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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8632242" data-attributes="member: 82106">We're certainly saying the same thing. So, to clarify as I was apparently leaving a bit too much unsaid (sorry), in a Star Trek genre simulation type of primary agenda the reason for the 'ion storm' which takes out the transporter is that it is a trope of the genre! Now, it will certainly also shape the plot, and that may well be useful in a dramatic sense. However, even the dramatic element of the ion storm is still helping primarily to reinforce the genre. Thus this ion storm might happen at any appropriate moment within the genre sim play. It would often set things up, for example.Within a Story Now version of playing Star Trek, a failure of the transporter, the 'ion storm', appears as a way of creating/raising stakes within the context of conflict. Of course, it is a genre appropriate way of doing that, but the point of doing it NOW is to serve the Story Now agenda. In PbtA terms it would be a hard or soft move by the GM in keeping with the play process which puts pressure on the PCs. I recall there's a Star Trek episode where there's some sort of time pressure created, and the transporter fails. Does Kirk abandon his crewmembers to their fate? Or does he risk a million lives on some other planet to rescue them? His loyalty is pitted against his sense of duty by means of a transporter malfunction. Perfectly genre appropriate, but in service of story, not particularly just to play to genre tropes, certainly not PRIMARILY for that reason. I'd also say that ends are likely to vary between agendas here too, as it would be appropriate in Story Now to lose those crew members, potentially, but it would be rather a violation of the tropes of the genre for that to happen (when Kirk loses men it is SET UP, not consequence, or else its color).</blockquote>

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