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Showing content with the highest reputation on 04/22/2020 in Posts

  1. I really loved the JP below. The three of them really did a stand-up job of setting the scene for the Embassy's transition to the Thor's first mission. Really well executed writing which gave a great "cinematic" set piece to the send off. I kept seeing slow sweeping shots of this great starship sliding through space in my mind's eye. Well done gents!
    2 points
  2. “Yes and …” is a technique used in improvisational comedy to create fictional scenes collaboratively. At Starbase 118, we too create fictional scenes collaboratively, albeit in a different medium (writing) and genre (sci-fi). In the case of simming, “yes and …” is more a mind-set than a writing prompt. The “yes” means you take what the other character has written as the given reality – you don’t “shoot it down”, explain it away or ignore it. Instead, you embrace it! The “and …” means you build the scene by adding to the situation. This could be your character’s perception of events or their reaction to it. This Writer’s Workshop looks at how “yes and …” is a great way to resolve “out of character” (OOC) blunders “in character” (IC) and create additional opportunities to write collaboratively with your crew! Let’s take an innocuous typo or mix up of a character’s name. In the philosophy of “yes and …” this is an opportunity to be creative IC. The thinking process might go something like: yes the character mixed a name up and … what could have caused it/what does my character perceive the mix up to mean? Here’s an example of how one character perceives a name mix up as a sign of stress – a logical assumption given that Main Engineering is burning down and containment is failing. (( Battling to keep the fire contained in Main Engineering aboard the U.S.S. Improv. )) The terminal sparked as the screen flickered and finally blanked; containment control was offline. Weller: Get me containment back online David, or we’ll lose engineering! The Chief had called out Ensign David’s name. A small slip maybe, but the stress of their dire situation was affecting them all – even the Chief! Davies wiped the beading of sweat from his forehead, for now was the time to step up. Davies: Patching through a workaround, Chief. Davies uses the mind-set of “yes and …” to acknowledge the name mix up IC and resolves it by linking the mix up to the situation they’re in. This creates a rich and engaging scene! Of course, we don’t want to decide the actions or thoughts of other characters; Weller is free to reply with their perspective here, which might contradict Davies’ interpretation altogether. A contrast between characters’ perspectives is good as it creates a rich psychology, adding depth to our scenes. So, what are Weller’s options following Davies’ sim? Well, Weller might decide to not even be conscious of the mix up, showing how focused he is on his job. Alternatively, Weller could shrug the mistake off because to Weller it’s irrelevant while the fire threatens their lives! Or, perhaps there is a different reason for the mix up? Perhaps David has become an impromptu part of Weller’s backstory. As you can see, the possibilities to be creative are numerous and exciting! Let’s see what happened: (( Battling to keep the fire contained in Main Engineering aboard the U.S.S. Improv. )) The terminal sparked as the screen flickered and finally blanked; containment control was offline. Weller: Get me containment back online David, or we’ll lose engineering! The Chief had called out Ensign David’s name. The memory almost choked Weller. The scars on David’s face … his face … the pain. Not again. Weller would not let that happen to another member of his crew. A shout brought Weller back to his senses. Davies: Patching through a workaround, Chief. Here, Weller has leaned into the OC error to create an opportunity for character building IC, which could then be developed during shore leave. For example, during shore leave, Weller could sim the incident they’ve referenced fleetingly during the mission, asking other writers to take on an NPC as part of a joint post. Or, Weller could talk the incident through with the ship’s counsellor. These ideas are great because they create opportunities to write collaboratively with other players while building Weller’s backstory. What will you “yes and …”? The post Using errors creatively with “yes and …” appeared first on UFOP: StarBase 118 Star Trek RPG. View the full article
    1 point
  3. Ishka couldn’t make any sense of where she was. It was home, and yet, it wasn’t. Something about the scents that assailed her nostrils was off. Most things on Leya-I didn’t give off strong odors like this, especially plants. In desperation, she looked around the meadow of sun-kissed Kazuri for some clue as to why she was here. Scant moments ago, she’d been floating in space in an EVA suit with her oxygen supply nearly depleted. She paused. Was she dead? Is that what this was? Al-Leyans didn’t believe in an afterlife, but if she could imagine one place she’d like to spend eternity, it would be the beautiful landscapes of Leya-I. Though she had wanted nothing more than to escape, that had always been more about the people. Fighting against the sudden surge of apprehension and uncertainty, she took one step forward. And then another. And then another. Before long, she was wandering the field of lovely plants, her feet scarcely touching the ground as she did. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but she didn’t really care. She was home. For the first time in years, she was home. A sound at the other end of the field caused her to tense and instinct took over. Her distant ancestors had once been easy prey for any large animal that sustained itself on flesh, so it was only natural that her fight or flight response would engage in the presence of the unknown. She didn’t truly know anything about this place or what to expect here. What should have been a haven was a strange land to her. She listened, expecting her keen hearing to pick up the sound again. As she strained her ears, she made out the subtle, rhythmic shift of the grasses that alerted her to the approach of someone or something. Not knowing its intentions, she shifted her stance to brace for a fight. With no weapon to help her, she’d have to rely on her strength alone. The feeling of what she believed to be a hand on her shoulder caused her to jump and she instantly grabbed the hand, using the creature’s momentum to flip it over her shoulder. She barely registered the surprised yelp as the creature landed on its back with a resounding thud. Moving quickly, she sat atop it, pinning it with a hand at its throat, the other hand ready to deliver the killing blow. “Ishie?” The familiar voice and pet name made her freeze. Only one person had ever called her that. Her hand briefly tightened around the being’s throat as she grappled with what she was experiencing. No. No, it wasn’t him. He’d died years ago. This was some imposter. Her temper flared. How dare someone impersonate him. “Who are you?” she growled. A soft smile crossed the man’s lips even as his hand came up to the one gripping his throat. “Ishie, it’s me,” the man rasped. She growled louder, warring with what she knew to be true and what her eyes were showing her. Despite the fact that her grip was likely cutting off his air, he made no move to stop her nor did he give any indication that he was afraid. Tears sprang to her eyes, sliding down her cheeks, as she released the man’s throat and stood abruptly. She ran her hands through her hair, tugging hard at the strands, even as the man gasped for air beside her, rubbing his throat. “Wake up,” she muttered. “This is an asphyxiation-induced reaction. Your brain is trying to make sense of what’s happening. Wake up.” Again, she felt his hand, and she tensed. “I’m here, Ishie,” he rasped. “I’m here.” She turned to him, anguish twisting her expression. “No! You died!” The man didn’t respond, allowing them both to lapse into momentary silence as she processed what was happening. Taking a deep breath and exhaling it, she broke the silence, her native Esperanto flowing with ease. “What is this place?” she breathed. A smile that she couldn’t quite discern the meaning of slid across his lips as he studied her. “Home, Ishie. We’re home.” That simple statement held so much meaning that she wasn’t certain she could unpack all of it even given an eternity. There was something about the way he said it that made her believe him without question. For the first time since encountering him here, her gaze met his. What she saw caused her chest and throat to tighten, the tears beginning anew. She could scarcely draw breath, each exhalation requiring supreme effort as she wrapped her mind around the fact that she was looking into her uncle’s eyes the same way she’d used to before. How is this possible? “Uncle,” she whispered. She dropped her mental guard entirely, allowing herself to fully feel his presence even as she stumbled forward to embrace him in one of the tightest hugs she’d given in her years. Burying her face in his shoulder, she smiled as the subtle yet familiar scent of the many blossoms he’d enjoyed tending to invaded her senses. It felt like an eternity that she stood there, embracing him and refusing to let go. She was almost afraid to, convinced she’d lose him again and she’d never get him back. It was soft at first but gradually grew in intensity. A beeping sound that didn’t match her current surroundings had her pulling back and she furrowed her brow in confusion. “Do you hear that?” she asked. Her uncle smiled sadly, cradling her face in his hand as though to bring her attention back to him. “Hear what, Ishie?” She shook her head. “That beeping. I--It sounds familiar.” Gradually it grew louder and she realized that the world around her was becoming fuzzy. In a panic, she reached for her uncle only to watch him disappear right before her eyes. The rest of the scene faded away rapidly and she found herself again staring through the visor of the EVA suit out at the black of space with a splitting headache. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she did her best not to sob because it would only deplete her oxygen faster. “Please,” she whisper-prayed to whatever deity was listening. “I want to go back to him. Please.” But no one seemed to hear her. She remained stuck in the EVA suit, waiting for the Atlantis crew to eventually find her. ====================== Lieutenant Ishkabela Journs Assistant Chief Medical Officer USS Atlantis I238110RH0
