Samantha_Kent

Yeah, he was referring to the different time periods which the different series are set in. :P

Welcome to STSF! I hope you have a fantastic time playing here! :)

So basically my first question is, are not knowing things like that going to hurt my chances? Also, if anybody has some advice on things I should look up, and possibly some good resources, it would be much appreciated.

Everyone plays on STSF with different levels of experience with the franchise. Some people were diehard fans of the original series (Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the like), others (like me) started out with watching one of the other series first. So not everyone knows the exact same things (as a matter of fact we're probably going to start getting a lot more people in your situation, having seen the movie) and its easy to pick up on the elements which are most common to the simming experience.

Also, as DarkMonkey said, Memory Alpha is a FANTASTIC resource, probably the best and most comprehensive encyclopedia of Trek anywhere on the web. Definitely check it out, and use it when simming, as it is a great place to fact-check. The "Random Page" wiki function has occupied many an hour for me, too. :P

Also, I noticed on another new person's post that a member made a comment about playing characters from specific timelines. I'm a little confused as to how that would work. Are different sims based in different timelines? Are you expected to establish what timeline your character exists in, or is it just something some people do for their own amusement?

I'm not entirely sure where this post was, so I'm not quite sure what they were referring to. It's possible they meant the different eras of Star Trek. The original series (TOS) which ran in the 1960s is set in the 2260s. The next three series -- Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9), and Star Trek: Voyager (VOY) -- ran from the 1980s to the early 2000s each partially overlapping the next, and are set roughly concurrently in the 2360s-2380s. Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT), which aired after Voyager, is set as a prequel to TOS in the 2150s. So there are a couple of different eras to choose from. Most of our sims are set in the TNG/DS9/VOY era, though we do have one TOS-era sim (USS Hood), one set during the TOS movies which is slightly later (USS Challenger), and one set in an imagined future era not included in canon (USS Agincourt). We also have one sim set in the Romulan Empire (USS Talon) and one featuring a half-Federation, half-Klingon crew (IKC Qob/Lakota). So there's quite a lot of time frames and such to choose from.

Lastly, since I'm just starting out, i don't quite know the order in which to do things. Do I write up some kind of profile for my character first, so he can be used in the academy, or do the academy first and worry about stuff like that later?

In the academy, everyone is human and everyone is a cadet; you don't have to worry about writing a character profile just yet. The point of the academy is to let you get a handle on the mechanics of simming, getting used to working with other players and telling a story and keeping to a plot, to experiment with different positions and different types of character personalities, and (if necessary) to get used to the Star Trek world. Once you graduate and join an advanced sim, you'll be able to start running a character over multiple weeks and developing them, but for now you don't have to worry about it.

Hope this all helps! Feel free to ask around if you have any more questions -- everyone around here's pretty friendly and will be glad to help out. :)

The Temporal Prime Directive seems like a strange thing to cite given that it was already broken by Spock having traveled in the first place. :P

Oh, my lord almighty...the instructions on how to open my Macbook and clean the fan are scaring me. :P

Welcome to STSF, Brynna. :P Hope you have a great time here...feel free to ask around if you have any questions!

So if you're the Gatekeeper, who's the Key Master?

Has anyone else here ever played a board game called Atmosfear, involving a DVD where a really creepy guy called the "Gatekeeper" insults everyone playing and throws random events into the game while a timer counts down the length of play?

Yeah. It's epic.

It seems to me it's happened before; I seem to remember reading about some election where the deciding voter was dead.

Heh heh, thanks to Samantha. She edited a picture of Katee Sackhoff for me, to have for Aliana. ^^

>.>

<.<

I crossed the streams, didn't I? Ahhhhhh...

Welcome to STSF, Drake! :) Hope you have a great time here and feel free to ask around if you have questions!

::sigh:: It's that kind of response that is getting people who want to have an actual discussion flamed too... :-/

Edited with a new entry:

The Six-Flags-fold path.

My brain just translated the Washington Post headline "Issue of Guantanamo Detainees Simmers in Virginia" as "Issue of Guantanamo Detains Simmers in Virginia" and got all excited...

I think I need more sleep. :)

He'd been put on a leash, he'd been put outside.

He'd been told to beg, he'd been told to fetch sticks.

 

But no longer was he gonna take it.

No longer would he play dead.

 

Fido was the first of the dog protesters.

Fido was an angry son of a bitch.

I think I'm going to sit this round out, as I don't see any possible way I could top this one. ROFL.

I'd be down with that.

The bit with the computer not understanding him was funny, and this makes up for a lot of these inconsistencies, but not all of them.

I actually found this one of the strangest bits of the whole movie, given that it seems both implausible given the emphatically multicultural nature of the Federation -- presumably there are even stronger accents than Chekov's out there -- and (from an IC standpoint) unsafe to have a computer which is not able to interpret anyone not speaking Standard American or British English.

Well, someone needs to keep the production line going, so the Iowa Bar where Kirk tangled with the security cadets (and unsuccessfully hit on Uhuru) could fulfill his order for a "Classic Budweiser".

Did anyone else notice that Uhura ordered something Cardassian? (O.o)

Welcome to STSF, Caaga! Hope you have a fantastic time here! :)

As for my question. What exactly is the policy on players creating new species for their characters? I've got an idea for my own in mind (rather basic details, really, nothing too articulated) but I don't want to spend too much time on it if there's going to be heavy opposition.

