Authors: Clare Bradley, Guido Dorssers, Walter Flaat, Rob Versteegt, Bram Peeters Version: 5 May 2005 (a few small additions on 7 February 2006)
Abstract We have a few basic guidelines on what format to use when posting. In time, you will find they make keeping track of the story and other people's characters easier. Don't worry about making mistakes... that's what the Academy is for.
Posts are written in the narrative style, using third person, past tense. So, instead of writing 'I walk along the Promenade, and suddenly bump into my friend.', you should write: 'Jill walked along the Promenade, when she suddenly bumped into her friend.' Also, enter twice at the end of a paragraph, creating a blank line between each paragraph.
Avoid the 'SuperHero Syndrome'. We want realistic characters with as many flaws as attributes. Not every plot should have a happy or clean ending, and not every situation your character encounters should be solved by your character single-handedly in as few posts as possible.
Don't use overt profanity in your posts or sexually explicit writing or dialogue. The basic guideline here is that "If they don't say it on the show, don't use it in StarTrek Frontier Fleet". The philosophy of Star Trek is to respect each other's differences and not everyone wants to read swear words so the wishes of these people must be respected, regardless of your personal feelings on the matter.
Posting Frequency
The minimum requirement is one post per week (for the player's main character). An average of two posts per week is the requirement for a promotion, although the length and quality of the posts is taken into account as well of course.
Post Length
The minimum length of a post is about 300 words, although the length only becomes an issue if a player repeatedly sends in short posts.
A few longer posts are usually easier and more fun to read, and give more opportunity to describe the story and the character than a lot of small ones.
The Subject Line
The subject line of your email should contain your character's position on the ship or station, and your character's name. Our mailinglists will automatically include the name of your ship in front of it. For example, if you are the Odyssey's Chief Medical Officer with the name of Threnn Vok, you should write 'CMO Vok' or 'CMO Threnn Vok' in the Subject Line. When the mail is sent, it will appear as 'Subject: USS Odyssey: CMO Vok'.
The Header
The header is present as an additional tool to help clarify both the geographic position and the position in time of your character. Always read the complete posts of other players and do not simply skim the headers!!
The headers format is (Ship/Base/Planet - Location - Earthdate, Military Time), so a correct header should look like:
(USS Valkyrie - Bridge - 2391.02.24, 1414)
The location is always the location on and not the location of the specified ship/base/planet. The dates always consist of 4 digits for the year, a dot, 2 digits for the month, a dot, 2 digits for the day. Then a comma follows with a space. Then the time comes, consisting of 4 digits without a colon. Remember that Star Trek, and this game, uses military time (24 hours, 0000-2359).
You should try to avoid posting in at two different times. The timeline within your ship will not be straight, but you should avoid bouncing around within your character's own timeline. In other words, don't jump ahead to a later scene when the current one isn't finished yet.
Skipping too much time is not a good idea either. If everyone is posting at 1400 hours, don't write a post detailing what your character did up to 2300 hours. Doing this as an officer might inadvertently make yourself unavailable, thereby missing for example a Red Alert.
Military Time (24-Hour Clock)
Time is told on a continuous 24-hour clock. Rather than distinguishing between morning (AM) and afternoon (PM), the time is read sequentially from 0000 to 2359. For example, fifteen minutes past midnight is written as 0015 and spoken as zero, zero, fifteen. One thirty in the morning is written as 0130 and spoken as zero, one, thirty. Two o'clock in the afternoon is two hours after twelve and therefore is written as 1400 and spoken as fourteen hundred. Quarter to ten in the evening is written as 2145 and spoken as twenty-one, forty-five.
2400 (twenty-four hundred) is possible in dialogue, when you want to refer to the end of the current day, but in a header it should always be 0000 of the next day.
12h 24h Mil. 12h 24h Mil.
========== ======= ====== ========== ======= ======
12:00 am 0:00 0000 12:00 pm 12:00 1200
1:00 am 1:00 0100 1:00 pm 13:00 1300
2:00 am 2:00 0200 2:00 pm 14:00 1400
3:00 am 3:00 0300 3:00 pm 15:00 1500
4:00 am 4:00 0400 4:00 pm 16:00 1600
5:00 am 5:00 0500 5:00 pm 17:00 1700
6:00 am 6:00 0600 6:00 pm 18:00 1800
7:00 am 7:00 0700 7:00 pm 19:00 1900
8:00 am 8:00 0800 8:00 pm 20:00 2000
9:00 am 9:00 0900 9:00 pm 21:00 2100
10:00 am 10:00 1000 10:00 pm 22:00 2200
11:00 am 11:00 1100 11:00 pm 23:00 2300
Communication
Speech
We have several ways to distinguish different forms of communication. When your character is speaking, use quotation marks:
"I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer," the EMH complained.
Thoughts
When expressing your character's internal thoughts, it's usually best to describe them in a narrative form. However, there will be occasions when you want to write your thoughts as dialogue, especially when conversing with a telepath. Thoughts should be expressed in this form:
Kevin nodded at his Betazoid friend. ~ You've got me there, old buddy, ~ he let his friend know, certain of the fact that he would pick it up telepathically.
COMM system
When you are hearing someone's voice over a communicator or comm link, use the following form:
Sally was worried about her friend. Luckily, her worries were over when she heard her friend's voice over the commlink. =/\= I'm alright... =/\=
Keep in mind, that if you are speaking to someone over a link, your dialogue will be in ", and only the replies will be in =/\= marks.
