Details
Motivation
Deep Space 13 has a unique niche in Argo roleplay as a common ground where everyone can come together, whether for work or relaxation. However, starbase RP has declined as player crew activity has risen, which runs the risk of siloing RP in small groups that might otherwise be shared. Revitalizing DS13 as a place where things are happening can broaden options for everyone while ship RP continues to thrive.
To that end, this proposal lays out a framework for professional RP within a large hierarchy like the starbase, affording players who participate in it a high degree of agency in and ownership of their jobs. This RP activity among DS13 crew should also stimulate more interaction with ship-based characters, creating a mutually reinforcing exchange between both. A healthy DS13 RP scene is good for the whole fleet.
Principles
A common point of failure for RP groups is the GM, who is typically responsible for generating the plot hooks and events for other player characters to react to. This proposal aims to embrace an RP framework that is more collective, more collaborative, and more distributed. While IC authority figures do play a guiding role, there are no GMs obligated to generate content. Instead, everyone is encouraged to pursue their own goals, working collaboratively to generate content for each other in a peer-to-peer relationship. It is the responsibility of every player to make their own fun.
Player Agency
Because there are no GMs, the power to decide what your character should be doing is vested in you, the player. There should be no need to wait for orders or permission so long as your character is acting within the purview of a Starfleet officer of that role and rank, and not particularly disruptive to the roleplay of other players. (Disruptions may still be good RP, but should be discussed with the player group in Discord first.) You are empowered and encouraged to pursue your idea of interesting RP.
Collaboration
We are all creators, both for ourselves and each other. Our characters’ drive to pursue their goals, especially where they need to call on the help of others in achieving them, is the engine that powers RP. OOC, no one person is in charge of where this story is going; we are going to find out together. This is very different from a GM-centric approach and will require more communication and trust among players. In this RP framework, we are both the ensemble cast and the writer’s room.
Ownership
The flipside of the collaboration principle is this: no GM is going to do it for you. We all have to take responsibility for making things happen. This is true for our own characters but also for others, such as when we notice a new recruit is hovering at the periphery of things, nervous about diving in. Each of us needs to own not just our personal story but the community story. We each contribute to making DS13 a welcoming place to play for everyone.
Structure
So how does it all work? This step-by-step guide will lead you through the process for setting and achieving professional goals which provide RP-ready activity ideas and incentives to act on them.
Cycles
Deep Space 13 will operate on a 6-month cycle aligned with the biannual awards ceremonies. Each spring and fall, player characters (PCs) and their superior officers (SOs) will review goals from the previous cycle and set new goals for the next one. During each cycle, effort is put toward pursuing PC goals with RP.
Setting Goals
At or near the beginning of a cycle, each PC should meet with their SO to set goals for the next 6 months. This meeting will involve both IC and OOC discussions as the players share their creative intentions and then those are translated into in-universe goals in the character conversation. Note that sometimes an IC goal will merely be a pretext to set up some interesting character conflict or development that the player wants to pursue OOC. A goal is always only a means to the end of good RP.
Players are encouraged to bring their own ideas for new goals to this meeting. The role of the SO in this process is to provide guidance and feedback, not generate ideas for the PC. A good starting place for players struggling to come up with ideas is to think about what you would like to change about your character in the next 6 months, then come up with a professional challenge that could spur that change either directly or indirectly.
The IC goal-setting meeting is best addressed through a synchronous RP session either in-game or in Discord, but if that is not possible, an asynchronous Discord RP scene or IC communications on the website (as a last resort) may be used as fallback options. No matter what form the meeting takes, a thorough discussion of the player’s OOC motives is essential to ensure that the IC goals being set can generate the RP that player is excited to play out.
During the meeting, the SO will share their own goals as a method of guiding the discussion. In most cases, PCs should end up setting at least one IC goal that aligns with the SO’s goals as a way of contributing to the sense that everyone is working toward a common cause. (That SO’s goals will be at least partly aligned with their SO’s goals, and so on up the chain of command.) But it’s also important for each PC to have goals aligned with their own passions and ambitions, so don’t let the SO’s goals limit your thinking.
A good target is three goals per PC per 6-month cycle, mixing and matching any of the following types:
- Job goals aligned with priorities from up the chain of command (try to have at least one of these)
- Pet project goals related to the job but not necessarily in scope for SO goals, something that expresses who this PC is and what they value
- Professional development goals such as building career skills, mentoring, etc., something that helps the character grow and mature in their role
Of course anyone is welcome to set more goals of any type, but take care not to overload yourself. Too many competing priorities is a good way to get nothing done, and you want to leave some ideas in the bank for the next cycle, too.
Here are some characteristics of a good goal:
- The goal is SMART — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. How will you decide what is in-scope for your goal? How will you measure success? What people and materials will you need to succeed? What deadlines must you meet?
- The goal is interesting. Goals exist to inspire interesting RP. Let your own emotional reaction be your guide here. It should be something you’re eager to play out.
- The goal is playable. What will you do to pursue this goal? Are there interviews to conduct? Tense negotiations to act out? Chase scenes to simulate? Or will the only way to mark progress be writing tedious reports? Think about your goal on two levels: what is your character doing, and what are you doing with your character?
- The goal is shareable. Think about what opportunities exist to draw in other people, whether from your own department or others. Many hands make light work, and at the end of the day, the work is only an excuse to play together.
