(no subject)

[active_apathy]

A secret project is afoot! Well... partly secret. Now, for this Secret Project to work, I'm going to need a little bit of information from you, the people who read my entries. So, go and Google for a reading speed test, take it, and tell me:

[Poll #552089]

The sooner I get this information, the sooner I can start posting bits of the Secret Project, making it rather less secret and rather more fun. liadlaith, lesslikeyou and daphyn, I have electronic evidence of your excitement over the Secret Project. If you don't answer, I'm going to tickle you mercilessly.

And now that we've gotten past that bit, I have some non-sneaky research. Everyone who was interested in <lj-rp> seems to rather like sci-fi, and FATE came out rather a bit ahead of everything else. Now comes the time to find out just what kind of sci-fi you'd like, and what other genres you might be interested in throwing in with it. There's no poll for that bit, just a bit of a conversation in comments.

Comments

[ryttu3k.livejournal.com]

928. YEAH BABY. And 82% comprehension - could be better, I missed two questions. Oh well.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

And that explains how you read the Big Brother diary entries without missing any of the slashy subtext.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

430, and 100% comprehension, although it would have been worse if it wasn't multiple choice. But I read a LOT, and have since primary school.

Re: Teh Sciffy RP, I think the options are:

Humans On Strange Planet
-With Sentient Aliens
-With weird/dangerous Non-Sentient Aliens
-Sentient Aliens that we don't know are sentient
Human Empire
-Rebels
-Invasion
Alien Empire
-Human Rebels
-Human First Contact
On Earth
-Alien First Contact and/or Invasion
-Mind Powers or Mutants of some kind
-Impending Doom eg asteroid or global warming

I think that covers everything, some-one add anything I've missed. I'm personally partial to global warming, seas rising, etc, because most Sciffy RPs are set in Space and some things have been over-done. Or mutants, mutants are always cool, although they've been done too.

[ryttu3k.livejournal.com]

*bows* And how I managed to read the entire Lord Of The Rings, uh, trilogy in thirteen hours?

[liadlaith.livejournal.com]

Although the offer of being tickled is tempting, I took the test and got 266 wpm. It would appear I am the slowest reader EVAR.

Oh the shame.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I'm not terribly good at aliens. That said, with suitably creative players that isn't too much of a hindrance; players tend to come up with all kinds of wonderful little thoughts that can be selectively harvested, and FATE is perfect for ignoring details and specifics.

I was thinking some kind of powery-type thing in any setting could probably work; again, that's the kind of thing that FATE does really nicely.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

266 is above average, and people read slower on their shiny computer screens. It's really not that bad.

I could just tickle you anyway, I suppose. :)

[one-bullet-left.livejournal.com]

...sigh. Perhaps this is not the time to admit that when I wasn't trying to hurry, my score was 179 wpm? And when I WAS trying to hurry, it was only 300 wpm? I am not worthy. *sulk* Mind you, I read much more slowly onscreen than I do on paper because the glare bothers me. By the same token, I read much more quickly on low-quality, dull paper than I do on bright white glossy paper.

And if I'm reading something that facinates me, I read a LOT faster than something I have to struggle to concentrate on, like a dry, statistics-loaded bit of babble about reading speeds. *whistles*

Anyway. I gave you my score as that stupid thing dictated. Bah. My pride is more hurt than it should be by this. Stupid thing calling ME a merely AVERAGE reader...

...okay, I'm done.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

You are worthy, so none of that. Not to mention that speed is further affected by whether it's a CRT or LCD monitor, monitor settings (esp. brightness and contrast), the background, the text colour, the text formatting, the font face (esp. serif vs sans-serif font), font weight (bold text is harder to read), column width and text alignment (justified is best, flush left next) all play their little part.

If you want to, you can try again with paper and a clock*, and then change your answer to how fast you read things that interest you. Or you could try a different online one, since they tend to give different results.

*There's two fairly easy ways to go about this. One is to time how long it takes to read a page in a book, then counting up the words and dividing to find words per minute. The other is to time a minute (or more, for a more accurate result), take note of start and end points, and then count all the words.

[liadlaith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but everyone else is better'n me. Wah!

people read slower on their shiny computer screens.

