Workings of the Embassy
Introduction
In 2004 the Embassy was just a dream. It began life as a project on the drawingboard, or rather a set of threads on the Forums. This allowed the dream to be shared with all across the fleet and a number of UFoP players worked on its creation long before I even got involved.
By the end of 2004 the dream became a reality. With players throughout the fleet having brainstormed the Embassy's setting, we as a crew took their idea and expanded on their foundations. As we strive to build an entire planet, culture and history we record our facts and our missions here on the wiki.
But the creation is quite like no other -we're planet based, we often do diplomatic, political and science based missions rather than all out action and as such simming on the Embassy can be a little diferent too.
Whether your an experienced Embassy crewmember or a new player joining our little group, there are times when we all need to put our hands on a piece of info telling us what we can do as a player within our group.
This page tries to offer a wealth of information on how to be a player with the Embassy group. The website and the wiki offers a wealth of IC info about the Embassy setting and the Star Trek Universe, but hopefully this page can act as your first port of call when you have a question on being a player or what to do!
-Capt.Rocar Oct 2005.
Aims and Goals
As we began our adventures on Duronis II we had a number of aims and goals which we would work towards. This article details them:
Also, if anybody is interested in reading the original brainstorming behind the Duronis II Embassy creation then they are available here:
This can be quite an amusing read. You'll see what we inherited from our friends accross the fleet and perhaps be able to reflect on how our sims and the details in them compare to their original ideas. Perhaps you could even bring back a forgotten idea and get it into one of your posts to make that dream become a reality.
As we move on as a crew their are three main goals which we ought to all walk towards:
- The Embassy group will always be tolerant and understanding: Open to all races, sexualities, ages, religion and gender etc. This is both IC and OOC.
- Stay within PG13 but push the boundaries of what we explore in your sims. Theres no reason we cannot have disabled characters, homosexual characters or even extremist characters. Likewise, our writing should explore the issues that affect societies -damaging the environment, poverty, war, drug use etc etc. Anything we see in the news would likely make an aspect of Laundean society worth exploring.
- Do not be afraid to seek out new ways of simming or offer an original of looking at the Star Trek universe. Everyone can have an idea and its up to Ensigns and Lt.Jg to lead a mission on in its plot just as much as a LT.Cmdr.
Two Tiered Simming System
It is important to understand the two tiered simming system on the Duronis II even if your not always seeing it in use!
Sometimes a player's RL commitments mean that they remain excellent high quality writers but in a mission environment they can not always keep up with pace and feel bad for holding people up with replies. In the two tier system these players move to (for lack of a better expression,) Part-Time embassy based characters. These part-time players remain Embassy based whilst the other players will
be the ones sent out on the more traditional high-powered and fast
moving away missions.
Going Part-Time is not a handcuff though. Come each "shoreleave" (or point at the end of a main mission,) Part-Time players will get a chance to volunteer for the next mission and return to full-time with the crew. Or they can choose remain at the Embassy on a PT basis. For example, if a player suddenly has exams coming up in the next month or if they're off on holiday with only internet-cafe access then then they can take a step back for a few weeks.
Those Part Timer (henceforth referred to as PT) remaining at the Embassy will therefore be able to continue simming at a slower rate without holding up an actual mission. Our planet based Embassy setting allows for something exciting: contrary to what might usually be the case with beint a PT.
If you ask to be a PT then you are actually taking on an important responsibility: You will be tasked with exploring the Laundeans, their society, their hisotry -everyday life. In essence your mission is to write a sim that explores an aspect of Duronis II or Laundean society. And you write it as and when your RL time permits.
To give you an example, Lt.Cmdr Jenkins (a made up person,) has been playing with the UFoP for nearly 4 years and is a great writer who has ties to the Embassy group and other players there; she does not want to quit and won't transfer. But she has to revise for exam and work 40 hour weeks and cannot keep up with the mission pace. So she take on her PT embassy based role. What I expect from her (and other players in that situation,) is that when she writes a sim it should not just be about her pottering about the Embassy complex but it should go and explore the Duronis II setting seperate from the mission... so for example she could go shopping round a market in Lokesh or she could go witness a coven or she could meet an old man and talk about what life on Duronis II was like before the revolution!
If she wanted she could just write a short story about a fisherman at the other side of the planet...anything that helps establish what local life is like there! These writers can really do some indepth exploration of the Duronis II setting and give a real vibe to the planet -eventhough their post will not be tied to the focus of the main mission everyone else is on.
