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 Star Trek: Engage is a story-based roleplaying game based in the Star Trek universe, played on an IRC server. As a player, you take on the role of a Starfleet officer in one of several different departments on board a Starship or Space Station. You’ll begin your career as a Cadet and through playing missions you’ll earn accolades and awards, getting promoted up the ladder until one day you might even have command of your very own ship. Promotions are our way of rewarding the better and players and more dedicated writers, as our aim is to have players carry a character or two with them over months or even years, earning promotions as they play. A handful of friends and I have been developing this over the last 6 months after moving away from a similar group. We have around 30 years of experience in running games of this type in the Star Trek universe, so we feel pretty confident in launching Star Trek: Engage for others to play. Format Each “Game” takes place on a specific ship or station, and is played over an hour at a specific time every week. The games are run by a Game Director, who lays out the story, controls some NPCs and plays out the results of your actions if they’re required, acting very much like a PnP DM. However there are no dice, no stats, no numbers, just community storytelling and character building. The Director communicates information that you’ll need throughout the mission, either by PM, in an Out of Character room, or in the Mission Room as an Action that all of the players can see and respond to if necessary. As a Science officer looking at the sensors, the Director might message you that you detect a Romulan warbird decloaking dead ahead. Your next character action could be based on this. If you decide to ignore it, then the consequences will play out, or you could notify the Captain who could then order the Tactical officer (played by someone else) to go to Yellow Alert and raise shields. At this point, the Director could post an Action that the Warbird has now opened fire, then everyone gets to do the Enterprise Shuffle, and so on. Missions are played through like that; the Director giving the players the gist of a story and letting them muddle through and do what they feel they need to, pretty much exactly like PnP only without the pauses to roll dice after every message. This is a creative game and the aim is to have players build their character through pieces of creative writing, or “logs”, posted to the forums, or e-mailed to the ship’s mailing string after every mission. A log is just a piece of writing to progress your character, give the crew an insight into their mood, their goals, their personality, and see how that plays on their relationships during the missions. I’ve been playing this sort of creative game now for nigh-on ten years, and one of the highlights is seeing what people do with the characters they create. Currently We currently have five ships running at different times and on different days, and depending on the playerbase (which is quickly growing, most of whom are experienced roleplayers from similar games, with almost 30 characters total right now) new ships will be added bit by bit. We’re launching on the 17th of February, but we’re giving people time now over the next two weeks to get in, create characters and grab the slots they want before we start running official games. I’ve coded a pretty robust character and ship database for storing everything, giving you easy access ship rosters, character profiles, game transcripts, calendars, etc.. It takes you right through from character creation, to picking the ship you want to play on, and afterwards lets you see services records, choose different assignments and is generally there to make playing and keeping track of your character as simple as possible. We also have a fantastic design person who gives all of the games a personal touch with things like construction patches.  We’re looking for more players, so take a look at what we have - there’s a Handbook for new players you can flick through and a quick test on chat protocols to take before you can make a character. It’s pretty simple, it's mainly there to help familiarise new players with how the game is played. We’ll be running an event on our IRC server this weekend, a game for all of the new players to dip their toes in with some action and excitement, and everyone is welcome to join in or watch if they want to have a taste of what a game session involves. We tend to post events either on the blog, forum or Facebook page which you can find links to at the bottom. Feel free to ask any questions in this thread and I’ll answer what I can! Links Star Trek: Engage Website Forums (Register on the first link) Player Handbook Facebook Page Cthulhuite fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 03:35
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Tuxedo Jack posted:Sounds interesting ill check it out. We have a little over 40 players signed up, although not all of them have characters in yet. We'll probably be looking at getting another two or three ships added shortly after launch if demand increases - and we're hoping it will! Each ship or station has it's own little part in the greater Universe, and each Director is free to play that game how they want. But we're going to be running "Community Wide" mission arcs a few times a year, basically one big story that each of the ships play their own part in. Imagine a Borg invasion with the 5 ships we currently have on the roster. The station might be the main focal point for the attack, and their part of the arc (Which could take place over 5-6 game sessions) might be about defending against the Borg and launching a counter offensive. One of the ships might have discovered something which the Borg are looking for and are trying to get there first, and another ship is going into Romulan space to try and get support from them to join in the defense, and yet another ship is starting a counter attack with a weapon they recently picked up in a previous mission arc of their own. The game Directors all work together in the background to tie all the threads into one complete story that all the players take part in, whatever ship they're on, because the actions of one ship might have consequences for another. I've run a few of these in previous games and it's always busy, and it can be complicated for the Directors, but it's a hell of a lot of fun to play.
