The only memory I have of Anomaly was reports. That kind of made me not like the game.
If anybody makes a Trek game, please watch any of the Trek shows and/or movies and count the number of times people were seen doing the thrilling tasks of filling out and filing reports. And discussing the contents of said reports with their superiors. See how this might apply to a game.
What happened to Trek?
Well, a lot of things.
Star Trek: Enterprise I think really tried to do a lot for the franchise to revitalize it. But the cultural atmosphere of America doomed it. 9/11, the housing market, collapsing economies, Neoconservative paranoia, and social justice warriors stopped the whole positive future, let us use science and innovation in order to solve problems. Science Fiction is no longer popular because the future is no longer important for the majority of people. Kind of hard to do that when one is living paycheck to paycheck. This is why, I feel, shit like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and Zombie dramas are more popular. Political turmoil, the need to break social norms, and the fear of becoming well...meaningless...are hot topic.
I know I am not going to get a lot of +++++ for this but...this is Big Daddy Amin keeping shit real, aight?
Look at what is in the news today? With the exception of ISIS/Daesh (which doesn't get a lot of news coverage because the average American thinks Damascus is a city from Lord of the Rings), the majority is social justice: Planned Parenthood, women's liberation, gay marriage, etc.
I don't mean to insult the women in this forum but women are typically risk averse. They don't like to take chances (with the exception of a few cases like Tereshkova and Ride).
I speak as a man. We have all this fucking testosterone. Men didn't dominate the aerospace industry because they are smarter than women. Hell, my wife is light-years smarter than I am. But sometimes I wish women could just get in our bodies (because we all love getting in your bodies! 
) and feel what we feel. When your blood is full of testosterone sometimes all you want to do is fuck, fight, or....build a rocket and go to the Mars.
The new NASA is all about diversity roleplaying. But this is the old NASA.
This is a scene from Apollo 13. Look at the characters. NASA engineers who are men. White. Possibly Christian. Most of them have Southern accents. And they probably are monogamous heterosexuals. And OH MY GAWD they are smoking! It is a 21st century NIGHTMARE! TRIGGERING!
Our priorities aren't about space exploration because well...we have other priorities as a nation. This can be seen nowadays with ideals of beauty now (my grandpa probably would have fucked someone like Joan Halloway from Mad Men long before he'd pork Gina Carano) I'm not saying that is bad. But we have regressed prior to the sixties with manned space exploration.
So that is why Trek ain't popular.
With that said, would I rejoice in a Trek game? Yeah. But please, don't make it like Anomaly or Gamma One. While they had nice concepts, I am not in favor of Starfleet Bureaucrat Mediocrity MUX. And I don't want to play some lower level ensign who fills out TPS reports and I cannot reach LTCMDR unless I know the game's founder.
Yeah that sums up some of my experience in Stark Trek games at least Anomaly and Gamma briefly. We need games without elaborate REport systems.
Anomaly and Gamma really tried. It really did. And it had an amazing plot. Scenes went on too long for my taste (7-9 hours. Oops! There goes my Saturday evening...), and some of the admins, I felt, needed a cross so that whenever they felt so damned unappreciated they could nail themselves up there. This could all be ignored if the reports system didn't hamstring roleplay. After doing a mission I kind of got tired having the admin's charbit tell me I forgot to format my report the correct way or whateverthefuck. What was the point of these reports? How did they enhance roleplay? We never used them that much in roleplay I don't think other than paper pushing RP.
Why is my prentendy funtime dominated by fucking reports? Don't I get this from my job already in the meatspace.*
That was it for me as well. I push enough fucking paper in my day to day life. I don't want to RP pushing paper practically to the exclusion of all else. Anomaly drove me off, then I tried Gamma and played one scene, was asked for a report, never logged in again.
Having played on G1 myself (along with a host of other ST MU's) I know what the 'intent' behind reports was about but agree it never carried itself out well.
Also, @Big-Daddy-Amin - I agree with your assessment of what happened socially to ST, and like my original post said I think the 'exploration & risk' of The Martian stuck a nerve of going out there.
So with that in mind; from a 'design' standpoint (and this may need a new thread outside of advertisements) how does one approach a Trek Game. I don't mean setting/etc but is there a means to have a Trek Game that is not completely dependent on 24/7 staff 'running' things?
