Outbound OOC/Memes

It's September 30. Three people (including me) have posted to AC. I think that kind of speaks for itself in terms of what's going on. The writing has been on the wall more or less since we opened, and the game has just continued to shrink since then. (And at least then, there were more than two players and a mod.)

As such, Outbound Flight will be closing today. It was fun, but it seems kind of silly to keep a game open for 3 people.

I'm not going to blame anyone, point fingers, any of that. No need to turn this into a wanksplosion. But I've noticed that it's getting harder and harder to find casual RP on Dreamwidth anymore. It's either sex games or horror games - no one wants adventure games. But honestly I have enough of dealing with traumatized people at my job, and I don't want to join a sex game. And with real life stuff, and such a small amount of us right now, I don't have the can, or the energy to mod a game.

That all being said, I had fun playing with you all. I'll still be catching you on plurk or on various corners of the internets. Stay awesome, all of you.

Buckle up boys, girls, and other! It's time for ~*~activity check~*~.

To complete activity check, you need to post a comment with your player name in the subject line and with the following form filled out:

<b>Character name:</b> <b>Character journal:</b> <b>Activity Link:</b> <b>Activity Summary:</b>

The Activity Link is just a link to something that you did this month to prove that you posted with your character this month. There are no quotas on comments or threads or anything of that nature, so feel free to link anything!

The Activity Summary is your chance to sum up in a paragraph or several what your character was up to. This can include both threaded-out and handwaved activity (within reason). Since we're already summarizing our activity, feel free to use people's AC comments as a place to figure out any handwaved CR you'd like to note for the month.

If you have multiple characters in the game, make sure to fill out the activity form for EACH of them.

If you do not post activity for a character, you will idle out and have to wait two weeks to re-apply with your character. Once you have posted some of that sweet, sweet activity, you are free to app in another character if you happen to want to play more than one.

Welcome to the Space Olympics.
All the oxygen has run out,
and someone who will not be named
accidentally hit self-destruct!

Everyone was having a good time visiting a small trading outpost for a hoverball tournament when it suffered from a terrible accident. Now, all the life support is failing and the self-destruct timer is counting down the minutes! Worse, Outbound Flight herself isn't docked, too busy gathering mineral resources in the area, and it won't arrive before the countdown runs to zero.

Will you run for it? Steal a shuttle? Use the emergency escape pods? Help civilians? Push them out of the way? Use your l33t engineering skills to fix the system malfunction? Punch something? Try EVA? Cry a lot?

Act quickly, because any way you slice this, you're not going to have much time before the air running out is the least of your concerns...

Buckle up boys, girls, and other! It's time for ~*~activity check~*~.

To complete activity check, you need to post a comment with your player name in the subject line and with the following form filled out:

<b>Character name:</b> <b>Character journal:</b> <b>Activity Link:</b> <b>Activity Summary:</b>

The Activity Link is just a link to something that you did this month to prove that you posted with your character this month. There are no quotas on comments or threads or anything of that nature, so feel free to link anything!

The Activity Summary is your chance to sum up in a paragraph or several what your character was up to. This can include both threaded-out and handwaved activity (within reason). Since we're already summarizing our activity, feel free to use people's AC comments as a place to figure out any handwaved CR you'd like to note for the month.

If you have multiple characters in the game, make sure to fill out the activity form for EACH of them.

If you do not post activity for a character, you will idle out and have to wait two weeks to re-apply with your character. Once you have posted some of that sweet, sweet activity, you are free to app in another character if you happen to want to play more than one.

I know we're all still hella backtagging the event, but just to let y'all know:

Based on the planning posts, everyone earned the good ending. (Whether or not everyone earns good+ is up in the air, gotta see some action on the event post regarding fixing the bugs first.)(Yes, there is a good+ ending.)

Thanks to Clu, Axl, and Thrawn, the problem was traced to its source and dealt with. The droids' erratic behavior will almost immediately stop when they intervene, though the ones that have been math-drawing and statue-building will persist in their efforts until everything is complete on the 13th.

Just so you know, the big sculpture project will look like this and occupy the D1 mess hall for a while, at least until the Master succeeds in delegating enough zombies to take it down. Ornamentation. Shudder.

Event: A Few Small Glitches



Who? Ship-wide. Sorry, guys.
When? The madness begins on the morning of August 8th. Event end is dependent on player action.
What? Robots gone wild!
Why? The ship hates you.

By now your characters will have probably taken notice of the fleet of small droids that takes care of the ship. Mouse droids present something of a trip hazard and handle a lot of the cleaning, astromech droids roll around getting mistaken for trash cans and fixing things, buggy-looking things clean the glass, and so on. Maybe they've been kind of under the radar lately, since aside from the astromech's welder it isn't like any of them are armed or anything.

Well, the droids have noticed you. And they're a little pissed, it seems.

Starting on the morning of August 8th, little things start going wrong. Maybe it's the complicated math shapes created out of piles of dust in the cafeteria that's your first clue, or maybe the soap in your quarters was mysteriously replaced with skin dye overnight. Maybe you took notice of the droids making something out of the remains of some of the barricades. Either way, it's pretty easy to tell that the droids are acting kinda screwy.

As the week progresses, the little glitches and gremlins start to escalate-- food suddenly getting spiked with alkaloids that are poisonous to Earth-like creatures, drugs in the medical bay suddenly being mislabeled, the thermostat going into extremes of heat and cold, the lights going out. More mathematical diagrams on the floor start appearing, and that is definitely some kind of sculpture being made over in D1. If things don't get dealt with, this stuff might even start spreading to the engines. Or the environmental systems. Might not want to sit around and wait to find out what sort of environment the droids think is appropriate to the droid god.

