OtherSpace: A Guide for the Chiaroscuro Transfer Student

Okay, I did it in one direction, and I'll do it in the other. This guide is specifically for those Chia folk who wish to partake in the last year of OtherSpace, for whatever reason. It has been said that this is the more difficult transfer (compared to OS-to-Chia) and I can quite understand that, because OS, much as I love it and hang on to it as my first home and primary brain eater, can be a very hard game to play. Since I'm far more an OS-player than a Chia-player, I snagged Gena/Kael's assistance (as he's more the other way round.) Here, then, is our guide to those who wish to brave this most difficult of frontiers.

1. Expect Violence.

This is the first thing to know - things go boom on OS, and they go boom often and thoroughly. That wine festival that looks so tempting is very likely to have a body count. So is that parade. So is the Association of Bookkeepers Annual Potluck Dinner, frankly. If it shows up on the +calendar, consider there to be an 85% chance that something ugly will happen. Most of the lighter, more social RP is handled by the players for the players, and it's safe to say that the vast majority of that is completely free of the usual explosive entanglements.

Ruin: This is NOT an invitation to go make a badass. Oh, you can, if you want to - most OSians wind up trying to. But you don't have to. If you take into account the violence of the grid's history, and understand from the outset that this is not some distant past thing but probably continuing right up to last week, you'll probably come up with a character bio that can deal with things. On my personal account, I will say that creating a character who'd mentally cracked at the bio stage was one of my brighter notions, as it's let him deal with events on the grid with much less overall shell-shock.

Gena: I'd tell you to think of OS like a Chinese Martial Arts movie from the 70's. With spaceships.

That is to say... all of the bit parts are utterly noncombatant to the point of uselessness, the cops are either strangely amazingly badass or completely absent, and everybody you meet that has a name is some sort of martial arts guru that would rather not fight but is seriously going to kick your ass if you look at 'em funny. It's just that kind of world - if that busboy doesn't know how to use an energy pistol or have a couple levels of brawling, it's an amazing thing that he's survived this long.

This world has a feel like Star Wars, for lack of any other specific title to compare it to - it's a world where everybody knows how to use a gun, and the likelihood of action on-camera is high.

I guess the point in emphasizing this, for me, is to say that while you can create a perfectly rewarding largely nonviolent and utterly non-confrontational player character, you're not going to find yourself fitting in well with theme... and you're going to do a lot of 'being useless' when the dice start flying. Give some consideration to the role you want to play, but recognize that OS is an action game and don't write yourself out of active participation in that action.

2. Honor Is Dead. Mostly.

This is probably the main thing for a transferring Chia person. Honor as you have come to understand it does not, by and large, exist in the OtherSpace universe. This is not because players are trying to play morally gray characters, but a direct result of several factors beyond a player's control that I may or may not get into later. There are three real options for playing a character with honor concepts similar to what may be found on Chia:

a.) The Royal Navy of Sivad. This is where you should go if your concept of honor fits in with that of Chia's nobility - if it's all about decorum and courtesy and chivalric actions (holding the door for the ladies, challenges to duels, etc) this is where you want to go. On the downside, the RNS can often parallel the Scourges in its attitudes to the rest of the grid.

b.) Zangali. This is the only race on the grid that actually has a code of honor laid down. For you Chia people I will say: It's a whole race of Knights a la Norran Lomasa, with all the ups and downs thereof.

c.) The Watchers. This is where you should go if your concept of honor and knighthood could be taken from the movie Dragonheart: His blade defends the helpless, his might upholds the weak, his word speaks only truth, his wrath undoes the wicked. This may well sound very attractive to you. I will therefore add this: if someone stood on the sidewalk outside your house/apartment/whatever and shouted that and meant it, what would you think of their sanity? Yeah. OS thinks about the same of the Watchers.

Out of the three options, if you want company go with A or C, understanding that they're mortal enemies, and if you want to explore the idea of honor on the grid freeform, take option B. The idea of honor on this grid is built around the Han Solo archetype, not King Arthur - it's more 'rogue with a heart of gold' than 'knight errant'.

Gena adds: While I firmly agree with that last statement - 'rogue with a heart of gold' - I disagree wholeheartedly with the first. Which is alright.

The difference is that high ideals, Chivalry, nobility, and all the things we come to associate with the fantasy genre... well, they don't exist in the two-fisted gun-toting style of OS. Instead, honor becomes the intensely personal thing of soldiers and warriors. The exploration of honor as a theme is entirely up to your character; it is not predefined by any particular societal norm. In that, your character can be from anywhere, doing anything - the noble-savage Qua, the practical-to-a-fault Ungstiri, the uniquely alien Centauri, or the decadent Demarian; these archetypes all have different definitions of honor. How those definitions intersect is part of the fun and conflict in OS.