Given that Starfleet is a large organization I don't see the problem with reports in theory.
However if the expect he player to write more the a paragraph summary then that is horrible.
True the report the character writes off screen should be substantial, but expecting the player to put a lot of effort in is a bit out there.
I totally understood the purpose the reports served. They were designed so keep some sort of record of what was going on ICly that PCs could refer to, which you need to do on a game that's supposed to have some kind of structure, if you want to keep RP flowing. They seemed to become more an impediment than an assist to RP, though.
I'm not sure there's a "good" way to do this. Maybe make it the responsibility of the ST to just put up a quickie bbpost with a log and hooks for further action, though telling STs to do more is never the best solution.
In any case, an Anomaly-style game where the focus was actually on characters and crew adventures rather than space systems would be something I'd love, it just doesn't seem like anything anyone has the impetus to do right now (I think these games, by necessity, require a committed and active ST presence). Maybe again someday.
I also believe the inception of the Wiki for record keeping alleviates some of that 'report' burden.
@Songtress said:
I miss Anomaly Trek MUSH/MUX. ( ATM), I mean I played Zevarin a Betazoid and I loved her. I missed Anomaly so much it was exciting and different. A ship based game, like Voyager.
Anomaly was not ship based, it was station based. You're thinking of Gamma One. Which also eventually went to station based.
ITYM "reports-based". And "started as" for that matter.
I think Trek games could benefit from looking at Ashen Stars' implementation of the GUMSHOE system for missions. Basically, a Star Trek mission is a series of pieces of information with various crew members deploying various items or skills to obtain them, and throughout, the meat of the show is crew members arguing over what to do from their various points of view and from various moral values. How much damage a phaser does just doesn't ever matter - they're insanely deadly when they need to be, and useless against Our Superior Planning And Technology when they need to be.
I think most settings could benefit from a similar departure from hoping that a combat and skills use model will produce scenes or a story that are interesting. It's all about the characters, and their personalities, and their choices (and subsequents). It is not interesting, beyond a gambling point of view, that you rolled a 6 on a D8.
I have to disagree, I do think story is very important but to my tastes it needs to be balanced with a game aspect as well. While I am a big fan of rules light systems I am not of Gumshoe because it feels too predetermined, I don't want to know what that I will solve the mystery. To me there has to be the chance of failure or why bother playing?
If I want to read star trek fan fic I can find that pretty easy or read one of the dozens of novels produced over the years. To draw me into playing a game there need to be some game aspects to it.
Gumshoe doesn't guarantee you will solve anything. It guarantees you won't miss the necessary clues to enable you to make decision on your courses of action, be that to solve a mystery, or expanding the model, approach the negotiations table with the most pertinent facts, or decide on how to best wage a war given the current situations.
The particular model GUMSHOE has breaks the typical rolls run everything approach many games have. This "universal approach" isn't, there are many many ways players and GMs modify that approach to suit the actual results they want. Allowing only one roll or many, one chance to find info, or many, requiring rolls to interpret something or not, allowing player decisions to overrule (or not) what the dice say, the ways to customize a roll are endless. Many weigh the results towards many rolls to fail, or many rolls to succeed without realizing it.
If you are trying to break the usual way the game system runs things, you usually look at what the players do that is FUN, engaging, and that enables RP at whatever level (from in character acting through narrative to basic table talk description of game mechanics choices) and focus on getting to that, and making IT more important.
If you want a pure sim, you will end up with the muddy results of reality, and a lot of dead ends and unresolved events, and you'll get to play through every unrewarding hour of it. I love nodding to those realities, but I want to get to the stuff that is interesting for my players and I.
There is a page in Powers: Who Killed RetroGirl? that shows frame after frame of legwork. It gives the nod, then the story moves on. That's what Gumshoe is trying to, except instead of summary of many non-interesting but necessary events, it's about moving quickly through the parts that won't lead to interesting stuff in a game system.
Imagine making an alertness check, a perception check, and empathy checks every single turn of a game to represent your actual perception of everything. Could lead to awesome moments, but most likely it leads to a million rolls we fear are needed, but never go anywhere. Best to roll when the situation is complex, more complex than it appears, or MAYBE when it might highlight your characters shortcomings (like they hate the Irish).
