I’ve got this crazy idea stuck in my head that I should write a story for GSB. Should I go along with it?
i think lots of people like fan fiction, but when in think of Gratuitous Space Battles the first thing i think of is not “deep underlying plot”
Meh, true. Which is actually why I want to make some of my own plot for it.
would love it!
support
One slight problem though. I have a hard time designing ships. While the story can reflect this at the start, It would help if people could submit ship designs so that later on, more efficient stuff is available.
Anyway, co-writers will be appreciated!
I have to agree that the game doesn’t naturally lend itself to a story. Cliffy has stated that the reason behind the battles has been lost over the aeons, hence ‘Gratuitous’. Without motives, it would be a fairly hard task to impose an over-arching fiction onto the game.
There’s definitely a lot of scope for some fiction / personalising of GSB, but there are also a lot of potential issues. Maybe the hardest thing to do would be getting the tone right. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how GSB’s metagame could hypothetically be scaled-up without losing sight of its origins. To take one example, I was hugely in favour of an experience system for captains when I started playing, but then realised that this isn’t a game where heroes can turn the tide of a battle: they’re far more likely to get evaporated by the first wave of incoming plasma. If this is one example of how the game mechanics impose tone, the ship chatter feature is another - there’s a gallows humour to it that might be hard to sustain in extended prose (even more so if your characters’ fatility rates are reflective of the game). Without wanting to read too much into anything, it seems that the ‘philosophical’ core of GSB is fairly fatalistic in the grand tradition of Catch 22 or Oh! What a Lovely War. In SF terms, it’s a lot closer to Starship Troopers than Babylon 5. There’s carnage in spades, but not much in the way of motive or plot.
But I’d be willing to concede that I might be approaching this from the wrong angle. It would certainly be interesting to hear forum members’ ideas for a plot / story / background for GSB and I wish you all the luck in the world in coming up with something that fits.
Well hey, can’t blame me for trying. Its a wim of writing.
Hell no, that wasn’t the intention at all. I love this stuff, and I’ll be first in line to read anything you come up with. That last post was just some general musings really, and not intended to put anyone off.
Right, sorry.
And I’ve got a character lineup that I think will work with the gallows humor of the game, but mostly the story will be dedicated to describing massive space battles.
Characters will include a pennypincher corrupt admiral, a patriotic and ignorant redshirt cadet, and a mean ass fighter jock. Plus a few others but these three are the ones that will survive longer.
Story is always good.
It gives a meaning for the stuff you are doing and reasoning why you are doing it and why you should continue doing it.
When I was younger I under estamated the importance of stories and didn’t keep them imporant at all. But now I have started to realize that they are as imporant as the games itself too because, as I said already, they give meaning and reasoning why you are there doing what you do.
It doesn’t need to be anything else than just a simple intro movie or something like that which explains the past and the current situation and how you are attached to it.
I’ll make something up for the backstory.
For some reason, whenever I play a game I always wonder “What is it like living in that world?” Hence a lot of my stories.
I want story for GSB NOW! I dont care if it is short or long, crappy or rly well written… Story is story, humans need only a few words to trigger huge imagination.
I named my second cat after one of the characters in catch 22.(http://www.positech.co.uk/cats.html) I also intended to stick the names of catch 22 pilots in the federation crew lsit, but I forgot about it until now.
Do it! Catch-22 is still my all-time favourite novel. I’d derive a ton of perverse satisfaction from sending Yossarian into the midst of an enemy fleet. “They’re trying to kill me!”
Okay, I’m going along with it. Wish me luck!
I think of GSB as a cross between Star Wars and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. 
Well I’ll do my best, but I haven’t read hitchhikers guide to the galaxy so I’ll need help on the humor.