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Feb 7, 2014 03:58
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Our designer very kindly just shoved this in my face for Saturday's event. If you want to come along and see how the game is played, or if you've made a character and want to get stuck in, this is the time.
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Feb 7, 2014 15:05
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Tekopo posted:What organisation were you attached to before? This seems to be similar to something that I tried on and off ages ago. It was called ACTD, or A Call To Duty. There's quite a few groups that do something similar. Cthulhuite fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 15:34
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Tekopo posted:Yeeep, that's the one I was part of. I was part of the forum RP ships, but I stopped posting because I was a slacker and most of the other characters felt like Mary Sues. This was ages ago, mind you, more than 5 years ago. You'll still get the odd Mary Sue here and there, it's a necessary evil sometimes for this type of game, but the majority that I've played with over the years and recently as well have been great. The best are the characters written with an add little quirk that the player just rolls with, because sometimes the annoying characters are the most fun to watch. Did you delve into the chat-based part of it at all? I know they ran Chat and PbP as two separate entities for the most part, I don't think there was much crossover.
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Feb 7, 2014 17:49
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Tuxedo Jack posted:What's the difference between Engage and ACTD? Besides this one being goon run, that is... Obviously, being Goon-run is the most important difference. ST:E gets players in and playing as quick as possible. We don't have any length training processes, it's just a short and (hopefully) interesting Handbook, a short test on chat protocols that takes you through a short scenario as if you're playing in a proper mission, and then you get to create your character. We have a pretty good character creation wizard. You have lots of options for race, family, education and medical history. I've noticed that giving players the options to do things in bite-size steps really promotes creating interesting and detailed characters, and some of the current folk on the roster seem like they'll be really good fun to play with. On top of that, the character database is all custom coded with the game in mind. It has the features that we, as players, wanted and felt others would too and from the feedback we've had already a lot of the playerbase agrees. Everything is easy, you can choose assignments at a click, you can edit characters with new information or see their service records, awards, accolades, promotions, etc. Tekopo posted:Nope, only did forum PBP: it's what I was used to at the time and I didn't feel confident doing the IRC stuff. I'm gonna sign up for this though! I just felt that everyone else was playing a ~special snowflake~ while I was trying to create guys with faults and crap so it really grated me. The biggest issue was fitting IRC around my schedule, tbh. I'm glad you're signing up! We only have the 5 slots right now, and the times are largely based on initial subscriber requests before we launched, but as we get more players we'll be opening up new ships, and there are the forums which i'd like to get more people posting character interactions too and there's a few forums set up specifically for that. We ran a little event last Saturday for some of the new players to meet-and-greet in character, and there were some fantastic bits of roleplaying even from the ones new to the format. One of our new characters is superbly Vulcan, and after talking to one of the experienced characters for a bit came out with this; ST:E posted:<XO_LtCmdr_Sumner> SCI: Oh, I'll probably be heading out tomorrow. We're still getting everything settled, after... well, we're getting it settled. ::puts on what she hopes is a reassuring smile:: Cthulhuite fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 19:05
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Doc Cylon posted:So it's like D&D with phasers? Nah I'm kidding, I'm all over this. "More Phasers, Less Dice" should be the next thread title. We're running a short test game in about an hour on the IRC server (1400 UTC), and everyone is welcome to come and watch or join in if you feel up to it. I'd love to see a whack of people in there. IRC: chat.startrekengage.com
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Feb 8, 2014 13:51
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I'm glad you had fun! We had a good handful of people there and everyone got really stuck in, even the people who had no experience with the format. We've had a couple of logs posted on our forums as well, and those are always fantastic, you should definitely stop in and read one or two of them.
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Feb 9, 2014 03:14
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Error 404 posted:Can I play as a Holodeck Janitor? We have auxilliary positions for things that don't fit into your usual moulds, for people that feel they can roleplay things like that without getting bored of left out. So if you can sell it to me (Holodeck Janitor or otherwise), you're welcome to clean up the Holodecks after this; 
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Feb 9, 2014 04:06
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Judging by Guinan's look, you're gonna need more than a nip of that Romulan Ale.
