Post by Nola on Dec 26, 2017 6:09:30 GMT
Hey guys!
We're still a few months away from STAB's first anniversary (late March), but now is the time I tend to get most reflective, so I thought I'd share some thoughts about what we've done with STAB so far, and where I'd like to see us go in the future. Apologies ahead of time if I ramble a bit - I'm operating on, like, two hours sleep. Anyway...
I think it's safe to say that, this time last year, none of us had any idea that STAB would be a thing. I certainly didn't, as I'd been focused on trying to help iron things out back in STE, and I most definitely would't have guessed how much responsibility would fall to me in terms of getting the game organized and underway. Suffice to say this was all way outside my wheelhouse at the time. I had zero confidence in my ability to run anything, and those first few months were nerve-wracking as I kept looking for ways that I might fuck it up.
So far, so good.
As it turned out, the timing of our move to STAB was serendipitous. Those of you who've known me for a while have probably picked up that I've got some mental health issues. What you might not know is that this stuff has plagued me all my life. I first started therapy around the age of 10, and have been doing it off and on throughout the 21 years since. It's really only been in the last 12-18 months that I've felt it start to pay off.
I don't know that I can properly express to you all how different I am today from the person I was when I started this game. For the first time in my life, I feel like I have my feet under me. I feel like life is manageable. I'm actually able to recognize my strengths as a person, as a writer, and as a director for this game, which is the continuation of a game that's been in play since the late 90s.
That's not to say that I see myself as perfect, of course. I think there are a number of things I could be doing better. The difference between me 9 months ago and me now, however, is that instead of feeling shitty about those things I could be doing better, I now have the wherewithal to actually try and do better. If I could pinpoint any difference as the biggest, that would be it - I now know that I can improve my life. That wasn't true for the first decade-plus of my adult life. It's a liberating feeling, to say the least.
All this is to say that I've got some additions to the game in the works, which I would like to share with you now.
1. First and foremost, we're going to be adding a new way to play STAB: forum-based play. As much as our chat-based missions are our bread and butter, the reality is that, with our current player base and staff, the number of play times we can offers is limited. As it stands, we have three 1-hour slots out of a 168-hour week.
That makes it really hard to recruit straight-up. IRC-based Star Trek Role Play is already a fairly niche hobby, so finding people who would be interested is hard enough. The odds that many of them would be able to play during the times we offer just whittles our potential player base even more. The idea with having a forum-based game would be that it would greatly expand the number of players we could attract. Once we've built up some numbers that way, we can start looking at opening up new ships and new times to make it easier to recruit for the IRC side of the game.
For those of you who've been playing with us since the ACTD days, you might recall that the Forum-based ships there had what we could politely call 'pacing issues.' We play-tested a similar setup in STE that managed to be even worse. Long story short: our version is going to be significantly different.
Instead of having players play individual characters on forum-based ships, we're going to have each player be in charge of their own ship. This has two important benefits. The first is that threads will no longer bog down while the crew waits for one character or another to respond. The second is that it will give each player more creative freedom as they help plot the careers of an entire bridge crew themselves. I believe that this will solve a lot of the problems with previous forum-based systems, and will also remain true to what STAB is meant to be: a writing game.
That being said, there will also be a structured side to play. I've installed a basic dice-rolling plugin on the forum, and am currently preparing a stat system for play-testing in the near future. For that reason, I won't give too many details on this aspect of the game yet, but I will say that it's meant to add a tactical element to the forum-based game. There is, after all, a war going on, and this would allow us to play that out in a completely different fashion from the action we see on our chat-based ships - not better or worse, but different.
I decided to put this together after talking with Annie and Andrew (Nox). For those of you who don't know, Annie runs forum based on the Mafia board game, and has connections though that to a network of similar boards. By adding a structured element to the forum-based ships, the hope is that we can start attracting some of those players who also happen to be Star Trek nerds like us.
I'm pretty excited about it, to be honest. At the same time, I would love to hear what you all think of this idea, whether positive or negative. I can't stress enough that I do not want to impose anything on you guys that you don't want. Ever.
One of my bigger sources of uncertainty since getting STAB up and running is how STE ended. We don't need to revisit what all happened, but the gist is that too much of the game became dependent on one person, and that one person wasn't overly willing to share responsibility. Avoiding that here in STAB is my #1 priority. It always will be. This game is meant to be a community, and I want us to be able to be open and honest with each other when it comes to this kind of thing. I can think of a few ways my announcing this forum-based game might raise some concern, so I want you all to know that your opinion on the subject absolutely matters to me. If you don't want to share it here, you are always free to drop me a PM as well.
I won't take up too much more of your time, except to say that I appreciate all of your support in getting this game up and running. I can't tell you how heartening it's been to have you all come along with us, and it's my sincere hope that we can reward that support by making STAB the best version of this game yet.
As always, thank you all for playing, and I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.
