Crewing

Public Safety Notice
For the crimes of Murder, Piracy, Kidnapping, and Unlawful Use of an FTL-capable vessel, a warrant has been issued by the High Court of the Nation of the Eternal Sky for the arrest or destruction of all crew of the “Scourge Fleet”. The Fleet is considered to be at large, and is responsible for 16 known attacks on cargo ships occurring primarily in the Sandos system. Owners of merchant vessels should take care on voyages to this system and neighbouring ones, and should not engage with the Scourge Fleet; they are well-armed and highly dangerous. Travellers are encouraged to share any information they have on the Fleet with the Expansive Dawn spaceport authorities, to aid in their arrest.

– A public safety notice issued to all ships docked in the Expansive Dawn, an Eternal Sky-owned spaceport.

Ventures features a setting told on a galactic scale, and thus there is a lot more scope to get a lot more people involved in playing it. It makes sense within the narrative that not every player will have the time or capacity to interact with everyone else – space is big, after all, and you couldn't possibly know everything that's going on. In order to get as many people involved as possible while respecting the health of our GM team, we have chosen to have a smaller player cap (24), but allow for a much higher crew cap. Unlike players, crew members will not submit turnsheets or receive writeups for these, although may be asked about what their character would do if involved in a player's action, and be informed of what happens as a result of that action.

Crew in Society Games sometimes take on the role of assistant gamerunners, but in Ventures it will be possible crew like you are a player, but without turnsheets. Personal crew submit characters like players do, but with fewer mechanics to worry about. Narrative crew submit an indication of the sort of character they would like to play, and then receive a character generated by the GMs. This might be a character unknown at the start of the game, or it might be a particularly important figure in existing power systems. There will also be some room for narrative crew to choose and plot out their own direction for the character, giving them more active agency in the plot.

If you are playing in Threshold, crewing for Ventures is an excellent way to get to meet with and spend more time with other members of the society, while also not overwhelming yourself with too much writing. Alternatively, you can play a crew NPC fully remotely, which might be desirable for people who would like to stay involved with the Society, but cannot easily attend uptimes in Oxford.

It is also possible to crew multiple NPCs. These can be any combination of pre-generated by the GMs or self-generated.

While we do not have a strict limit on the number of crew we can accommodate, we may need to revise this policy if we are massively oversubscribed. The limiting factor is likely to be based on room bookings rather than turnsheet work however, so the unlimited cap on remote crew is unlikely to change.

As a member of the narrative crew, you will be responsible for taking on an important aspect of the world. Your NPC will be important in some way to the events happening in the galaxy. While there will be some degree of a “brief” given to you, you will still have freedom to add to that character's personality and behaviours, as well as shape their experiences through the play of the game. You may also have input over certain turnsheet actions for the benefit or detriment of the people involved, although ultimately adjudication and writeup is a GM task, not a crew one.

This might be a character who is near the top of a power structure, such as a planetary government or a spacefaring guild. It might be someone who is "find out in play" material, relating to the mysteries around exploration. However, they might just be an important backstory NPC for a PC, and are personally very significant to that character even if they hold no wider power.

As a member of the personal crew, you will have a character like any other. Any idea that works for a PC would also work for a personal NPC, although without the power of major actions, you may find that an overly-ambitious NPC gets easily outpaced by their PC counterparts. You will however have some space to develop and change the character, as well as being able to get them involved and actively contributing to PC actions.

A personal NPC might be a worker for the Cartographers, attending to the library or keeping the station clean. They might also be a space tourist, eager to follow along and see the galaxy. They could also be a mercenary, willing to work only for hire.

As a remote crew, you are expressing an interest in not attending the majority of uptimes in Oxford (although if you are able to attend any, please let us know in advance). However, you will still be able to interact fully with people during emails, and can make an appearance in turnsheets.

This might work into the fiction for your character. Perhaps they need to stay stationed at a research post somewhere, and hence cannot travel to the Cartographers' station for uptimes. They might instead be prohibited from attending, representing a figure who has been antagonistic to the Cartographers in the past.