Posted by Sharon Miller in Alt Ship Charter Proposal - USS Leviathan
Alt Ship Charter Proposal - USS Leviathan

In the interest of continuing to diversify our main fleet ships and offer something a little different for players, I would like to propose a new alternate role playing area:

• USS Leviathan - Anomaly Recovery Unit

The USS Leviathan is a modified Mjolnir-class starship, assigned to a classified Starfleet division called the Anomaly Recovery Unit (ARU).

ARU History

As Starfleet continues to explore and expand across the four quadrants, their vessels draw attention from all manner of new species and races - not all of them friendly. In previous decades, the resolution of hostile or dangerous encounters was considered the responsibility of the discovering vessel, with additional assistance only provided in extreme or catastrophic circumstances. This approach often resulted in significant loss of life from top class, flagship crews. Additional to this, there were times when a definitive resolution proved impossible to achieve and in such circumstances a dangerous anomaly was sometimes left minimally guarded (such as with proximity warning beacons).

The Anomaly Recovery Unit was therefore created as a highly-trained, highly-specialised task force whose sole purpose is to investigate, capture and contain those ‘anomalies’ considered dangerous or otherwise highly unpredictable. Containment is initially achieved using bespoke containment units onboard the ship and then ultimately by delivering any captured anomalies to the ARU Headquarters on Starbase 237.

Sims on the USS Leviathan

Sims on the USS Leviathan are based around crew interactions with these anomalies and will usually follow a discovery > investigate > capture > contain pattern. The Leviathan operates as a self-simming environment, offering all crewmembers the opportunity to create a unique anomaly and then direct a sim regarding the capture and containment of that anomaly.

For this purpose, instead of a standard GM role, the USS Leviathan offers a custom title of “Mission Director”, to be held by the player currently delivering the main sim.

Playing on the USS Leviathan

Other than the above, the USS Leviathan will utilise the common STF command structure, including all standard Starfleet departments, ranks and chain of command. The exception to this will be the GM role as already specified.

Therefore, Character Ranks on the Leviathan will count towards Member Rank in the same way that they do in standard RPG areas. Additionally, the CO and XO positions will count towards any club-wide limits currently in place.

The Leviathan will be a second character ship only and will not accept new players.
The posting rate for all crew will be that of a medium paced ship (3/5/7 days).

The Leviathan crew will include the following Command roles as they exist in standard RPG areas:

• Commanding Officer (CO)
• Executive Officer (XO)

The Leviathan crew will include the following Department Head roles as they exist in standard RPG areas:

• Chief of Security (CoS)
• Chief Medical Officer (CMO)
• Chief Science Officer (CSO)
• Chief Engineering Officer (CE)
• Counselor (CNS)

The Leviathan will also offer the following common swing positions as desired:

• Chief Intelligence Officer (CIO)

Custom Positions on the USS Leviathan

In addition to the standard roles mentioned above, the USS Leviathan will offer players the opportunity to roleplay a selection of custom ARU positions, either as a standalone swing role, or as an additional duty assignment along with their standard role.

Recovery Task Force

• RTF Commander - head of the Recovery Task Force, the frontline unit deployed in all capture and contain scenarios
• RTF Operative - member of the Recovery Task Force

ARU Research Division

• Novel Researcher - cleans cages, feeds anomalies and performs any ‘hands on’ experimental tasks deemed too dangerous or otherwise undesirable for senior researchers
• Senior Researcher - co-ordinates research effort in their chosen discipline (security, medical, science, engineering)
• Consultant Researcher - specialises in highly-focused research of one particular level of anomaly

Current status of the Leviathan

Currently the USS Leviathan is operating as an X Fleet vessel, where we have an active roster of 18 players and achieved a post count for our first month of 1113 posts.

Leviathan and ARU mythology

There is a wealth of additional detail on the ARU and the RTF available on the current USS Leviathan MOTD: https://www.star-fleet.com/core/xfleet/leviathan/

Further details can also be found on the following google document, which currently serves as a living document for ARU/RTF lore: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/134TwyEIkZNR3HNv2cguSap6oSx9PFGovgvnPaClJck4/edit#slide=id.g6514dc85620e01f_0

Thanks and credits

I would like to thank the entire Leviathan crew for their contributions towards ARU and RTF lore, in particular J Ridgley and Jay Luistro, who were instrumental in the creation of the ARU and RTF structures and finer details.

Argh. I hate to write this post, because I love what you all have come up with, I love the enthusiasm, I love the concept. But right now, I have a concern about approving this as an alt-RPG - primarily on the simming side of things.

So I see the Mission Director concept as an interesting way to get around the GM shortage problem that we are currently facing, which is often the first objection to a new ship. But… given what is causing the GM issue, combined with what I think has often been the problem in alt-RPGs that end up not being successful, I see a potentially large, untested problem here.

Often, alt-RPGs that end up being unsuccessful end up relying on the huge work by just one or two people. At the beginning (say the one to three months) you have a huge enthusiasm for the theme. But when that enthusiasm starts to lessen (and it always does) the question becomes whether that alt-RPG is too reliant on one or two people. If so, then often you get a burnout problem or an absence problem, and that’s it for the ship. In a different era alt-RPG the “reliance-problem” isn’t as pronounced because it’s still fairly easy to find groups of people as it’s just a matter of changing the year and some of the tech, etc - sometimes it’s not RP’d as well as other times, but it works. For themed ships, though, that becomes the problem. So this is what is in the back of my head when I look at any alt-RPG concept - how much will it end up requiring the goodwill of one or two specific members.

That then leads to one of the main factors of the GM shortage - lack of interest in members becoming GM (there are other factors as well, but that’s probably the main one). If there’s a lack of interest in people becoming GMs, why do we think there will be a huge interest in the “Mission Director” role? There probably will be an interest for the first few months while we are all enthusiastic about the idea. But after that?

This is different then are other non-GM RPG area, Oed V. Unlike Oed V, these missions are envisioned as actual sims, with ongoing typical GM-like interactions. And Oed V has had some huge struggles in the past to even make their self-simming work - it takes huge amounts of work by the Oed V Governors for the role-playing there to stay consistent. Oed V has done a great job, but there been a lot of blood, tears and sweat over it’s long history to make that work. The Leviathan’s simming concept seeks to replicate that, but with more structured sims relying on the goodwill interest of players to be temporary GMs essentially.

My concern is that this we’re essentially setting up this ship to become super-reliant on the work, effort and ongoing goodwill of just one or two members. Looking at the history of alt-RPGs in the club, I am really concerned that this is a recipie for disaster - which would suck! Leviathan is doing so well right no in its current format. I would hate to see a really good x-fleet ship become an alt-RPG but then run into the problem I’m describing here and get decommissioned. So I don’t think making Leviathan an alt-RPG is currently a good move for the ship, and in fact I feel it may hurt the ship in the long run.

At an absolute minimum, I would encourage us to see if the ship can be sustainable in the long term, rather than making decisions on the initial ride of enthusiasm most newly themed ships get.

Again, I love the concept. If I had time for a one or two more characters, Leviathan would be up there in a ship I would like to join. The work into this draft charter is superb. But I think we’re setting up the ship for failure but moving ahead in this way.

Daniel