Captain Rocar keeps a number of NPC/secondary characters but only one or two are ever needed in a mission. The others are there to facilitate those undertaking this second tier PT role. At the end of the day, 4 quality sims a month from these players setting out the background of Duronis II is better than loosing these good writers alltogether because their RL prevents them from simming at the rate of the mission.
New ways of Simming
In establishing a planet based sim we have done something new. But the novelty need not end there. In addition to running our regular missions, we sometimes like to try out a new way of simming within the standard format accepted for our usual mission.
Although most are missions are traditional, so far we've done two kinds of things to make a mission a little diferent. The first was a Murder Mystery in which we suprised everyone with the death of a main character. Each member of our crew was then e-mailed (in a direct OOC) a set of three clues pointing to the culprit. Alone these clues were useless but once the crew all shared their clues by writing them into their sims then they could work together and it became a solvable murder mystery that everyone strove to solve. The other new mission we did was insert a diferent type of puzzle into a sim. The crew could only overcome the obstacle blocking their mission once a player completed the puzzle and included their solution in their sim
Details of how these missions were organised and run are printed below:
The Murder Mystery Sim
Coming Very Soon
What the crew thought?
If you did this mission please write a feedback comment here!
Puzzle Sim
Coming soonish
What the crew thought?
If you did this mission please write a feedback comment here!
OOC Involvement
Theres a large number of things you can do to get involved and help run the Embassy. But the most important place to get active are:
- Cataloguing things on our wiki.
- Volunteering to write a Monthly report on what we've done in our mission this month.
- Once you reach Lt rank, Mentoring a new officer.
- Taking part in discussions here:
Fleetwide
As a player on the Embassy you are also part of the wider UFoP wide community and should try and help out the fleet a little bit if you have some spare time. Remember the UFoP takes a lot of running and things only get done when people volunteer.
Good places for you to get involved are:
- The Advertising Team (helping to promote the UFoP and ensure we get new players)
- The News Team (who's articles get published Front page of our site
Socialise accross the Fleet
As a community of star trek fans, we are not limited to having something in common withjust our own group. Try and use [1] whenever you have a spare second (for example I check the threads that interest me 5 minutes before going to lunch!)
Also you may wish to join one of our guilds and meet people with similar specific interests:
Readers Guild - For those who play characters who are telepathic or empathic, this guild acts as a point of reference on information concerning these unique circumstances.
Lambda Alliance - Helping to create diversity within our RPG, the Lambda Alliance is for members of our group who are/are supportive of/play characters who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered.
Guild of Vulcans - For Vulcan characters and those interested in Vulcan culture.
Guild of Trills - For Trill characters and those interested in Trill culture.
Guild of El-Aurians - For El-Aurian characters and those interested in El-Aurian culture.
Survival Material
Promotions
Okay so you're dying to get your character promoted but you're not sure what you still need to do or how to achieve it?
Then Go to: Embassy Promotions
Generally you will find the promotions from Ensign to Lt.Jg will come quicker and that with each rank it will go slower/take longer to get promoted.
As you rise up the ranks, it becomes more about how you help others: -how you've helped the command staff with OOC work? How you've driven the plot forward? But most importanly how you've helped lower ranking officers. Even the best writer in the world will not make it past Lt.Jg if they are not nice to new officers and help them out or don't get involved with ooc work in addition to writing plenty of great sims!
It really isn't about how long you've played your character in the group and how many missions you do... Promotions do need to be earned, and unfortunately you have a captain who's little tough in promoting people. But, that way you know you really have achieved something when you get a promotion.
If you want to get promotions look to have a finger in every pie and helpout as much as you can -become part of our online community and not just a writer ;o)
Details in Sim
Ever watched Star Trek V and thought "hold on they've past that deck twice now" when Spock and Kirk fly up the turbolift? Or perhaps been confused in Star Trek First Contact when the number of decks on the Enterprise changes from 24 to 26?
Most of us don't notice these things, but those that do get irritated by them. So even if Paramount cannot remember how many decks a ship has from one page of script to another...we should at least try to do better and get continuancy in our sims.
As we develop the Embassy and Duronis II there are countless facts that we establish that it would be nice to keep "Embassy canon" from sim to sim. Your first port of call should be here the wiki... of course for that to work you need to catalogue facts you've sim here too!
Additionally:
This is our Guidebook and offers lots of great trivia to help you get acurate details in your sim! Check it out for:
- Background: An overview of the background of the embassy.
- Duty Posts: More explination on the jobs each staffmember holds.
- Promotion Info: More information on how staffmembers are promoted.
- Embassy Defenses: Explination of the embassy's defenses and alert statuses.
