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Mission Submission
Anyone can submit a mission for the Chin'toka to embark on, and we encourage you to do so! All of our missions have been submitted by someone on the crew, ranging from an Ensign to a Captain and all have a chance of making it onto the schedule.
We know submitting a mission can be challenging, and has some daunting aspects, so we've added some frequently asked questions below.
- How long until my mission makes it onto the schedule?
- 'It depends' is the best answer we can give. The staff works hard to balance the schedule between different types of missions, ranging from purely scientific and exploration to 'pew pew' missions with lots of action and shooting. To that end your submission might be the next mission on the schedule, or it might take a little time to come up in the roster.
- How detailed does my mission plan need to be?
- Not very. There are things the staff looks for in a plan, but they will work with you to find out the questions to those answers if they need them after they get the submission.
- What types of missions work best?
- The most important considerations in a mission submission are:
- Departmental Roles. The most important consideration is what role each department of the ship will play in the mission, so that we can ensure that every player has something to do, and a starting point by which they can help to develop the mission once it's in play.
- Theme. This is the general focus of the mission. Diplomacy, medical, exploration, tactical, some combination of the above?
- Needed MSPNPCs. It's an important consideration to think of what non-crewmembers are going to be needed to flesh out the mission, whether it be an alien starship commander or diplomat, the leader of a group of scientists who are in need of rescuing and medical attention, or something else along those lines. MSPNPCs tend to be leaders, and NPCs can be added or better defined during the mission as needed. After seeing a mission proposal, we tend to send out casting calls over the OOC group after offering first pick of MSPNPCs to ship staff, but if you submit a mission and really want to play one of them yourself, by all means!
- Mission Acts (1, 2, 3, Etc). This shouldn't be incredibly detailed, as missions have a tendency to evolve and change as players add details over the course of the plot, but it's good to have a general idea of when and how new plot elements are going to be injected in order to change or intensify what's happening in the mission. Think of these as the small cliffhangers that would occur in Star Trek episodes right before a commercial break. Unlike in a TV show, it's important to consider how player action may affect large plot points, and plan accordingly if possible. For example:
- Act 1: The Chin'toka comes across a disabled freighter. Contact is established by the Bridge crew, and the freighter captain (MSPNPC) relays how they were attacked by pirates. She requests assistance, and the Chin'toka beams over an engineering and medical crew. Work begins, and progresses until, surprise, the freighter Captain takes the engineering and medical teams captive!
- Act 2: PCs left aboard the Chin'toka begin to form a plan to rescue their crewmates while command staff negotiates with the freighter Captain. The captured Chin'toka crew members form an escape plan. If they escape and capture the freighter Captain, she breaks down and reveals that an old enemy of the Chin'toka's has taken her family hostage aboard their flagship and forced her into this plot. It's then that three pirate attack ships equipped with cloaking devices, led by the pirate commander who's taken the freighter captain's family hostage aboard her flagship, decloak nearby and threaten to destroy the Chin'toka unless the captured crew members are turned over. If the Chin'toka crew members have not escaped custody, then they will find out about the freighter Captain's family at this point during a communication between the Captain and attack ship's commanders.
- Act 3: The captured Chin'toka team may at this point either be beamed over to the pirates, be retrieved in some manner by the Chin'toka, or take control of the freighter. Depending on how the pirate commander is being played and creative solutions that players come up with, the freighter captain's family may survive the situation or may not. There may be a firefight between the pirate ships and the Chin'toka depending on player decisions. If the freighter captain, pirate commander, or any other MSPNPCs seem particularly well liked by the crew, we may make sure they stay alive in order to have them show up as reoccurring characters at a later date. A Captain's Log will wrap up any loose threads at the end of the mission as we lead into shore leave, where players will likely roleplay their reactions to these events.
As you can see, Act 1 is the primary setup of the mission and culimnates in a change of some kind. Events should grow more intense or the stakes should grow higher at this point. Act 2 is where the bulk of player-driven plot changes are set up and where certain action pieces may occur. Once again, stakes should be raised in this act, and it's a good place for assumptions to be turned on their head, like the motivations of the freighter captain being revealed. Act 3 is the climax of the mission, where the stakes are at their highest and where events are eventually resolved. Missions can have more or fewer than 5 acts (a traditional TNG, DS9, or Voyager episode would have a teaser followed by 5 acts due to the spacing of commercial breaks) but we often find that three acts work very well for our purposes.
- B Plot, if any If you have something that you really want to do that relates to your character's development, it may work best as a B plot. If you come up with a good mission proposal that involves the rest of the crew, but want to have your character shine in their own particular way, by all means involve them in a B plot. This might involve your character's family or race, something in particular from their background that a limited number of other players can be involved with while the main plot is progressing, and will ideally be related to the A plot occurring in the mission in some way or another. As an example, an A plot may be your ship exploring a nebula, and the B plot may involve dealing with the discovery of a hidden colony of your character's relatives in said nebula, and what happens as a result.
- Is there anything that I should avoid?
As mentioned above, if there has been an overabundance of a similar mission type recently, we always appreciate some diversity. Also, it's best to avoid missions that are centered around PCs or PNPCs, because if for some reason that player is unable to sim for a long period of time, it can derail the plot in a big way.
The best advice the staff can give you is, if you have an idea for a mission, go ahead and submit to your mentor, First Officer, or CO, ideally by sharing a Google Document with the considerations listed above filled out. We'd love to hear it and work with you to see where it goes!
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