Session Zero

As for Nova Blue's curiousity about Gloop, let's tie that in with Nova Blue coming to Gloop to talk about feelings. Since that seems like a positive relationship, let's go with the +1 Trust option for Gloop's question: he believes her interest to be genuine intellectual curiousity.

Nice. Sounds like we've found people to fill in the blanks for each of the Connection questions now. I'm going to go through this thread, and add all the names to a post that I'll put in the Crew/Character Thread for easy reference, and for us all to go and check before we move on with Session Zero (we're almost there...)

I've edited the Crew/Characters thread to include the results of the discussion about connections - here it is. If there's anything in there that I got wrong or needs changing, please let me know

The one last thing remaining is for Hank "The Tank" Harper/The Warrior/@JoshuaMabry

"1. Despite their lack of fighting skills, John Doe/The Normal/@htechJ has helped the crew out of some dangerous situations. Has that earned your respect (+1 Trust) or do you dislike their methods (-1 Trust)?"

Please let us know whether it's the +1 or the -1 Trust option.

A Recent Adventure
In summary

Before starting the game proper, we'll describe together a recent dramatic event experienced by the whole crew.

So! Please share thoughts/answers on the questions highlighed in red below - I'd like everyone to have input to what we come up with here.

---
In a bit more detail

To bring in a bit of collaborative world-building (the game-as-written has lots more of that in the pre-game set-up that we've skipped due to it being presumably very slow via PbP), I'd like to try the A Recent Adventure element from the rules (p45).

For this, we'll describe together a recent dramatic event at which all PCs were present.

After that, we'll assign PC names at 'random' (we'll use the alphabetical order of your PC names i.e. Gloop, Hank, John, Nova - I'll roll a d4 to decide which of you we'll assign to the first statement) to the blanks in the a set of statements describing the event. This will impact your Trust score AND we'll build some lore as you share details about the statements associated with your PC. We'll collect those together in a single post in the Crew/Characters thread for reference.

The questions we'll start off answering together are:

A. We ended up in a dangerous situation and our ship was badly damaged. What happened? What was damaged?

B. Our actions impressed or displeased someone with a lot of power and influence. Who? Why?

C. How long ago was this event? It should be within the last two weeks.

---
For reference – once we have agreed a general answer for the above questions, we'll work with the following set of statements:

1. XXXX tried to avoid the danger but failed (-1 Trust)
2. XXXX (+1 Trust) and XXXX (+1 Trust) teamed up and got something vital back online.
3. XXXX lost something that they deeply cared about.
4. XXXX (+1 Trust) saved XXXX's life (-1 Trust) but neither has talked about it since.
5. XXXX impressed us with their courage (+1 Trust)
6. XXXX (-1 Trust) was unaccounted for during the most dangerous moments.
7. XXXX nearly left the crew because of this incident (-1 Trust)
8. XXXX holds secret suspicions about the event

Sincere question: Won't that be slower / less fun / more complicated than simply playing the adventure?

When playing 'live' I've seen it take maybe 5 minutes - so it's much less time than RPing it. But maybe with PbP it ends up taking ages.

Was including it as a way to hopefully relatively quickly get input from everyone in the initial situation - and perhaps to use what you come up with as some inspiration for the scenario - but if you'd rather just start playing, we can also do that.

In my experience, players in PbP tend to be more "passive" when it comes to open-ended, undirected questions (i.e. anyone can answer). We receive much less feedback from each other, and we can't tell if the other players liked the idea and wants to contribute or improve a scene or decision. So we stay quiet.

My suggestion would be for you to "answer" with an opening plot related to this question: "We ended up in a dangerous situation and our ship was badly damaged. What happened? What was damaged?" and we would take it from your answer as part of an adventure, by describing only our own character actions.

But I do not know. If anyone wants to answer the red questions, I can contribute.

PS: Normally I would wait quietly, but since it's your first PbP game, I wanted to bring this discussion to the group.

@htech really appreciate you sharing your experience like this for my first time trying this out!

And, yes, I'll do exactly that. I'll answer the red questions i.e. set up a scenario for you all, and then ask each of you to just give individual input on the indivdual statements at the end of that post, just the ones mentioning your character.

That sounds like a good compromise between speed and getting a bit more involvement in lore-building from everyone.

Thanks again!

I'm travelling the rest of this week to deliver a course - doing the training is pretty tiring and time-consuming so I might be too tired to post much

OR

I'll be delighted to have something else to think about than training and will be all post post post heh

What I've done / experienced with these world-building type of things in PbP is the GM assigns the different questions to specific people. The first person answers the first question, then other players can offer suggested changes. Then GM closes that question and prompts the next player to answer their question, and so on. It provides some structure and direction without completing abandonthe process.

It can take a little while, but I've always enjoyed the process.

At the suggestion of @htech and @timplausible, I've adapted the "A Recent Adventure" tool to bring a bit more direction to your contributions to the story of something that you recently experienced together.

I've come up with such a situation, such an incident, below. After my description of the incident, there are 8 questions I'd like to hear your answers on.

