Stargame Redux: USS Xerxes Archive



Stargame Archive: USS Xerxes

The Stargame Council Archivist Randye Jones kept many of the posts created by players on the games she played upon. She has begun converting these old ASCII files to .pdf's and will make them available as the project progresses. The files will also contain out-of-character (OOC) messages she received or sent. Unfortunately, OOC posts not sent to her or posted on the lists themselves are not included. Former players and gamemasters are invited to submit posts to enhance the archive. Please contact Randye directly at gamer@stargame-redux.org.

This is the archive for the USS Xerxes game, which flourished between 1995 and 1996, primarily under Randye Jones.

Archivist's Note: Two things come immediately to my mind in this process. First, as I've been re-reading these approximately twenty-year-old Stargame posts, I've become amazed at how diligent the players and administrators of Stargame were in keeping the games going despite inconsistent and unreliable Internet access. This PBEM (play by e-mail) format was highly dependent upon using the Internet to connect players from around the world. The number of times we had to shift to distribution lists because the various servers failed or gms/players reported their individual ISP's had lost days of messages occurred with shocking regularity in the files--at least from the perspective of a user of today's much improved Internet. I suspect that many of the gaps in file dates are the results of lost posts in my own email accounts. Second, the majority of players on Stargame were college students or otherwise affiliated to some school. This (or various freenets offered) was how they gained Internet access in those days. Therefore, a lot of down time occurred because players were affected by class schedules (papers due, exams, breaks, etc.) This may explain, too, why Stargame eventually died away. As students graduated and took on careers, families of their own, etc., I suspect that time and interest in roleplaying waned.

Gamemaster's Note: I created this game as one of the few that explored the era prior to the timeframe of the Original Series. Xerxes was, first and foremost, a warship in a time of war, so the players had to take a much different approach to their play than in the explore-the-final-frontier approach in other games. Since there was no canon information available at that time (the television series "Enterprise" wasn't even a twinkle in some writer's eye then), we relied greatly on FASA gaming history and technology of the era. Thus, there are a lot of messages between me and various players that never appeared on the public list as we discussed and created details to appear in the scenarios we developed. I've included all but those I felt were very personal emails and needed to stay that way. Overall, though, they give a wider perspective of why at least some of what happened in the game happened as it did. I hope you enjoy the stories we created. -- Randye

Because of the nature of these posts, access will be password-protected and limited to former gamemasters and players of the specific game. To get access, please complete the form on the Archives page. You will be contacted soon thereafter.

BTW, we can not grant permission to reuse any of the contents of these archives. You should start by contacting the gamemaster for the specific game with requests like this.

Interested in more information, please contact gamer@stargame-redux.org.

LLAP!

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