3. It Doesn't Have To Make Sense. In Fact, It Probably Won't.

For Chia people, who are by and large used to the conformity and unity of theme in Fastheld, this will probably be one of the worse shocks. There's more history in OS, in any given system/world/city of OS, than you will find in the whole of Fastheld. And if someone gets around to telling you about it, you're likely to find it doesn't make much sense. This is because admins create plots and arcs and players either take part in them or studiously ignore them. And sometimes things get dropped halfway through because the players lose interest, or a key figure leaves the grid, or the admin takes a break. And so you will find many odd and quirky things that basically amount to "Whatever Happened With That Killer Plague?" and so on. On OS, many to most plots are admin run, and will stop for some reason and maybe start again a few months later (or not) and there isn't, at the player level, a lot that can be done to make sense of it. The average OSian deals with this by not dealing with it - what happened two months ago is old news. There's probably a new crisis going on right now that requires their attention...but they'll still remember the old and unfinished plots, if something jogs their memory. This will happen even with things that would on an OOC level cause bafflement, like plagues and rescue missions.

Fastheld is by comparison a much slower and more sedate grid. There's a sense of long history, of things possibly building up over centuries. Otherspace is a modern grid, flash-feeding news by the minute and second in a way even more ADD-inspiring than our current media-happy world is now. Characters that go with the flow, or ride the wave, survive and thrive. Characters that get neurotic about unfinished business are going to be swamped and unhappy.

Gena adds:

Worth reiterating: ... it's not going to make sense. There's too much history. Instead, concentrate on the here and now, and look to your character to form the bridge between wildly disparate stories. The only constant you can count on is the character itself - use that.

4. Everything Needs An Admin. And If It Doesn't, It Doesn't Matter.

Chiafolk have the +craft system. They can make many things that change the grid around them in a visible, definable way. The only systems that require the attention of an admin on Chia are combat and medicine. If you come from Chia, you're fairly used to making the things you want to have on your own, or dealing with other players for them, and you almost never need to deal with an admin.

On OS, there is no +crafting. (not yet, not till OS:M.) What does this mean to you? It means that most of the objects you're used to seeing and needing don't exist. You can @desc yourself wearing anything you want - clothes aren't hardcoded. You can describe yourself owning anything you want - it doesn't really exist, so you'll have to remember it, but you can pretty much invent the hell out of the universe. The downside of this fact of life is that if you design your character around the crafting ideal (engineer, cook, construction worker, electrician, etc) you need to invent things for your character to do. And if you need to affect the grid at all, you have to +str it. You can't +improve that gun in your hand by yourself, even if you have Gunsmithing. You can't tweak that PDA in your hand even if you have Electronics.

It's all +str'd. And because it's ALL +str'd, there's a lot of +strs in the system. And because there's a lot of +strs in the system, it can be weeks or even months before yours is seen to, unless you happen to catch the eye of an admin with a similar shiny. (Keller, I understand, can be very helpful to gunsmiths, for example, but even so it's not going to be a quick process.)

In theory you can repair and upgrade ships at the player level. I've never actually seen it happen.

For this reason, many people who want to play more crafty sorts of things get discouraged. To you, I say Do Not Despair. You're just going to have to work that skill a little harder to get it into RP. People aren't going to commission your electronics guy to buff their PDA or commlink - but you can RP him doing so for NPCs just the same. And because improving an item is so rare, it often has solid in-game benefits. A Superb energy pistol, for example, may well have a higher ODF or fire more shots per round than a Fair pistol. So there is a payoff for the effort in a real sense, if you do want to +str.

Most of the hardcoded objects relate to combat or communications or ships. Anything else, you're probably free to invent. The same goes for pets and NPC family members.

5. Know Your Admin.

Related somewhat to point 4, this is relevant to any newbie to OS. Each admin has a different area of oversight, usually related to a given race or world. Lunites, for example, are Wik's domain, as is the world of New Luna. Sivadians are a bit up in the air right now, though I think Keller's adopted them at the admin level, and Sergeytov is the go-to for how to create a convincing Sivadian character. Knowing your admin will help you know who to ask to make a good character for the type of race you want to play, and what direction you want to take your character in. If you're consistent about it, admins have been known to favor such characters with places of their own - shops, restaurants, office buildings, etcetera.

It's also a very good idea to learn which admin runs which plots. Not only so you can find out how to get into them, but how you can know which plots you want to avoid getting into. Every admin's got a different plot-running style and it's a fairly sure bet you aren't going to like all of them. Having an idea who's running which events on which worlds can help you enjoy the game you're playing, rather than spending a lot of time tearing out your hair or beating your head on the wall.

As a side note, plots rarely seem to tangle. So if you're somewhere for reasons pertaining to Plot A, it's not terribly likely you'll be nailed by events pertaining to Plot B even if you're central to Plot B. There are exceptions to this, but it seems to be fairly consistent in my experience so far.

6. Know the Unwritten Rules.

I stuck a different thread up here before, about some of the truisms of Otherspace. It wouldn't hurt to read them over, but I'm going to clarify a point or two for the visiting Chia native:

Firstly, OS doesn't have Nobles and Freelanders. It has Oldbies and Newbies. On Chia, if you're noble you can do a lot of outrageous things, and you probably have the bigger houses, better horses, finer clothes, etc. On OS, those are the Old Players. Old Players have the strange and killer weapons, the combat stats to knock you and that army behind you into next week, the ship that can fly rings around the fleet. Old Players have the connections and the influence, and just like on Chia it's recommended that Freelanders find a Noble to sponsor them, on OS you can't go wrong having an Old Player as your mentor and guide. And again, just like the nobility of Chia, the Old Players of Otherspace have their own factions and histories and political rivalries that a new player would be wise to step carefully around. On top of this...yes, actually, an Old Player probably can kick your ass into next week with minimal repercussions.

