[Tim]

In what was a perfectly innocent mistake at the weekend I've been badly spoiled about the plot of an upcoming game, one I was looking forward to - and all it took was one word.

I feel that it's worth airing this topic in an attempt to increase potential game enjoyment for players.

Everything that follows is purely in my view and designed to hopefully maximise future enjoyment of games (and other stuff)

We've been doing this a long time and for many of us there's a spoken shorthand, however saying "It's an Aliens (Hissy Things) Game" immediately blows many expectations out of the water - we KNOW we are going to get physically attacked by technologically unsophisticated black monsters at some point, so the person on point is checking the shadows for things that jump out, and not tripwires (when of course they should be doing both)..

It's a difficult line to draw - saying it's a Star Wars game is acceptable in that the Star Wars Universe is huge, it gives the players something to hang onto, costumes become easy to explain, there's a wealth of material out there.

HOWEVER

Saying it's a Star Wars Game based on Anakin Skywalker killing Jedi Children, probably kind of blows the plot and any shock value out of the water.

Showing my age way back in *my* early days of tag, there was kind of an in-joke metaphor for participation in tag games "I'm on Holiday" - as soon as anyone said anything about paritcipation in an upcoming game, the other person would say "I'm on Holiday, can't make it" or something similar and generally quite naturally the conversation moves on and the element of surprise is preserved.

It's very easy for use, especially those who have been playing the hobby for a while to under-value pre-game secrecy as a part of the whole picture, the internet doesn't help - picking totally unfairly on Emm's game as an example simply because it's the next scheduled public one - public sign up forums mean I already know about two of the other teams in the Star Trek game. I don't know what they are going to be doing, but i know they are there and so I'm not expecting to see Gorns or Horta for example.

To wrap this up - please can we all simply avoid the phrase "It's based on...." when we are talking to anyone not on the organisation team or NPC crew. This goes treble of the actual games organiser is not part of the conversation.

Remember "Loose lips sink (star)ships"

Cheers

--Tim
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--Tim "Oscar" Atkinson
This is who we are.

[H-Bird]

Quoted For Truth. Yup.

H
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Chris Hannaford

In the grim darkness of the far future there is only tea. And cake. Evil cake.

[Alex]

This, of course, was the reason for the High Frontier generic setting. Wrapping most of the corporate dystopian future movies, books and TV shows in one big stretchy wrappy thing means you can have many more things than Aliens out there, while still giving people an idea of what game universe they're stepping into.
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Cry havoc, and let slip the sausage of war!

[Nasher]

Unless your name was Paul Sharville I well remember all those people "on holiday" and sometimes some of them were!
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Dickie, save the Empire! Bertie, Bertie, I'm coming for you lad, I'm coming for you...
The Major

Paul Nash
The original Nasher...