the ship unrightfully. Feel free to say how/if it is connected to your time in the navy or your lack of promotion, if you want.

The rest of it is... "hey, that's what I said." :)

Works for me :)

I thought we were taking a ship from the Navy Base. But it doesn't have to be.
I'll tweak the story why this is ok for Lio tomorrow.

Every kingdom has a navy, this is not your navy, it is the enemy navy (if we want it to be).

If this is ok for everyone. Works for me.

I also like the idea of the undercover special op.
This would give us a leader (could be homeplanet HQ)+ a reason to steal a specific ship + necessary resources to pull it off (the hacker)
Also we could have a goal for our first mission: return the ship.

Other option: the ship contains a hidden ''treasure'' . This doesn't have to be a thing of material value, maybe it's intel the navy wants. In this way, it might be possible to keep the ship after the first mission.

This is just something I was thinking about starting from your (vagueGM) idea how to work around Lio's conscience. If this stirs up the previous scenario to much. Ignore it 😁.

In short: Lio's on board with stealing a ship from a rival/criminal.

We can definitely say there is something on the ship that your navy wants. That you are sent in to get it for them.

This plan came about because we have a ship as the result of Raf's Benefits, so it is simplest if we get to keep the ship after your navy collect what they were after (saves us having to get another ship afterwards).

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We don't all have to share the same reason for doing the heist. Maybe Cat needs to flee this sector and this is her best route out; Raf has access to the codes to transfer control of a ship, and was planning on taking it anyway; and Ronny can have any reason, related to his spying and the situation with Cat or not, as we choose; and Lio uses those needs to worm his way into the team with the promise of some 'navy help in getting past the blockade' and a distraction?

Maybe Raf approaches Lio with the plan and he realises that it is an opportunity to get a MacGuffin his navy have been after for a while? We can work out the details if we like the framework.

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It sounds like we are bringing along an NPC hacker. You guys tell me if he is supplied by Lio's navy, or if you need to make contact with someone local.

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Are we also doing the 'damsel in distress' gambit? There are lots of people wanting to flee this civil war.

Damsel in distress was just me looking for a reason to push Lio into doing something he normally wouldn't. So for me, not necessary.

I'll give the others a chance to reply before the chunk of text gets to big. I'm speaking from experience 🤣

If you are all searching for a gentle way to tell me my idea sucks: don't worry 'bout hurting my feelings :-D

I'm good with Airshark's idea and vagueGM's additions to it. As mentioned before, Ronny can supply a hacker contact. It can be a remote person or an NPC we bring along. It might be good to have someone who can guard the ship while we're out doing things in town.

I think Pedrop's suggestion of how Raf is the one who gets the group together still works too.

As for how we get a ship and who we're getting/taking it from, that doesn't matter as much to Ronny. He just needs to get out. Preferably with people he can trust.

Excuse me... But "everyone is thinking your feelings will be hurt" role/job is already taken!

;) ;)
I'm very OK with your ideas.

I can be gentle while telling you your idea was fine, too? Can't I? :)

Cool. We can say that is what happened, unless we want it to be Lio's navy hacker, which is fine too. Say what you guys want. (We can intervue a few candidates if we want:)
Yep. Just say which you would each preffer.
That is true too. Is this another NPC you want us to create? If we want them to mainly be by the ship, we could maybe make an ex-military, with old injuries as an excuse to not wander far from the ship.
Yes, that still works.

Where? I did not mean to. The only places I see where that might be the case were questions starting with 'maybe'. What did I miss?