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Feb 9, 2014 04:22
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wrong way posted:Too bad I missed the intro game you ran is there any more planed or will I just have to jump in? Fantastic, glad you signed up! We've another event planned for Wednesday, and then one last one for Saturday before the Launch on Monday 17th. The Wednesday event will likely be early evening UTC, and the Saturday event will be early afternoon, so hopefully we can get a decent turnout for both even if you just want to drop in to watch.
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Feb 9, 2014 19:06
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We've got another event running tomorrow! If you're thinking about playing or getting a peek at what the game is like, now is your chance before launch. We have one event tomorrow at 2000 UTC, and we're going to have another on Saturday at 1400 UTC. As always, you can check out our forums for updates, mission orders and game logs.
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Feb 11, 2014 13:57
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We'll be kicking our event game off in about an hours time (2000 UTC) if anyone wants to drop in and watch, or if current players want to take part. IRC: chat.startrekengage.com Channel: #EngageLounge Look forward to seeing you all there!
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Feb 12, 2014 18:57
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We'll be having another event mission on Saturday, 1400 UTC to catch the morning folks. Yesterdays was an amazing success, one of the best i've seen in a long time. The transcripts for both yesterday's mission and last Saturday's are up on the Star Trek: Engage forums if anyone wants to take a look. We're also looking for command staff on our Sunday ship. It runs at 1900 UTC and could use an experienced role player to be the CO. Raise your hands in here, drop me a PM or e-mail us on the site and we'll send you the thrilling questionnaire!
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Feb 13, 2014 18:16
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We're just under an hour away from the first official game if anyone wants to join us on the IRC server and spectate. I'm jittery with nerves at running this game. 
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Feb 17, 2014 20:15
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That was a fantastic launch mission, the IRC channel was practically overrun with people. There was much warping, Klingons, phasers and an explosion! We'll always be accepting new players if you want to join in, and if you want an example of that first mission you can download the transcript below; http://www.startrekengage.com/odn/transcripts/hyperion/hyperion11402.17.docx
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Feb 18, 2014 21:54
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Holy poo poo this is nerdy as hell and I want a piece of it. I'm signing up.  Nerds for the Nerd God! Let me know if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer what I can.
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Feb 19, 2014 03:31
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Hiro Protagonist posted:So is this a goon-only venture or can I invite or promote it amongst non-goons? Nope, this is very much an "Everyone in the world" venture. Please, invite anyone who you think might be interested! The more players we have, the more fun the missions tend to be. We have our third official mission tomorrow, which is made up of mostly experienced players, so that'll definitely be a good time to drop in and take a look at how things are played if anyone is still on the fence. Thursday, 2000 UTC.
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Feb 20, 2014 02:31
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Tekopo posted:If anyone has time this sunday, I would suggest dropping in at 1900 GMT and see me order a crew to the their deaths! "Launch a photo torpedo....AT OURSELVES!  "If anyone is up early on Saturday on the west coast, or doing nothing on the east coast, we're set to have our only Station mission then. Saturday, 1400 UTC. There's a fantastic selection of old and new players, some really great and creative roleplayers, and best of all I'll be directing the mission myself!
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Feb 21, 2014 04:47
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Golden Bee posted:I feel the one hour window really works against the game. Sure, it's ok to drop in for a lunchbreak, but I just started getting put in charge of something when it was time to say "later". The way it works is that each Ship is it's own separate entity, it's own game with it's own permanent crew, and the same Game Director every week. Each ship plays at the same time every week just for that hour, so that everyone on the crew (Or guests who want to play an NPC) knows when to drop in and how long it's going to last. The idea is that a Game Director will have an idea for a mission "Arc" that will run for 3-6 game sessions over a span of weeks, giving everyone a chance to contribute, play and further the story. There's a much more creative focus on the game a lot of the time, it's about the character interactions rather than dice rolling and trying to "win" the scenario, which is why we have a time lapse between each game for players to write logs about their character's thoughts, experiences, etc and to further their own personal story a bit more based upon the actions during the game. Some people even get together and write "Joint Logs", a collaborative version of the same, where two (or more) characters interact and build their own bit of narrative. If you're willing to stick with it, I think you'll find that it's a very rewarding experience if you're into the more creative aspects of role playing games, rather than a constant hack and slash. If not, it was nice to have you there for the hour yesterday, you're welcome to drop in anytime!
