- Warp Propulsion System(WPS) Specialist

Probably one of the most loathed aspects of a sim is the occasional bout of Superhero Syndrome (SS). SS is where a person makes their character out of the boundaries of acceptable development. This can be in a number of methods, but typically tends to occur primary in a biography or writing in the sim itself. SS can range from making your character a race that is not acceptable, such as a Q, or other omnipotent being. It can also be making your character super intelligent, or super strong. When involved in writing, this can include having your character try to quickly and effortlessly solve every problem or situation. Superhero Syndrome severely inhibits the sim to function and can often at time interfere or disrupt the current storylines.

Once you've developed a biography and gotten accepted to the sim doesn't necessary mean you don't ever have to deal with it again. Many players often like to go back after a while and revise their bio and add to it with things such as recent events and relationships that have occurred. Remember, characters can change over time and so can their personalities.

After you have written your character's biography you can submit it to the CO. After it has met with approval, you will be all set to begin.

The GM will then subscribe you to the Starfleet Engineering listserver, a tool that allows for the distribution of email to all members. Your bio will be put up on this web page, and you will be introduced to the game. After that, it's up to you to have fun and join in with the adventures on board the ship.Star

You should read through all (or most) of the Crew Bios on the website to familiarize yourself with the other characters that you will be interacting with. It is also a great way to get ideas on how to write a biography. It is a good idea to read through the last several posts to get a feel for the style, and frequency of the other players posting into the game. That way you can get familiar with the characters of the sim, and also come up to speed on the current story line.

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In a true live action role playing game, all of the players get together to participate in a fantasy game, and one person, the Game Manager (GM) takes on the role of referee. The GM oversees who goes when, and what is allowed and not allowed. In an E-mail sim, the burden of what is allowed and not allowed is somewhat shifted to each of the players. When you post your creative writing effort, and submit your story to the sim group by clicking on the "send" button of your mailer, YOU are the GM at that point. And being a referee on a role playing game you should ask yourself a few questions about your submission.

"Given my character's biography and established game play thus far, would my character do this?"

"Given the Star Trek universe in which we are gaming in, would this possibly happen?"

"Will this entry greatly affect another player's character, or disrupt a storyline they are currently pursuing?"

"Have I used this player's character in a way that is consistent with their biography and established game play?"

"Will my post in any way alter the true Star Trek universe in which we are gaming in?"

Basically there are two things you have to look out for. The first is that you do not write anything in your story entry that will drastically alter the current "story arc" established by the GM or AGM's logs. If you have doubts about an entry, you can always feel free to send a copy to the GM for approval before posting it to the group. We do intend to have certain story arcs and episodes center around different crew members to ensure that everyone gets to be "the star" on occasion. When this happens to your character, you will be in the spot light so to speak, and the other player's character entries will take a secondary, or background role. Like wise, when another character has the spotlight, it is important that you still post into the sim, but in a way that supports the storyline, and the other players.

The second thing to look out for is when you use another player's character (star) in your story. If your use of the character is only minor, and doesn't really affect any other storylines currently in progress, then you are probably okay. But if your use of the character is extensive, you may wish to copy the player on your intended post before sending it to the whole group. Sometimes this can avoid problems later on because you made someone's character do something or say something that they would never do.

Stories that require a lot of dialogue between two player characters (PCs) are usually best handled in a cooperative effort. One player will write out the story, with dialogue for their character and the other pc, and then mail it to the other player for review and/or revision. When they both agree on the final story, it is posted to the rest of the sim group as an official entry. This kind of cooperation, often called a joint log, is encouraged.

The other way of doing a dialogue sequence between two players is to post a story that puts the two characters face to face, and then each player posts a short entry with their comments, ending it waiting for the other player to respond. While this can work well for short conversations between two players that frequently check their e-mail for sim messages and respond promptly, it tends to not work well for longer winded, or confrontational dialogue pieces. These are usually best handled "off line" with cooperation between the two players to come up with a completed `chapter' of the story, and then posted it to the sim group complete. This way, a conversation that takes just five minutes of "game time" doesn't spread out over two weeks worth of E-mail postings.

The DOs and DON'Ts of Writing a post

To set out some simple rules of what to do in simming to get your character active in the plot and/or sub-plots is easy, to use the rules is not so easy.

The simple rules:

- Write in such a way that you portray a real person, with emotions, habits, weaknesses, a past, and one who may make mistakes and is just trying to live by their beliefs to the best of their ability.

- Have fun writing your logs.

- Write so that others have fun reading your logs.

- Keep true to your biography, but don't be constrained by it.

In-character ideas are always a good way to get involved in the main plot, suggestions for improvements or secondary approaches directed towards your superior get you visibility which may in turn generate an assignment for you to do something that could even become critical to the plot. Character interaction and joint logs can also be a great way to get involved too.