Sincerely,
CJ
We're still a few months away from STAB's first anniversary (late March), but now is the time I tend to get most reflective, so I thought I'd share some thoughts about what we've done with STAB so far, and where I'd like to see us go in the future. Apologies ahead of time if I ramble a bit - I'm operating on, like, two hours sleep. Anyway...
I think it's safe to say that, this time last year, none of us had any idea that STAB would be a thing. I certainly didn't, as I'd been focused on trying to help iron things out back in STE, and I most definitely would't have guessed how much responsibility would fall to me in terms of getting the game organized and underway. Suffice to say this was all way outside my wheelhouse at the time. I had zero confidence in my ability to run anything, and those first few months were nerve-wracking as I kept looking for ways that I might fuck it up.
So far, so good.
As it turned out, the timing of our move to STAB was serendipitous. Those of you who've known me for a while have probably picked up that I've got some mental health issues. What you might not know is that this stuff has plagued me all my life. I first started therapy around the age of 10, and have been doing it off and on throughout the 21 years since. It's really only been in the last 12-18 months that I've felt it start to pay off.
I don't know that I can properly express to you all how different I am today from the person I was when I started this game. For the first time in my life, I feel like I have my feet under me. I feel like life is manageable. I'm actually able to recognize my strengths as a person, as a writer, and as a director for this game, which is the continuation of a game that's been in play since the late 90s.
That's not to say that I see myself as perfect, of course. I think there are a number of things I could be doing better. The difference between me 9 months ago and me now, however, is that instead of feeling shitty about those things I could be doing better, I now have the wherewithal to actually try and do better. If I could pinpoint any difference as the biggest, that would be it - I now know that I can improve my life. That wasn't true for the first decade-plus of my adult life. It's a liberating feeling, to say the least.
All this is to say that I've got some additions to the game in the works, which I would like to share with you now.
1. First and foremost, we're going to be adding a new way to play STAB: forum-based play. As much as our chat-based missions are our bread and butter, the reality is that, with our current player base and staff, the number of play times we can offers is limited. As it stands, we have three 1-hour slots out of a 168-hour week.
That makes it really hard to recruit straight-up. IRC-based Star Trek Role Play is already a fairly niche hobby, so finding people who would be interested is hard enough. The odds that many of them would be able to play during the times we offer just whittles our potential player base even more. The idea with having a forum-based game would be that it would greatly expand the number of players we could attract. Once we've built up some numbers that way, we can start looking at opening up new ships and new times to make it easier to recruit for the IRC side of the game.
For those of you who've been playing with us since the ACTD days, you might recall that the Forum-based ships there had what we could politely call 'pacing issues.' We play-tested a similar setup in STE that managed to be even worse. Long story short: our version is going to be significantly different.
Instead of having players play individual characters on forum-based ships, we're going to have each player be in charge of their own ship. This has two important benefits. The first is that threads will no longer bog down while the crew waits for one character or another to respond. The second is that it will give each player more creative freedom as they help plot the careers of an entire bridge crew themselves. I believe that this will solve a lot of the problems with previous forum-based systems, and will also remain true to what STAB is meant to be: a writing game.
That being said, there will also be a structured side to play. I've installed a basic dice-rolling plugin on the forum, and am currently preparing a stat system for play-testing in the near future. For that reason, I won't give too many details on this aspect of the game yet, but I will say that it's meant to add a tactical element to the forum-based game. There is, after all, a war going on, and this would allow us to play that out in a completely different fashion from the action we see on our chat-based ships - not better or worse, but different.
I decided to put this together after talking with Annie and Andrew (Nox). For those of you who don't know, Annie runs forum based on the Mafia board game, and has connections though that to a network of similar boards. By adding a structured element to the forum-based ships, the hope is that we can start attracting some of those players who also happen to be Star Trek nerds like us.
I'm pretty excited about it, to be honest. At the same time, I would love to hear what you all think of this idea, whether positive or negative. I can't stress enough that I do not want to impose anything on you guys that you don't want. Ever.
One of my bigger sources of uncertainty since getting STAB up and running is how STE ended. We don't need to revisit what all happened, but the gist is that too much of the game became dependent on one person, and that one person wasn't overly willing to share responsibility. Avoiding that here in STAB is my #1 priority. It always will be. This game is meant to be a community, and I want us to be able to be open and honest with each other when it comes to this kind of thing. I can think of a few ways my announcing this forum-based game might raise some concern, so I want you all to know that your opinion on the subject absolutely matters to me. If you don't want to share it here, you are always free to drop me a PM as well.
I won't take up too much more of your time, except to say that I appreciate all of your support in getting this game up and running. I can't tell you how heartening it's been to have you all come along with us, and it's my sincere hope that we can reward that support by making STAB the best version of this game yet.
As always, thank you all for playing, and I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.
Sincerely,
CJ