This page is going to show you the ‘Forlorn Hope’ method of posting. It’s a simple format. The first thing in a post is the names of the characters in the scene. The next line is for the location. Here’s an example:

Hadrian Marcus/ John Sexton

Bridge, Forlorn Hope

Hadrian sipped his coffee and grimaced. “I don’t know what’s worse, this coffee or this job.” He drained the mug and said, “Okay, here’s how I see it. Scheiderer lied about owning the cargo. She had her personal group of pirates stop an Alliance courier, stole the cargo… and probably killed the Purplebellies to keep it quiet. The pirates get their hull breached in a meteor storm and breathe vacuum. She hires us to go find the cargo, we bring it to her, and then she either pays us enough to keep us quiet or she kills us and saves her money. Since we were dumb enough to signal her that we found the courier, she knows we’re aware of her piracy-and-murder sideline. If we try to sell the goods ourselves and it gets out, she’ll put out a price on our heads. If we try to sell it and the Alliance finds out, they will dump us on a penal moon until the stars burn out. I did six hard years on one and I’m not going back. So we need another option.”

The captain tapped the navigation screen and pulled up a map of the outer edge of the system. “Okay, we’re three days from Sierra. There should be a cutter on patrol nearby- they’re making a big fuss out of showing the flag since their cruiser’s going to be in dry dock for another eight months. Stupid idiots. Can you get us to a place we can access the Cortex and find out the schedule of the cutter and who’s in charge? We need to know whether to avoid them or, gorram it, try to deal with them.”

(reply)

Okay, now a reply to a post follows the same format. Try to avoid cut-and-pasting the previous post and then adding a sentence before sending it in. You can paraphrase what the person said, how your character interpreted their mood and then post your reply, making sure to give them something to reply back to. Here’s an example:

John Sexton/Hadrian Marcus

Bridge

John watched the captain drink more coffee and wondered if it would be more efficient for Marcus to chew on a power cell, instead. The captain gave a good summary of precisely how and why they were rutted but good. John had been shocked to find the small Alliance courier ship. From the pristine state of the hull and engines, he could tell they had been hit with a magnetic grappler. Both the crew had a single round in their foreheads and John had realized that one of the pirates had stolen the boots off one of the victims. The girl had been all of 19. The pilot managed to shake the mood of gloom off and thought for a minute.

“Huh. There’s a Cortex node about three hours away. It’s between a repeater and Volon. We won’t get a lot of traffic on that line, so there’ll be bandwidth to burn.” John scrolled the map and pointed to a flashing dot. “That’s the Carter meteor swarm. It’ll be about three light-minutes from Sierra in four days. Might be able to use that for one of your ‘stratagems’. Don’t know how you throw a handful of trivia into the wind and get a plan. You really need to teach me that. Must be fun at parties.”

(reply)

I’m pretty open to suggestions about plots, schemes, possible outcomes and players are encouraged to talk to me about them. GMing is hard work, after all, and a man’s got to be a fool to refuse good ideas or advice. That being said, however, I need to okay it before it gets posted. A couple of other rules:

No real profanity. It makes some people tetchy and all. Besides, how can you not love swearing in Chinese?

No smut. Your characters can have all the sex they want behind closed doors but keep it clean in-game. We’re a PG-13 game. Shoot all the people you want, just don’t show your naughty bits. ;-)

Don’t write dialog for others. I encourage joint posts and have done some really complex and excellent ones myself. Some people do it via email and others do it in IM. Just don’t write for others. This is a personal gripe of mine. I once played an ambassador in a Trek game where three people in a row started a conversation, wrote paragraphs from my character that were downright crazy talk and then sent me to a different part of the ship. I quit after the captain wrote me attacking the Prime Directive and had me go to the engine room (still confused by that last bit).

We need three or more (preferably more) good solid posts a week. If you run into some real-life problem and need to take some time off, let me know. We can post your character breaking their leg and sitting out a run or being arrested for a bar fight and missing a heist. It makes it easier on the other players and it adds realism to your character. Heck, we can even bust you out of jail when you’re ready to come back. And who wouldn’t want their fellow players to bust them out of jail, even if it’s for mopery or littering?