If you feel your character is always being left out of the main plot, talk to the GM about it, they can suggest ways to get more involved or may even be able to focus the next plot on you or your department.

Please realize, despite the best effort of your GM, he/she may not be able to create a plot which will actively include every member of the sim (try to think of a plot that will intimately involve 30-40 different people, if you can, let your GM know what it is). In a situation in which you are not highly involved in the sim, create a sub-plot, recurring ones are best. Some suggested sub-plots include: romance, ask a fellow crew member to share a holodeck program with you; rivalry, use the holodeck or challenge someone to a game of darts in the lounge; party, (always good to get people to interact) throw a surprise birthday party for another character. There are numerous other types of sub-plots, some that may require approval from the GM are: recurring villain NPC, recurring technical/mechanical problem, or maybe even an outbreak of a flu.

Examples - "The Dos":

Say you are on an away mission but you are just one of the little guys (a junior science officer), you can make an open ended post that you find a plant that should not be native to this planet, and is only known to exist five sectors away. This gives your GM the opportunity to feed your idea into the main plot which involves a medical quarantine of part of the planet or opens up a possible sub-plot for other simmers to exploit.

You're patrolling near the DMZ for Maquis raiders. Nothing much is happening, and as the helmsman you're dying for some action.

The BEST course of action would be to talk to the people most likely to be involved if a Maquis ship attacked a convoy or such - the senior officer on the bridge and the tactical officer - as well as the GM. Work out a co-log between the people.

You might end up having a log in which the tactical officer receives a distress call and that the CO orders helm to head to the ship in distress at maximum warp, and the "blessing" of the GM to post the log. You might be told no, but again, by doing this, you don't have the GM angry at you along with the tactical and senior-most officer on the bridge.

Say your current mission is to protect a sector from some raiding pirates and you're the assistant flight control officer. Do not make a post that while on duty you detect a large deposit of metal on a remote moon. You steer the ship over to see what it is and find the pirates secret base. Your post then goes on to have the ops officer hail the pirates and tell them to surrender. They do. This is a prime example of Superhero Syndrome, which was mentioned above.

The same idea applies here - while TV shows mostly do this sort of thing due to time constrains, e-mail has all the time in the world. Analyze the above actions and you can see a lot of plot problems - for one, the helm doesn't do scanning for metals, science, tactical, or operations does. Second, if you had the captain order you to pilot to the base, and if you had the Ops officer hail them, you've broken the cardinal rules of e-mail simming, which are NEVER undermine the CO or overuse another person's character without his/her permission. Finally, pirates would not surrender that easily.

It's definitely a fine line that is tread when it comes to plot lines. When in doubt, stick to what you know and what you can do at your post or in your current situation. If you have a question about what the sensors might be reading, or even if you'd like to suggest a plot change, contact the GM or the AGM.

In this area, one can certainly not be exhaustive in listing what is not proper to do in your logs. It's always a good thing to keep in mind the Golden Rule, if you would not want another character to make the post you're about to make, then you shouldn't make it. Remember, the GM may do some of these things from time to time, but he/she is doing it for good reason (discipline, plot development,etc.) and that does not mean that you should reciprocate.

Some of the simple and hopefully more obvious things you should not do include: killing or seriously harming a character without that player character's prior permission, altering the main plot, solving the main plot, writing a log that locks other players into a set course of action without their or the GM's permission, taking an action which adversely affects the plot, or writing a log that makes your player look like a super hero. Don't spend excessive amounts of time writing about the universe your character lives in. And the object is not to out do the other simmers with what ideas you can create, i.e. in a Star Trek sim; a transwarp teleporter, my character can teleport any where in the galaxy! That wouldn't be very fun would it? What would be the purpose of spaceships? Do you think there could still be the political rivalries between the alliances?

Also, remember what you do has repercussions for the rest of the crew and ship. Taking the warp core offline for a level 1 diagnostic in the middle of a battle is not a very good idea, nor is running a security drill in the middle of a party being held onboard.

Probably the single biggest fault of simmers is related to the Superhero Syndrome. This is when a simmer has their character do something awesome and beyond good etiquette. This is regardless of whether or not it is feasible or within the characters biography. Examples of the more subtle forms of this are better than a description. But here are some of the more obvious cases: a character single handedly disables 10 Jem'Hadar with only a toothpick; you prevent a star from going supernova using the Bussard Ramscoops in 20 minutes; or you solve the plot in a single post.

Remember, don't do everything, you are simming to interact with others, not show what god-like powers you can think of for your character.

Examples - "The Don'ts"

Say you are on an away mission but you are just one of the little guys (a junior science officer), you can make a post that you find a plant that should not be native to this planet, and is only known to exist five sectors away. Then you go on to state that this plant is obviously either the cure or cause of the disease that has the planet quarantined.

