When you create a new topic in this category, your post will automatically populate with an event template for you. See below for an explanation of each section of the template.
Shift Time
To help aid in timezone conversion, please include your event’s start time in argo shift format. See Shift Schedule and Weekly Meetups for details.
Audience
Specify the Player Group that is the intended audience for your event. This may be a ship squadron, a single crew, a department, or even the entire fleet.
Attendance
Specify who is allowed to attend the event, in addition to members of the target audience:
Group
Choosing GROUP means that only members of the selected audience may attend.
Reserved
Choosing RESERVED means that anyone outside of the selected audience must reserve a spot with you in order to attend. You can use this to limit the number of participants or to make sure you know in advance who will be present. If you select this option, you must specify in your event post how many guest spots are available, and how you want people to go about reserving them. Your post might look something like one of these:
- RESERVED - 5 spots available, reply here to reserve one.
- RESERVED - Room for two guest stars, DM me on discord if you want to come.
- RESERVED - Our usual ops officer can’t make it, let me know if you’d like to fill in.
Specified Role
This option indicates a semi-open event in which anyone can show up and attend with a character that meets certain criteria. When selecting this option, you must include that criteria. You may want to set your event to SPECIFIED ROLE if you are limiting attendance to only ship captains, or only lower ranking characters. You can get as specific as you need to, such as ‘only engineers’, or make it very broad, such as ‘any Romulans’, depending on the context of the event.
Open
OPEN events indicate that anyone can attend on any character. This option is most common for social events, ‘random’ occurrences, or other happenings where the character’s jobs/roles are not the main focus.
RP Format
Choose one:
Social
Roleplay in which characters are not required to interact with anything other than other characters. The host’s role is generally limited to organizing the gathering of characters, or in providing the backdrop, or controlling ambient NPCs for players to interact with.
Examples of social RP events include:
- unfilled Fleet Meetups
- holiday parties
- poker night/board game night
- Counseling’s icebreaker sessions
Freeform
Roleplay in which players are individually permitted to determine the responses of the environment. In a freeform RP you are allowed and expected to emote your character’s actions AND the results of them on the environment. The players involved are meant to collaboratively write the scene using their own creativity. The host’s role is in setting the scene, providing the backdrop, and controlling any key NPCs. Using those methods, the host may gently guide the event to a particular outcome, or it may be entirely open-ended.
Note: freeform RP is not an excuse to godmode. Actions that affect other player-characters must still be only be attempted, so that the other player is afforded the opportunity to emote the result on their own character.
Freeform RP might look something like this:
[6:39] [Fleet] Host: “Ops to Engineering Team 3, we’re getting reports of flickering lights down on Deck 84. Please go check it out and report back.”
…
[6:45] Kermit scans the power conduit with his tricorder and notes that it is out of alignment.
[6:45] [Local] Kermit: “Hey guys, over here. I think I found the problem.”
[6:47] Suvik responds with a nod and walks over. He takes a hyperspanner out of his toolkit and gets to work. After several adjustments, he steps back. “I believe I have corrected the fault, Commander. Please verify my results.”
[6:48] Kermit , who had been daydreaming about ice cream, looks back to his tricorder. “Oh! Yep, back within a 0.2 micron tolerance.”
[6:50] [Local] Suvik: “That is acceptable. I will inform Operations that our task is complete.”
GM
Roleplay in which the GM exercises total control over the environment in which players will interact. Players are expected to emote their character’s actions only, leaving the GM to provide the outcome. Structured RP events may be ‘on rails’ in that the GM has a specific and particular story that they are telling through RP. There may be multiple possible outcomes depending on player decisions, or the event may even be open-ended in the outcome is entirely determined by player decisions.
‘Bridge RP’ is a subset of structured RP in which characters each man a particular station of a ship’s bridge and receive information from the GM throughout the event, specific to their role on the crew.
GM structured RP might look something like this:
[Fleet] GM: “Ops to Engineering Team 3, we’re getting reports of flickering lights down on Deck 84. Please go check it out and report back.”
…
[6:45] Kermit scans the power conduit with his tricorder.
[6:45] [Tell to Kermit] GM: The conduit is out of alignment.
[6:46] [Local] Kermit: “Hey guys, over here. I think I found the problem. This conduit’s out of alignment.”
[6:48] Suvik responds with a nod and walks over. He takes a hyperspanner out of his toolkit and gets to work.
[6:48] [Tell to Suvik] GM: It takes a few minutes, but eventually the problem is fixed.
[6:49] Suvik makes several adjustments, checking his work along the way. After a few moments pass, he steps back. “I believe I have corrected the fault, Commander. Please verify my results.”
[6:51] Kermit , who had been daydreaming about ice cream, looks back to his tricorder to recheck the conduit.
[6:51] [Tell to Kermit] GM: The conduit appears to be back in working order.
[6:52] [Local] Kermit: “Oh! Yep, back within a 0.2 micron tolerance.”
[6:53] [Local] Suvik: “That is acceptable. I will inform Operations that our task is complete.”
System
System-based RP uses a pre-set system or framework to guide the roleplay. There is no official system in use by argo as a whole. Event hosts may post or use existing systems in the guidebook, or include system details in the event post itself. Players will typically be expected to have read the details of whatever system is being used prior to attending. For an example, see: SHIP Captain - A Space Combat RP Framework
Gameplay
Roleplay in which players run actual game content, including PvE/STFs, PvP, story missions, and exploration missions. As game content is pre-scripted, gameplay RP is typically closed-ended. There will often be a limit on the number of players that can attend due to team size. The host’s job is to set the stage and inform players of any deviations or additional supporting details.
Setting
Combined with RP Format above, specifying a setting gives players a better sense of what kind of event you’re hosting. This can be helpful/critical to determining which characters should be attending. Typical answers are Starbase/Bridge/Away Team/Space. As you can see, you don’t need to be terribly specific, just enough for the player of the starbase ensign to realize that they might have a hard time participating in a space event, or of the captain to realize that their character might not fit in on an away team.
Starting Point
This one is fairly self-explanatory. Simply: Where should players gather at event time? Should they head to the starbase conference room for a briefing? Should they standby in sector space to be ready to receive bridge invites? Will this be a discord event not requiring an in-game presence at all?