Welcome to the Most Passive-Aggressive Ship in Star Fleet
Posted on February 21, 2013 Posted by John Scalzi 30 Comments
Whilst on the JoCo Cruise Crazy 3 cruise, I played a round of Celebrity Artemis, in which JCCC3 luminaries (and I) pretended to troll about in a starship, shooting up aliens, who apparently deserved such treatment. My crew consisted of Rifftrax’s Kevin Murphy, comedian Joseph Scrimshaw, musician Greg “Storm” Di Costanzo, cruise icon Jonathan Coulton, and, as captain, television’s Wil Wheaton. Of course someone shot video of it (Angela Brett, to be specific), and here it is, in all its messy, obnoxiously funny glory.
I know the Artemis folks would love for me to give them a link, so here it is. Because you know what? We had tons of fun playing this thing. Get it for your next geek gathering.
Was everybody hammered?
I got to play this game at GenCon with my geek friends. We had similar “success”.
Never heard of the game or the people mentioned, other than Wesley
You all clearly had a good time with that. A little jealous, I am.
I still have my copy of the “Starship Simulator” from Dilithium Press somewhere..Dated 1978, the tech wasn’t really up to it then.
There’s a copy available on e-bay : http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Complete-Starship-Simulation-Project-Roger-Garrett-dilithium-press-78-/300706563896
I’ve played “Bridge Crew” a few times.. That’s from 1996.
http://www.mithril.com.au/promo.htm
“There are a great many configurations that Bridgecrew can be played in. The simplest layout is a small LAN, with 3-6 terminals attached. You can also run VT100 compatible terminals of the serial ports of any of the terminals. ”
Love the Red Shirt BTW.
Thank you, John. :)
John,
Just a side note, the Maltose Falcons is the name of a homebrew club that goes back many years in the LA area. Good name for a ship though; could Scotty possibly have a home brew set up in Engineering?
You did the best of any group I’ve seen try this. Some time I’ll look for recordings of people taking it seriously.
I found this last night on youtube, because what else is there to do (while stuck in front of the laptop nursing an almost-asleep baby) than try to find promised videos of Scalzi on the JoCo cruise. DH was at one point doubled over in laughter.
This is going on my fantasy bucket list, along with playing D&D with Ursula Vernon’s party.
I was there. There were 3 groups who tried their hands at “Celebrity Artimis” with varying levels of success and silliness. It was incredible.
Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham introduced me to this, and I’ve never felt more like a geek than when we were all sitting in my living room, wearing red shirts, and playing Artemis with a bunch of SF writers.
What are the odds we can bring Celebrity Artemis to Worldcon?
Poster – Kevin Murphy was the voice of Tom Servo for most of MST3K’s run, and Jonathan Coulton is a humorous singer/songwriter who’s best known for penning and singing “Code Monkey” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W_wd9Qf0IE ) and “RE: Your Brains” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOlznuyPOeM ).
Scalzi – was TWiT Network’s Leo Laporte on this cruise? I know he recently went off somewhere and left his network in the hands of Sarah Lane, Tom Merritt and a Geek Priest (seriously).
I dunno. I did not see him if he was. It was not a requirement for all nerds to be at sea together, however.
Artemis is one of the most magnificent things in the history of ever. I played it one weekend at a friend’s house last fall and my inner 10-year old was punching the air with glee the whole time, even as I calmly reported course changes and firing solutions. I am itching for another round.
System requirements are pretty light for Artemis, also; any Pentium/Athlon dual-core machine with an old Direct-X 9 card can handle a bridge station with ease and run a ship in a pinch, and anything more modern/powerful than that can run a ship with grace and style. It’s well worth the modest price for anyone who ever daydreamed about being on the Enterprise bridge or in the Galactica CIC, and is a terrific activity for a geek group.
John, did you script that? It seems pretty smooth, and pretty Scalzi-like dialog (witty, sharp). I’m not gonna be mad. I won’t even tell anybody else!
There’s also an iPad app. Last time I played, I used my iPad and did just fine with it. The touch screen makes it particularly Next Gen-y.
Thanks, @Eric Saveau! We appreciate the kind words.
Gosh, it’s not every day someone I’m a fan of posts something I shot on their blog. I guess posting video of the last crew first was a good idea. :) I never actually played Artemis myself, despite how much it was played on the cruise and even in the airport afterwards, because there was so much else happening at the same time. I’m going to have to play it some day, and then come back and watch this with a better idea of what’s going on.
I also have footage of you singing Redshirt at the live band karaoke, and the first part of your reading. Is it okay if I post those too eventually?
We don’t want all nerds at sea together. Like not putting the President and Vice on AF1 together, you don’t want to risk losing all our Nerd Resources in one accident.
Angela Brett:
Karaoke, definitely. The first part of the reading, please wait until the release of that chunk of The Human Division, which, as it happens, comes out next Tuesday.
Heeheehee. That’s my shirt you are wearing.
Much discussion has been happening at our house as to the proper way to display such a priceless artifact. Shelley has a big display of a spagetti Squash signed by Alton Brown. We determined this “signed by the author of Redshirts” redshirt is equally awesome.
I’m not gonna lie to you, Marge Scalzi; this was one of my favorite 20-minute segments of the entire week.
I bet this was just hilarious if you could make out the words. I couldn’t (because of my hearing issues). If some benevolent person with better hearing captioned it, I’d be delighted to watch it. The automatic captions aren’t any better than my own hearing-impaired guesses, unfortunately.
@Xopher I’m not hearing-impaired and I still couldn’t make out most of what was being said. I second the desire for captioning.
It was a bit distorted; I think that was because of the room acoustics. But the Wil Wheaton William Shatner impersonation luckily needed no audio.
“C is Charlie.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
And it’s only the beginning. :D
I had a great time organizing this event, and seriously hope it becomes a recurring thing!
I see Glenn has already posted his video of you singing Redshirt, but what it’s worth, here’s mine, apparently from the same angle, but with more problems of spotlight glare, and some extra talking at the end: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mMSDeOvxmM
I bet Jason Roop has great footage of it from his side of the stage.