True - and I wasn't doing my sneaky trick of highlighting the text to keep my eye on the line.

Maybe if you tickled me I'd feel better ; )

[one-bullet-left.livejournal.com]

500. That's with squinty, been-up-too long, no-glasses eyes, but dammit, it's a better score than on the computer. So ha. I still maintain that I usually read a lot faster than that, but I'm not about to mess with it.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Ha indeed! It'll be posted here, so it should be nice and readable.

And I'll try to make it interesting.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Since you asked. *tickles you*

[liadlaith.livejournal.com]

*giggles helplessly*

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Yeah, powers are cool. Aliens are one of the things which have been over-done, which is why I suggested global warming - SF short stories and novels went through a global warming phase, but RP never really did, unless you count Fnal Fantasy, which was just weird. And working out which countries would be totally immersed and where the islands would be is really fun if you have a map of the world with contour lines.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Powers are indeed cool, and its hard to unbalance them in FATE; there's some new rules bits and pieces that I'll introduce everyone to a bit later on that are really very pretty.

I've never played any Final Fantasy, but Waterworld (the novel) was far, far too much global warming for my tastes. That said, Port Wednesday in Garth Nix's Drowned Wednesday makes for a lovely submerged city effect (despite that one being from displacement).

Aliens are indeed overdone; that's another bit of why I like Firefly so much. There's only so many variations on the theme before it gets really, really stale. I'm not much of a random monster person in fantasy roleplay, either.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Never heard of Waterworld, must look it up, and my library hasn't got Drowned wednesday in yet. I haven't actually played Final Fantasy either, but my friend is a fan, and there's this bit with thise huuuge wave, and then there's this kind of semi-submerged world of the future, whatever.

Anyway, yeah. If your main focus is powers you'll want to go all X-Men-only-not, or then again you might not. I prefer the government-secret-genetic-experiment style mutant to the completely random ones, but it's a theme that's only been explored in one or two directions, really, so you never know. There's a freeform RP like that called Eternus Infinuum, with the mutants and all, but as a result of chemical things rather than X's random "omg humanity is mutating it is teh future of the human race omg". I guess chemical, nuclear, random and omg!Secrit Govt Cloning Shit are the only mutation causes I can think of, or maybe solar flares.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

ZOMG! A sekrit pr0jekt! What's it about? Tell me, tell me!
*snrk*

Yay for 500 wpm. I wonder why you bothered including zero on the poll though. Anyone who scored zero reading wpm... wouldn't have been able to read the entry to post a response anyways :)

Skiffy stuff... hrmm...

I had a nice character made up for a GURPS Cthulhupunk game once that never too off. I like the idea of the setting, and loved my character. Half the point to the character was that nobody (except me) knew it was a Cthulhupunk game, they all thought it was just straight cyberpunk, and that my character was an absolute nutjob.
See... he was a parapsychologist, who paid the bills as a private investigator.

I like SF-Supers... but I am on a supers kick these days.

Fantasy-SF crossover... very much depends on how it's handled.
Shadowrun = good. Fantasy group dropped into future = bad.

Out of the genres you had listed last poll... I'd have to say that cross-genres I'd like would be horror, cyberpunk, supers and/or espionage.

As for general sort of SF? Hard to say... the genre is TOO wide open for me to think right now. A little quirk-problem of mine... I can't make decisions on wide-open things. I need some kind of confines or choices to limit me before I can effectively answer.
So I suggest collecting/making up a list of primary SF types of gameage... and then posting another poll specifically for that.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

You'll have to wait. Suffice to say, this is so that my Secret Project is based on (semi-)valid data. Or, rather, because I could use the average of 200 but wanted the average of my readers for a bit of extra space to play.

0 catches values less than 50; unlikely, but not entirely impossible.

I like Shadowrun, and not just because it upsets William Gibson. It's an elegant crossover.

The genres I had listed last poll were ones I could think of off the top of my head, up to the maximum number of options. The one I definitely won't do is western; the Serenity RPG is to be released at the end of this month.

