I saw "Martians Wanted: NASA Opens Call for Simulated Yearlong Mars Mission" and wondered if it would be possible to have a game like that.
I think not.
I would expect that players would quickly drop even if there was a way to really simulate the situation.
Anyone think it could be done?

I've tried colonization games. Training isn't a problem for holding interest, but once landfall is made interest drops off quick. Replacing a local ecology with a terran ecology is more work than adventure. Fighting off the local wildlife gets monotonous, too, after a bit.

I would expect 20 months or so of monitoring dials in free fall to be just as hard to keep interest, if not harder.

A simulationist approach would likely be a bit too niche outside a motivated group looking for that sort of thing.

I could see a more reality show/social experiment style drama based game maybe having more of a reach with the whole "mars mission simulation" being just a backdrop.

I suspect you could do at least as well as some of the martian voyage movies. Exploring different "drill" scenarios would be kinda fun. What happens when a micrometeorite cloud passes right through your sleeping cabin!? Air leak captain, fuel leak, spin gravity generators are offline. Oh and Bill Kerman is dead!

I mean, roleplaying IS simulationism.
This message was last edited by the user at 04:36, Sat 24 Feb.

Mars Mars or Mars with Aliens or Space 1889 Mars, or alien planet?

Mars is a boring red desert planet with killer winds and temperatures. It might be cool to visit, but I wouldn;t want to live there. If it was an interesting planet, some subrterranean life form or something, maybe, otherwise I feel interest for me would drop off sharply.

In reply to Ice Raven (msg # 5):

It's kinda funny that this popped up now. I just finished watching an anime series called Terraformars, most of which happens on Mars.   Honestly, I'd expect that the most difficult part of a game like this is keeping the players/characters engaged.  (e.g. Chess is nice but what do you do after you've played hundreds of matches against everyone else?)

Would having it be an isolated outpost be better?
Something like the gas station with the sign saying "Last stop for the next 200 miles."
Random people would stop by for random reasons.

In reply to GreenTongue (msg # 7):

Are you considering running this game?

No. Just curious if it was even possible.
I could see something like a lone gas station in the middle of nowhere that had random visitors at random times but a small set of people in an isolated building "on Mars", just don't see Players staying engaged.
Wondering if people could prove me wrong.

Maybe if there was more of a sci-fi bent to it, like landing on Mars accidentally unleashes some ancient alien technology that’s going haywire? Something to give the players more of a reason to stay interested beyond just a life-sim I guess!

KS Robinson wrote the Mars trology, so there is that. That's not a year long project though, that's like 60 years (technology extended lifetimes) so you have time elapses. The initial survival desperation of getting shelter up, getting food and water going despite cold that snaps machinery and strips screws, then a wave of immigrants arrives, then city buildings, then Earth gets more oppressive "But why do we need to listen to NASA or the UN anymore?" One guy restarts Communism, another starts a religion...

So it changes from a survival game to a world building sim with politics and so on.

 Fun reads for sure, I highly recommend! Don't forget the stowaways!

There is a lot you could do, and you could even advance time a few years to skip any "Boring stuff" - once you arrive at the planet, there are as said above sto aways, alien technology, unusual life forms, perhaps things changed back on Earth and now someone else is in charge of the mission with different goals, perhaps there was a colony that arrived BEFORE you did because they improved engine speed, but now that colony mysteriously died off, perhaps another country contacts you to tell you that you are being lied to about the point of the mission.

Interesting options if the players engaged. With the normal slow game speed, there would need to be a series of cliff-hangers I expect.

In reply to Malakhon (msg # 13):

This is GREAT advice! I wanted to say something similar, but you said it better. So now I don 't have to try. :)

I ran a hard sci-fi game that was an RPG and "RTS" ala starcraft or total annhilation style. Where players would have missions that would be played out like any most TTRPGs, then after each, during "downtime" I'd give "rewards" which were assets and tools, technology, and most imporantly time values. Building their home was important to the players, but they could have had a mars base like the white house, if they wanted, but that would have been it. Instead other things, like weapons, communication, and travel, omg travel was their biggest sink of that downtime. So in that way, the "boring" was instead a separate game "Type" where they'd spend their resources, be it assets, or time, or research to just fill that in more macro. I wouldn't award more XP for them spending it "wisely" but if a player did, and they did, was extra creative on the process, I'd discount that communal project, in time, or what have you, to show it made the game not just better, but much better. Then again, we'd get into another more typical time frame. My players would travel, and that was important because their next investment was their base, so being able to explore was only the big priority, without the idea of "rescue" their base was their "comfort zone" and the better the travel they developed, the farther they could explore and still make it b ack to their base.

John Conway (game of life) had being inspiration for their robots. Which was the "sci-fi" part, where "dumb" machines could make "smart" machines. John Conway, the mathematician whom thought the "Monster" was the most beautiful, "invented" the game of life to show how simple machines are more than capable to make complex machines. This is how it was hard, but still sci-fi. Lasers existed, but not like Star Wars. Joe Rogan makes an excellent point, which is rare, in that you SEE laser beams in Star Wars. You can't even see, less hear bullet with the eye, so this group only built radial lasers, in that they were one or two shots, and then needed to cool down, had an arc of maybe 100 degrees each, but that could fire just barely more accurately through time space than just...unguided light. So they had some time space control like a slow moving terrestrial projectile and the correlis affect, the group; could "aim" by compensating for the light bending by certain bodies. To be fair though, that part was slightly more soft sci-fi as there were aliens near the black hole.

So, having "down time" activities that the players could reach a consensus on and that provided time compression between the "fun" parts would make this type of game practical?

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 07:40, Sat 09 Mar.