There is a big difference between wanting a sim and wanting a game with unknown elements, I have never been a fan of pure simulation systems. But knowing my character will find everything important in the scene, which Gumshoe does, true there might be complications and such but the system is set up so you find the clues even at cost lessens my desire to play through the scene. It does in table top and I can't imagine it not on line. If I know the important result, aka i find the clues, then why bother with the rest of the scene?
Also while the system in Gumshoe does not guarantee solving a mystery unless the GMs you have played with are vastly superior to the ones I have know all the clue pretty much does that. I like my table top GM but he is not better at crafting complex mysteries then authors who do it for a living nor should he be, but since I have been reading those novels since childhood knowing all the clues leads to knowing the solutions quickly. I rarely knwo then end of a mystery novel in advance but when dealing with another non-professional it is usually pretty obvious where it is going.
Never read Powers, though that is mainly cause I can't handle Bendis writing.
I get where you are coming from. I'm not talking about you literally, just a pattern in games in general. However, I will ask you this: would you be fine if you went in to a investigation scene, rolled crappy, and then either the GM told you flat out that the investigation will bear no fruit unless something false in your lap in a few weeks, or even playing through all the dead ends etc and not getting any further? And that was that? Would you expect several more chances for whatever reason, like another crime in the string, or someone offering info? Or no?
I have been the person running mysteries, and trust me I am not an author, nor am I perfect at all. I did this in Champions (superheroes, often with wacky powers and high skills), Deadlands (often little character skill, just player intelligence or imagination), GURPS (player skills and player intelligence).
In all cases, one major lesson was this: if you spend a lot of time on something, and the players never see it, it's as if it was never there.
I often relied on the noir/hardboiled detective approach which was that persistence would inevitably get one of the hidden actors to act against you directly, and as player characters you were heroic enough to survive and learn critical info. Being super heroes really helped with that. I also made experts available, and had the players direct their efforts the same as they would direct their own: was there anything in particular they should look for,m or a theory they should try to prove/disprove?
In the end, I probably let the players succeed by giving many chances often. If they repeatedly did terrible with rolls, their experts, and their as player thoughts, that could lead to a mystery. This is how the NPC they were meant to protect eventually was subverted to join Grendel and his syndicate and help cover up that telepaths were reading various critical minds and not controlling but benefiting from economic decisions in the realm of billions a year. The heroes utterly failed and that stood as a mystery until the post game rundown of what was going on.
Apologies to the Star Trek topic. Another way to look at this is how often did Star Trek character fail to spot something, then fail to note something due to that failure, then when confronted with the consequences then failed to be of use, and THAT all was the focus of the episode? Usually we focus on who will be an active part of the storyline, right? Not the almost was's.
@Misadventure said:
would you be fine if you went in to a investigation scene, rolled crappy, and then either the GM told you flat out that the investigation will bear no fruit unless something false in your lap in a few weeks, or even playing through all the dead ends etc and not getting any further? And that was that? Would you expect several more chances for whatever reason, like another crime in the string, or someone offering info? Or no?
I would be fine with playing out some dead ends then having another change with the next crime scene in the mystery.Most game style mysteries i have seen regardless of system had more then one incident in furtherance of the antagonists objective. Just like the PC don't need to win every fight they don't need to solve every thing at the first attempt. A good GM has a backup plan and a way to get player back on track if the first attempt is not successful. Look at the mystery genre, sometimes the protagonists miss things and don't realize it until later.
To be making a bad investigation roll and having it mean OK you never solve the mystery is like the oh you blew your disarm trap roll everyone dies. Character should have failures and successes and grow from them. Maybe blowing the first roll means the villain has more time to plan or had more men or guns when the times comes to face him that is fine tow there are lots of ways to have failure add to the story rather then take away from it. Maybe by blowing an investigation roll I chase a bad lead to a biker bar and make and enemy there to add a sub plot. or something.
I have been the person running mysteries, and trust me I am not an author, nor am I perfect at all. I did this in Champions (superheroes, often with wacky powers and high skills), Deadlands (often little character skill, just player intelligence or imagination), GURPS (player skills and player intelligence).
In all cases, one major lesson was this: if you spend a lot of time on something, and the players never see it, it's as if it was never there.
