[snip]

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.

=== No you’re right the MACO part wasn’t what I was referring too, a better line would be Starfleet Marine, while not official it is semi-official having occurred in STF’s continuity. So that could work instead.

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.

=== Its fine Dave :)

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.

=== Ok so another thought occured to me shortly after my below reply. I went back to read through my HUGE pile of word doc notes since pretty much i first took over as GM on the Merrimack! My first sim was back in 2011 (wow that’s almost more than 11 years now! Holy crap I think that’s a record of sorts of longest non-stop serving gm one a single ship aint it? :P), anyhow the charter for the Merrimack says that it begins service around or after the events of st6 (2293) so the Merrimack in character lore and sims ran from 2293 till 2304 by the time i took over, meaning as you said we’re in 2315 by now

So going off memory alpha for the trek canon timeline here’s what happened of importance since 2293:

2293
The events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A) is decommissioned shortly afterwards.
The opening events of Star Trek Generations. The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-B) is launched under the command of John Harriman. While responding to a distress call, the Enterprise is struck by a discharge from the Nexus which breaches the hull and James T. Kirk is presumed killed in the blast.

24th century

2305
Jean-Luc Picard is born in LaBarre, France on Earth.

2311
The Tomed Incident - (while there is no hard/fast details of what this incident did/happened it is stated that its the last contact the federation had with the romulan star empire in any form until their return in 2364 by the ent-d)

2319
Gary Seven is born.

== So in short by canon not much has happened of importance beyond the Tomed incident, depending on your source of reference on memory alpha the cardassians took over bajor somewhere around the 2310s BUT contact by the federation didn’t happen until later 2330s-50s again this being some kind of on/off border war/skirmishes.

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

• Dave

=== Ok so here’s the thing I agree with you the Merrimack charter was probably not designed with the idea of longevity in mind, the same issue is faced by the Bonnie, in some ways even more so! Their charter literally says if they go beyond the year of 2157ish (past that is the earth-romulan war and soon after the founding of the federation) once they reach that they are no longer an enterprise era so have to be decommed. The result is that basically every captain thta changes on the bonnie ‘reboots’ the ship back to 2151ish (more or less season 1 of enterprise) and then skips up to that point, before a rinse/repeat. The solution to this has been unofficially saying to keep the exact year date vague but still keep it somewhere each sim between 2151-2157ish, in this case having been GM there for a while the idea that plays out is ooc we are seeing ‘snippets’ of history play out as a third party of the events we write of the characters if that makes sense. Yes for the bonnie there should probably be a charter change, but no ones come up with a workable solution that keeps it in the years of the enterprise era and not something far further that removes it from that in anyway shape or form past 2160 and still keep an alt-rpg era for those interested in the Enterprise era.

=== No here’s the thing on the Merrimack, we face a similar issue, while the charter isnt so restrictive as the bonnie’s is it is a similar scope. How do we define what is the TOS Movie Era (TMP Era whatever you want to call it) and passing from that ‘era’ to something else? TNG era did not start until 2360ish with the season 1 of TNG, so unofficially between 2290ish (end of st6) and 2360s (TNG S1) is referred to unofficially as the ‘lost era’. Because there is so little in canon events known on screen. Yes there are some events which are hinted at in canon lore, the exact point of say the federation and cardassians’ meeting is vague some point to 2310 others in 2330-2350ish being the point of first contact followed by a on/off border skirmish like the klingons and federation had. There’s also obvious tensions rising sometime between 2310 up till the loss of the Enterprise-C to the romulans between the federation and klingons, which with the Ent-C’s sacrifice healed that rift. In short my point is there’s a lot undefined.

=== Now compounding this is related to the first point similar to the bonnie, at what point do we say ‘this’ is TOS/TMP movie era and ‘this’ is TNG? arguably there is literally 70 some years of where one ends and another begins. So lets look at it from another definition of things, if the TOS/TMP movie era is defined on screen as events from ST 1 to ST 6 this covers according to memory alpha for all those six movie’s events from 2273 (ST1) to 2293 (ST6) including the opening moments of Star Trek Generations (With the Ent-B). So if by this wording the Merrimack covers those eras and it goes beyond that (which is long since has no matter if we say its 2302 as we discussed a while ago or 2315 or whatever) then the merrimack is no longer a tos/tmp movie era ship! Meaning by definition the Merrimack is in violation of its charter meaning in theory it should be decommissioned (hell no i don’t want that!), so this circles us back to this issue.

=== So now if we accept the definition of the above, what does this mean and how to fix it? In short the charter should be updated would be the easiest and best fix for the Merrimack. That being either 1) Like the Bonnie it would be restricted to events between the timeline of 2273-2293 (Ignoring all the problems that would throw into the mix of past sims since I at least took over!), or 2) We could rename the Merrimack’s era as being of the ‘lost era’ which is generally accepted in lore as being from 2293 to 2364 (S1 of TNG) again roughly going by the canon events of lore.

=== I could also see a third idea 3) We accept that all events on the merrimack’s sims have happened in the scope of the years they happened (meaning for example my destiny’s paradox sim series happened to the merrimack from 2298ish till 2301), plus the events since which I implied happened in 2301-2302 up till now. This means we focus on advancing the story as needed for the pacing of our stories. Given the Merrimack’s sims often take a half a year or more each but only cover say a few days or week or so of actual sim time, this seems silly to say 1:1 year advancement happens all the time. Instead I would say we run sims and advance time as it makes sense into our in character writing lore. Meaning the age of Glens son is whatever would be appropriate for 2302 now, same with Cross’s kid. This third option may need a charter update just to imply that the time of events occur from X year and beyond, and that the definition of what the incharacter sim year is defined per the crew/CO/GM per their writing advancement. Does this make sense?

=== For reference further the Destiny Paradox sim series i ran on the merrimack from start to finish ran from 2011 until 2012, with final loose end ties ups happening recently in the sim Dust & Echoes in 2020. By my implied notes I expected the events of the Paradox to be in late 2298-late 2299 and with your final return in 2300, after that was when we shifted to using the current date being 2301 and now 2302. This horribly complicates things, because when I took over the merrimack as GM in 2011 I had inquired what our date was in lore, I was told according to my notes from David and Amanda Noon it was somewhere around 2297/8 hence my references since. But since it seems now Amanda and the crew of the time were in fact in 2304 ooc by the charter but were playing it till then as 2297/8 by Noon, this throws more problems into the mix. So even more so I feel like we need to sort of ‘retcon/adjust’ our in character development some to fix all this! My solution is that we assume that all events regardless of what the charter says from when Noon GMed and since I took over were from 2297/8 until now in 2302, adjust ages, of npcs etc to suite. Because otherwise all the events even Noon did and I did would have to be shifted forward or ignored (i dont want that!) Since Noon’s events would have been happening already past 2300 from what she told me but it obviously wasn’t.

=== Also as a side note? I think I’ve mentioned this to some before but back in 2006 when I first found STF and joined up do you know what it was I wanted to do from the get go? Join the Merrimack! To be told I couldn’t back then by the pdept (and quite rudely at that i might add!) because the ship was/is a ‘second character only’ ship almost made me never join STF! But I was so enthralled by the idea of playing in the ‘movie/lost era’ that this ship entails I kept the course. And I literally dropped my joining ship I got assigned too (the montgomery), to get a spot on the merrimack (where I was an XO! and learned so much from you dave!).

Thoughts?

GM CockRoach