Excalibur Manual/Missions

			Excalibur Manual

Excalibur Manual Introduction A: the Basics 1: Expectations 2: Sim Format 3: Below Sims 4: General Tips B: the Posting 1: Ship 101 2: The Borderlands 3: The Crew C: Operating Procedures 1: Missions 2: Shoreleave 3: Mission Submission 4: Staff D: Advanced Topics 1: Promotions 2: Secondary Characters 3: Department Heads 4: Mentors 5: OOC Activities 6: Player Achievements USS Excalibur-A Wiki Page NCC-41903-A Edit this nav Missions First and foremost, we want you to feel comfortable being creative. Each contribution you make can affect the course of the game and we welcome it, no matter how much experience you have with the group. Your contributions can make a difference and move the story. Continuing the Story vs Plot Twists First and foremost know that all players on the ship can effect a plot. As you will see below all missions start with a rough plan, an idea of how the adventure could go, could being the operative word. One Captain shamelessly stole an adage 'no mission survives contact with the crew', simply to point out that missions never ended how they were envisioned. This adds to the fun. That said, there are a few things a player can do to irk their command staff. Imagine for a moment your CO is involved in some intense negotiations with some Romulans, trying to get them to withdrawl from a planet. Things are tense, but working, when a writer writes about a Hirogen ship crashing into the negotion room. Such a plot twist is not just a twist, it would be quite outside the realm of what you might see in a typical story or episode. You are free to post what you want, but try to keep it in the realm of the story. While its hard to say what's out of the 'realm of the story', a few rough guidelines are below. Before, Introducing a new species into the story, Destroying a ship, building, or other item important to the story, Moving or affecting a large group of players. Give a shout to the senior members of the staff. But really, the group would rather you continue the story than worry you are doing something wrong. Back Tags / Back Sims Back Tags are tags for responses left for a player after they have already progressed past that point in the story. For instance, you are starting a sim and realize you would really like adding a boarding party being detected in the middle of your sim; however, the player action has already progressed past the point such an incursion would be detected and responded to. Adding the plot element, and then tagging the appropriate officers for a response would be a Back Tag. Back Tags lead to a myriad of problems: tags get lost by players not looking to 'go back', it sets up situations where players' future actions don't match previous events, they can cause players to need to write extra-long posts to include both the 'back tags' and future events. Our goal is to keep the momentum of a plot moving forward, 'back tags' can often rob the story of momentum and progress as players must always 'go back' and rehash previous events. In the case of the boarding party example from above, a more permissible way to complete the desired action would be to sim an indicator of 'something strange' and then later in the course of events sim the actual detection of the boarders. If you find yourself wanting to write backtags, consider it a challenge to not do it and find a way to accomplish your goal at the current point of the action. If you decide you cannot write without a backtag, contact a member of the Command Staff for assistance. Back Sims are sims you wish to write to fill in gaps in your writing, your character's backstory, or simply when you have been away for a bit and want to give your character some closure. Back Sims are permitted, provided you do not introduce back tags and realize that some other players, due to their own time constraints, might not respond. Plot Twists and similar mechanics must not be introduced in a back sim. Previous missions are available for reading on the Mission Archive.

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