Posted by Robert Archer in Alt Ship Charter Proposal

Posted by Commodore Steven Sigle (FComm, Infinite Fleet) in Alt Ship Charter Proposal

Posted by Dave Eads in Alt Ship Charter Proposal
Posted by… suppressed (7) by the Post Ghost! 👻
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I humbly present the Charter for USS Sentinel:

The Governor-class USS Sentinel, NCC-1794, is hereby commissioned in the (#) Fleet as a TOS Show-era Alternate RPG Area.

The USS Sentinel will be structured the same as a Standard Ship and shall be commanded by a CO and XO who are appointed the same way as on a Standard Ship and a GM who is appointed the same way as a Standard Ship. However, as an Original Series Era ship the Sentinel’s missions are expected to be predominantly (but not limited to) TOS in nature and biased toward Era specific issues and plotlines, and its crew staffing is expected to be realistic to the series timeline crew requirements. The Sentinel’s time frame (The TOS Era is specified as 2250 - 2270) must be honored with respect to technology, species, and species present in Starfleet at the time, etc. As is appropriate to the Era, the XO shall concurrently hold a Department Head position.

CO and XO positions on the Sentinel will count fully towards any limits in place. The Sentinel will not accept new members to STF; it is a Second Character Only ship.

The Sentinel will be reviewed in 90 days by the President, Fleet Commander, and CO to determine if the Sentinel has been successful in its mission. The President shall have a final ruling in this matter. The Sentinel will be reviewed based on the following criteria:

-The Sentinel must maintain an active and healthy role-playing environment.

-The Sentinel must continue to function as a TOS Show Era ship.

If the Sentinel is found to be successful in maintaining its environment, it will be considered permanent. It may be decommissioned at a later date should it be found to be irreparably in violation of any points of this charter.

(though I can’t take all the credit for writing it, I had a lot of help.)

-Dave Eads

So I was asked in DM to put my “legalese” hat on and see if I can post a revised version, just to clean up some language (it’s substantially the same as before). I also added some flexibility to the DH titles for the CO.

Here I go:

The Governor-class USS Sentinel, NCC-1794, is hereby commissioned in the (#) Fleet as a “Star Trek: The Original Series” (“TOS”)-era Alternate-RPG Area.

The USS Sentinel will be structured the same as a Standard Ship and shall be commanded by a CO and XO who are appointed the same way as on a Standard Ship and a GM who is appointed the same way as a Standard Ship. The Sentinel shall be set in the time period of year 2250 to 2270, with the exact game year set by the ship’s CO in consultation with the ship’s GM.

Missions and characters should adhere as closely as possible to the canon of the time period with respect to concepts including, but not limited to:
Technology
Known Races
*Relationships between the United Federation of Planets and other known powers

Canon for the TOS-era shall be defined by both Star Trek: The Original Series as well as any other live-action Star Trek movies and television series depicting the same time period.

The crew of the USS Sentinel shall be structured in a manner consistent with the TOS-era. The CO may rename a Department Head position, and may add additional swing positions so as to maintain a TOS-era RPG environment, but there shall be a security department, a science department, a medical department and an engineering department. The USS Sentinel’s XO shall concurrently hold a Department Head position.

CO and XO positions on the Sentinel will count fully towards any limits in place. The Sentinel will not accept new members to STF; it is a Second Character Only ship.

The Sentinel will be reviewed in 90 days by the President, Fleet Commander, and CO to determine if the Sentinel has been successful in its mission. The President shall have a final ruling in this matter. The Sentinel will be reviewed based on the following criteria:

-The Sentinel must maintain an active and healthy role-playing environment.

-The Sentinel must continue to function as a TOS-Era ship.

If the Sentinel is found to be successful in maintaining its environment, it will be considered permanent. It may be decommissioned at a later date should it be found to be irreparably in violation of any points of this charter.

-Daniel

Daniel this is wonderful! Thank you!

-Dave Eads

Slight tweak maybe ? “ The time period in which the Sentinel is based will be between 2250 and 2270. The exact game year will be decided by the ship’s CO in consultation with the GM.”

Calé

I have to ask, why do we need this and the USS Merrimack? I know Merrimack is supposed to be slightly further in the future, but it is meant to be established as a TOS Movie ERA ship. The Merrimack was meant to fill this void, yes as time has gone it has moved from 23rd to early 24th due to the nature of things but the ship class is still the Mariner class which we set up as a 23rd-century design. Would we want to change the mandate of the Merrimack seeing as it would no longer be filling the void it was once meant to as our TOS era ship?

~Steven Sigle

As someone who ADORES and LOVES the Merrimack I wanna chime in on this. The Merrimack is a MOVIE ERA aka TMP (or tos-movie whiehver you wanna call it) which covers star trek 1-6 time period of 2273ish-2293-ish. Since it is set post star trek 6 since taking over as GM with the CO and crew agreement we’ve more or less set the in game year when asked as 2301 but do our best to not reference it much just so we avoid the problem of on going time passage and so sometimes we ‘fudge’ the in game year to be a little earlier (but still post st6 movie time)

So rant aside I think the Merrimack is sufficiently different both in technology, setting of poltics etc, that it DOES NOT nor never DID cover a TOS era timeline period like is being proposed. The Mariner class fyi is basically stf’s version of the Excelsior fyi, a ship in canon which didnt appear till AFTER the tos timeline proposed. This is something I think sometimes get lost in translation when talks like this come up. Or least thats how I feel.

