@ajroach42 omg this would rule.

@Damage There's so much still to come!

@ajroach42 Ten Forward: The Ride!

Behind the counter, everyone is all spacey.

You're confused.

You walk up to the counter. You order "a small coffee" the clerk, who you can't help but notice has the Weirdest speckled patter all over his skin, asks if you'll be paying in credits or dollars.

"what's a credit?" you ask.

He gives you your total in dollars, and points you towards a small display.

"Ask the computer. She'll explain."

You approach the display, but you see no obvious way of interacting with it.

The monitor says "Ask me!"

Eventually, you get up the courage and you do.

"Computer, what's a credit?"

suddenly the monitor springs to life, with an ambient, vaguely organic pattern that shifts in response to the words:

"Do you want the official standard galactic encyclopedia entry on Credits or are you looking for something more coloquial?"

"Uhh..."

"Are you new to the galactic federation?"

"Yes!"

"Ah! Let me explain" the computer begins. (Cont. ofc)

"This space is a kind of game. Think of it like an MMO, but IRL.

I'm a computer. I know things. Ask me about things. If you want an out of universe explanations of a concept or idea, just say "what the eff is [thing]" If you want an in universe explanation "Tell me about [thing]"

Let me tell you a little bit about what you can do here."

and she continues on to explain that there are computer terminals at each table, that connect to a massive in-universe community, that this is one of several locations.

She tells you about some of the RP opportunities. About the membership options. About the costumes and the aliens and the culture.

You listen, enraptured and a little confused.

Finally she says "We have a shuttle launching in a few minutes. Would you like to fly along as an observer?"

confused, you say "Yes."

A woman walks over. Her apperance is vaguely alien. Her clothes unlike anything you've seen before.

"If you're going to fly along, we need to get you suited up. Go talk to requisitions."

You walk towards a door labeled requisitions.

Inside, a small, friendly robot helps you find a suitable flight suit, side arm, and a portable computer terminal.

You glance at the terminal. "Ask Me" is printed across the screen.

"Computer, what the eff did I just get myself in to?" you say.

The computer springs to life, and responds almost coyly "If the cafe is a kind of MMO, consider this a demo. You're going to take part in a short orbital maneuver."

The woman from before returns. You're led through another door. "I'm captain Ken'fa" she says "will this be your first time spaceside?"

"y..yes?" you respond nervously.

"Neat! This is going to be fun! I haven't taken a newb up before. We'll be in flight for about twenty minutes, is that okay?"

"Sure, I think"

She leads you on to what can only be described as the bridge of a starship.

Other crewpeople trickle in.

She introduces you to everyone, and gives you a moment to familiarize yourself with the systems.

"You're going to be controlling the scanner array" she says, motioning to a panel of buttons. "If anything starts blinking, just tell me. I'm not expecting any trouble today."

a short pause, and then

"All hands, prepare for lift off."

You look around, unsure what to expect.

And then the whole room begins to lurch slightly. If you didn't know better, you would swear you were accelerating.

You check your sensors. They indicate incredible speed, and fully functional inertial dampeners.

You look to the windows, and you see space rapidly approaching, the earth falling quickly behind you.

Suddenly the acceleration lessens. The crew are up and around, following the captains orders, which you still don't fully understand. It's mesmerizing.

It's so mesmerizing that you don't realize the captain is talking to you until the third time she says "can I get a sensor reading Cadet?"

She says it with a smile, though, and walks over to remind you how the buttons work.

You're still dumbfounded, but you begin to participate, assisting the crew in gathering the required data, getting to know them.

You've been in space for about fifteen minutes when you notice a red flashing light on the console. It's getting brighter and more urgent.

You panic.

"uhh... Captain...?" you say "captain, there's a light."

You hear one of the other crewmen singing under their breath "over at the Frankenstein mansion"

The captain, though, grows grim and serious. She walks to your station and begins to flail at the controls.

"Computer, red alert. Battle stations. Three raiders incoming."

The lighting changes. The crew all strap in.

"Sorry cadet, this might get bumpy. Strap in, and hold on." she says, and you do.

On one of the viewscreens, you see three ships approach. It's fast, and they look so real you struggle to remember that this is all in the back of some coffee shop.

"Hail them" the captain says through gritted teeth.

A face appears on the view screen. The captains shout at one another for a few moments, before you notice another light blinking on your console.

"Captain..." you begin.

"Not NOW cadet" the captain says sternly before returning to her banter.

Your terminal blinks. A text from another crew member. "the sensor is indicating that our reinforcements have arrived. The captain doesn't want to blow the surprise."

Suddenly, the captain closes the connection. She quickly consults her termainal and then begins firing as two other ships appear in view.

The ship, or rather the bridge, or rather the room you're in? lurches and sways as the captain and crew engage in the dance.

A torpedo strikes your hull. The shock shakes the ship.

Through one of the view screens, you finally see a large, distant explosion.

"We've disabled the vessel captain" says one of the crewmembers "shall we destroy it?"

The captain weighs this option for a moment, but ultimately decides against it.

"Nah, I gotta get to class, let's take her in."

