Turnsheeting

Summary

  • A turnsheet period represents a month of ship life.
  • You have three major actions during this time.
  • Actions require a plan to stand any real chance of succeeding.
  • The deadline for turnsheeting each week is Midnight Thursday Evening (that is, midnight between Thursday and Friday). Deadlines are strict.
  • A list of turnsheets for each week can be found on your user page. Follow the link on your page, and then click “Create this page” in order to get started.

How To Turnsheet

Each week, you have the opportunity to submit a turnsheet. The turnsheet represents what your character does in period of time between meetings (this is sometimes referred to as downtime). In character, this period is one month long.

Actions

Writing Your Turnsheet

Turnsheets can be found on your user page. If you're new to the wiki, you may want to read the wiki guide to get started.

Major Actions

In each turnsheet, you may take up to three major actions, in which you can put your plans into action. They can be anything you can think of that your character might reasonably do — from a cooperative action with other PCs to repair the wogglesprockets in the engine room, to stalking your nemesis through the Oxygen Forest. You don't need to put in an action to do your job unless you're doing something out of the ordinary - the rest of the time outside your actions, you are assumed to be getting on with your regular life and work onboard the ship.

We will try to interpret your plan, along with any external factors involved, when adjudicating what happened in your turnsheet response. Telling us what outcome you want is often a good way to be clear about what you're trying to achieve, and depending on any playstyle quirks you have taken, we may be able to adapt your plan on the fly to better take into account situations you might not have expected.

Generally, anything that hangs together coherently as a single subject can be counted as one major action; even if the plans are vaguely related, two plans may be better turnsheeted as two actions if their scope is widely different - trying to fit in too much in a single action may not give you the results you want. Concise plans that are easier for the GMs to understand and keep in mind when resolving turnsheets are preferable to multi-paragraph epics. We have a lot of players, and only a limited amount of time! If possible, keep plans brief, and remember that longer plans are not the same as better plans.

If you want to ask any questions about actions, please contact the GM team and we'll do our best to help.

Skills, Resources & People Involved

The most important part of any plan is having the skills to pull it off. In Generation, having a skill enables you to rely on a certain range of abilities as part of your plan, representing your expertise and training in the area. Simply having a skill is not helpful unless you can exploit it as part of an action. “Throw my Social skill at X problem” is not a plan and won't get you very far. “Use my Social skill to calm down the angry mob with a calming speech” is much better.

Resources are things that you may have started with or picked up in play that aren't represented by your skills. This might include, for example, the big industrial mining laser you found in the cargo hold, some fake IDs you have for trade, or a number of minions ready to do your bidding.

Other people are going to be crucial to your actions. They may help you or hinder you. If you are relying on another character to help you, make sure to note their assistance on your turnsheet. If an NPC has agreed in session to do something for you, note that down as well - we play a lot of different people and may forget. It can also help if you tell us how you think the other characters are likely to respond - this helps us judge your actions and responses in kind.

Sample Action

I've got a long-standing enmity with Michael “Moustachio” Red. I want to ruin his reputation, however, I've got very little information on his personal life. Before I can do anything I've got to research him, his habits, and any juicy scandals he may be hiding, so that later I can undermine him. I'll dispatch a crack team of small children from the creche I control to snoop around his compartment, and report back on what they find. Meanwhile, I'll spend a few evenings in the bar buying people drinks, hoping that someone who knows Moustachio will get talkative.

This action takes into account skills you have (you'd need Social to have any chance of success in convincing people to spill the gossip), resources you control (your creche of children might be something you started with or developed in play), gives a clear idea of what you're trying to achieve, and hangs together as a single coherent whole.

Minor Actions

In addition, you have minor actions. Your character may get invited to parties, casual drinks, clandestine meetings and so on. Perhaps they need to pass on an item in their possession to someone else. To register that your character is doing this, but without putting in the effort that a Major Action would imply, you can use a Minor Action. There's no limit to these, but we'd prefer it if you kept them to 1 or 2 sentences. If we find people are abusing minor actions, we may have to impose limits, so in general, please don't take the piss.

Deadline

The deadline for turnsheets is midnight on Thursday night - aka the midnight between Thursday and Friday.

Ideally it would be best if you could resolve your plans for the turn in session, but you can use the period between the end of session and the deadline to correspond with other players via email.

The deadline is strict, for your own benefit as well as ours. Being force to wait up until 3am so you can finish your turnsheet because some unreliable person didn't email you is not fair. We're planning on having GM meetings on Fridays and need time in advance to prepare, so late turnsheets cut into our time as well.

Please contact the GM team if you believe you have extenuating circumstances (we understand if real life gets in the way sometimes), but please don't expect to be able to hand in your turnsheet late on a regular basis.

Turnsheet Response

We will aim to get a response to your turnsheet to you before session begins each week. These responses will be added to the end of your submitted turnsheet on the wiki. Your GM will email you when they have completed your turnsheet response, but it's worth checking your user page to be sure.

If you have any questions about your turnsheet response, contact your GM before the start of the session and we'll try to clear everything up.

Sample Turnsheet

turnsheeting.txt · Last modified: 2012/09/23 19:56 by gm_dave
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