The Incident
You're currently on a job smuggling a herd of Jasmian mega-cows from the Anisor system to the Razaar system. You've got 100 head of cows in your cargo bay, they make a lot of mess, and need a lot of looking after, but they should also net you a very tasty profit from the cartel of livestock farmers you're delivering them to.

The trip is a long one - about 30 lightyears in total, and you need to make about 6 inter-system jumps from start to finish (you only have fuel for about 10 lightyears of fuel at a time, and there isn't even a vaguely straight line you can take between Anisor and Razaar.

To be able to jump safely, you need to travel to the distance of about 4 light-hours from a star the size of Sol - and your in-system impulse drive can move you at around 1 light-hour/day - with refuelling, and then 4 days to/from safe jump distance, you need about 10 days per jump - so this trip is about 60 days of travel.

While making your way in-system to refuel before your previous jump, about half of the way out to safe jump distance, you detected an SOS beacon calling for help. The crew aren't heartless - and wouldn't want to leave people in need if they could help them. But also, maybe when you arrive there's no one left to help and some tasty salvage is to be had. But also, maybe it's a trap... So you decided to go and take a cautious look at the source of the beacon.

You got within hailing distance of the beacon but couldn't raise anyone. You could see that the beacon was coming from a wrecked spaceship.

All seemed safe as you approached the wrecked ship - but as you prepared to dock, a net of energy sparked off from the derelict and covered the surface of The Ballerina - and started to knock out ship systems seemingly at random. First up, it disabled the ship's navigation system. Then a few minutes later the ship's heating circuits switched off. And then more and more systems dropped offline.

The crew desperately tried to free the ship from the net, fought to re-start the lost systems. They went outside the ship to try and sever the net, they tried to get inside the derelict to see if there were something inside it controlling the net that could be switched off...

Eventually the crew managed to free The Ballerina - but it was touch-and-go whether they'd be able to survive this...

The Questions
Please answer the questions that mention your PC below:

1. @htech/John Doe tried to avoid grave danger but failed (-1 Trust).
What danger? How and/or why did they fail?

2. @RageRed/Nova Blue (+1 Trust) and @JoshuaMabry/Hank (+1 Trust) teamed up and got something vital back online.
What did they get back online?

3. @timplausible/Gloop lost something that they deeply cared about.
What did they loose? How?

4. @htech/John Doe (+1 Trust) saved @RageRed/Nova Blue's life (-1 Trust) but neither has talked about it since.
What was endangering @RageRed/Nova Blue's life? How did @htech/John Doe save them? Why haven't they talked about it since it happened?

5. @JoshuaMabry/Hank impressed us with their courage (+1 Trust).
What did they do that impressed us?

6. @timplausible/Gloop (-1 Trust) was unaccounted for during the most dangerous moments.
Where were they? What were the most dangerous moments?

7. @htech/John Doe nearly left the crew because of this incident (-1 Trust).
What part of the incident made them want to leave the crew? Why did they, in the end, decide to stay with the crew?

8. @RageRed/Nova Blue holds secret suspicions about the event.
About what? About whom?

Love it :) Thank you, @RageRed!

If we go with the war Hank fought in, it's "The Republic."

You are not the plucky hero, the Alliance is not some evil empire, and this is not the grand arena.

3. @timplausible/Gloop lost something that they deeply cared about.
What did they loose? How?

Up until this event, Gloop had a space/environment suit from his homeworld. It was made with high-tech materials allowing it to strecth and reshape along with Gloop's body. The suit was damaged during the event and cannot be repaired outside his homeworld. Now he has to use humanoid suits like the rest of the crew.

6. @timplausible/Gloop (-1 Trust) was unaccounted for during the most dangerous moments. Where were they? What were the most dangerous moments?

Gloop was one of the crewmembers that went outside to shut off the net. There was some disagreement about whether the net could be deactivated from the outside or whether it would be necessary to go inside the ship. Gloop said he thought inside was the best bet. The team found an external hatch, but couldn't open it all the way. Only Gloop could fit through. After he went in, the team lost contact with him. The crew on the outside ended up disabling the net. When Gloop reestablished contact, he said something had attacked him an torn his suit, but he didn't know what. A search of the other ship did not find anything that might have attacked him. Some on the crew think Gloop isn't being honest about what happened.

5. After helping Nova Blue keep the ship from exploding in a methane fueled fireball, Hank was the first out the airlock to try cutting the net off of the ship. He was already hard at work when Gloop joined him. All of a sudden, Gloop took a misstep and went spinning away from both The Ballerina and the derelict. Hank launched himself out into the black and retrieved Gloop, in the process discovering the derelict's escape hatch.

Thanks everyone! I'll compile your answers to the "A Recent Adventure" questions, post that in the Crew/Characters thread, and let you know the changes to Trust scores - and then we're good to go with the first scene.

The one last thing remaining is for Hank "The Tank" Harper/The Warrior/@JoshuaMabry

"1. Despite their lack of fighting skills, John Doe/The Normal/@htechJ has helped the crew out of some dangerous situations. Has that earned your respect (+1 Trust) or do you dislike their methods (-1 Trust)?"

Please let us know, @JoshuaMabry, whether it's the +1 or the -1 Trust option.

John has earned Hank's respect. Getting the job done is more important than the method by which you do it.

Thanks @JoshuaMabry