Big list of Loopholes

[Tobian]

Well i just mentioned there should be one of these somewhere, so I thought I'd start one off...

Often when you are running a game you can get rapidly unstuck because you didn't think to create a loophole in your story to get round a sticky problem. Fundamentally Roleplayers are very good at walking right round the cleverly designed scenarios, sidestepping all of the pitfalls and problems you carefully designed because they come up with some incredibly simple thing you overlooked. So with that in mind I thought we could put together a number of problems we've run into and solved by a bit of quick thinking.. or didn't solve, but then thought up the perfect reason why it shouldn't have worked , or simply because (like me) you are unhinged and think up impossible to escape traps

Ok a few to get going...

Kelbonite: Yes apparently even with state of the art sensor arrays simple ores and rock can be the biggest bane of any Starfleet crew scanning for those missing crew/hostages/hidden enemy. It can be frustrating to have a mission revolving round finding something.. and then have them find it with sensors from orbit, beam it up and go home without a plot Burry it deep inside a huge trap laiden mountain range all covered in kelbonite, and get them to walk.. Walking is health, though not if you find those traps

Thoron Emitters: These things are the Gold pressed Latinum of hiding people: the architypal 'Maqis trick' They block tricorders plain and simple. Of course the players can simply scan for Thoron emission.. but then if you know that, use it against them.. have lots of them, all over the place

Dampening Fields: Again a special grey area in the hearts of all GM's. Dampening fields are basically cheap coaking devices. They can mask energy, life or technobabble so as to be nearly invisible to starships or tricorders. Sometimes you can detect the field it's self, but then you don't know what it's... dampening!

Pattern Enhancers: the ultimate foil for Kelbonite and Dampening fields.. for when players try to use them back at you! With insurection we were brought the snazzy isolinear tags, which could make for a good cat and mouse game of 'it'

Solar Flares: Space is a far more dangerous and unstabe place than it often appears on Trek. Nature can be a great story telling ally. Solar flares, especially heavy one's can stall travel intrasystem, cause atmospheric disturbances, prevent transporters and all sensors from working correctly and even make a good plot device if they are artificial.

Ok there's a couple.. Does anyone care to add more!

[Captain Blake]

Dampening Fields: Again a special grey area in the hearts of all GM's. Dampening fields are basically cheap coaking devices. They can mask energy, life or technobabble so as to be nearly invisible to starships or tricorders. Sometimes you can detect the field it's self, but then you don't know what it's... dampening!

/pedant hat on

I'm a touch unclear on how making something wet would make it cloaked. But, it does lead one to an interesting scenario...

"Why are you peeing on the shuttlecraft?"
"We're using the dampening fields to cloak the ship."

/pedant hat off

damping fields. Great idea.

Alex

[Tobian]

Hmm of course the dampening field works because being in a damp field ruins your uniform.. you're too busy going EWW to notice the incoming ship, cloaked or otherwise

[C5]

Great idea, Tobian. I'll see if I can post a few of my own (or just the problems my players caused me).

Could someone please enlighten a non-native English speaker about the dampening field thing ? Damping means getting something wet and dampening means err... like in dampening field, or is there another subtility ?

[Owen E Oulton]

OK...

The verb "to damp" means to restrict the effects something, a "damper" is a device which restricts an effect (as with a fireplace damper, which restricts airflow). A device which restricts the effects of interia is an "inertial damper."

The adjective "damp" means slightly wet, and to "dampen" something is to make it wet.

This is one of the most common mistakes in SF. With all the references to "inertial dampeners", I figure there must be some form of "wet inertia" in the future - sort of like in Back to the Future where Marty keeps saying "Heavy!" and Doc replies "There must be something wrong with the gravity in the future - everything's heavy!"

Next, we'll deal with kilo-pico-seconds...

[Tobian]

Ok the spelling lesson can be put to bed. I go with Startrek English: it's their typo, but it's the 24th century so maybe they changed grammar :P The end.. back to the topic at hand and not dampness!

Any more of you willing to share?