- This topic has 25 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I have just been mulling over an idea for the forums that would possibly allow me to play my character, rather than just NPCs. It seems out of place for the fleet captain to be present in the bar after a shift (perhaps on a rare occasion), so I have been trying to figure out a believeable situation for me to sit and discuss division plans and the latest news / intel (i.e. stuff you’d need to know about our situation.)
Having watched enough ST:Voyager and being a bug fan of Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series, one idea I’ve noticed being used there is the idea of a bridge officer/ fleet conference. In Voyager, Janeway has key bridge officers to sit and plan with (Picard does the same in TNG) and in Lost Fleet, Geary uses conference software to talk/ brief the captains of the fleet. I was thinking, we could kind of use the same idea here. I could chair a conference for the most senior/experienced officers in the division to attend (i.e. all the bridge officers – you guys).
This could be a weekly meeting where information is fed across and we basically play out the conversation through the week, between the shifts.
Before I get stuck into it (preferably, I want to begin it this week in order to feedback intel and mission prep stuff), I wanted to open up the idea for discussion.
Something important in such a meeting would have to be etiquette. Obviously, we couldn’t drink at such a conference (or at least not alcholic/exotic beverages – no mini umbrellas in cocktails), and rank would have to play a part when addressing people/showing respect etc. What kind of etiquette rules could we lay down? We can discuss here and the final set of rules be posted in the first meeting.
And also, what do people think of the idea? I think it could have a great impact on RP as people could be given key information, or even assigned tasked to complete between shifts (e.g. ‘catch up with Turnez and get me the latest sensor readings’ or ‘work with Edwards to figure out some way to fix up that daka generator’). This could then feed in to the duty shift itself, with people feeding back the information they have gathered or the progress of the tasks they are completing.
I like the idea. It’s a good way to give people information in character, and to come up with new stories from conversation. I agree that rank protocol would have to be observed, and that refreshments would have to be limited to water, tea, coffee, or drinks with similar characteristics for other races and cultures. If it’s appropriate for a conference at work, it’s probably all right for a conference in the TSN.
It doesn’t preclude the bar, we can have a formal meeting and then go and relax afterwards to be more informal. The bar is where personal background details can emerge. And where paper umbrellas in cocktails can be twirled, with no harm done.
It might be helpful to define when the conference is over: we don’t want it to go on until the last minute before the next shift. The senior officer must have the authority to dismiss everyone back to their duties.
I am fully loving this idea. It’ll feel like we’re a lot more involved in the universe and missions than just being the ones going out and shooting stuff.
My big worry is finishing the RP thread in time for the GMs to get Saturday’s mission ready. We’ve already seen the RP go a little too long recently. Matsiyan’s bomb refusal last week going after the shift, and the week before, Feil and I’s shenanigans ending during the shift. Fortunately the latter wasn’t important.
@admin – incredible series of books! I love the fleet conferences… especially the delay thing (I know we won’t have delay)
Agree with Aramond – it’s a time thing. Can we get this done in time.
But love the idea, etiquette I would say follow protocol. Have it like a committee where someone is chairing the meeting (does not have to be highest rank). And each atendee has actions they need to report back on at the next meeting.
Love the idea.
One of the reasons I had Blaze stabbed was to try to move everyone from simply drinking the week away. Things happen even when we’re not on the shift, and we can experience it through forums. That way, even us who cannot play for a few weeks (as it is currently, I might be away for 2 or 3 more shifts), can still RP with you on the forums.
A few ideas/guidelines about the topic:
- in a formal meeting, rank and protocol must be respected,
- what is said in the meeting can bare consequences, positive or negative (think before insulting or attacking someone),
- each post should answer a question,
- each post should include a question that would allow easier continuation of the discussion,
- posting from different time zones and life occupations means we can’t lead dialogues (on the forum) very well, so each post should cover almost everything an officer has to say about a topic.
I have to point out, though the Bar thread may go on for most of the week, that doesn’t mean the officers are sitting in the bar drinking for a week! Even the longest threads, if you imagined the conversation going on sequentially in real time, wouldn’t take up more than an hour or two. It’s just a way to represent some off-duty time, between admin duties, maintenance, training, and rest and duty shifts that might be taking place on the station.