And there's the problem. The genre's too wide open to make a compact yet complete list. Another option would be to poll for SF elements, but that'd be messy. This is why I was hoping for a bit of a discussion in comments, instead of me trying to make up a poll. Even if a few viable options pop up here, it's pretty easy to just poll for them.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Waterworld? Don't bother. The book is as bad as the film. Drowned Wednesday is quite a lovely read; if the library doesn't have it, then I've seen copies in Target for about $10.

I used to play in a near-future supers freeform on Shards, riiiight back in its early days. Thing is, in SF, I don't generally feel the need to worry about causes for things too much. It's enough to know if things work, if they break, and what they do - after all, there's countless things in the real world that I don't understand at all. Powers wouldn't have to be a major focus, either; they could be anywhere from major plot point to sometimes resource.

Again, with FATE, exact causes are pretty irrelevant. Players can make up details - it's somewhat encouraged that they do - and the dice do more pacing than simulating.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I guess I'm just a Sciffy freak then :P I really love working out why things are happening and what all the butterfly effects of one little change in the fabric of the universe are. You don't really need to tell it all in the RP, but it's nice to have it there as background and you know, just in case. You never know what situation will come up in an RP, and it's easier to make up a backstory first than to have to create one later when there's all sorts of story developements that it has to fit.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, and nnow I remember what I forgot on my list. Plague! Someone's released a freaky mutated virus, or it's mutated itself, or whatever - society ridden with creepy new disease always makes for an excellent sciffy world, if only because plagues require a completely different style of society from the one we have in the real world, and if the world doesn't organiseitself into uber-quarantine then you can have sooo much fun with the panic that plague induces.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

Yay, someone who agrees with me that Shadowrun is an elegant crossover. That was always one of the things that appealed to me about it, is how well they integrated it all.
That and the magic system.

So I have a setting with elves and trolls and mages all running around... and 95% of my characters are non-magical humans. Go figure.

Well lets see... elements...

Near vs Far future...
Localized vs Planet Hopping
Light/Positive vs Dark/Gritty
Space Based Action vs Footwork Oriented
Weird Powers (psionics, the force, X-Mutants, etc) vs Mundanes
Aliens vs No Aliens
Machine Life/AI (androids etc) vs None
Cybernetics vs No Cyber
Or, really, Modified Beings vs Unmodified Only (covers all forms of transhumanism, such as cyber, bioware, genetic engineering, surgical modification etc)


Hrmm... those are most of the major genre topics I can think of for now. Near-future tends to be cyberpunk/dystopian by default, so it's something to keep in mind since both of those items were on your poll. The only time it doesn't fall into those (that I can think of) is when space travel suddeny becomes cheap and plentiful.

Localized means a one planet, or even one area (a la the ill-fated X-COM Apocalypse), rather than travel being a noteworthy component of the game. Trigun is localized. Star Wars is not. Star Trek does both. DS9 is localized, while the others are not. Both options have advantages and drawbacks.

Light/Positive is basically the Star Trek approach. Dark/Gritty would be the Star Wars Universe (but not the movies), cyberpunk in general.

Space Based Action includes ship battles, but doesn't require it. It covers anything that goes on primarily aboard ship, as compared to on planet or even just in spacedock.

The weird powers bit should be self-explanatory. As always, you can declare powers off limits for players, but have NPCs with them as plot devices (ie River). It's a tricky area, because when players can have shiny powers, a lot will gravitate towards a superhero or Jedi concept, often without realizing it :)

Aliens vs No Aliens is pretty self-explanatory. Machine Life should be much the same. Cybernetics as well.

All those last bunch can be wrapped up into Regular vs Modified beings. Even without outright cyberware or whatnot, you can do a lot of weird stuff with current surgery already... so this question is ultimately about establishing the general social attitude towards radical self-modification.

As for my preferences on those categories...

Near vs Far future... no preference really
Localized
Dark/Gritty (small preference)
Footwork Oriented
Weird Powers
No Aliens (I don't like how aliens/metahumans/etc tend to dominate gameplay in most games, as everyone goes for shiny elves and ignores boring humans. If aliens are around, I much prefer for them to be rare and understated, at least among PCs)
Machine Life/AI vs None... no preference
Cybernetics
Unmodified Only... tricky to say. Extreme modification often comes out being much like aliens. It's a hard thing to handle and balance. This is a very small preference in any case.