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Feb 21, 2014 16:24
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Shadowesque posted:Oh oh, I have a nerdy question! I understand the timeline that we're to be set at, and obviously we're following canon, but do you guys have any opinions officially about the expanded universe from the books? Or is it just, so long as it doesn't contradict tv canon and/or is explained in an interesting narrative way, go nuts? Pretty much. It depends a lot on what the Game Director wants to use, but TV/Movie/Official technical manual canon takes precedence and the expanded stuff like the fiction books is...well, depends what it is. Primarily, it's whatever makes it interesting. 
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Mar 1, 2014 20:08
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Shadowesque posted:Oh boy, this makes some of my dumb, impulsive character ideas seem at least somewhat more plausible! Hm, it's been absolute ages since I've ever worked IRC, but maybe I'll see about joining you lot and whipping someone up... Fantastic! We'd love to have you onboard, the interesting characters are my favourite.
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Mar 1, 2014 20:43
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We've got our next mission tomorrow at 1900UTC if you're on the fence and want to watch before diving in and making your own character. We definitely welcome spectators!
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Mar 2, 2014 03:47
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FredMSloniker posted:A couple of requests and questions about your website: Thanks for the tip! I"ve updated the timezone list, it should be easier to select now. As Tekopo said, it's for races that only have one name, like Klingons and Vulcans. And yes, human norms for height and weight are perfect. I look forward to seeing your character!
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Mar 3, 2014 15:51
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Sodomy Non Sapiens posted:Looks fun, but the timezone differences between the US and Australia means that the Sigma Rho is the only choice I could even remotely expect to make sessions for. Pretty much as Tekopo says. NAV would be responsible for Navigation and Flight Control onboard a Starship, or on a shuttle, etc. They play the part of a pilot. They're also in charge of flight control, incoming docking ships on the station, shuttle requisition, etc. It's an interesting role to play and tends to have fingers in a few pies.
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Mar 13, 2014 14:19
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We've been wrapping up the first mission arcs pretty successfully over the last two weeks, gearing up for the next ones. Some commendations and promotions being handed out too. We also have a log-writing competition for the whole playerbase. As it's all about creative writing, the players write up logs about what their characters are up to, back stories, things like that between weekly missions and for the month of April the bests ones are getting gift certificates and t-shirts and stuff. If you're on the fence about joining in the fun, now is a great time to do it!
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Mar 27, 2014 19:12
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We're close to launching out US-based evening ship. Basically it'll be around 8-10PM EST, an after work special for anyone interested in playing that's on the western hemisphere. If you're interested in the game, now's the time to join up and have a say in what time the ship runs and what day. The more people we have, the better idea we'll have on when it runs. And if you're in the game already, you'll have first pick of the good positions. 
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Apr 28, 2014 19:18
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Error 404 posted:Except Holodeck Janitor (reminding me I should get to making my dude) Yes you should! The Sigma Rho station is beginning a new arc this week, so now is the time to get your butts into those available seats (Or ones of your own choosing). When a new Arc begins, i'll usually write a little Prologue type thing and then give out the Mission Orders from Starfleet Command, then the Command Officer writes up a mission briefing for the crew - kind of like an outline of what needs to be done to accomplish the mission, the kind of thing the Enterprise crew would discuss in the Observation Lounge. You can find the thread on the new Arc here
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Apr 30, 2014 19:57
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It is the best Station, but I'm biased because it's mine.  We recently combined the USS Bremen and the USS Hooke to increase the crew size, that now runs on Thursdays at 1900 UTC. We're ALSO starting a new arc which you can begin reading up here
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Apr 30, 2014 20:35
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Just resurrecting this thread to make the announcement that we've added a more US-Centric timed ship to our lineup! The U.S.S. Sentinel is a Sovereign class ship, and she's begging for some crew. If you were on the fence before because there wasn't a good time, and this one suits you better, join up and join in! The Sentinel will be running on Mondays at 2100 EST. Here's the STE forum post all about it! Linky
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May 22, 2014 18:12
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We're on a bit of a recruitment drive at the moment, as we're down a few people on our station - The Sigma Rho and on the U.S.S. Hyperion. We also have a few other ships at different times for those of you who find those better. Take a look at our forums if you want some writing examples from these fantastic people, or check out the ship roster if you want to see which positions we have open and where. Accepting anything and everything right now, send us a character all you Holodeck Janitors out there!
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Jul 15, 2014 17:39
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The Atlantis is looking good in our roster! We could use some more players, though. We've just gone through and revamped the initial player experience, making it that much more interesting and streamlined to get in and start playing. Also, our design department has been busy. 
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Jul 29, 2014 16:02
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