Posted by Gamemaster CockRoach (Gamemaster) in Main Sim - Habitat - Away Team Tour

[snip]

Lance looked at the doctor “ just give me some basic painkillers I’m gonna need to stay alert though I’ll just lure the input on my eye for the time being. That will help with the light” he said Lance was a MACO before joining star fleet he was as tough as nails.

(OOC: Sorry, no MACOs in this period. The Military Assault Command Operations was a United Earth organization that existed as a part of the United Earth Military during the 2150s, prior to the founding of the Federation. The MACOs were not associated with Starfleet. Lance is 30-years-old. As per it’s Charter the Merrimack is a “23rd century ship, with all the anthropological and technological idiosyncrasies of the era” and is set “293 years from today” i.e. 2315. To have been a MACO as an adult then Lance would need to be at least 170 years old!) - Dave

OOC: sorry for that but Lance is a tough as nails person. He can take a punch and give it back twice as hard.

OOC: So Dave just to clarify since i know we had this discussion a few years back about the 1:1 timeline advancement per the charter, if you recall we settled on the idea of it being vagueish, and left up to us when to advance, previously we were in 2301 going into 2302. Did you wish to alter this original idea?

GM CockRoach

So, let’s take this OOC or we can discuss further elsewhere.

Firstly, it doesn’t alter what I just said. Having someone who was once a MACO would still mean they’d need to be 150-years-old. I really want to keep anachronisms out of this ship. We simply need to strike out the MACO word and there is no problem.

Secondly, I’m dealing with some bad news, so sorry for possibly being brusk about this, and yes, sorry, I forgot completely about the earlier discussion we had.

Okay, thirdly and specifically about this actual date problem –

The Charter actually says that we are set “293 years from today” so wouldn’t that need an Edict or something to change? When we discussed this before, I don’t think I had read that properly because I didn’t realise the date was set so rigidly.

Yes, I think that we possibly do need some flexibility on dates. If it is really 2315 then we are getting into territory covered in the set up of TNG stories. I do kind of like the idea of that. It would be interesting to meet the Cardasians and Bajorans (maybe for the first time) but it would alter the dynamics of the ship, and we can hardly call ourselves a “TOS-Movie Era ship” any longer if we do that. The Merrimack Charter obviously never considered that the ship would be around so long.

My only problem with going more slowly and saying that it is still 2302 would be a possible staleness in character development and the fact that there is far too much back-story to have happened in only 7 years. As an example, Captain Glen has a son by Andromeda du Astra who would be a teenager by now. Is he to stay as a young child for ever? I think the Miriam Cross character would have huge issues with that too.

Of course, you could easily explain away the difference in years by having had us return from our time travelling at an earlier time (before we set out) except that you didn’t do that, and also that would then have involved two Merrimack’s in the same time period (which would be a little hard to keep secret).

Of course, as GM you could “Make it So” somehow, but if we progress through years at the same speed as every other ship, even if it is now still 2302 then the problem will occur once again in the future. It is what happens when you age. So, your solution is only really a stop-gap.

So, my answer is that I really don’t know. What do others think?

• Dave