From jeffj@baudelaire.princeton.edu Fri May 1 09:04:18 1998 Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 06:35:31 -0600 From: "Jeffrey J. Jenkins" To: INDIGO FLEET List Serve Subject: [CINCINDIGO] Welcome and Fleet Mission Dates ---OFFICIAL INDIGO FLEET TRANSMISSION--- Hello and welcome to the INDIGO Fleet mailing list. As you are already aware, the situation in the fleet is tense. INDIGOXO sent a message relating the destruction of USS LEXINGTON. Since that time, the situation has gotten worse as some of the following messages will relate. In fact, as the first of these posts will tell, the situation between the Dalriadan Alliance and United Federation of planets is worse than we could have ever dreamed. As a result, a series of events critical to the future of our characters and involving all of the units in the fleet are about to take place. You and your captains will be recieving more information through this list shortly. Attached, you will find a primer on misstion dates which our Fleet Intelligence Officer, Tim Tyson, and I have prepared. To keep the story organize, we need to keep track of key events and record when they occur in relation to each other in game time. The Fleet Mission Dates are a tool that will help everyone across the various units involved in the story plot out when major events occur. The mailing list for joint mission posts will be: indigo@cyberhighway.net Your CO's will let you know when to post to this list. If you have any questions, please let us know. Respectfully, Jeffrey Jenkins aka Vice Admiral John R. Brooks CINCINDIGO --------------------- A MISSION DATE PRIMER --------------------- Ladies and gentlemen (and Klingons): Allow me to take this opportunity to explain Mission Dates. Although many of you are no doubt very well aware of the majority of what lies below, I urge you to at least skim this material, both as a refresher, and because we will be using a rarely-used concept for our next "mission": FLEET MISSION DATES All posts sent to this list will use fleet mission dates. We will coordinate with each commanding officer exactly what mission date the ship is on (because of the nature of missions, not everyone has the same clock). And we will begin to synchronize clocks. For everything to work, we all need to be on the same clock. This will happen shortly. Just remember, once your CO provides the information on the mission date for the ship, it is important that, for the duration of the fleet mission, EVERY POST include a Fleet Mission Date. (If you have any questions, please write me directly. But this is *very* important for the fleet mission.) Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with mission dates in general, I am going to enclose a section from the "ALB FAQ: An Ensign's Handbook", borrowed from the ASR Documents available off the website. (Since this document has probably changed since some of you went through ALB, I would urge you to reread it.) Those of you who are already familiar with mission dates can skip this next section, though you may want to skim over it as a refresher and to make sure we all have the same ideas about what we're going to be doing. ******************************************** 2.1.3 Mission Dates and Stardates Mission Dates (or MDs) are used by some RP units to ease the maintenance of continuity within the plotline(s). Some units use MDs to construct time lines of happenings on the ship so writers can keep track of who is doing what with whom where at any given time. There are two parts to the Mission Dates -- the day and the time. They are laid out as follows: MD DD.hhmm 'DD' is for the day. The Mission Dates begin at the start of a mission, and is reset at the start of the next one. The 'hhmm' is for the time in the day, in military time (24-hour). For example, a scene happening at 2:00 pm on the 5th day of the mission would be dated: MD 5.1400 Mission Dates are useful in storylines in which the crew splits into Away Teams, or there are multiple threads and subplots. ********************************************** That's it. There really is not much to the idea of mission dates. But, for those of you not used to using them, it can be hard to remember to put them on a post and difficult to resist the temptation to track every minute. Remember, that these are a tool. While it is important to know what else is supposed to be happening at a given time, Mission Dates are not a straight jacket. They are meant to help us keep track of important events. If you aren't certain of a MD, put a number as close to the right one as you can make it and make an NRP comment about the event that you are placing this one relative to. This helps everyone know where your post is without referring to a timeline. One important note before we go any further: MD's (in our case FMD's) will take the place of "timeframe". Now we're going to be using FLEET Mission Dates. How is that different? Damn, I'm glad you asked! We are on the verge of beginning our participation in a multi-ship mission. This will involve every unit in the fleet: NOVA, PROMETHEUS, YAMATO, YORKTOWN, CONSTELLATION, Starbase OMEGA, and Starbase ALIGHIERI and the rest of the Dante Expeditionary Force. That's about sixty (60!) PC's or so, though several people, will have more than one of their characters involved, so it's not quite as complicated as it sounds. However, it's still going to be difficult to coordinate, which is why FMD's (get used to those initials) are going to be CRUCIAL. Not only does it help us keep track of what's going on aboard our own ship, but we can coordinate with outside actions which may well affect us, or something other external factor we would all be aware of, like the possible destruction of Starbase OMEGA. (No, that is *not* a prediction, merely an example! Geez!) On occasion (beginning in the next few days, in fact), we will be sending out FLEET-wide posts to *everybody* to keep you informed on the "larger picture" of the war. These will be actions (like battles) or incidents (like the destruction of the LEXINGTON) that everyone would be aware of. Feel free to have your characters react accordingly...... IF they know about them. There will be lots of rumors circulating, of course, but remember information is controlled at the top, and just because we inform *you* about something does NOT mean your character knows about it. Please try to keep that distinction in mind. So now that you fully understand how very important it is that everyone pay attention to FMD's and making sure your post fits in at the appropriate spot in the timeline, let's move on to a few more important specifics. Did I mention you might want to keep this around to refer to? Well, I did now. On every post, IN ADDITION to substituting "FMD dd.hhhh" where we usually use "timeframe", I would like to ask that you summarize the post down at the bottom, amidst your NRPG comments, preferably using only a short sentence. Please write one entry for every "scene" and separate time that your character is involved in that are contained in the same post. Therefore, even a short post could have several entries, while a long post could have only one. FORMAT: MD X.XXXX (Description of event)..... a few spaces..... Author Let's use a concrete example (these are from the CONSTELLATION): ND 7.2020 The Captain writes a log entry James MD 7.2030 Thoughts about the killing at Kobe IV James MD 7.2040 Demis regains his composure James MD 7.2200 A wacky situation on the bridge James All four of these entries come from *one* of James Bowman's posts. Note that he writes an entry EVERY TIME there's a scene change in a post (usually denoted by a line of stars like this: *************** ). Got it? Good. Also, while events can occur simultaneously on different parts of the ship (and throughout the fleet) and thus theoretically have the same MD, things that occur sequentially, such as when everyone speaks up at the briefing, should have a different MD, even if it's 0801 as opposed to 0800. A corollary of this is that you should try and leave others some room to insert their own reactions under a unique time if they wish to do so. Now, it is *not* important for you to note every detail in excrutiating detail. But, you need to be sure to note important events. Damage to a ship or the change in location of a character are two important things. If the ship is hit and the operations officer needs to help damage control teams on deck 5, then he shouldn't be on the bridge five minutes later. If the impulse engines are hit, then the ship shouldn't be outrunning an enemy ship any time soon. I am also going to keep a log of "major events" on the fleet web page. I'll announce a direct URL shortly so that you can bookmark the page. I would recommend that each ship appoint one person log mission dates for the ship and to check "Major Events" list regularly so that everyone a given ship can refer to a list of what has happened in the ship and so that I don't miss anything that should be on the Major Events list. Mission dates can, I think, add significantly to everyone's enjoyment of the mission, and helps us all to keep track of concurrent activities, as well as being very important from an overall planning standpoint in making sure things happen aboard different ships more or less simultaneously. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE pay attention to this. Everyone in Fleet Command, Jeffery Trock (INDIGOXO), Mike Groner (COMDANTEXF), Tim Tyson (INDIGOINTEL), and I, has worked very hard to develop what we hope will be an exciting and interesting adventure, but it is a complex undertaking and can only happen if everyone works together. These FMD's, though they may seem like a pain in the ass, make it all possible. There will be times when I give a ship captain a certain time frame within which to complete a particular task. This may be because they will team up with another ship at that time or because some important event will happen (either a communication from Fleet Command, an attack, or other event) at that time. Whatever it is, let's try to work within that framework so we can keep everything moving forward as planned. There may also be times when we are posting and working *together* with one or more of the other RP units for a specified period of time, either in real time (like two weeks) or for a specified time in FMD's. They will also be using the SAME FMD's, so if and when that happens, we *must* coordinate with them! If everyone will work at this, we will all be able to have a very "tight" and fun adventure, but if people get lazy or sloppy, it is going to be a nightmare for those of us trying to run the war. Fleet Command will endeavur to make things run as smoothly as possible and we will, hopefully rarely, correct FMD's if they don't work in the overall timeline. However, since we're all going to work at this and pay attention to the main timeline, this won't be needed, right? ;) If you have any questions, problems, suggestions...... anything at all you need to say on this subject, please talk to me. Refer complaints to your captain or myself. Thanks for taking the time to get this far and I hope you will enjoy both the mission and using FMD's. Jeff and Tim. /---------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Jeffrey J. Jenkins | "Fortune is not on the | | http://baudelaire.princeton.edu/jeffj/ | side of the faint-hearted. | | mailto:jeffj@baudelaire.princeton.edu | -Sophocles, Phaedra. | \---------------------------------------------------------------------/ | Copyright 1997, Jeffrey J. Jenkins, All rights reserved. | \-------------------------------------------------------------/ ***This message sent by an official member of Indigo Fleet*** Are you also posting your message to the newsgroup?!!! ---END TRANSMISSION---