Turnsheeting Guidelines
Each turn, players are invited to write a turnsheet detailing the activities of their PC during the 6 months before the next meeting. This should preferably be sent by email to gm-team at legacy-empire dot org dot uk or at rpgsocgm at maillist.ox.ac.uk in the text of the email not as an attachment.
Your Turnsheet may contain up to 8 Action Points worth of activities. This will allow you to specify the amount of effort you want to put into each activity.
0 AP
Actions worth 0 AP will be very minor activities that could be considered part of your characters day-to-day activities and/or actions which do not provide a benefit to your character.
Example 1: Attend a party thrown by my Head of House.
Example 2: Send my Gravcycle to Technologist Phelps for discreet repair.
1 AP
Actions worth 1 AP will be small activities that do not take much effort to arrange. If you can't describe an activity in fewer than 50 words, it is probably worth more than 1 AP.
Example 3: Find out what the guests at the party thrown by my Head of House know about Forlox.
Example 4: Find a Technologist prepared to repair my Gravcycle discreetly.
2 AP
Actions worth 2 or more AP will be closer to the "actions" used in recent Society Games in that they may encompass larger activities.
Example 5: Get poison into the food eaten by the guests at the party thrown by my Head of House using my Stealth skill. 2AP
Example 6: Build a new Gravcycle using my Legacy Tech Deveopment skill, purchasing the parts discreetly from various sources. (I've built a number before, so it won't be too hard.) 2AP
More than 2AP
Some actions are sufficiently complex that they may involve the expenditure of more than 2AP. In the example below the player wants to completely wipe out a group of space pirates and loot the spoils of their fleet, not having had any interaction with that plot previously.
Example 7: The Space Pirates have been causing me some trouble lately and I want to eliminate them. I'll research attack patterns using my Investigation: 3 skill to anticipate a shipping route the Pirates will harass in the near future. Next, I'd like to use my House Influence: 3 to call in part of our fleet, which should then lie in wait along this route, hidden in a perfectly ordinary Carrier. When the Pirates attack, the trap will be sprung. I will then personally oversee the salvage operation to ensure I get the best loot. 4AP
- This roughly breaks down into 2AP to research patterns, 1AP to use House Influence and 1AP to oversee the salvage operation.
Playing to your weaknesses
By investing more AP into a plot (and hence more of your character's time and efforts) you can increase its chances of success. This is particularly advisable when you are not playing to your strengths.
Example 8: The Space Pirates have been causing me some trouble lately and I want to eliminate them. I'll research attack patterns using my Investigation: 1 skill to anticipate a shipping route the Pirates will harass in the near future. Next, I'd like to use my House Influence: 1 to call in part of our fleet, which should then lie in wait along this route, hidden in a perfectly ordinary Carrier. When the Pirates attack, the trap will be sprung. I will then personally oversee the salvage operation to ensure I get the best loot. 7AP
- In this case the player is not confident that their skills are good enough to pull this off; because they really wants to succeed then they 'overspend' on the action. By dedicating more IC time and effort to the challenging research and to putting their meagre influence to best use, then he may be able to achieve the same results as the player in Example 7.
Extended Actions
Longer and/or more involved and complex activities will be assigned (by the GMs) a number of "effective AP" required to complete them. The number of actual AP you must spend on the project is the "effective AP" divided by the rank you hold in the skill relevant to the project (rounded down). If you have a plan in mind and want to know how many EAP it will cost to implement, send us an email.
Example 9: Joe has Empire Tech Development rank 2 and wants to invent a printing press. The GM team assigns this project an "effective AP" of 8, meaning that Joe will need to spend 4AP to complete the project. This total may be spent over several turns.
You may want to use a system to indicate to us which actions are the important to you in case the AP required doesn't match the AP you thought to allocate. By default, we will assume that you will not spend any extra AP on actions in your turnsheet and that they are listed in decreasing order of priority (most important first). The format we suggest is for you to give each action a short title, list both the AP allocated and the maximum number of AP that you would allocate if it would cause the action to succeed and then list your actions in decreasing order of priority.
Example 10:
- 1. Eliminate the Space Pirates - 4AP (max 7)
- [Action body as above]
The reason we always need a priority order is that we are a benevolent GM team and will always have your character perform actions so as not to break your Word, unless you specifically turnsheet to do otherwise. This is because breaking your Word is likely to make your character unplayable, so don't give it lightly.
Sample Turnsheet
Here is a sample Turnsheet to give some idea of how the whole thing comes together.
Player- John McSample
Character- Captain Wolfram Truniss
GM- Mark
Action Summary and Priority:
Help wipe out the Space Moles (3-4ap)
Mock Battle with my Rival (2ap)
Go to the Party and seduce Foxy Karpeer (1ap)
Start work on my Engine Modification (1-2ap)
Action 1 Help wipe out the Space Moles (3-4ap)
I promised Amil Truniss that I’d help him sort out the space moles that are riddling his planet. Preferably I’d like to just blast them from my fighter (Piloting 3), but if that’s not going to be possible then I’ll have to fight then hand to hand. That’s not going to be easy (since I only have Fighting 1) so I’ll try to call in some favours from the House (Influence 1) to get some troops sent over.
I really want this to work since I told Amil he could count on me to get it sorted, hence spending at least 3ap.
Action 2 Mock Battle with my Rival (2ap)
My Rival, Mardok Omar, has challenged me to a mock space battle to find out who is the better Pilot. I don’t trust him to stick to the rules so I’ll have my Ally, Tim Truniss the Technologist, look over both our ships beforehand to make sure there’s no sabotage. After that I’ll fight fairly and show off my skills (Piloting 3, Specialisation in Dogfighting).
If I lose I’ll try to be graceful about it, if I win then I’ll rub it in Mardok’s face and make sure that the Court circular hears about the result.
Action 3 Go to the Party and seduce Foxy Karpeer (1ap)
Foxy (the npc played by Tamsin) invited me to her big gala at the session, so I’ll be sure to go along and have a good time. I’d like to try to seduce Foxy since she seemed to be hiding something at the Court Meeting- hopefully she’ll be more forthcoming if we become intimate. I’ve only put a point into this since I don’t think Foxy will take too much convincing (and with my Charisma 2 I’m good at this sort of thing)
Action 4 Start work on my Engine Modification (1-2ap)
I want my Frigate to be capable of travelling through hyperspace at twice the normal speed. I know this is going to be a long-term project but I may as well get started now. With my skill at Legacy Tech Development then I should make good headway (2 + my specialisation in ship modification. So that’ll be 6EAP, when I emailed the GMs earlier you said it would probably be about 15 EAP to finish it).
Housekeeping
Give Sedrik Machello the documents I recovered from the Space Pirates.
Make sure my squadron are still doing the practice exercises I instituted last term.