Your ship docks with a nearby starbase. The captain consults with a repair crew over the viewscreen.

"I'm distributing the loot now, everybody check your terminals" she says.

"So, cadet, what do you think?"

you consider this for a moment.

"That was the most amazing thing I've ever experienced." you finally muster.

"Ah, that was nothing, they didn't even board us!" the captain says, as you exit the ship. "Oh, you should have enough credits from that raid for a few more free hours. I also passed along my info. Go set up an account, and if you decide to join up, maybe you can join up with us. We need a new science officer. "

@ajroach42 aaa i want this

i wanna be the science officer

@ajroach42 also what's happening with Jupiter's ghost i kinda stopped checking sorry

I'd still like to participate in something like that

@squirrel It's totally still *going* to happen, but it has not happened yet.

I found out I needed practice at production, and I needed to polish some stuff.

So I work on it about twice a week, but I haven't started recording yet.

I'm planning to get started in earnest after the holidays.

And I'm super excited to have you involved.

Basically, I want a #spaceLARPCafe that has an actual cafe open to the public, but that also serves as an in universe hangout.

And then in the back, I want big ol "Star Tours" style flight sims, connected directly to starfleet style controls and piloted by small crews.

Engagements can be PvP or PvActor. It's 1/2 LARP, 1/2 computer game, except that even the computer game parts happen in a realistic environment.

Obviously there will have tobe some Kayfabe to make the whole thing work, and the only way to make it economically viable would be to charge pretty steeply for memberships.

But, like, you could totally have all the stuff that you would expect out of a big space MMO. Intergalactic intrigue, away missions (complete with laser tag assisted combat) First contact, resource gathering, etc.

But done by a troupe of improvers, and some folks that are okay at tech.

The motion sims would be complicated to build on that scale, but not impossible.

And honestly, it'd be So Much Fun.

Even if it was just LARP style as a weekend installation somewhere, you know?

AND there's no reason that #spaceLARPCafe has to be SPACE-y.

It could just as easily be a steampunk thing! The combat could be done in airships instead of spaceships.

Or just boats? but that's boring.

But yeah, Disney could do this and it not even impact their overhead.

If I had some warehouse space and a coupla grand to spare I could do it.

(Which, I think, means I will eventually.)

Like, give me some haunter/cosplayers/prop-makers, and then I gotta figure out how to do the flight sym. (My initial thought is a box and some arduino controlled wenches and some rope, but that's probably actually really bad.)

@ajroach42 You could start with *really* hacked together proof-of-concept stuff that larpers won't mind at all, prove it out that way. If you start getting money and interest, you can upgrade the props and equipment for more and more realism. (Make it clear from the outset that this is the goal so that the initial core group isn't alienated.)

@varx that’s not a bad point.

And we’ll already be doing the world building through the Jupiter’s Ghost podcast.

Most of my friends that LARP are already real invested in their games, and don’t have a lot of spare time.

But yeah, I could focus on the software side at first anyway. I doubt there are many open source spaceflight games with reasonably realistic graphics and cooperative (single ship) multiplayer out there rn.

@varx but I have enough on my plate to last a while, so this will have to wait a few months.

@ajroach42
Is this a real plan or the beginning of a novel you are writing? 😃

@kelbot more plan than novel, but probably neither?

It’s a thing that I wish was real.

@ajroach42
Would be pretty cool. It sounds like it could be the basis for a fun SciFi novel.

@ajroach42 That's kind of what the old Red Planet/Mechwarrior stations were like. We'd show up and pay our $20, the staff were in costume/character, then you'd run a half-dozen missions, earn points, got lapel pins at new ranks.

Had me obsessed until Wizards of the Coast drove themselves bankrupt and the local station was closed in their fallout.

@mdhughes never heard of this. Investigating now.

@ajroach42 Find the Red Planet trailer, starring Weird Al Yankovic as a Martian rebel.

@mdhughes I bet that’s a hoot!

I’ll dig it up when I’m not in transit.

@ajroach42 love the RHPS reference. 😊

@fernweh couldn’t help it.

When I typed “there’s a light” it sprang up unbidden.

@ajroach42 which is exactly how such references should spring up.

@ajroach42 You can find me here.

#JustSpaceAlienCatThings

@ajroach42 I will go there all the time in uniform / costume

@brook right?

I mean honestly who wouldn’t? No friends of mine.

@ajroach42

@ajroach42 I was tech guy responsible for spaceship simulation at a small all-day LARP like this last year. We used Artemis for spaceflight simulation, and had the crew sit at five computers in a school's gym changing room. The gymnastics hall was filled with a labyrinth for boarding ships and nerf gun fights.

@zatnosk !!

@ajroach42 and I even think it was the second or third event in a series. It's been on pause since easter last year, though, because the organizers are pretty busy (and so am I).

But one of the organizers is a friend of mine who have a complete hardware setup for running an Artemis bridge. I have a project crawling along with writing better support for using a physical mixer (sliders and knobs) as the interface for the engineering station - currently, it works as an unstable hack.

@icefox They had three shifts, so 1/3 - 1/2 of the crew?