Posting Guidelines

Activity

Players are expected to post at least twice a month, or ideally once every two weeks in order to help keep things moving. This can be done with their main character or NPCs. Individual posts should be at least three hundred words. Joint posts should be at least four hundred, and each player listed on the post should meaningfully participate. Posts that don't meet this standard may be removed for editing, or discounted from a player's monthly count.

Please also respond to JPs in a timely manner. While we all have other obligations outside the simm, adding a few sentences does not take very long. It's more fun for everyone if a post doesn't linger while the rest of the simm moves on. Please reply within a day or two, or sooner if you can, especially if there is a time zone difference. This isn't a hard requirement but it helps meet the post requirements and keeps up enthusiasm.

If you expect to be unable to post for a while, please contact the CO or XO for a Leave of Absence. A LOA up to four weeks can be granted but only with notice. Please also let anyone you are currently JPing with know. Try to wrap things up if you can so they are not stuck in limbo, or decide whether it can be postponed or have your character written out.

If necessary an Extended Leave of Absence can be arranged, but you must have a time frame for your return and provide a reason for your absence. If it is a very long-term absence, it may be necessary to move your character to another position in order to keep vital roles filled.

The command staff reserves the right to write a character as an NPC if they are not responding to a JP for an extended period of time, or remove them from the post if possible.

Quality

We aim to produce content that is high quality. This is why there are minimum word requirements for three hundred words for a single-character post or log, and four hundred for JPs. Posts that fail to meet this length requirement will either be returned to WIP status or deleted.

When working on a JP, please try to give the other player things to react to. The occasional paragraph of thoughts can provide interesting character insight, but there still needs to be something for other people to react to. Also, please be careful about not controlling other characters. While leaving several tags can help speed things up, don't make too many assumptions about what other players will say or do, and be willing to change things if they do something unexpected. Also, if there's more than two people involved, make sure everyone has a chance to contribute.

Keep out of character and in-character knowledge separate. Players will be given more information about what's going on with a mission than their characters know. Your characters should discover this in an organic manner. This applies to the inner thoughts of other characters, too.

Finally, before posting please be sure to check for spelling and grammar. Also make sure everyone else is satisfied that the post is wrapped up. Always ask before making any spelling/grammar corrections to someone else's writing.

Formatting

All posts should be written in third person and past tense, with the exception of personal logs.

When speaking remotely, such as via communicators or a computer screen, it is not necessary to add any special formatting. It can be treated as normal dialogue, as long as it is clear that the person speaking is not physically present. If you want to be extra clear, however, you can use a combination of italics and normal quotation marks.

Example:

Jake's communicator chirped and he flipped it open. "Hunter here."

Lt. sh'Kerran replied, "Captain, we're picking up a large life form heading right for you!"

Purely internal thoughts can be shown with italics.

Example:

That is a really big bug, Jake thought, trying not to make any noise.

Telepathic communication, such as between Vulcans or Betazoids, can be indicated with a tilde (~) instead of quotes.

Example:

~Who are you calling a bug?~ said a voice in his head.

Before posting, each post needs to have a title, location, and timestamp added. This helps people keep track of what is going on. If the location is somewhere other than the ship, specify what planet/ship/station it is and then the specific location.

Location examples:
Bridge
Officer's Mess
Hunter's Quarters
USS Fireball, Engineering
Deneb IV, Sports Center

The time stamp lets us know when this happens. For the current mission, usually this is indicated by the Mission Day and either an exact time or a general time of day. The CO will usually have a mission timeline up on the wiki to help people figure out when posts should be happening. For the 'flashback' mission, which is for things that happened in the past, this could be a specific date or something general like "Academy survival training".

Time examples:
MD02, 1700 hours
MD01, Morning
May 11, 2256

When done editing a post, you should leave a TAG indicator to hand off to another player. This could just be a general tag, but you can also do something like "TAG Hunter" in multi-person JP to suggest who might go next. This is just a suggestion, though.