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  4. Snapping awake with a painful groan, Lt. Cmdr. Geoffrey Teller tried to re-orientate himself inside the darkened runabout. With no internal illumination and only faint starlight filtering through the viewports, the scene slowly resolved as he tried, and failed, to stand. The runabouts emergency restraints had engaged at some point and, he realized as a loose padd drifted past in zero g and clattered against a dead console, were the only things keeping him from floating freely around the cabin. Something had gone terribly wrong. With a deep breath of air that was already tasting stale, Geoff tried to clear his throat but ended up setting off a series of wracking coughs. “Report...Tomlinson...J’shon…” his words came out as a rasp and elicited no answer. After a few moments, it became clear why. Both officers, strapped to their chairs and still at their stations, weren’t moving. From where he was, Teller couldn’t tell if they were unconscious or...something worse. “Oh, Geoffrey. Did you hurt yourself playing again?” A woman's warm, lilting voice seemed to fill the cabin. Teller’s eyes went wide as they focused on the impossible sight on the viewscreen. Too shocked to be afraid and too confused for anything cogent, he only managed to croak out a single word. “M...mom?” For a moment, he was again seven years old, having skinned his knee after failing to climb the large oak tree near their home. It had been a childish bet with his older sister, whose longer limbs and superior coordination meant she had been climbing the tree successfully for several years already. Never one to back down from a challenge, even at that age, Geoff had made it halfway up before losing his grip and sliding back down, painfully scraping his skin. His mother had been watching the proceedings from a nearby picnic blanket and had rushed over with kind words and a small civilian dermal regenerator. That had been more than twenty years ago, before he’d joined Starfleet, and before his parents had been lost. Somehow, that thought helped ground his thinking. The face on the screen remained placid and calm, the picture of maternal compassion. “But...you died. Years ago….your ship…” He was cut off by a very familiar and very maternal clucking. “Oh, don’t worry yourself about that, Geoffy,” The voice, and the face, were perfect. Every inflection, every mannerism, even the way she brushed her hair to one side were exactly as his mother, June, had behaved. “I’m here now, don’t worry, everything is going to be alright.” Teller felt himself slump back in the runabouts chair as globes of moisture floated away from his eyes. Nothing about this made sense and, in the back of his mind, Geoff began giving serious consideration to the possibility that he was critically injured and just imagining the whole thing. He tried to turn his attention back to the inert console in front of him. There had to be a way to get some power back on. After several failed attempts to bring systems online, Teller thumped his fist against the uncaring composite as the voice gently chided him. “Geoffrey, what did I tell you about letting your frustrations distract you?” His mother had crossed her arms and pursed her lips. She was clearly expecting him to respond. “You’re not real...you’re not real...this is just some kind of...weird brain injury...I need to get back to the ship…” Teller tried to ignore the voice as he struggled with the seat restraints. “Oh, Geoffy, I wouldn’t do….” The warning came a moment too late as he successfully released the restraints and was nearly catapulted into the ceiling. He flailed without purchase for a few moments before colliding with the roof of the cabin. “...that.” “Well if I didn’t have a head wound before…” Teller rubbed his skull and inspected the cabin as his mother's face looked on, concerned. Finding a grip, he rotated and pushed off towards the inert form of Lt. Tomlinson, their helmsman. Without a tricorder he couldn’t tell much, but at least she was still breathing. He pulled the emergency aid kit from beneath a console but found the equipment inside as inert as the rest of the runabout. Whatever hit them seemed to have a devastating effect on all their technology. Geoff spoke aloud, mostly so he could hear something other than his own breathing in the increasingly claustrophobic interior. “That’s alright, Tomlinson...you just take it easy...I’ll get us sorted….That’s a Good Job Guarantee…” Geoff tried to work some hope or vigor into his voice but found it lacked for both. His assurance didn’t impress his other audience either. “Are you still using that ridiculous catchphrase, Geoffrey?” With a smirk, his mother seemed to be needling him slightly, as she so often did when she was alive. Teller ground his teeth in irritation. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but if you can help, now’s the time. I’ve got two injured crewmen here. I’m not sure how long we were out, but the air recyclers aren’t running and what’s in the compartment won’t last. If you can’t help, kindly shut up and go haunt someone else, I’m busy.” “Geoffrey John Teller, that is no way to speak to your mother!” The image on the screen looked genuinely hurt and, on some emotional level, Teller felt a very real pang of guilt. He turned, sheepishly, to face it. “Uh...sorry…it’s just...I’m not sure what to do right now. I’m not sure what you want...hell, I’m not even sure any of this is real. For all I know, you could be a symptom of hypoxia and I’m just blathering to myself in a broken ship.” Oddly, this admission actually helped Teller calm his racing mind slightly. On screen, his mother was the very picture of maternal concern. “It’s alright, Geoffrey, it’s alright. I’m here for the same reason as always - my son needed me. Now,” the woman clapped her hands before interlacing her fingers and cracking her knuckles loudly, a habit that had always turned young Teller’s stomach, “you, young man, have to start thinking. I bet you can find something in that spaceship of yours to take apart. Just like you took apart everything in the house. Hopefully this time there won’t be as many parts left over when you put it back together.” Geoff was again transported back to childhood, sitting on a kitchen stool and being scolded by his mother for his antics while behind her, his father painstakingly reassembled the home replicator while trying not to grin too openly. “The replicator…” With a flash of inspiration, Teller pushed off the console and floated towards the runabouts small replicator. Like