Welcome

The only noise I could hear was my own breathing on the inside of my helmet.

It seemed like it stayed that way for an eternity. Nothingness. A vacuum-filled void outside my suit. Eventually however, my communicator crackled into life.

“Tleka, status report.”

I checked my diagnostics, and gave the 'all-clear' back to the station in orbit.

One careful step after another, I made my way towards the open door of the landing craft. My boots were unwieldy and put me off-kilter. I was not practiced at walking without full use of my claws, but eventually I stepped out onto the planet surface.

I will never forget that moment. Seeing the barren, yellow wasteland ahead of me. The windswept rocks littering the landscape. The suns blazing down on me.

A far cry from the treetops I call home.

You will never forget your first time on another planet. There is something so deeply humbling about the experience. Looking up at the stars, unable to see the rock that you came from. The vastness of space is cruel and uncaring.

But it was our perseverance that got us here. Our drive to go beyond.

And beyond we shall go.

– From the biography of Tleka Talon, explorer of the Cartographers' Guild.

The theme of the wiki can be changed by clicking on the palette in the top right hand corner of the page. The pages might look a little strange in other styles, but they should be easier to read if you're having any difficulty with the current colour scheme!

Note to Firefox users: To ensure that the new theme applies, hard-refresh your browser by pressing Ctrl+F5 (on PC) or by holding down the refresh button (mobile).

To return to the Ventures theme: select Solar from the themes dropdown menu.

For more information on the accessibility of Ventures as a whole see here.

Ventures is one of the two OURPGSoc Society Games for Michaelmas and Hilary terms 2024-2025.

The known galaxy is small, civilisations and factions are spread out, and communication is slow. With the recent invention of faster-than-light travel, that is all about to change. Players will have opportunities to explore and discover unlike anyone in the past has been able to. However, there is always a danger when venturing out into the unknown.

Ventures will be running on Tuesday evenings in even weeks during term time. For more details on the schedule, see When and Where.

If you are new to Society Games, or roleplaying in general, the Intro to the Wiki System, Uptime and Sessions, and Downtime and Turnsheets pages may be useful.

Make sure you read the Conduct and Acceptable Themes page so you know which themes are allowed to occur in our game.

To get more of an idea what tone the game will have and what sort of themes it's based on, see Style and Tone.

To learn more about the game's setting, see the pages in the Setting section in the sidebar, especially The Known Galaxy for an overview and summary of the key facts. You do not need to remember everything from the Setting pages – in fact, due to the scale of the galaxy, it might make sense for your character not to know everything!

To learn how to contact the GMs, see this page for details.

And finally, if you want to participate in the game, you'll have to create a character. There will be an optional Character Creation event on Tuesday Week 1 at St John's College and over Discord if you need help or inspiration creating your character.

In order to be able to run a high quality game and maintain a healthy work life balance, if more than 24 players express interest in Ventures we will be forced to ballot. The ballot will be done in combination with Threshold, so that not having a place in one game makes you more likely to have a place in the other (and choosing to play in only one game does not hurt your chances of getting into a game). In the event of balloting, we will admit groups in a certain order until we reach a group which will take us over the player cap, at which point that group will be balloted for places. Subsequent groups will not be balloted and will not get places as players, although might be able to join the crew.

More information on how the ballot will work can be found here.

Everyone who wants to play Ventures must submit this ballot form by 11:59pm on Tuesday of 1st week (15th October). This is so that everyone knows if they have successfully got into the game before they submit a character. You can find more information about character submissions in Character Creation.

Characters are not due until 11:59pm on Friday of 1st week (18th October), and can be submitted through this form.

Ventures is also able to accommodate a large number of crew. These are people who play one or more NPCs, but don't take on the same gamerunning responsibilities that GMs do. At present, there is no cap on the number of crew that we can accommodate, but we may be forced to revise this policy if an unprecedented number of people sign up. We are also able to take on crew who play fully remotely, not attending any sessions in person. For more information about this, see Crewing.