There has been some chatter and speculation about what we'll be doing for official Argo timeline/canon material in the new expansion, especially given Argo's history for classifying time travel-related STO arcs and generally steering clear of alternate universe material. All good concerns! This post will explain our stance on the upcoming material and hopefully clarify the Argo staff's plans for handling everything that's about to drop in our laps.
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The Agents of Yesterday 'Tutorial' Storyline (like almost all of the tutorial storylines in the game) should be ignored and considered implausible for use as an origin story for any Argo characters. Rumors of a Temporal Cold War may exist, but the Argo fleet has no dealings with it.
No Federation starships being released in with AoY's launch will be eligible for use in Argo's present day timeline. Players who are interested in characters who have time travel origin stories that utilize one of these vessels will be considered, but please be aware that we will heavily biased against permitting them and will likely have additional requirements for you to consider.
No Federation starships being released through the Kelvin lockbox will be eligible for use in Argo's present day timeline.
On Temporal Recruits: we may run an option to suspend the regular alt application process like we did with Delta Recruits, but we're waiting for the program to actually go live before we determine for sure.
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You time-traveling haters, won't you support ANY form of TOS content whatsoever???
The short answer: yes, but in a limited way.
Spoiler: The long answerShow
We've been paying attention a bit to how other fleets are handling it and what staff has been debating as far as what we want to continue focusing on as an RP group. While there are a lot of possible options (holodeck series, single-ship crew, etc.), we maintained a lot of concern for not wanting to detract from the current Argo storyline and also not wanting to compromise the current storyline with a lot of out-of-universe elements.
However, we did have one solution that seemed to fit all the criteria of allowing us to make use of the TOS universe, while keeping it meaningful and relevant to present day characters and the present day storyline: through a "flashback" arc.
Since I'm not sure that's an actual term, let me explain. In the present day, Argo officers will encounter a short series of events that leave them scratching their heads, uncertain of what to do. As they do their research into the circumstances, they discover a small section of history that had been lost, but whose discovery enables them to solve the problem that they are now encountering.
Some sort of similar examples from Star Trek series would be the "Flashback" episode from Voyager, or the very last finale episode of Enterprise.
The current plan is that Argo staff will GM both the present day arc, as well as have events that take place with new characters in the past that are part of the history being discovered. It's very possible that this will take the form of a single ship crew, though it is not guaranteed. Players will be invited to create characters for the history arc (or play ancestors of your current characters if you wish) and the actions of this arc will directly impact the characters in the present in terms of what they discover and how they'll solve the problem in front of them.
Caveats? First of all, this proverbial arc ... is not written yet and I have some ideas, but nothing that I am certain of. I am planning to chew through the expansion material and see what I have to work with, if there's any official material that I can make use of, and I'm expecting that process to take two to three weeks by itself. So it may be a month or so before we even get started.
That said, if the enthusiasm is there, then this is probably what we'll go with. I am aiming for an arc length of about two months, no longer than three, with a rate of about one event or plot discovery point every 1.5 weeks. This means, of course, that at the end of this arc, we will no longer be running official events with the historical characters.
However, we did have one solution that seemed to fit all the criteria of allowing us to make use of the TOS universe, while keeping it meaningful and relevant to present day characters and the present day storyline: through a "flashback" arc.
Since I'm not sure that's an actual term, let me explain. In the present day, Argo officers will encounter a short series of events that leave them scratching their heads, uncertain of what to do. As they do their research into the circumstances, they discover a small section of history that had been lost, but whose discovery enables them to solve the problem that they are now encountering.
Some sort of similar examples from Star Trek series would be the "Flashback" episode from Voyager, or the very last finale episode of Enterprise.
The current plan is that Argo staff will GM both the present day arc, as well as have events that take place with new characters in the past that are part of the history being discovered. It's very possible that this will take the form of a single ship crew, though it is not guaranteed. Players will be invited to create characters for the history arc (or play ancestors of your current characters if you wish) and the actions of this arc will directly impact the characters in the present in terms of what they discover and how they'll solve the problem in front of them.
Caveats? First of all, this proverbial arc ... is not written yet and I have some ideas, but nothing that I am certain of. I am planning to chew through the expansion material and see what I have to work with, if there's any official material that I can make use of, and I'm expecting that process to take two to three weeks by itself. So it may be a month or so before we even get started.
That said, if the enthusiasm is there, then this is probably what we'll go with. I am aiming for an arc length of about two months, no longer than three, with a rate of about one event or plot discovery point every 1.5 weeks. This means, of course, that at the end of this arc, we will no longer be running official events with the historical characters.
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Finally, Argo staff is always interested in supporting members' efforts in RP. If you have an RP structure that you want to lead the charge on yourself, regardless of what timeframe it takes place in, please feel free to speak to a staff member about it and we will honestly try our best to help you make it happen!
As usual, if you have questions, please feel free to post them to this thread for a response.