Grom and Kansas pretty much covered this, but basically you go through the academy as a human character just so you can get used to the flow of the game, how the mechanics of it all work, and all that. Once you graduate and go to join an advanced sim, you can work with your GMs for that specific game to determine whether or not your race idea is one that they feel is appropriate.

Oh, and I did my first academy sim the other day. Very fast paced and a little hard for me to follow, but still very enjoyable.

 

Hopefully in the next one I won't feel as though I'm drowning.

It does take a little getting used to but don't despair. The more practice you get, the smoother it'll flow and it ends up being a heck of a good time! ;) Feel free to keep asking around if you have any more questions; everyone here is always glad to help out. Best of luck and again welcome!

Welcome back, Shawn. :)

Welcome (back) to STSF, Rhawkins! Yep, there's plenty of life in the old girl at the moment...eleven active games, and one academy per day -- 10 PM Monday/Wednesday, 9PM Tuesday/Thursday/Friday, 12PM Saturday, and 3PM Sunday (all EST). ;) Hope you're back to play and look forward to seeing you around!

Welcome aboard, crazygreek! Hope you have a great time here! ;)

Sam probably doesn't exist in the timeline set forth by this new film incarnation, that's just my take on it.

lol, when you said that, my mind first went to, Sam SemaJ, and Samantha Kent. I have been spending waay to much time on here.

::sigh:: So did mine.

I was also wondering why Starfleet updated all their starships with cadet bridge crews before sending them all off to rescue Vulcan.

Yeah...I was wondering that too. It seemed rather contrived and (if you'll pardon the obvious joke) illogical.

Welcome to STSF, Katsya! I'm sure you will be a great asset indeed. ;) Hope you have a great time here! Feel free to ask around if you have any questions -- everyone'll be glad to help out.

And to your 13-year-old...what's wrong with being a nerd, huh?! ;)

Welcome to STSF, Tristan! Hope you have a really good time here...feel free to ask around if you have any questions! ;)

...about leaving a whole pile of fans that were drawn in by the new movie, to think that was definitive Trek, and really, while it seemed to have been marketed to draw in new fans...it seems to have the plot designed for Trekkers who could get the idea of the alternative reality scheme.

This is a better way of phrasing what I was trying to say on that score. Thank you. ;)

::sigh:: Well, this is the second time in as many months that I seem to be the only person who *didn't* like a major science fiction event (the other one being the Battlestar Galactica series finale).

I was really disappointed with this movie altogether, and I would like to think that even had it not been Trek or I not been a Trekker and analyzing it entirely on cinematic merit I would have felt the same way. The script was stilted and made me laugh occasionally when it clearly didn't mean to; the story was strange and felt rushed and not as fully thought out as it could have been. It had a problem which I remember disliking about the "Get Smart" film...they were trying so hard to stuff all the cliches into one movie, one after another after another, that it all became rather haphazard. Much of it also seemed layered with implausibility (a kid with a criminal history and bad Academy record is promoted directly from Cadet to Captain because of *one* mission? And Chekov, by comparison, remains an ensign for like...eight years?) and many things that could have been explained were not (what is "red matter"? what happened to the Centaurian eel thing? Etc...).

The characters themselves seemed extremely flat for much of the film -- McCoy and Scotty occasionally had moments of good characterization but the movie for the most part seemed to suffer from the same difficulties that people once accused ST:V of having -- that the characters existed to be laughed at rather than with, as comic relief rather than personalities. Uhura existed more or less to be hot, Chekov existed to say "Wulcan" a lot, Sulu existed to forget to turn the parking brake off and to have a really cool extendable sword.

The Romulans...first of all I'm surprised that they would make the Romulans the villains of this movie at all, given that the Klingons were the main villains of TOS and probably have better wide-appeal anyway and Nemesis had just done a Romulan-villain movie already. Also, as Jami and Grom said, they were also kind of one-dimensional as villains, and perhaps, having just created a Romulan char for the first time, I feel biased on this subject, but that bothered me.

That being said...it was beautifully designed and beautifully shot, a very, very pretty movie with some good lines and sequences and excellent action. Additionally, I have not yet spoken to a single person who didn't like it, so I'm beginning to wonder if I just watched a different movie. I have managed to be accused of being a party pooper and (once) of having no taste, so some people are rather up in arms about its quality. Interesting, and probably in the long run a good thing, though I would like to think I went into this with an open mind and very much wanting to like it and am not simply spitting into the wind to annoy people.

I do think it's interesting that an installment purported to bring new fans to the franchise so deliberately created an alternate universe, leaving a whole pile of fans thinking *that* is the definitive Trek when the impact of the plot on so many levels was intended to come from how *different* it was from the definitive Trek.

Well the whole point is that it's an alternate timeline. As a stand alone movie, it was awesome, but it chucks 40 years of canon out the window. From a role-playing stance, we just presume we're in the unaltered regular timeline. ;)

((Also, RE: Jami's comments...I too had the novel "Sarek" in my head when Amanda died -- as a matter of fact every time Sarek or Amanda was on the screen really. It's my favorite Star Trek novel EVER by a wide, wide margin, and I couldn't help the comparison, but as "Sarek" is not canon I do not hold it against the movie so much.))

Generally, that'll be up to whatever GM team you end up working with...once you get assigned to a ship you can discuss with them the sort of character you want to create. Bear in mind, though, that on a TOS sim Romulans are still something of a novelty to the Federation, I think...

But yeah...everyone is human in the Academies, and once you graduate and pick an advanced game, you can check for your GMs approval of the character you want to create. ;)