I actually have no idea what Shadowgate is.... but I'm thinking that it will contain two main elements... that being storytelling/rpg and combat. RPG is along the lines of those books where at the end of a chapter you have choises A or B. A and you turn to this page, and B you turn to that page. And so on, and so on, and so on.... Combat is at the moment pretty basic, simple rolls of the dice. You divide your results between offense and defense. Really, the simplest 'engine' I could think of. So far, everyone who plays is Captain of their ship or commander of their station. Now... how do I work that "If A then 1, if B then 2" into a programming code? Well, I think that you have a series of fairly simple campaigns, and a whole bunch of text written by yours truly, to cover every possible choice. That still has the potential to be pretty lame.... I'm reading about Shadow Gate on Wikipedia, and I see similarities. But this sort of "If, then" thing could take place in space, as well as on planet. One of my goals is to have a Trek game that uses a fair amount of fanon.... say from the resources of the Memory Alpha Trek wiki, to take advantage of the tremendous amount of stuff out there, canon or not. I mean, for example, in my current text "Imagination-Based" version on my blog site, I am about to pull a nasty on my Klingon Cruiser DuranQo by having it leaving Deep Space Nine when it is thrown back to the TOS era. Now sure, he's in a Vorcha Class, and he could easily carve a path home. But he's allies with the Federation. He's not naturally gonna want to put holes in saucer sections. And even running cloaked, he's still crossing the bulk of Fed territory to get home, and odds are he won't make it through without combat. So you have a story with choices to make, but sometimes combat will go into it. And hypothetically, what if a few people playing in the TOS era (which I also envision... all era's playing at the same time) happen upon my errant Vorcha? They're gonna take him on. Someone is going to lose their ship. That's what I'm doing here. And what I'll try to write as a computer program.
And yes, I don't have a problem with a Connie joining TNG ships... There is always a way to work that into the story....
Kapact