For starters, the planet could be quarantined for other reasons - deadly indigenous flora or fauna, aliens shrouded in a VERY secluded spot, etc. Second, maybe the GM wanted this plant to strike out and kill an NPC on the team, or for it to be a life form. You've created a massive complication in this matter for the GM to try to handle.

When in doubt, ask the GM. Tell him/her what you were thinking about sending. You might just happen to have a better idea than what they had and might let you go ahead and post, or they might be able to sit down and explain why that post wouldn't fit in. Either way, it's a lot better than posting it and then having the GM upset at you.

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The mechanics of an E-mail sim are quite simple. Each participant (or player) creates their own biography for the character that they will play in the sim. This biography is important, because it will describe to the other players how your character looks, and acts like.

Once the character biography is completed, it will be posted on the website so that it can be referenced when stories are written involving your character. You should always read each player's biography (or reread it) before posting a new story entry involving that character. It can save you the embarrassment of making a false reference in one of your stories.

Example: "Chris ducked to the right as the disrupter blast streaked past her head." Which would be fine as long as "Chris" is a woman, but if it is short for "Christopher"....

Most Web browsers will allow you to print out and make hard copies of the articles you browse. Feel free to make yourself a hard copy of the player's character biographies for easier referencing.

When you think of the player characters, you should be thinking of "the stars of the show", that is really what they are. In this sim, the USS Hephestus (the Mobile Engineering Plaftform) has about 200 men and women on board, but really, the few player characters are the stars of the sim. So our famous Desemona Karol, would be the equivalent of Jadzia Dax on Deep Space Nine.

Along with the player's biographies, a list of all the player's e-mail addresses and the player's positions are stored on the website. These files are updated each time a new player joins the sim, or an old one leaves. You may wish to download these files and print them out from time to time. `

When you turn in your character bio and it was accepted by the GM, your email address was added to an email listserver mailing list. You should have received a "Welcome" message directly from the listserver telling about the sim, and how to turn on and off your email there in case you leave town for an extended period of time. If you need to have your email address changed, or a new one added to the list, you need to email the administrators at [email protected].

When you are ready to post your "in character" story to the Starfleet Engineering email sim, you only need to send it to this one address:

[email protected]

The email list server will then mail out copies of your story to everyone in the group (including yourself) within a few hours. If, for some reason, you do not receive a copy of your story from the listserver within 4 hours, go ahead and re-send it. The worse thing that can happen is everyone receives the story twice. (we call that a "rerun")

When posting new story entries or posts to the sim group, please adhere to the following rules:

If the message is "in character" and intended to be part of the sim, on the "Subject line" of the message, begin it with the following:

Start of with the title of your post. Such as "Romulan attack part 2" or "party in Ten forward" etc. For messages to other crew members 'out of character' to discuss possible storylines, or congratulate them on an exceptional posting to the sim, please start the subject line as follows:

"NRPG" or "OCC":

Where the "NRPG:" is the first part of the subject, and any additional text you like can follow. That will make it easier to sort out the NRPG - (Non Role Playing Game) messages from those intended to be included in the sim storyline.

Another important thing to remember in each of your logs is the header. Before each post, please include the title of the post, who it is written by, and the position of the person(s)

For example:

----------------------------------------

In addition, when writing your log, please follow standard internet writing format; no indentations and a single line break in between paragraphs.

Correct Example:

"Yep, see you in a bit." Janaia quickly responded and shut off the comm link.

Remy quickly put on his uniform and headed out the door towards the bridge. He wondered what she wanted to talk to him about, then it hit him, it was going to be about the alternate Sovereign or something, possibly a demotion. Something like that would ruin his Starfleet career.

The turbolift soon stopped on the bridge, Remy walked across the bridge to the door of the Ready Room, he could feel that everyone on the bridge was staring at him... maybe cause of the past happenings that have happened when Remy went into the Ready Room.

Incorrect Example:

"Yep, see you in a bit." Janaia quickly responded and shut off the comm link. Remy quickly put on his uniform and headed out the door towards the bridge. He wondered what she wanted to talk to him about, then it hit him, it was going to be about the alternate Sovereign or something, possibly a demotion. Something like that would ruin his Starfleet career. The turbolift soon stopped on the bridge, Remy walked across the bridge to the door of the Ready Room, he could feel that everyone on the bridge was staring at him... maybe cause of the past happenings that have happened when Remy went into the Ready Room.

It's also recommended that use spell check for each of your logs before you send them to the listserver.

The last E-mail sim "mechanic" is that each player is expected to make a minimum of one sim entry per week. You may post more frequently than this, but we would like everyone to at least post this frequently. If you are unable to post to the game because of vacations, or final exams, etc. Just let the GM know, (and the rest of the sim group) with a NRPG message ahead of time.

Promotions within the sim are based on performance and a running tally of points which you accumulate with each log you write. The more quality logs you post, the more points you receive, and the closer you become to getting promoted. For more information on the point system and promotions, click here.

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