Also, if we're using a vessel -make sure you check up on what vessels we have available to us:
Not only does this tell you what craft we have but it also allows you to gain access to:
- How many we have?
- The ships' names and NCC numbers
- Their stats eg size and warp speed ability!
- Where they are kept!!!!
A quick check at the above link and you know where to go to get a runabout for your sim. You know how fast it can go and you make sure we have consistency in what our runabouts are called!
- o) I really don't want to see sims where you go and use the runabout River Thames from a non-existent shuttlebay in Rocar's rose gardens anymore than I want to hear that Star Trek IV's humpback whales are about to be returned to Alaska for release back into the wild when Dr. Gillian Taylor told Kirk and Spock that Gracie was "very pregnant." (Humpbacks give birth in warm, south Pacific waters, say Hawaii, during the winter and later migrate north for summer.)
Know thy neighbours
Being planet based its very important to know who our "adversaries" and "friends" are. After your own character's race then you should know the most about Laundeans, Romulans and Zalkonians.
The Embassy section details Laundean culture and society. For example did you know their is a traditional Laundean form of greeting (equivalent to a handshake)? When you sim a Laundean its nice to include these little details and they can be found on the wiki.
Our Website also has some key info: Laundeans on our website
This includes:
- Spacial Geography: Detailing the spacial geography of the Duronis system and its inherent worlds.
- Planetary Geography: Background on the planet's country-states and their geography.
- The Laudeans: An exploration of the Laudean people and their culture.
- Laudean Government: A profile of the current central government in power.
- Laudean Fielding: More information on the Laudean "fielding" power, which enables the Laudeans to sense energy fields..
- Laudean History: A brief background on Laudean history, including information up to the Revolution.
When you sim a Laundean its important to describe their appearance in keeping with what we've established so familiarise yourself with this: Laundeans
The Romulans are known well enough. Part of the joys of our setting is that we get recurring characters eg Senator Or'Lok the Romulan Ambassador. Or like Gul Dukat in DS9 our recurring reman villan D'Vreoux.
Memory Alpha article on Romulans
Again, when simming a romulan character its nice to include as much little details as possible! Maybe the odd Romulan word or a romulan game they like playing or eating a canon Star Trek romulan food.
The Zalkonians are diferent all together. Once again, theres very little canon stuff on them so you have free artistic license to make it up. This is a diferent kind of simming to simming the romulans who have such a wealth of canon facts at your disposal. Do however bear in mind things we already established about them in previous sims (for example that the Zalkonians are a Suzerainty or that they're socially inept and slightly xenophobic) and of course the canon facts,
Memmory Alpha Article on Zalkonians
You'll see from the above article that some Zalkonians are evolving into to non-corporeal life-forms. But you must remember that the Zalkonian people were frightened by those undergoing the change and their government began exterminating anyone showing symptoms. As such a member of the Zalkonian delegation would not be walking around and have omniprent powers/ be turning non-corporeal.
For the sake of the sim we say none of these kind of Zalkonians are on Duronis II. Remember, in the UFoP you can not play these kind of races (eg a Q) and so your Zalkonian characters must adhere to that rule.
The Mentor System
When a new player or Ensign arrives at the Embassy from the academy, they are assigned a mentor. This is usually a Full Lieutenant or higher and would usually be their department head or someone with experience in that department. These mentors introduce themselves to the new officer the minute they come onboard, makes friends with them OOC -helps them make other ooc friends, importantly giving them something to respond to in the sim/help them get involved. Then if something is amiss with the new officer's sim they'll catch it and correct it. Eventually, they offer advice on things to try and improve on, all the while praising the new officer's positive aspects.
This system seems to please both mentor and new officer a great deal. (if you're doing something wrong and get corrected by the Captain its sometimes a bit more daunting than if your buddy points it out to you and gives you some pointers.)
This allows the junior officers to always get 1 on 1 help, praise and pointers whenever it's needed, whether that's three times a week or once a week. This ends up far better than if they were to wait until the end of the month for an evaluation from me as CO; it also gives the senior players an OOC responsibility. In this way, once you are a Lt or Lt.Cmdr you may become a mentor and gain a taster of dealing with OOC issues long before you reach Commander rank/FO status. It helps the crew gell and hopefully when you are a menotr you feel like they are giving something back by being involved with this ooc responsibility.
This system helps junior officers to improve and also ensure they make OOC friends/ get help joining in the sim (i.e. we always have someone who will remember to include us and the mentor IC usually takes the new officer under their wings and introduce them to others IC)