@Jacic, That’s kind of the feel I was hunting for as well
Oh, that clip was SO good! Love it.
Some name options for our protagonist (as well as writing their own):
I really like “Barbara” as a name, since it implies “Barbie doll”.
Barbara Dearling? Darling? Dearheart?
Barbara Baker (implies she should be in a kitchen)?
The male equivalent would be “Max”. Not sure about the era though.
Max Goodman?
Max Mann?
Marvin Mann?
I think my favourites are Barbara Baker and Max Mann, but I’m not attached to them. Suggestions/improvements welcome (as always, for everything).
I’ll turn Samantha into an intellectual type with “Foster” as a last name, and call Bargle Jim Bargle. Unless anyone has a better idea? Bargle, Hint and Sam were all just the quickest gender-neutral names I could come up with. Bargle is human, just not big on social interaction. [I’ll go edit that for clarity.]
Yes, we absolutely need a magic healing box. Having just read “Redshirts” I can’t possibly call it “The Box”. How about “Dr Zork”, a wall-mounted panel (with lots of flashing buttons despite being voice activated) including an AI that dispenses a variety of coloured liquids that always heal whatever-it-is.[I’ll go put that up above too, and Joe.]
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@Felicity_Banks
Barbara implies Barbie? News to me…
still, I think Barbara Baker and Max Mann sound good enough to me…
I think Zork is a bit over overused now… maybe we should call the box “Oswald” or “Doc ENIAC”
No offense intended, but I think I’ll pass this time. The starting premise just kinda kills it for me. One of the biggest parts of a sci-fi universe being built is the diversity of language, and I understand that given the nature of the time limit, nothing solid could be made. It’s just, waving language away completely due to pollen of all things, just kinda kills it for me. Good luck regardless. I highly recommend doing some research on 50’s slang if you’re including elements of it. If anything it’ll at least serve as a starting point for adapting your own slang based on the style.
Sounds like a great idea! So count me in… I have tried to block as much time during those days as possible, and I like the premise and characters that are being developed so far. I was wondering though, maybe we could try to develop a bit more the stats to be used, and as @jacic stated we could try to use such codes to make sure from the start that the MC can be male/female etc
If we got rid of pollen altogether, and allowed multiple languages whenever and where-ever, would you be interested again? The Zorks are just a go-to hand-waving device (so our technobabble is consistent :P)
Eg.
The green goo flolloped towards me across the purple ground. “Beep boop twup!” it said.
I grabbed my trusty Zork translator and hit the flashing red button. Why are you so bony? it translated.
“Um,” I said. “I’m not from here. Could you direct me to the nearest settlement, my good. . . . er. . . man?”
Boop wump diddly pong. . . glarg. . . xark? said my translator.
Cool. Got any great stat suggestions for us?
Once I have a good idea of stats, I might write up a startup scene so everyone can cut and paste that much to be going on with (adding more whenever they think it’s useful).
I’ll definitely include the ability to be male/female/other (he/she/they).
@TechDragon610 actually there could be a kind of compromise, in that whichever writer wants to use the zork translator is free to do so, and if somebody’s main ideas relate to language issues, then you can say something like “Strangely the zork translator seems confused by this strange alien’s bubbles, could this be a language not even the zork have managed to figure out?”
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To be honest, I’m going through an unexpected move right now and I’m not even sure how it’ll work with the schedule, I’ll have to check when the land lord set the deadline for leaving. I got work early morning on the 8th until about 12-3pm depending on if some appointments are canceled. I digress, perhaps a more lore friendly language setup could be a Boolean system of variables that represent if a character has learned a language or not, then if set checks during dialogue to modify it into English while having marks on both ends to indicate that it’s translated text, and not purely being spoken it English. Now that I think about it, for the story of this thing to have any semblance of decency, we need a common enemy, perhaps the MC is tasked with rallying the armies from local systems to face an incoming invasive force that could threaten the Zork? As for not using other planets, depending on how close they are supposed to be, the cultures we make can’t have space travel of their own and still be ignorant of each-other. I think at least two should be at war with eachother, with the MC playing the part of peacemaker. Of course that would require quick communication between the two creators. I think the rallying force idea would suffice to be an explanation as to why the MC is traveling so much. If not that, then perhaps the MC is searching the Galaxy for a way to pay a debt of their own, perhaps even a treasure hunt? (I.e; each of us writes in some sort of artifact into the planet, then when all are collected, could trigger the end scene(s))
I think the simplest way to bring it into a cohesive whole is:
-Hints of a villain (let’s say the Zork are secretly calming the minds of all races in order to feed on their complacent brain waves?)