You can also use ^ or =^= instead of =/\=.
The Computer
When the computer speaks to you, you should write its voice in this way:
<> Link Established. <>
The Reply Request, and replying to a post
Reply Request
In this game, we don't write for the characters played by other players, we ask reply requests for them. For example, if you want a reply request from the character named Tall, you just write down '(Reply Tall)'. (Without the quotes)
With our posting style, it is common to ask multiple reply requests, meaning the person writing a post will have to make certain assumptions. These assumptions must be minor assumptions, where the person writing the post leaves as much freedom for the other player as possible.
An optimal situation would be leaving the other player completely free, however, although we strife to accomplish that in our posts, it doesn't always succeed...
Sample Post
An example of how to let another player be as free as possible, is this:
(Pandora Station - Corridor - 2391.04.25, 1122)
Billy walked through the corridor. There, he saw his friend Ted. "Hi Ted!" said Billy, with a smile on his face. "Long time no see! How are you?"
(Reply Ted)
"I see." Billy nodded. "You know what Ted, how about we go to a bar, and have a drink? It has been such a long time... You can tell me everything that happened in... what was it... 2 years?"
(Reply Ted)
"Wow... that long huh?" He smiled. "Well.. what do you say... are you coming with me, or not? I am going anyway... "
(Reply Ted)
Billy smiled, and started walking down the corridor, towards the Bar. Inwards, he chuckled. He had heard stories of Romulan Ale being available at this bar. Even though it was actually illegal, the manager seemed to have gotten some bottles of it anyway. Billy grinned some more. He had heard that this Ale would be delicious... and he was about to find out if that was indeed the case!
(Reply Ted, any)
(Posted by Bobby DeMan)
As you can see, there are some spots in which 'Ted' can reply in different ways. He can say that it has been 3 years... or maybe just 3 months. On another place, where Ted has to decide whether or not to come to the bar: he can decide to join Billy, or not. As you can see, that makes absolutely no impact on the rest of the post. Even if Ted isn't coming to the Bar, Billy still is...
However, this little sample post wasn't without assumptions: I assumed that Ted will talk to Billy, instead of just walking away. Such assumptions however, can be made by looking at the posts that have already been written, and depending on how the relationship between the two persons is at that moment.
The person who plays Ted, could now reply to this post. That could be something like this:
(Pandora Station - Corridor - 2391.04.25, 1122)
Ted yawned. Standing on patrol in a corridor wasn't his most favourite of duties, but it had to be done. Still, this security business didn't seem to be as thrilling as he thought it would be.
It was just then, that a man passed by him.. a man he hadn't seen in a while. A man.. whom he didn't really want to see anymore. "Hi Ted!" the man said. "Long time no see! How are you?"
Ted now sighed. This man... he knew him. Things just couldn't get any worse... Despite this thought, he just gave a smile. "Hello Billy... I'm fine, thanks for asking." He hoped that with this, Billy would go away, but unfortunately, Billy just kept talking to him.
"I see." The man named Billy nodded. "You know what Ted, how about we go to a bar, and have a drink? It has been such a long time... You can tell me everything that happened in... what was it... 2 years?"
"More like 2 weeks... " Ted said with a sigh. "Come on Billy... We haven't seen each other in less than 2 weeks, and you still want to go to a bar?"
The man named Billy only seemed to react to the first part of Ted's sentence. "Wow.. . that long huh?" He smiled. "Well... what do you say... are you coming with me, or not? I am going anyway... "
With a shake of his head, Ted sighed. He knew he shouldn't go. He was on duty. And besides, going to a bar with... Billy... there weren't a lot of fates worse than that. But still, it was almost Ted's lunchbreak, and he could use a drink... He sighed once again. "Yeah... " he finally said, while walking along with Billy. "I'll go."
The two men walked through the corridors, past several doors, before they finally came to the bar. "Well... you first." Ted said, gesturing for Billy to walk through first.
(Reply Billy)
With a smile, Ted entered the bar, and immediately saw the Bartender standing there. "Hi Eric!" He said, smiling at Eric Bardom, the Bartender. "How's it going?"
(Reply Bardom)
"Well... ehm... let's see. I'll have a synthale for me, and... " he looked at Billy with a questioning look on his face. "What about you?"
(Reply Billy)
"And... what he said." Ted said, not feeling the need to repeat what Billy said.
(Reply Billy, Bardom, any)
(Posted by John Doe)
As you can see, now Billy and Bardom can reply to this post, all from their own point of view. This can go on and on, until one of the players decides to let his/her character walk away, so that no more replies can be asked.
At the end of a post, you should list the people you want a reply request from, (in the case of the previous post, that would be Billy and Bardom), plus 'any'. This will allow anyone who wants to join this little talk, to do so. In certain situations, like the closing of a conversation or subplot, it is possible to use (Reply none). However, the use of (Reply none) is not recommended, since this game is about asking replies, not simply closing conversations. (Reply all) can be asked as well, but it's rarely necessary for all to reply, so be careful with this. As a general rule (Reply all) and (Reply none) are only used by Command Teams.
Note: There is no need to put question marks behind your reply request(s). If you feel the need to do so, then you most likely need to use (Reply any) instead. That's what it is for! To give people the change to optionally reply.
End Note
After the reply request, list your real name. It should look like this:
(Posted by Jane Doe)
After this you can add can include your email and any alternate ways to contact you over the net.
Note: You are free to include a link to your personal website, but not to other PBeMs and the like.
