I'm distressed about the distress!

Hey guys, came down with a bit of a bug but on the mend. Will try to catch up over the weekend.

I felt like MacLearen needed a break after everything that's happened to him, so it was the biobed's turn.  :D  Hope you're feeling better, GM.

Was feeling better yesterday but now have a fever and one of the kids is sick too…

:(

Whew.... an eventful maiden voyage so far...

I've noticed something about the game and want to share my thoughts with the crew.

With any game / system every player needs to have something to do, but, on a Federation starship, every mission doesn’t involve heroic, crisis averting activity for all key members of the crew.

Consider a typical Star Trek episode, two or three senior officers are the focus of the show. At a few points during an episode, a couple others might swing by for a few lines of technobabble but then disappear again until they are the focus of a future episode.

That kind of formula works for TV but will kill a game like this... all in all, the ship's doctor doesn't have much to do 'on screen' while there is a visiting dignitary heading to an important diplomatic mission, the tactical officer is probably sitting out the important research into a unique nebula and the Captain can only order the chief engineer to re-calibrate the warp coils to prevent a breach so many times before it gets a bit old...

So to keep the game engaging for everyone, it will seem a bit frenetic from a wider ship-perspective; it sure has as we approach the first 500 posts in the game.  My advice: suspend disbelief, jump into plot lines you like, avoid those you don’t.

Have fun with it and feel free to send NPCs in your department off to do stuff you don’t want to play directly.

On a similar note - I'll be adding the concept of a "mission clock" in a thread that summarizes ongoing missions to help PCs understand how things are unfolding on main story arcs and hopefully show the way to resolution.

The story so far will also be summarized in the mission clock thread so you don't need to worry so much about missing a critical piece of information in a wayward post from last week.

@Kotar, @Iren, @Sirin

Looking back, Kotar has 1 Hold from Perform a Scan, Iren has 1 Hold from Perform a Scan and Sirin should have been given at least 1 Hold for the Perform a Scan in the Shuttlebay.  On top of that, whoever rolls next to solve the worm problem gets +1 to the roll after Iren's Insgithful Analysis.

That's plenty to solve the immediate problem of secondary systems failing and cleaning up the remnants of the worm. Between the three of you, feel free to post how you work together to solve the problem.

Valéria’s conversation with Impela is indicative of a growing philosophical divide in the Federation. On one hand, there are those that believe the foundational principles of a democratic Federation must be upheld, even in the face of the Borg. On the other hand, there are those who have been so traumatized by the events at Wolf 359 that a ‘by any means necessary’ mentality is developing.

Oddly, those in open rebellion against the Federation for the appeasement policies toward the Cardassians fall in the former camp…

Should be a fun ride…

Sabotage mission summary updated.

Going off grid this coming week. I will post when I get back.

In reply to Kotar Krenn Sogh (msg # 143):

Turns out I was off the grid a bit too. Busy week... looking forward to getting some posts up over the long weekend.

Looking at bumping the distress call forward a bit now that the immediate danger of system wide failures has been taken care of.

The Sabotage story line is still playing our with the Doctor investigating Ensign Yu's suspicious activities, Sirin repairing Mockingbird and Iren reverse engineering the worm to create a worm-hunting phage.

That leaves the Captain, Valeria and Kotar ready to play the bridge crew action for the distress call.  Our First officer has asked for a pause while she reconsiders playing the game, but I can take over that PC for now.

Posts coming up in the next day or so... if you want to do something a little bit different, just let me know.

Hi crew. Tough week staying on top of things IRL and sorry I didn't get around to freshening up the threads. Hopefully things are more predictable this week.

Hope things are going better for you now!  :)

Despite going through them like Spinal Tap goes through drummers, can we get a new XO?

It can't just be the Red Shirt Curse, since we've only had one Captain all this time.  Maybe we're all just too difficult for XOs to wrangle...

Are we still on?

Well, I'm still here.  You can't get rid of me that easily.  ;)

Finally a few free moments to catch up a bit. Should update all the active threads today.

In reply to Captain Tleera (msg # 148):

She asked for some time to reconsider and with my time table being a bit erratic recently, I'll leave things as they are for now.

In reply to Starfleet (msg # 153):

Copy that!

Not sure if Sirin can go off to help with the worm given that there's a red alert going on. Would that be appropriate?

Not really. We're at red alert and the Captain made the announcement to action stations. But she's likely be amenable to it if you asked and came right back when the shooting started (there's always shooting and screaming and dying).

@Sirin - just leave some Ensign around on the bridge to do all the screaming and dying...

Another rough week IRL and I'm working through the weekend.

Will try to catch up... feel free to put gum in each others hair and run with scissors if I can't be around to supervise!