-A climax where one of the crew is threatened - probably Joe.
If someone would like to write that climax during the jam, put up your hand and give us an outline so we can do our best to foreshadow it.
Any wars, invasions, etc can happen in a story and the editor can check they don’t contradict anything else. The universe is large, and even a war might not be mentioned when Captain MC is fighting triffids/catching a criminal/zooming around space looking heroic.
Otherwise, I or someone else will write it after the fact, and try and make it look natural.
Otherwise, I think we’ll get too bogged down in hammering out details. Even the post above is pushing it a bit.
Whatever’s written can be edited, after all 
But not if it never gets written.
Good luck with the move, TechDragon610.
I would like to look over the final product if possible and work out some of the kinks. Given proper foreshadowing I can while up a climax. One thing’s for sure. We need to set up a chat room or something to coordinate.
Well good luck everyone, I can’t participate. The computer I’m using temporarily just isn’t able to don this, and there’s no way I’m getting my usual hardware fixed in time.
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Agreed we should set up a chatroom… Any ideas about a good system that would also allow important “sticky points” to be saved so somebody can quickly go thorough things (given time zones etc)…
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Although I’m fine with coding, I have no idea how to set up a chatroom. Anyone want to volunteer for that? Also, what is it primarily for?
-during the game (eg bonding over mutual procrastination and/or discussing plots as they happen?)
-plot discussions before, during, and after the game?
-something else?
I’ve just written a very basic draft startup file and uploaded it to my own dropbox, but I don’t know how to invite people. I suspect there’s instructions somewhere… where? Just link me; you don’t need to walk me through.
Ooh! JOE should totally be our villain!
All people would need to do is have an inciting incident or problem that could have been caused by Joe.
Mechanical failure? Joe unwound the zertanyax from the capacitor while the MC slept.
Lack of funds? Joe secretly reprogrammed your credit chip to siphon off your wealth.
Old girlfriend hates you? Joe told her you slept with her cousin.
Then for the climax all you have to do is catch him red-handed, ask what he’s doing, and then he grabs Miss Foster and threatens to blast her pretty brains all over the starboard hatch if you don’t just give him the ship and get out! “Damn it all to heck! I’m not just an improbably handsome fellow with an array of convenient skills! I have dreams too!”
Motivation: he’s sick of being the (wait for it) average Joe.
Since you inherited the ship, he’d be jealous anyway. Who wouldn’t? And the more you succeed, the more jealous he’d get. If he kills you, the ship is his (coz Sam is just a girl, Hint just a robot, and Jim Bargle too old).
People can foreshadow his betrayal or not, as they like. Just make sure he has had an opportunity to secretly do SOMETHING behind the scenes to make your story happen. And tell us what it was.
Also, @Doctor, you mentioned the possibility of images. Want to find something somewhere we could use as a draft front cover and/or official inspiration??
@Felicity_Banks, I mentioned images? I can’t remember, but I’ll take your word for it and come up with something.
About the Joe: Why do we need a villian? We’re probably going to be doing completely different things in each of our parts, I think it’d be better to just leave any villians as one offs created by whoever makes the part, then maybe tie them together when we put the pieces together with a villian team up finale
I am good either way, we can have some authors have Joe sabbotaging things (if they want to include this) here and there if the authors want, but then mostly create one-off baddies that might end up teeming together in the finale… somehow I get the feeling in a sense what we will be doing is sort of what happens in shows like dr. who, different authors contribute different chapters, which somehow interlink finally…
regarding chat-room, no idea really how to do this… does anybody have any idea how best to coordinate all this?
To make a slight start to all this before the jam, maybe we could all start to put together the character creation? This way by the time we start the jam we would have already started turning things in our heads…
Kind of agree with the Joe villian. Problem is you’ve got multiple people writing him as the bad guy, how do you stitch that together unless no one finds out, or even suspects it could be related to him, which will really limit the story. Also, are there other crew? Or just these guys?
You can add more non-crew characters (or even crew, why not?) and we’ll work out the details later.
TechDragon610 is likely to write the climax, so there’ll most likely be a suitably over-the-top villain there.
There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on Joe or villains, so just keep the possibility in the back of our heads in case it’s useful later.
It’s surprisingly easy (speaking as a veteran National Novel Writing Month-er) to add in foreshadowing in the second draft.