Most of my preferences are weak to begin with. The ones noted as being small are even weaker... they're basically "if forced to choose..." preferences.

There, is that more helpful?

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

They're similar to the categories I was thinking towards, though some can be somewhat blended.

Near and far future are so fluffy as to really be meaningless, unless it's a very near future.

Any successful story is localised, but that may not be quite what you meant. The best sci-fi series that stoll about between planets tend to pick specific locations to play in - but you mentioned travel being a noteworthy component.

I like dark. The moralising and good-always-winning and shiny methods (and one-dimensional eeevil) of light things doesn't appeal to me overmuch.

I see footwork as being more related to doing things yourself rather than playing with vehicles. A ship, from inside, might as well be a big building that flies through space. Doing things inside counts as footwork to me.

Weird powers are interesting. In FATE, they're self-limiting; if you have a power that you can use all the time, then it'll run out very quickly. Things are always on, but they only give away bonuses when they're important to the story.

I don't really do aliens or monsters or such.

AI, I can take or leave.

Cybernetics is an interesting one. I like Shadowrun's concept of essence for dealing with that kind of abuse, but FATE is already self-limiting in this respect. The newest (currently unreleased) versions treat 'skills' as 'resources that the character can use to do stuff' - so powers and contacts and traditional skills all get mixed in with that. Cyberware aspects could be fairly neat - invoke for benefits of cyberware (remember Luke and the battery in his hand?) or invoke negatively for drawbacks.

But yes, that is more helpful. :)

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

I shall take the speed reading test later. For now I am talking to you which is much, much more important.

::avoids tickles::

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Flatterer. *squish*

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

I only speak the truth!

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

You speak what you see as the truth, because you're an adorable lovely person who loves making people feel happy.

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

I already told you that I don't lie, so believe me - you're more important than a speed reading test. Especially when i've not spoken to you in a long time.

[leila82.livejournal.com]

Wee! 661 and 100%. Proud of self even though might have guessed on 5 questions.

It's a pity I can't perform the same on stuff I'm supposed to read and retain.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

It was. I'd ban weekends, but that'd be a Bad Idea™.

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

It would be. I quite enjoy weekends.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

The main difference between near and far future is the overall scope possible, and how esoteric the tech can get. Going 100 years into the future... you might have regular space travel and MAYBE FTL... but you're also not liable to be seeing blaster guns, starfighters and teleporters, nor galaxy-spanning unified governments. If you do have those in 100 years, it's almost certainly because aliens showed up and gave us the tech. Most likely you'll have coldsleep for long haul space trips, slugthrowers for weapons and no/minimal space battles.

Far future easily enables all the esoteric tech you want, galaxy-spanning empires, and anything else you may desire. Star Trek and Wars is definately far future in this sense.

Localised is fuzzy as well. What I was thinking in terms of that would be the game being restricted to one main area. Maybe a megacity, maybe a planet, maybe a solar system at the most. But it's a "local" area, and we don't stray out of it.
This is compared to stuff like Trek/Wars, where they're hopping between systems on a regular basis, and they tend to have specific segments (sessions/arcs essentially) in one area, and then move on to the next. Star Trek rarely spends more than a single episode in the same system, for instance, whereas Deep Space 9 rarely left the same location.
Travel can be noteworthy in two different senses. The first is the Star Trek sense... you travel to new locales and do stuff when you get there. In this case travel is mostly handled as a downtime issue. You finish the plot, get on the ship and blast off to the next place.
The other way is one that came up in Trek somewhat often as well. Having travel be meaningful, and plots develop while in transit. This can range from breakdowns to space attack to meeting aliens or whatnot.

That's kind of what I meant by localised. Do we stick to a consistent locality (whatever scale that may be) or bounce all over the starmap?

Dark is good. Sometimes it's nice to have one dimensional evil to go and kick ass though. As much as I love roleplay, there's something profoundly satisfying about getting to just go out and kick unequivocal ass sometimes.

