Ellri

Extragalactic Exploration Expedition: Survey Team II

So far, most of the crew isn't that set on actually doing the mission they've been charged with. There's at least 6-7 different things they're more interested in doing.

Stargate - Alliances

Yup. That was our point, Echo.

Echo said Unfortunately, very few people seem to care about doing much outside of the missions.

If people are railroaded into the missions, then they don't have chance to invent events. Leaving things unsolved not only IC but OoC will inspire unexpected plots. Set up events where you have no idea of what the result will be. Don't decide everything yourself, and you hook your players even more.

Of the players we know decently in here, we know they are all fully capable of crafting unexpected events. When everything becomes waiting around or otherwise utterly predictable, it gets very boring.

To give an example:
Right now, the RP is Earth vs. Lucian Alliance.
Or rather, to be precise: A perfectly unified Earth against a perfectly unified Lucian Alliance. Neither of those two exist in true SG lore. There are countless factions on Earth, each trying to be better than the others. The IOA, while it holds Earth interests on top, is a political beast of people fighting to favor their country over the others. Its not clean. The civilians fight to take control from the military, while the military tries to keep control. Where the civilians have advantage in not needing to follow the hierarchy, the military have advantage just because of that; they are excellent at making up a crew because they have a clear chain of command.

In a DSC-304 that isn't owned by any single nation, that should be even more visible. Sure, the military officer on top can keep (in this case her) subordinates from open conflict, but there might still be some conflict of interest. The civilians might want to gain more power. Scientists will want to have less military shackles, to have their own interests first and only do what the military wants when it is truly important. And scientists tend not to have the same regard for chain of command that military people have. Many of them even scorn it.

Same goes for the Lucian Alliance. Its not a single unified whole. Even back when Netan lived, the alliance fought within itself. It started out as a rough empire of criminal factions. Those factions later developed into clans of sorts. Like the invasion on Destiny in SG:U, two such clans were involved. They believed something valuable was on that ship. Thus they cooperated somewhat. Not all Alliance clans feel that way.

The Alliance hasn't had a single leader since Netan's (presumed) death. None of the various warlords that took over at the time of his fall have become powerful enough to control all the others. One result of this is that although the Lucian Alliance has many, many times the number of ships as the Tau'ri, they cannot use them to full effect, as they always have to keep a few eyes on each other. That is, if they're not openly fighting each other.

The there are the other factions, like the Free Jaffa and the Tok'ra. They too have their own interests. For the Free Jaffa, the politics are probably about as convoluted as those of the Lucian Alliance. While they're more unified, there are many styles of behavior. Not to mention the age-old conflicts they had against each other while serving different Goa'uld.

The Tok'ra on the other hand, are potentially the sole faction active that is the least divided. But their disadvantage is the lack of numbers. Their interests in these times would lie in building a society, hunting down the goa'uld and in gathering information. You don't stop a tradition of eons of espionage overnight. These interests don't overlap fully, so there's probably factions here too.

The lesson we're trying to give out here is this:
There are factions inside every faction in the Stargate Universe. So long as they have free will, people will have conflicts with each other, no matter if they are human, Jaffa, or something else. Only hive minds and true slaves are exempt from that. Don't imagine that a faction is cooperating fully as an integrated whole. Its not. It never is. There are probably even factions among the Nox. It might not be all that apparent, but they probably exist.

Finally: Don't try to hold and control every rope, Sep. Either you lose track of them and they slip away, or you cling too tightly and what they are attached to is incapable of moving.

Stargate - Alliances

Sep said the ready room is really just so I can grab the ground team together before I go

That, is the problem. That makes the ready room just another briefing room. Just presume you've got those you need and go.

Sep said Don't worry, you know me. I won't wait forever.

you tend to wait too long. Its not healthy for he RP to have such long waits all the time. You don't need to control all the time that the players are there.

When an RP moves too slowly, people find other RPs that engage more, and then their activity rate goes down even further in the current one. This is, as you're so fond of saying, Casual, not advanced. The pace you're moving at and the length of these briefing/ready/etcroom posts belongs in advanced.

Let the players loose, and they will reward you in the long run.

Stargate - Alliances

Sep... Just a minor observation...

Briefing rooms, prepping rooms, etc... They kill RPs. Not everyone involved need to post they're in there. Just presume that they are and go with that. This RP is good and doesn't need deadly slowdowns like that. Don't collab everything to gather people together. If it makes sense to someone that their character is present there, then he or she will make sure his/her character is there. Just push the plot ahead and make 'em catch up if you aren't sure they're there. It'll to Alliances good.

We may quarrel with ya, but we really don't want alliances to die.

World of Darkness (Boston)

Most intriguing character.

Advanced Roleplay - Posting

Because advanced RPs generally involve much more complex posts than say, casual, the requirements one should have are also much more complex. As said by others above, it can be anything from very frequently to weekly or slower, all depending on the RP story. Some RPs, like one we're in, has very slow post rate because there's four active factions in it (at least), and those coordinate internally before they post. The OoC is active, as is the IRC, so its not dead even when many days go between IC posts from anyone.

In some Advanced RPs one can even go through a several-week dry spot only to have it return to full activity later. But that's generally proportional to length of posts. Longer posts = wider gaps between posts permissible without danger.

The best system we've found is to have some means of OoC activity even when IC is dry. We're personally quite fond of the IRC, as that allows more direct contact than the OoC tab, but we will also use that, as it allows records in a way that IRC does not (without someone posting logs, that is)

World of Darkness (Boston)

we're waiting for more camarilla stuff, since our independent is visiting them.

Stargate - Alliances

Pretty sure that people who smoke frequently wouldn't pass the intense physical requirements of SG ground personnel. After all, the requirements for such are considerably higher than the requirements for regular military in most nations.

Extragalactic Exploration Expedition: Survey Team II

Foster... The only one even remotely aware of scalegrowth is Morven, and nanotech medical care has evolved so far that its essentially considered to be perfect. The only ones who would even care about medical care of a nature not based on nanites would be extremely eccentric historians. Its similar in many ways to how many practice the arts of making flint tools in our society.

The ambiguous 'everyone' knows that nanites can cure every sort of injury/illness known to man as well as most of those unknown to man. People don't get curious about ailments... They simply take a nanite injection to fix it and go on with their life. No need to worry about it.

As for Morven's case... The changes to her body, while they are to a large degree physical, are also biochemical. As the changes occur, her mindset is similarly changed. Whatever it is that is changing her, it is also changing her so that she thinks nothing is odd about it. A bit like brainwashing, really. Its rewriting her entire DNA, one segment at a time, but in a fashion that makes it so that the nanites cannot find anything wrong, simply because there's discrepancy in it. When one segment is changed, it is done so in every cell that has record of that particular piece. Or so we understand our own concept, at least. The alien thingamajig isn't explaining everything to us yet.
DNA is supposed to be static, and the changes to her DNA are subtle, so records are somehow being updated to match her current DNA.

Cooking, on the other hand, that can actually make sense to have someone on board with skill at. No matter how you can make a gray gooey paste (or stuff like that) provide the nutrients needed, we can't readily see a day when humans wouldn't enjoy "real" food.

World of Darkness (Boston)

We seem to recall a reference to Brujah regularly shooting each other... When they play 9mm Tag