"The Dos":

    To set out some simple rules of what to do in simming to get your character active in the plot and/or sub-plots is easy, to use the rules is not so easy.

    The simple rules:
        - Write in such a way that you portray a real person, with emotions, habits, weaknesses, a past,
            and one who may make mistakes and is just trying to live by their beliefs to the best of their ability.
        - Have fun writing your logs.
        - Write so that others have fun reading your logs.
        - Keep true to your biography, but don't be constrained by it.

    Sounds pretty easy, huh?  Well it is, and it isn't.  Your writing should be about and consistent with a real person, one that just happens to live in the universe of your sim.

    IC ideas are always a good way to get involved in the main plot, suggestions for improvements or secondary approaches directed towards your superior get you visibility which may in turn generate an assignment for you to do something that could even become critical to the plot.  Character interaction and joint posts can also be a great way to get involved too.

    If you feel your character is always being left out of the main plot, talk to your GM about it, they can suggest ways to get more involved or may even be able to focus the next plot on you or your department.

    Please realize, despite the best effort of your GM, s/he may not be able to create a plot which will actively include every member of the sim (try to think of a plot that will intimately involve 30 different people, if you can, let your GM know what it is).  In a situation in which you are not highly involved in the sim, create a sub-plot, recurring ones are best.  Some suggested sub-plots include: romance, ask a fellow crew member to share a Holodeck program with you; rivalry, use the Holodeck or challenge someone to a game of darts in the lounge; party, (always good to get people to interact) throw a surprise birthday party for another character.  There are numerous other types of sub-plots, some that may require approval from the GM are: recurring villain NPC, recurring technical/mechanical problem, or maybe even an outbreak of a flu.

    The best rule to keep in mind is, do you leave things for others to do?  If those you play with can't have fun, you soon won't have anyone to play with.
 

Examples - "The Dos":
(all examples are either reprinted with permission or are fictional)

Example #1:
    Say you are on an away mission but you are just one of the little guys (a junior science officer), you can make an open ended post that you find a plant that should not be native to this planet, and is only known to exist five sectors away.  This gives your GM the opportunity to feed your idea into the main plot which involves a medical quarantine of part of the planet or opens up a possible sub-plot for other simmers to exploit.

Example #2:
    You're patrolling near the DMZ for Maquis raiders. Nothing much is happening, and as the helmsman you're dying for some action.

    The BEST course of action would be to talk to the people most likely to be involved if a Maquis ship attacked a convoy or such - the senior officer on the bridge and the tactical officer - as well as the GM. Work out a co-log between the people.

    You might end up having a log in which the tactical officer receives a distress call and that the CO orders helm to head to the ship in distress at maximum warp, and the "blessing" of the GM to post the log. You might be told no, but again, by doing this, you don't have the GM angry at you along with the tactical and senior-most officer on the bridge.
 

    Say your current mission is to protect a sector from some raiding pirates and you're the assistant flight control officer.  Do not make a post that while on duty you detect a large deposit of metal on a remote moon.  You steer the ship over to see what it is and find the pirates secret base.  Your post then goes on to have the ops officer hail the pirates and tell them to surrender.  They do.

    In AES, this is known as the Superhero Syndrome. Back in Biography 101 and 102, we warned that characters shouldn't be made "gods", knowing everything and doing anything perfectly, or even graduating within the top 10% of the class.

    The same idea applies here - while TV shows mostly do this sort of thing due to time constrains, e-mail has all the time in the world. Analyze the above actions and you can see a lot of plot problems - for one, the helm doesn't do scanning for metals, science, tactical, or operations does. Second, if you had the captain order you to pilot to the base, and if you had the Ops officer hail them, you've broken the cardinal rules of e-mail simming, which are NEVER undermine the CO or overuse another person's character without his/her permission. Finally, pirates would not surrender that easily.

    It's definitely a fine line that is tread when it comes to plot lines. When in doubt, stick to what you know and what you can do at your post or in your current situation. If you have a question about what the sensors might be reading, or even if you'd like to suggest a plot change, contact the GM or the AGM.

    In this area, one can certainly not be exhaustive in listing what is not proper to do in your logs.  It's always a good thing to keep in mind the Golden Rule, if you would not want another character to make the post you're about to make, then you shouldn't make it.   Remember, the GM may do some of these things from time to time, but s/he is doing it for good reason (discipline, plot development,...) and that does not mean that you should reciprocate.

    Some of the simple and hopefully more obvious things you should not do include: killing or seriously harming a character without that player character's prior permission, altering the main plot, solving the main plot, writing a log that locks other players into a set course of action without their or the GM's permission, taking an action which adversely affects the plot, or writing a log that makes your player look like a super hero. Don't spend excessive amounts of time writing about the universe your character lives in.  And the object is not to out do the other simmers with what ideas you can create, i.e. in a Star Trek sim; a trans warp teleporter, my character can teleport any where in the galaxy!  That wouldn't be very fun would it?   What would be the purpose of spaceships?  Do you think their could still be the political rivalries between the alliances?

    Also, remember what you do has repercussions for the rest of the crew and ship. Taking the warp core offline for a level 1 diagnostic in the middle of a battle is not a very good idea, nor is running a security drill in the middle of a party being held onboard.

    Probably the single biggest fault of simmers is related to the super hero syndrome.  This is when a simmer has their character do something awesome and beyond good etiquette.  This is regardless of whether or not it is feasible or within the characters biography.  Examples of the more subtle forms of this are better than a description.  But here are some of the more obvious cases: a character single handedly disables 10 Jem'Hadar with only a toothpick; you prevent a star from going supernova using the Bussard Ramscoops in 20 minutes; or you solve the plot in a single post (this is a BIG problems that the GMs of AES HATE in particular!).

    Remember, don't do everything, you are simming to interact with others, not show what god-like powers you can think of for your character.
 

Examples - "The Don'ts":
(all examples are either reprinted with permission or are fictional)

    Say you are on an away mission but you are just one of the little guys (a junior science officer), you can make a post that you find a plant that should not be native to this planet, and is only known to exist five sectors away.  Then you go on to state that this plant is obviously either the cure or cause of the disease that has the planet quarantined.

    For starters, the planet could be quarantined for other reasons - deadly indigenous flora or fauna, aliens shrouded in a VERY secluded spot, etc. Second, maybe the GM wanted this plant to strike out and kill an NPC on the team, or for it to be a life form. You've created a massive complication in this matter for the GM to try to handle.

    WHEN IN DOUBT, ask the GM. Tell him/her what you were thinking about sending. You might just happen to have a better idea than what they had and might let you go ahead and post, or they might be able to sit down and explain why that post wouldn't fit in. Either way, it's a lot better than posting it and then having the GM upset at you.