Month: January 2018 (Page 2 of 2)

Star Trek Podcasting Best Practices & Improvements (Updated)

January 5, 2018 / Stan Shinn

Here are some notes from our 1/4/2017 recording sessions on ways to improve our podcasting of Star Trek Adventures game sessions.

Tools Needed

Rank Chart
“Stay In Character” Sign
Cheat Sheet — People/Places/Things Cheat Sheet
Player stand — Stand for character sheet (not sure this is practical given the current room on table)
GM Tools — I’ve got a host of GM tools (name tables, techno-babble tables, sector map, etc.) I’ll be creating

Behavior Changes

Talking over people — I think we still talk over each other and it will be distracting
Rabbit trails — Need to avoid tangential discussions not related to the story
Eating at the table — We should restrict eating to the breaks
Table Noises — Avoid dropping phone on table, crinkling water bottles, excessive shuffling of papers, etc.

Hand Signals

Add the following hand signals.

Podcasting Hand-Signals

Timeout — Pause recording
Move Along — Used to shut down Rabbit trails digressions, excessive time in a scene, etc.
Come to an End — About to close the segment so don’t start new actions

Standard Terms

Session — An evening of play. Target is 3 segments per session. Games start at 6:30pm (activities at 6:30pm include leveling up, podcast logistics discussion, and other off-air activities). Recording starts around 6:45-7pm. Segments record from 7-8pm, 8-9pm, and 9-10pm. Session ends around 10pm.
Adventure — An adventure arc of approximately 3-6 segments, run over 1 to 2 game sessions.
Segment — aka an Episode. 45-55 minutes of roleplaying which close on a satisfying ending. Each segment will eventually be packaged as a Podcast Episode. Followed by a 5-10 minute break.
Episode — Individual segments packaged up as an Podcast episode. Follows the Season # + Episode # format naming convention, e.g. ‘Vanguard S1E01’ or ‘Vanguard: Season 1, Episode 01’.

Notes from 1/17/2018 Discussion

We will publish an org chart of characters and setting information.
We will post a summary of podcast rules in the room where we podcast.
Season One — have both a Primary and a Secondary character.
Season Two — One of your two characters is likely to die, and the other one you carry forward. You’ll create a new character of the type (Primary or Secondary) you don’t have. You’ll have again have a Primary and a Secondary character at that point. Any time a character dies, you replace them with a new character of that type.
Stan starts off as the NPC captain. Pretty quickly, Mason becomes the new captain for Season 1. We plan on John S. becoming captain at the beginning of Season 2. Idea is that seasons run around 6+ months and end with a big milestone event, after which time the current captain gets promoted, killed, or otherwise is off-stage. Character who was the captain before comes in with a new character at much lower level (maybe an Ensign).
Whoever is playing the captain does the podcast intro. and reads the captain’s log ‘boxed text’ that kicks off an adventure. So the poll results are moot at this point.

Star Trek Rules Q&A Part 1

January 4, 2018 / Stan Shinn

Rules Questions

Here are some answers to last sessions Star Trek Adventures rules questions.

Question: Does momentum go away at the end of a scene?
Answer: “At the end of each scene, one point of Momentum in the pool is lost” (p. 84).
Question: How many questions does Momentum grant you?
Answer: A successful roll achieves some result. For each point of Momentum a player spends, then can receive 1 additional answers.
Question: How does “retain the initiative” work?
Answer: “After a character has completed their Turn — attempted a single Task and any Minor Actions they wish to perform — the Player hands the action to the opposing side (typically, but not always, Gamemaster-controlled NPCs), who will choose a single character to act next. Alternatively, the Player may spend 2 Momentum (Immediate) to keep the initiative, handing the action to another Player Character instead. Once a Player has opted to keep the initiative, nobody on that side may keep the initiative again until the opposition have taken at least one Turn of their own. In any case, no character may take more than one Turn in a Round.Once all characters on one side have taken a Turn, then any remaining characters on the other side take their Turns in any order they choose, one at a time, until all characters on both sides have taken one Turn. Once all characters on both sides have taken a Turn, then the action goes to a character on whichever side did not take the last Turn, and the whole process begins again for the next Round.” p. 163
Question: How does Advantage and Complications work and what mechanically it means to create a problem (Quickstart rules are unclear on this).
Answer: See pp. 76-77. Traits (with Complications and Advantages) are similar to Aspects in Fate RPG. Complication increases Difficulty of related tasks by 1.
What type of ‘Ice pick’ does the Andorian have?
Answered: It’s a climbers ice pick.

Phases Roll-out of Rules

Star Trek Adventures core rules book is over 300 pages, so its amazing, but a lot to digest. Here’s my approach for learning and rolling out the rules.

Phase I (Now through most of Season 1)

Using 32 pages of rules from the main book (pp. 73-88 Core Rules, and pp. 163-180 Conflicts), which covers roughly the same rules introduced in the Quickstart.