This is unfortunately true. I know from experience. I just finished running a campaign where the PCs by dumb luck and choice managed to completely avoid one of the subplots I really wanted to include so a lot of prep time was wasted on my end. Yeah it kinda sucks but in one of the hazards inherent in running a game.
I often relied on the noir/hardboiled detective approach which was that persistence would inevitably get one of the hidden actors to act against you directly, and as player characters you were heroic enough to survive and learn critical info. Being super heroes really helped with that. I also made experts available, and had the players direct their efforts the same as they would direct their own: was there anything in particular they should look for,m or a theory they should try to prove/disprove?
I use this tactic a lot myself to nudge player back towards the right track of things.
In the end, I probably let the players succeed by giving many chances often.
I think we are closer to being like minds then it appears, I always give multiple chances and opportunities for players to succeed and do my best to have it so that when loses occur they add to the story rather then take away. For example in the campaign I just finished the PCs totally blew the initial plot arc, both through rolls and decisions. It could have been very justifiable that it would end with then getting killed and everyone leaving unhappy. Instead I had the PC noble lose his title and some other non permanent losses and a it gave the character added motivation and he had the opportunity later to regain his position which he was successful at.
To me when running something I always liked the rule of only have the players roll when both success and failure are interesting, which to be also imply a related one, as the gm if I have the players roll it is my job ot make sure that the success or failure that results leads to interesting things.
to try to bring this back to Star Trek somewhat, look at the shows there is frequently points where the characters are stymied and suffer setback but then by the end of the episode or plot arc had their moments of redemption to save the day.
And I honestly have no clue what system I would use to simulate the feel of Star Trek in a game.
I completely support the idea that a failure, whether from a roll, player decisions, or plain old GM fiat (there isn't enough to make that clue out YET) shouldn't necessarily be the end. I have had good success with taking a failure and using it to add a dimension to later success, often including that aha moment of what it was that caused the failure before, whether it was chance, poor skill, or lack of information to make the important details stand out.
In a way, as long as you encountered Detail A, whether you succeed in revealing subsequents A1, A2 and A3 right then, or later doesn't always matter. But the act of looking at Detail A does, and hopefully that give the characters, and their players, a direction to think in.
In a "logical sense", it sounds like your approach is let them roll until they succeed, and once that isn't viable, have a fallback plan that goes into definite failure but still leads somewhere. I /think/ that this is much more compatible with the GumShoe idea if it was packaged right, than your think.
I really think the GUMSHOE approach (for those who don't know,. you have 0-10 points in 30+ forensic skills, and if you want to be the one to find a clue in a situation, you spend a point and find it. What it means may or may not be included, but what it means in context of the whole mystery is usually left to the players to work out) is about spotlight sharing. It's my turn to show I can find a difficult fingerprint anomaly. Otherwise the team could just have an even spread across all things, and the GM could turn it into an OOC guessing game by having more clues than they have points in a give forensic skill, and if the players don't choose to spend when important, too bad.
So, I think you could really read it as "Chararacters never miss a chance to interpret a clue, though they may fail if they are missing another clue to add context to the first." After that, its about players talking it out, and giving skill rolls to understand what a clue means, or where it leads.
Specific example: Locked doors and windows, no finger/glove prints on anything. I know that a wall crawling spider themed villain was in the room, and stuck to the ceiling, lowered themselves down on a web, and did X, then went up and crawled through the ceiling panels the same way they came in. IF a player asked, they could quickly find clues on the ceiling. If they had no reason to look, their rolls would just confirm the details. No nothing was cleaned off, there are no impressions on the carpet even. A remote drone would have disturbed the papers on the desks, etc. Later on, finding some web, or whatever, they might think to check the ceiling. I might even allow that with new info their skill could suggest check the ceiling.
Framing is important, especially when the characters are supposed to be talented pros like on Star Trek. (This is where limiting margin of success by how many points were in a skill made characters who invested in a skill feel like pros).
The only memory I have of Anomaly was reports. That kind of made me not like the game.
If anybody makes a Trek game, please watch any of the Trek shows and/or movies and count the number of times people were seen doing the thrilling tasks of filling out and filing reports. And discussing the contents of said reports with their superiors. See how this might apply to a game.