The whole time thing is being kept fairly nebulous, and I think that’s fine, otherwise we start having to keep a precise calendar. I have been imagining the duty shifts being fairly long, perhaps several weeks at a time, otherwise why do we need shipboard accommodation? We just time-compress them, and cut out all the boring bits when we’re travelling uneventfully. So, the hours we spend playing represent days or weeks, and the week in between is just a few hours, at least in my head. Am I wildly off?
I’ve read somewhere some time ago that the stardate and the length of the duty shifts are ambiguous on purpose, so that would fit with what you wrote, Mundy.
You are right Blaze. Though we have a system for creating them based upon the real date, the numbers that are generated are done in a way that makes it relatively ambiguous. It is also the reason why the year doesnt advance in January (we’d be in 2239 by now if it did).
I suggest having a specific agenda for the meeting which is either laid out by the ranking officer at the beginning or standard each week. That way we are less likely to be sidetracked. Further, as @blaze said,
posting from different time zones and life occupations means we can’t lead dialogues (on the forum) very well, so each post should cover almost everything an officer has to say about a topic.
Given an agenda, each person could go through and offer thoughts, opinions, suggestions, comments, questions, etc. for each topic the first time they post, and add more later as the conversation dictates.
What a great response!
I was thinking of guiding it closely for the first few, using the ideas I had planned out in my mind. For example, I have been considering how the next shift will play out and what we need to be doing. However, I want a way to communicate that to others and get you more involved, asking questions about the actions we will under take, or making suggestion on what to do. At the moment, I am leading the storyline (with help from the GMs of course!) but when some one else is leading it e.g. Fish, I could get the information from him and feed it into the conference, having a proper discussion on what we should do (back in thr Euphini Exploration, there were lots of decision to make that I wanted to discuss, but didnt have the opportunity).
I think, initially,they are going to be very focused. The first I was basically going to brief everyone on the current situation and what our course of action will be. Of course, it gives a chance to question and discuss what we are doing instead of just turning up to a shift and being told ‘our mission tonight is this…’. As a result, I’m not going to be drawing up an agenda. It will be sharing of information and orders. In a way,the opening remarks will be the agenda and then responses can be linked to that.
An end must be clear. I think trying to complete a meeting by Friday evening at the latest should be the aim. I am fairly happy for it to go on through the week. This should let people from different timezones get involved enough and have more two way conversations. Finding a balance on how much to write is simply going to have to be through experimentation. Also how it impacts conversation in the bar will be interesting and we’ll have to feel our way along with that.
The GM team talk on private forums here to share ideas, sometimes via teamspeak through the week, and in a GM briefing about an hour before the shift begins. They are therefore pretty well informed and ready for the shift ahead (in otherwords, don’t worry too much about the GMs,they are fairly well organised).
Ok,I have opened up a new thread in the Promethean Command forums for a conference. This is going to be a bit of a trial of the idea to see how it works out.
Nothing has started just yet, instead I want to give people a chance to indicate they are entering. What I will do is kick off the meeting properly tomorrow at about 8pm (UTC time) with the opening briefing/statements. I know some people might want to still join so to not break with immersion, we can simply state something like ‘the final officers come in and settle in to their seats’. That way we can have people be one of those ‘final officers’ without them having to RP being late to a meeting or something (p.s. anyone who tries that will have their post deleted!) We can just assume they were already there from the beginning.
When we are talking in there, it would be good if people didn’t try throwing something in (e.g. making a statement about some intel/undefined canon idea etc) without first giving me a heads up and having it OK’ed. That way,we are not going to end up having to dig ourselves out of a hole or come up with some way to work around/with any impact it may have on what is happening. These first few conferences we’ll have to RP carefully until we find our feet and continue to learn and develop our canon (and the encyclopedia).
Oh, in addition, I’ll try and post at least once a day to keep the conversation progressing. It should be about the same time each day (~8-9pm UTC). That should give a period of about 24 hrs for people to post.
The next conference, I’ll look at kicking it off on the Sunday so as to maximise time for us to post back and forth. This first one is probably going to be very short and focussed as it is pretty much starting mid-week.
I’ve been thinking about one particular problem, but I know of no way good way to solve it: timeline. The conference and the bar topics happen between shifts, but at what relation to each other? It cannot be at the same time, so one must have happened before the other. On the other hand, the bar is probably visited multiple times between shifts, but in the topic we usually RP it as if it’s a single day.
The problem is that we might reference in the bar to the conference, whether what we want to say or to what was said.
Any thoughts?
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.