Rules
RULES
1: All players must treat their fellow players with consideration and respect.
Characters may disagree, argue, or even come to blows, but out of character all players are expected to be civil and respectful. Abuse, disrespect or mistreatment of others will not be tolerated.
Players must not write other's characters for them without permission, and must respect other player's wishes if they do not wish to participate in a shared storyline.
2: All players must check in at least once a month or face removal from the game after consecutive missed check-ins.
The characters of players that are removed may be killed or kept in the story until it becomes convenient to write them out of it.
3: All players must be members of the SimCentral Discord. This is a condition of our hosting agreement.
4: All players must be at least 18 years of age.
Any player found to be under 18 will be removed from the sim immediately.
Mature content is permitted where appropriate, but not encouraged without good reason.
5: The command team reserves the right to veto character images that do not suit the aesthetic of the game.
We require that all characters be depicted in a visual medium, and we can help with that if you don't have anything already.
We aren't looking to tell you what to do or how to do it, but things like existing trek / sci fi characters are the sort of thing we'd prefer to avoid, in any event we're happy to work with you to find something that works.
6: The Captain's word is law. To defy it is mutiny. Mutineers walk the plank.
The CO and the command team will make the final decisions and arbitrate any disputes.
By joining the sim, you are agreeing for your character to be part of the sim and it's ongoing story until they are written out of it. Withdrawal will be actioned immediately if requested, but anything published on the website remains as part of the sim, there will be no retroactive removal of content.
The following are not rules, but guidelines for the process of playing the game.
HOW WE WRITE
Keep it clear, ask questions, tag instructively.
Our story consists of missions, each made up of posts. A post is like a scene in an episode, and a joint post (JP) involves multiple authors.
When starting out, scenes are set by the initiator, who leaves tags for others to respond. The tagged person responds by continuing the story or expanding their character based on the previous content. Responses can range from simple reactions to detailed elaborations, depending on the situation.
Your writing style is your choice, but clarity and brevity are important. Solo and smaller joint posts allow more freedom, while JPs with many authors often benefit from efficiency. You can use personal logs or solo/smaller posts to explore details not covered in JPs.
No one is expected to know all of Star Trek or (franchise of the mission) canon. Mistakes and purposeful changes are okay, but ask if you want to vary anything from any story that might impact others. If something seems incorrect, leave an OOC note or ask on Discord. We don’t want to nitpick, but it’s difficult to maintain a story if the details don’t make sense.
The command team confirms details and makes key decisions. Command-level changes are communicated along with reasons. Suggestions are welcome, though not all can be implemented.
Tags should include the name of anyone expected to respond to them, unless they’re open for anyone else in the post to respond to. If you’ve been tagged and are responding, take your name out and leave it blank or add the name of the character you expect to respond.
You don’t need to wait for a tag to respond, but if you jump in before someone specifically tagged has a chance to, you might be asked to rewrite after they’ve responded. If it makes sense for your character to interrupt for whatever reason, then it will probably be accepted.
The command team edits posts to ensure coherence, style and may remove or edit content that doesn't fit (usually after discussion with the author).
Ultimately our goal here is to craft a story together that someone might read and say ‘hey that multiversal adventure was both an entertaining story and pretty true to the spirit of golden-age Star Trek.’
STYLE AND FLARE
Keep it simple.
A ✱ in the post title with a number means that this post is a mission post progressing the main story. It will look like [✱2] at the end of the post title.
We don’t use any special characters or combinations of input like =/\= to signify using a combadge. If your character is communicating from beyond the room everyone else is in, just say that.
If you're branching the post to another area for more than a couple of paragraphs, add a divider using <_hr_> without underscores, it will look like the below.
There may come times when Unicode and non-english characters are used to portray something. If something just looks like a box to you, let us know.
Telepathy and thoughts can be written in italics, and should be if you’re communicating with someone else that way and not just reflecting. If you feel the need to emphasise something, making it bold is probably best, but beyond that keep the formatting simple.
ACTIVITY
Try to hit main story tags within two weeks, reach out if it’s too much / not enough.
We don’t have official activity rules other than checking in every month because I don’t want to have to enforce them. Non-main story posts can take as long as they need to, and even if the mission finishes they can be added as backposts.
We do however need to keep the main story moving at a pace that works for most of us. That’s why we ask that you get to tags in main mission posts within two weeks. At the two week mark I’ll reach out and present some options, but I’d really prefer not to have to. This is based on current trends and may be updated over time.
I appreciate that we all get busy, but it’s always possible to edit a post later to add preferred responses and keep things moving in the meanwhile. It just means if you need longer than two weeks, you might not have as much input in any direction the main story takes.
If you feel like you’ve got too many posts to deal with or want more, reach out to the command team and we’ll help you get to a level that works for you.
KNOWING WHAT YOUR CHARACTER KNOWS
Focus on character, flex the details, ask if you want to get wild with it.
Sometimes the audience knows things the characters don’t. This is called dramatic irony. Sometimes the characters know things the audience doesn’t. I don’t know what that’s called. Regular irony?
Your character shouldn’t know things you know as a player, they should make decisions based on their character, experience and situation. Try to consider the consequences from their perspective when you make a decision for your character, as going back and undoing something once the story has moved on from there is done at the discretion of all the writers involved, or the command team.
If your character should know something boring like who is your character’s neighbour, or how many Starfleet ships are currently in the outer reaches of the beta quadrant but you don’t know that personally, feel free to ask, no lore question is too small for us to apply our minds to. The plot discussion discord page is the best place to ask any questions or discuss any developments or calibration.
Don’t be afraid to throw details together if you’re talking about something inconsequential, or even something that’s the important focus of everyone’s attention. Making it up as we go is after all, part of the fun, but just be aware that some things may get pulled up for calibration if they deviate too dramatically from established canon or affect any plans for the story.
That said, feel free to suggest any story additions or variations you think might be worth considering ahead of time, but remember that the challenges designing an interlocking story with events for almost a dozen people to respond to means that not every suggestion can make it over the line.
The command team work under the ethos that if you can imagine it and make it work in a continuing story, you can do it. Just ask if it’s not in the application already.
DOING IT YOURSELF
Let the computer fix your mistakes, but don’t let it write for you.
While tools like Word’s spellcheck, Grammarly or Copilot style assistants are fine to use to proof or correct your writing, if you’re contributing something to the story it needs to be something that’s your ideas and thoughts, even if you tidy them up digitally.
If you’re using AI for more than basic structural/grammatical assistance, that’s too much AI. It’s a writing game for humans, if we wanted to write a story with ChatGPT we could all do that, but that’s not what this game is.