You will understand by this that yes, as a Newbie you start at the bottom of the social ladder. However, unlike Chia, you don't have to stay there. There is no glass ceiling - where on Chia a Freelander is always a Freelander, on OS...well, you'll never be the oldest of oldbies but you can certainly reach the upper middle class, or nuveau-riche strata in comparison.

Secondly...to those who wish to play the badass game, I say: you don't need to, and you won't win. But if you're fine with both of these caveats, good luck and God bless. In the final months of OS, you are never going to be as powerful as the oldbies are now, even if you tweak all your exp like mad. So if you're entering the game with some desire to be the Fastest Gun In The System, I can tell you right now the title's already been awarded and you aren't wrestling it away from him. Same goes for martial arts, rifleman, etc. You can be good, but you'll never make first string - there's just not time.

And I'm going to tell you that as violent as the grid can be, you don't need to. A lot can be done with a diverse character, or an 'average' character, and played with common sense they're in no real danger of dying. (Actually, it's rather like playing a bard - really sucky at everything at lower levels, blossoming into pure awesome at higher levels. To anyone looking to try this path, I refer you in future to Leodhais, who in his quiet way has amazed me several times with the skills he's picked up.) Myself, I went the specialist route - which is awesome when it's called on and kind of meh when it's outside my field. All you truly need is a high Agility (to duck) or a good Running skill. Or, you know, the sense to get down when shots are fired, which can be in short supply. I've been on OS over a year, and Ruin's managed to destroy guns through sheer incompetence at using them. He freezes in fights and has been known to faint in gunfire. He's still alive. Still fairly healthy overall. Take that how you will, but understand I mean it when I say playing a noncombatant character can be done, and can be fun.

Gena adds: 6(b) Go Space, Young Grasshopper!

No matter where you're going or what you're doing on OS, if you don't build your character with an eye to being on a ship's crew, fulfilling one of the primary roles available to that crew...

... you're shooting yourself in the foot early.

While it's perfectly possible to have a deep and fulfilling character that's limited to a single world or venue, it's not easy and it's often not fun. Ship crews travel all over the grid, rarely staying in one place, and offer the opportunity to experience OS from within a moving roleplay group of whatever size suits you. Frankly, those characters built to stay in one place, to exist within the bubble of a single RP venue? They're ultimately at the whims of the visits of those ship crews to advance their own stories.

So much of OS is centered around the mobility and power of her ships that it bears considering that any true new player on OS really needs to become part of a crew that suits them to experience everything OS has to offer.

So, as a secondary consideration - it's worth keeping an eye on the ship tasks that need filling: Pilot, Engineer, Turret Gunners, Medic, Security, Computerman/Electronics, Cargo Specialists.... as well as the other roles that are out there to invent. Trust me, if you're wanting to play an underwater basketweaver, you can (+sinfo underwater basketweaving if you don't believe me) - but if you've got skills for your character in any of the above areas, you've always got something to fall back on, and something that can get you involved with a crew.

Which is, frankly, where the action is.

7. What's It Like?

The dream of many players is to have a ship of their own. Kind of like having a horse on Chia, but there's obligations attached. There's power in being a ship captain - people will come to you. Plots will land on your head or, sometimes, bang on your hull. Captains hire and command crew, which basically means you can create your own little (or big) RP gang. Where the ships go, the crews go. Where the crews go, the plots go - this is an incontrovertible truth of the Otherspace grid, and the only exceptions are plots run for the benefit of the military groups. This is a power anyone can reach for, but not many can grab and hold. The word 'crew' is a very loaded word on OS, and while the details of its meaning vary from ship to ship or fleet to fleet, a near universal is 'you mess with one, you mess with all'. It's a very powerful backing to have and to use, and its existence has done a great deal to shape the feel of the grid. Different captains have different styles of running a ship, and different crews have different attitudes - nothing so codified as the Houses of Fastheld, but that's the best comparison I can give you. If you want to play a spacefarer, finding the right crew (or the right captain) will do a lot to make your RP more enjoyable. And if you want to play a planetary homebody - know your planet. Know the admin running that planet. It will do a lot to help RP (and ships) come your way.

Gena adds: ... and let me stress again: the action happens to ships. The story happens to ships. The events are easiest attended by those with ships. OS is utterly designed around the conveyances that hop you between the stars, and those folks that are planetary homebodies are those for a reason, and are usually significantly powerful members of their own community... or military, the two character types that must be bound to a planet.

In the first case... these aren't roles generally given to a new folks. In the second? Well, there will be ships involved, they just don't travel as far, and your other military players are your 'crew'. Believe me when I say, somewhere along the way you'll end up on a ship, or associated with a ship, or something similar.

Be sure you've got something to contribute in such a circumstance.