everything else aboard the system was dormant, but Teller was unconcerned. The model on the runabout had a small shielded power cell for emergencies, and while it seemed like the rest of the system's delicate electronics had been destroyed, the power cell itself appeared intact. There was no external indicator and no way to check the remaining charge but it was something. He hoped. “Oh, and what do you intend to do with that, Geoffrey?” By the gentle, suggestive tone in her voice, Teller realized it wasn’t really a question. It was as if an infant had just brought her a light pen, and she was encouraging them to find something to draw upon. There was something obvious he was missing, and his head was beginning to throb. The cabin's air was growing worryingly thin as he exerted himself. He considered the questionable power cell, and the small metal tube he was trapped inside. There were dozens of redundancies, backups, failsafes and emergency systems, but somehow nearly all of them had been rendered useless by this calamity. He wasn’t going to repair the ship with what he had on hand...or with the time he had left. “Remember, Geoffrey, it’s always ok to ask for help when you need it.” Once again, his mother seemed to be prompting him, but it was getting harder and harder to concentrate. The cabin, already darkened, was growing more clouded by the minute. Tugging at the collar of his uniform tunic, his hand brushed against his comm badge and the edge of an idea pushed in against the haze. Removing the communicator from his tunic and disassembling it with shaking hands, Teller could see that whatever had damaged the ship had wrought its destruction on the fragile components inside the communicator. The only element that still seemed intact was the micro-crystalline subspace antenna, a hearty mesh fused with the outer casing of the communicator itself. “That’s my clever boy...but you’ll have to hurry. We don’t have much time left.” There was an unmistakable tone of urgency in her voice and, as the air continued to sour, Teller was certain why. At best he had minutes until he blacked out. Teller let the useless bits of the comm badge drift away in the cabin as he gripped the precious antenna in his teeth. He needed both hands to pry the end cap off his reclaimed power cell, leaving only the exposed power leads. If he was quick, he could tap the housing with the antenna against the leads without destroying it, giving him a brief and very weak subspace pulse. On his first attempt, he forgot the basics of electricity and shocked himself badly, eliciting a loud and colorful expletive. “Geoffrey, language! You’d think I raised a klingon with that mouth of yours!” His mother's chastisement was entirely genuine and he felt his cheeks flush in embarrassment. “Sorry mom.” He no longer cared who or what was on the screen, too fixated on what he was doing to give it another moment's thought. Pulling off his uniform jacket, he wrapped the sleeve around his hand several times to provide whatever insulation it could, and then began laboriously tapping the comm badge against the leads. He could see a small electrical arc lighting up the cabin, which gave him some hope that his call was going out. Short Tap short tap short tap….oO Please hear me. Oo Long Tap. Long Tap. Long Tap. oO I need help. Oo Short Tap short tap short tap...oO Or we’re so screwed. Oo “See Geoffrey, I told you everything would be alright. Now just you rest for a bit and when you wake up, I promise everything will be ok.” The voice was dreamy and far away, but Geoff felt reassured and calmed, as he always had when his mother tucked him in. She began gently humming a wordless lullaby from the furthest corners of his memory, filling his chest with warmth even as the rest of him grew cold. His eyes grew heavier and heavier. His hands still worked, continuing the sequence of taps against the leads, not even noticing the electrical arcs had all but disappeared. Eventually, his hands stopped and his eyes closed, and Geoffrey Teller drifted towards the darkness, comfortably aloft on the sound of his mother's voice. === “Sir...sir! Sir are you alright? Commander Teller, sir, can you hear me?” Snapping awake with a painful groan, Lt. Cmdr. Geoffrey Teller tried to re-orientate himself, expecting to find the inside of a darkened runabout. Instead, he was nearly blinded by bright searchlights directed at him. His mind felt sluggish and confused, but he could fill his lungs again and the air had rarely tasted sweeter. “Mom…?” Squinting against the harsh light, Teller’s eyes were able to focus on the startled officer inside the environmental suit. It took him an overlong moment to work out that they were being rescued. It had worked. “He’s alive! They’re all alive, sir. Advise sickbay to standby for emergency transport.” As the officer passed along an update back to the Thor, Teller blinked and turned his attention back towards the view screen. It was blank and inert, like everything else aboard the runabout, but Teller could see the bits of communicator he had cannibalized floating nearby, bouncing harmlessly off the display. “God damn sir, I don’t know how you pulled this one off….we barely picked up your signal…” Teller blinked again and realized the lieutenant was speaking to him. A warm, kind voice echoed in his mind and he croaked out a response. “Language, Lieutenant.” Geoff smiled and closed his eyes once more before the transporter beam took hold and brought him home. The wordless lullaby went with him. [End] =============================== Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Teller Executive Officer USS Thor Fleet Captain A. Kells, Commanding V239509GT0
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