I was seeing footwork as being more "Are we spending our time planetside doing stuff, or shipboard doing stuff?" But you do have a point on ships being big buildings. For me though, it would have to depend on the size of the ship. Serenity is a fairly small ship all told. The crew is just a handful. I wouldn't consider on-ship stuff to really be footwork oriented simply because of the small scale.
The Enterprise-D (Next Gen) was over 600 metres long, and had a shipboard population (crew and civilians) of 1014, which is much more amenable to handling footwork onboard ship... but is still fairly cramped in the end of it. My high school had a population of 2500, for instance.
Oh the other hand, the Planet Pirates series by McCaffery, Moon and Nye had at one point a giant ship that was basically a space ark. The ship was absolutely huge and the population numbered in the high thousands. It was also designed as a long term habitat - many of the people aboard were 3rd generation inhabitants, with their parents and grandparents having lived aboard their entire lives. That kind of ship would be suitable for footwork IMNSHO, but anything smaller less so.

MONSTERS can be fun, as can rogue AI/Androids... but I like my humans. One noteworthy past experience that soured me on non-humans for good was a D&D game.
8 players. 6 elves, one half-elf, and me. The lone human. Yeah. Bloody powergamers.

The rest of that gets into FATE specific stuff, so I can't comment until I read it, which might take me a while, but I'll try.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Even the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire went about shooting things with bullets, but I accept the distinction you draw. I'm not much for mindless gadgetry, though; sonic showers and transporters don't really work for me.

The localisation bit makes rather a bit more sense now. I think I'll pay an extended visit to your page, because that'll help make for a sensible conversation.

I think I see your point on footwork. For ships, my thoughts were a bit more on things like the Dortmunder (in the Firefly pilot, and a few other episodes) which is magnificently huge. Or, for that matter, the ships in the Homeworld games.

It's hard to powergame with race in FATE. If you take an aspect for a race, then you can use it - but the human's going to buy a different one that might be useful more often. You might be able to invoke Elf for using bows, tracking things, seeing in the dark and doing other Elfy things - but the human could take an aspect like Loyal and apply it in any situation where they're looking out for the party/team/other.

You should read FATE, but I'll have to go through some radically different (mostly from other games) bits that I rather love.

[salzara-tirwen.livejournal.com]

I've already got quite a few alien races sort of under construction in my head, but although I could roleplay them I don't think I've gotten them to a point where I could describe them accurately to anyone else enough to watch them roleplay them without going "AAGH NO THEY'RE NOT LIKE THAT!" all the time.

[daphyn.livejournal.com]

736 words a minute with almost full comprehension. (I'm also tired.)

I like sci-fi. Firefly, Star Trek, Star Wars, mainly. Books by Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, not to mention Piers Anthony and Orson Scott Card.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

Well, slugthrowers will rarely go out of style because they're cheap and effective for the cost. But your point is good. That question could easily be revised to "Shiny Gizmos vs Mundane Stuff".

I do have a PDF of d20 Future availiable if you want it... it's a non-OCR'd scan, so it's 63 megs. However, if you use something like GetRight or WackGet, they can resume downloads so you don't have to get the whole file at once. Or I can give you FTP access and you can use your FTP client of choice to download and resume. Obviously the mechanics would be worthless, but it could make for a very handy technical reference.
Say the word and I'll link you or give you the FTP info.

You don't have to switch to my view, I was merely explaining my usage of terminology so you knew, but ok.

Hrmm... I suppose I should watch the pilot then, so I know what the Dortmunder looks like and it's scale. Never played Homeworld.
But I still estimate for a contained system (megaship etc) to really function as a self-contained setting, it needs a population up around 10k.

I'll read FATE when I'm not brainfried, running an RP and/or trying to catch up on LJ. So probably this weekend.

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

386 at 73% comprehension.

I tend to skip things that I find unimportant. I should probably not do that anymore, huh?

Yes, it took me a while to do this. I'm sorry. :/

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I'll forgive you, because you're awesome and because you have a Wash icon and because I'm nice like that.

And also because you don't like being tickled.

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

Reading my original comment over, it appears as though my "I skip past things that I find to be unimportant" comment was directed at this post - that's not what I meant. I meant when reading things. Statistics don't interest me, and that's why I scored so low on the comprehension. Hope you realized that. :/

::uses Wash icon again::