New Player Guide

Created by Commander Michael Sheppard on Fri Jan 31st, 2020 @ 4:17am

Welcome to Vanished...

If you made it here, you are no doubt interested in our very different game. Here on vanished, your character has crashed landed on an M Class planet far from Federation space. Here there is no hope of rescue, no hope of contact, and no future beyond the resources we find on our new home.

You still wanna call this rock in space, home? Well, there are a few things you need to know.

Command Structure

As you might imagine the Command Structure on Vanished works a bit differently. Here, all things in game are run by a Survivor's Council. Typically to real life, when an item comes up the Council discusses it and then as a group we determine a course of action.

As an example: the doctor needs to find a cure for some condition people are getting. The council could ask the doctor what he/she needs. The same meeting could then have the guard mention that an animal is eating food or something. They’d task them with finding the cause. And like that, you’d have two open-world tasks where the players would have to figure out how to solve those.

Out of Character

Out of Character the game as a Game Master. Just as a Commanding Officer, the Game Master is tasked with keeping the game running smoothly, ensuring that everyone has something to do, detailing the setting around so players have a point of reference, and most importantly to ensure that everyone has fun. Yes, there is always a bit of game management that has to take place, mission development, game progress, and applications from new players; these tasks will be handled by the Game Manager with the assistance of the Members of the game.

Why no Command Team? That is a good question. We want the game to feel real, we are a team of survivors that crash-landed on a planet. The need for a hierarchy and detailed Chain of Command felt a bit too unrealistic. We want this to be a cooperative experience, just like some of the survival TV shows display. There is still a leader, if you will, someone to help keep things going in game this is LtCmdr Michael Sheppard the only known surviving member of the Senior Staff and former Counselor on the USS Phoenix.

New Characters

Did you just say, only known surviving member of the Senior Staff? Yes, to give the game a more, challenging and realistic aspect all members will start out as either a Junior Officers or a Civilian assigned to the ship before. After our initial start, all new members will be survivors who landed elsewhere on the planet and after contact was made with the base camp, located us and joined the growing colony.

Open World Concept

No doubt, you've seen the term open world used in this guide. While the game master will have areas of the planet established, for mission progression, certain aspects of gameplay will be open and allow for the members of the game to create our world around us as we develop and grow. Much like a D&D game, player decisions will affect how the planet and colony grow around us. We realize that this can be challenging for some, and takes a bit more creativity then some might be used to. But it also gives our players the freedom to help create along with the rest of the team. But for this way of writing to be successful we need writers that can work on their own. We need players who aren't afraid to get creative and have initiative.

Randomness Factor

What makes this game different is the fact that we’ve added a dice roll, using a discord bot to make in-character decisions more random, even for the player.

Using our bot the player will type !1s20 in the dice roll channel and the bot will give them a number.

A roll of 1-10; the player loses and will fail at whatever task they had planned to perform. The player will then write out a post with that failure in mind. A roll of 11-19; player wins and will write a post accordingly. A perfect roll of 20, and the player wins and gets to pick a bonus of their choosing; the player will write a successful post and work in an added bonus into their storyline