Robert Archer

Small edit fix to the year fixing a typo!

Robert Archer

I understand all that, and intent can be everything. I feel the ship was meant to fit that tos era though in sense that at the time when we made ships were based it off the most recent info we had. At the time VI was the most recent tos info we has. Whereas the club kept evolving cause we had new stuff.

This said we call the current stuff tng for most part, yet TNG and Voyager are about as far apart as tos and st:vi and the same could be said now as Nemesis and now Picard.

I guess the intent in my mind for Merrimack was for a ship in the “Tos” era even if it was around the movie time and our current ships are meant to be “modern” era.

The reason for this is two fold, TNG and DS9 add distinct era that feel unique but they get tied together in the same along with voyager, TNG movies and now Picard despite 30+ year gap between them all.

Are we wanting to look to fine tune eras like this in the future? Do we make a 2360 tng ship or an 2370 DS9 ship? I don’t say any of this really to derail, but to just kind of look at the intents we made our already established alt rpg ships and talk about the idea of what this means for future ships too.

I don’t hate the ideas of each tv/movie era getting its place in our club. But does that change what the intent of the current alt rpg we have. To my knowledge Merrimack was meant to fill this void, yes it wasn’t the exact era but as I stated I think that was just due to us always place ships at the end of the period.

With Chernov and Bonnie they too fill a setting for a period and that is what I thought these 3 ships intent was for, give to for tos, jj, enterprise. Am I wrong in this thinking?

It stated in the original post that I believe the three alt Era ships we currently have do not meet the criteria I am hoping to fill with this proposal. I understand what you’re asking, Steven, but I think it has already been answered. It’s OK to disagree with me on this, but clearly there’s a lot of interest in pursuing an alt ship along these lines at this point.

The Merrimack is specifically a film Era ship. They wear completely different uniforms and the stories they play have a completely different feel to me than the idea I’m proposing here. I understand your comparing tng, Ds9, and Voy; but I think there’s a substantial difference between classic TOS and the role filled by the Merrimack.

-Dave Eads

I understand that, and I don’t want this to seem like I hate the idea. Honestly, I don’t, I love TOS just as much as the next guy. I just thought the idea behind Merrimack along with Bonnie and Chernov was to fill the void for the era they are in. I understand TOS tv vs TOS movie have a different feel but as I said so do TNG and DS9 or Voyager and Picard for that matter.

We state current ships are “TNG” era, even though we are so far from that era. My point more comes down to where do our lines get drawn on era ships we create more than anything. We don’t really have TNG era ships anymore, nor do we have DS9 or even Voyager for that matter. We are in an era that is very far removed from all of them in many ways yet we are bunching them all together as a whole.

Going back to TOS tv in general though, how much does the timeframe we are looking at the effect the ship also with Discovery? The time frame puts us clearly into the era of Discovery as well, are we integrating Discovery elements into the ship as well or are we ignoring these elements? I think there are some points to look at that have an impact on the storytelling as well as the purpose of alt-RPG if they are moving away from broad to narrow eras.

That is the entirety of my point to bring up, less so against the idea but more on thinking of where do we draw the line of what an era is and what we fill them with. If everyone is okay with breaking down ships into more centralized era’s I am fine with that if this is where we want to take the club into.

~Steven Sigle

So just to chime in here again, speaking personally on certain disco tech stuff we normally didnt see in the 60s TOS. Things like the holocomm projectors for example. That did get explained in season 2 that the tech had a tenancy to ‘malfunction’ or other issues at times, and as evidenced in that season Pike especially hated it, going so far to have it gutted from the Enterprise because of its failure off screen to cause problems on his ship. Something which could provide evidence down the line that spreads through the fleet due to his influence in theory. So we could say that the tech IS there for the Sentinel but leave it up to the CO whether they USE such tech or use more traditional 60s style comms. This would fit well with on screen evidence that there’s those who prefer the tech vs those who dont like it.

Other things disco introduced i dont think will be a big deal, like the spore drive for example obviously that was only on the Disco and no others. Beyond which I cant think of much else besides the ‘modern styling’ vs ’60s styling’ being an issue.

Thoughts?

Robert Archer

I happen to agree with Rob here generally, and would go even farther.

I don’t want to spoil for those who haven’t seen it, but… the end of Season 2 of Discovery offers an explanation for why any of the apparent contradictions in canon introduced by Discovery aren’t actually contradictions. So… I think it’s actually safe to just ignore Discovery completely, because that’s essentially the approach the writers of Discovery have themselves taken. (Even though I find that approach ludicrous, but that’s a whole unrelated rant).

When you remove the fantastical elements of the spore drive, the significant differences between the two shows pretty much boil down to the one communication method Rob mentioned, uniform tailoring, and how flashy the computer screens are. I think think this club has sophisticated writers who can decide how appropriate it is for the view screen to be flashy depending on what it is we’re writing about.

Joe