- The goal isn’t TOO disruptive. Take a moment to think through the consequences of achieving your goal. Does it upset the status quo in a way that could detract from other players’ experience? Does it depart from canon in a way that could have ramifications that will be difficult to manage in the future? A disruptive goal isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, but it requires careful handling, consultation with the other DS13 roleplayers, and potentially a pre-planned endgame that can negate the most serious disruptive effects if needed.
The SO’s role in this process is to help shape the PC’s goals, offering suggestions for refinement and polishing, but bear in mind that it’s ultimately the PC’s player that is in charge of this process. You are the only one who can decide what goals will inspire you to play your character proactively. Everyone should come prepared to give and take a little, but the SO should follow the PC player’s lead and do what they can to help justify the kind of RP that player wants to be doing.
When all involved parties agree that the goals are in good shape, it’s time to commit. For the PC, this means putting in the work to achieve these goals over the next 6 months, which will be detailed in the next section. For the SO, this means IC approval of the goals and willingness to support and defend them as needed. Everybody should buy in to seeing these goals through to the end.
Pursuing Goals
With your goals set for the cycle, you now have a guide to look to any time the impulse for RP strikes you. While these goals don’t place a limit on what you can do, they are a commitment, something you have agreed to fulfill and which other parties might be counting on.
Since most goals aren’t trivial undertakings, it’s useful to think about how a given goal can be broken down into subtasks that make measurable progress toward the end result you want. For instance, the goal “Conduct an audit of the Security Department” might suggest subtasks like “requisition records”, “interview security officers”, “investigate discrepancies”, “crunch statistics”, and “draft final report”. You might think some of these subtasks are more RP-ready ideas than others, and that’s OK — the point is that breaking down a large goal into smaller pieces can help you find the individual RP scene opportunities that you’re interested in playing out. In particular, any step that might involve interacting with other player characters is an excellent candidate.
Progress toward your goal should be documented with regular AARs. This can’t be stressed enough: don’t wait until the goal is complete to draft a massive summary of all the work you did over 6 months, as it will be a titanic undertaking and you are likely to have forgotten some of the best details by the end. Instead, a good habit to get into is to write a report detailing the project/task up front, and then add to it with small progress reports or addenda after each subtask is completed. This spreads the work out over the cycle and helps people who are interested in your subplot follow along as it develops. You might even inspire them to come see how they can get involved.
As mentioned above, not every part of your journey toward completion of a goal will make for a good RP scene/interaction. There may even be some goals where you struggle to identify any good opportunities — though hopefully, with practice and time, we’ll all get better at distinguishing goals that generate RP from those that don’t. In these cases, it’s OK to represent your progress in other ways — personal log entries, narrative stories, or just AAR updates for off-screen actions. Roleplaying interactions with other players is always preferred over solitary creation, but sometimes you’ve just got to get the work done so you can move on to the more fun/interesting parts.
It’s up to each player to decide whether they prefer to focus on and complete one goal at a time or make incremental progress on multiple goals in parallel. Do what appeals most to you.
Reviewing Goals
Throughout each 6-month cycle, DS13 command will host 3 department head meetings (roughly one every alternating month) which will serve as an opportunity to check in on goal progress. In preparation for these meetings, department heads will need to keep up to date with their subordinates’ progress, as they are the primary means by which DHs accomplish their goals. Attendance at these check-ins is not mandatory, nor is there any consequence (besides IC social pressure) for having little or nothing to report. Instead, think of them as a time-marking feature that helps remind everyone to keep making progress toward goal fulfillment. Department heads are free to decide what form their department’s internal check-in system will take — group conferences, one-on-one meetings, internal bulletin boards, etc. — so long as they are keeping in regular touch with all members’ goal progress.
At the end of the cycle, ideally shortly before the awards ceremony, each PC will meet with their SO again for a performance evaluation. In this meeting, the preceding 6 months’ goal progress will be reviewed and discussed. The PC should summarize their progress for the cycle, including both successes and failures, and share any new discoveries, lessons learned, etc. The SO should prompt the PC for more details on counterfactuals: opportunities missed or sacrificed, paths not taken, things the PC might do differently in the future. The ultimate purpose is to closely examine and unpack the work that the PC put toward their goals and coach them to keep improving, not to score them on completion. Often, unexpected developments cause best-laid plans to go awry, so the focus is on how the PC conducted themselves and whether they made best-effort attempts to achieve their goals, regardless of outcome. In other words, your character will not be judged on whether they finished all their goals exactly as outlined, but rather how they applied themselves to the pursuit.
Goals which were not completed, or which ended in some unfortunate result, may carry-over into the next cycle, but PCs and SOs alike should be wary of endless goals or too many repeats in a single cycle. Goals should be interesting, after all, and repeating the same things over and over rarely is. When goals are left unfinished, consider simply shelving them for a cycle and returning to them next time around, so that they can represent a change of pace rather than continuing drudgery.
Conclusion
A roleplay sandbox without GMs requires player agency, collaboration, and ownership. By setting and pursuing our own goals, we empower ourselves to drive our characters’ narratives. By communicating about our creative intentions with our superior officers and the other players of the DS13 crew, we can work together to craft goals that serve as RP-ready prompts for shared storytelling. By taking responsibility for meeting our goals, we commit ourselves to a communal approach to roleplay. We don’t need to wait around for something to happen; the power to make things happen is in our hands. Let’s use it to make something wonderful.