What can my character do about this?

Well, nothing is always an option. The Master will start taking notice when the gremlins start getting really bad and he starts losing zombies, around the 11th. The Force can't really do much from a distance to droids, at least not without involving smashing and other unwanted effects. If nobody does anything, the problem will eventually be fixed... sort of. If this is the direction everyone goes, expect some updates on the fallout.

Destroying the malfunctioning droids is also an option. They're not exactly built for fighting, and a sturdy golf club and some free time will take care of most of them. That's probably a good idea regardless-- it's possible to keep your own quarters crazy droid free, though that won't do anything to stop problems in the central systems...

Naturally, there's tracking the problem to its source and dealing with it. A lot of the ship's systems are automated through the dreadnoughts' computer cores. Find the bug in the system, stop the droids. Of course, whatever's causing the problem doesn't really want to be stopped, if the way the droids act is any consideration. Reprogramming, slagging the malfunctioning core, appeasing the droid god... if an exploratory force wants to deal with the core directly, expect further updates on that.

What will happen afterward?

Well, that's entirely a function of what everybody does. Since backtagging is likely to be a thing, please to be putting what your character plans to do in comments so that working out the event results is a little easier. Expect an update around the 11th. Maybe another one on the 13th. Things should mostly be resolved by then. Hopefully.

Oh yeah...

And don't forget, around the time all this crazy stuff is happening? Some things from home happened to appear on-board. Or were dug out and gift-tagged for their proper owners. Might wanna remember to get on that, too. Wouldn't want a droid to end up with your precious.

Game Housekeeping

ATP went up on Saturday. If you want to try and enable people, be my guest.

Reminder that we will be having our first activity check during the last week of August. AC rules will go up when the check is happening. It's pretty simple. Once we have finished the AC period (so, early September) things will be open if current players want to app a second character.

Terms and Conditions: August

Outbound Flight will be in deep space for the month of August, owing to a small problem with the hyperdrive motivator. The ship will drop from hyperspace on August 3rd, and normal operations will resume on August 25.

While everyone is stuck with the sublights, they will have a rather spectacular view of a large nebula undergoing star birth. The view is sufficiently far away that nobody needs to worry about radiation spikes. Hopefully.

The only other item of note as that sufficiently sensitive individuals (those with force sensitivity, latent or otherwise, or other mystic powers) might notice a distinct feeling of being watched. Well, not watched-watched, more like observed. Like a kid pressed against a store window.

Ship's weather will hold at an average of 72 F, with no extra areas sealed off, barring events below.

August Events

As always, you can check the Calendar for a handy month-to-month view of game events.

Item Drop will take place on August 8. A sign-up post will go up a few days before.

A Few Small Glitches will also start on August 8. Droids will be going a little spare, and the involuntary crew will probably have to do something about it before their weird little math diagrams and screw ups with what kind of tea you like start to escalate. The fun should be resolved one way or another by August 13.

As promised, this event will depend heavily on player choices. There are a lot of potential long-term repercussions depending on what the characters discover and elect to do with their knowledge. Keep an eye out for the plotting post!

There are no player events or plots scheduled for August, but if you'd like to start one please comment below. (Comment below if you have any ideas for September and onward as well-- no time like the present to work in more mayhem and chaos!)

WHAT HAPPENS IN SPACE VEGAS STAYS IN SPACE VEGAS

The ship has made a stop at a city-planet to acquire some supplies-- and just everyone's luck, it's one of those wonderful mostly-lawless places where you can do or get pretty much anything. About the only thing the local government seems to frown on is outright murder, though it's quickly apparent that most of the planet's places of business include some rather heavily-armed security to deter thieves and other ne'er-do-wells. Still, it's a chance to get away from the zombies and breathe some non-recycled atmosphere for a while...

Scenarios:

#1: Screw that, I'm staying on board.

Just what it says on the tin. Your character has some plans now that the ship's mostly cleared of both unwilling passengers and zombies.. the Master might even be away! Time for a little reconnaissance behind locked doors?

#2: All work and no play makes Jack something something.

Unhappily for you, you were given a mission on-planet that you should probably try to complete before you go have fun... well, unless you want to get your air supply cut off or any of another thousand yucky things. Thankfully, you just have to pick up that really big palette of mysterious crates watched over by those really big unsmiling dudes.. or was it that other big stack of crates?

#3: Well it's not technically illegal.

There's something on-planet-- money, technology, shinies, whatever your character's heart desires. Only problem is, you can't seem to acquire it by normal economic activities. Ocean's Eleven in Space, anyone?

#4: The chips are down.

It's Space Vegas. Your character is gonna go have a look at the space casinos, or take in a space MMA battle, or whatever other ridiculous thing you can think of on a planet where you can do pretty much anything you can afford... and you've got just enough in credits or barter to cash in...

#5: Wild card! Choose your own adventure!

DO

~Post a top-level comment for a character who will be NEW to the game. So, like.. everybody. If you want to.

~Make sure to label your post with your character's name and originating canon.

~Tag as if you're already stuck on this wonderful ship! Make sure to read through the game info before tagging.

~If you are really shy, try tagging one of the threads already there!

DON'T

~Walk out of the airlocks without a space suit. Jeeze.

~Taunt happy fun ball.