RP Ideas for Departments

[Malcolm Adeyemi]

Sometimes it can be monumentally hard for certain departments to remain engaged in a mission. I myself started in Medical back in the day. The department was like a ghost town. My DH at the time was online sporadically, and the ship itself had activity issues.

So it fell to me to remain active by myself. I can't count how many NPCs and random stuff I did to try to stay sane.

Medical is one, but in my mind it's also hard to keep the Flight and Science department active, too. Sometimes there just isn't enough to do for a mission, and you find yourself wondering if you even have anything to post about.

Some of my ideas for these departments are as follows:

Flight: Maintenance on shuttles, in-mission holodeck time for training and flight simulation, training for search and rescue operations.

Medical: NPC/APC crew physicals, medical research, NPC/APC crew illnesses or injuries.

Does anyone else have any ideas? What do you do when there is some downtime in the mission for your department?

[Dylan Torngate]

Flight: Fly/Test shuttles, create a navigational barrier that requires a few course corrections, maneuver through an asteroid field or a meteor shower, Play "air traffic control" If we're nearby a large civilian population, and have some off duty fun doing literally anything you want. (Within reason)

Medical: Run standard medical checkups, run medical experiments, surgeries, morgue duties, develop new medicines, and have some off duty fun doing literally anything you want. (Within reason)

Science: Run some experiments, catalog the local planets, survey a star, run geological tests on a planet below, badger the Captain into letting you steal a flight officer and go down to the planet below for some science, R&D some new stuff, run an experiment on a shuttle or on the ship with Engineering, and have some off duty fun doing literally anything you want. (Within reason)

Operations: Run some training exercises, coordinate some drills, run tests on the crew, man the ops console (sensor scans, comms, ect, et al), and have some off duty fun doing literally anything you want. (Within reason)

Engineering: Break some stuff, fix some stuff, design a new weapon/tool, work on the computers, work on the warp field, almost blow up the warp field (One time a year maximum, your captain will not like a warp core breach every mission.), work on life support, work on literally any piece of technology on the ship, and have some off duty fun doing literally anything you want. (Within reason)

Command: Command, organize, piss off underlings, piss off superiors, promotions, demotions, oversee everything, break regulations (It's what you do), keep those under your command alive, and have some off duty fun doing literally anything you want. (Within reason)

Security/Tactical:Defend the ship, test out weapons, improve weapons, clean weapons, investigate disturbances, throw crew in the brig if they deserve it, security patrols/drills, escort visitors around, investigations, design and test battle scenarios, regular police work, and have some off duty fun doing literally anything you want. (Within reason)

[Kirok]

Luke,

Good question.

I have a workable solution for medical.  I would suggest that a medical person take up 'residence' on the Bridge.  S/he could run the environment systems, be on standby for the ever popular Away Mission, and monitor vitals and what not of the crew (the Captain specifically given that they don't like to do their annual check ups ;-).

In addition, if you run the character as a field medic then s/he will always be where the action is.  The character can carry a med kit where ever they go.  In stead of sitting in Sickbay waiting for someone to walk through the door.

Flight is more difficult.  They are tethered to the helm seat/area.  So, having a temperamental station and engaging in lots of character development might help.  But those are the only ideas I have at the moment.

Respectfully,

Kirok

[Ruth Sigurdsdottir]

I only really 'know' 3 departments but I'll give my feedback on these.  I've often found myself on the 'sitting twiddling thumbs' stage in some cases!

Science

As Dylan said

Science: Run some experiments, catalog the local planets, survey a star, run geological tests on a planet below, badger the Captain into letting you steal a flight officer and go down to the planet below for some science, R&D some new stuff, run an experiment on a shuttle or on the ship with Engineering, and have some off duty fun doing literally anything you want. (Within reason)

(Personally I love the '...badger the Captain into letting you steal a flight officer and go down to the planet...'  Might have to use this one as Ruth was first in flight!! Could do it all on her own!)

To this all I can add is 'have a pet project you're working on'... Hrafn has the 'Tome of Doom' aka 'The Loom of Language - Xenolinguistic Edition'  it's a take on Frederick Bodmer's 'Loom of Language' which is an actual book, and since Hrafn is a Xenolinguist/Stellar Cartographer/Anthropologist it seems an interesting thing for her to work on, if she's not busy elsewhere... she works on that.  For my friend Raynor Hughes, he could go and talk to his plants!

Flight

Running through practice evasive flying patterns, recalibrating the navigation systems, mentally working out time in real time to wherever (if the helm is  from a particular planet or has family on a base could let mind wander a little to '....if we maintained Warp 7.8 I could be back with/on inside 14 hours...' ) can string it out a little getting the calculations 'wrong' initially.  Checking over shuttles and other small craft, maybe in conjunction with Engineering as in something has been mended and Engineering need a pilot to 'test fly' the e.g. shuttle to make sure that the repair is working.

Security and Tactical

The only thing I can add to this is run weapons drills or practice on a holodeck (but in mission... I mean write that your char has checked out a holodeck for some weapons practice), or do some fitness programme (if you're running after sneaky Ferengi you need to be able to keep up with them!) or do some Mok'bara (or other martial arts), go on the firing range to get a better shooting average (or NPC a sort of ongoing competition between your char and a colleague).

You could also offer to run weapon training classes in basic phaser training to anyone on the ship.

I forgot that I also did Medical with 2 of my old chars so...

Medical

My fall back was always to NPC medicals.  Find the peculiarities of various species (this helps when you are researching them anyhow, because the knowledge you gain, if you pick up something that is special to one species then when you come across it in mission proper then it'll hopefully set off a lightbulb of '...hang on, I've come across this before...' and you can then say "...I had a patient once..." and it brings you straight into the main foray of the action again.  Examples of this were Caitians who I particularly liked to bring up all the common ailments of cats - fleas, worms, mange, needing ears cleaned out before they got ear mites.  This I can do quite well having had cats for 39 of my 43 (almost!) years of life!! (and going to the vets 5x in that time.  3x for spay/neuter when I'd stopped living on the farm where it didn't matter how many cats we had, 1x to put down a cat that had been run over by farm machinery...short of a good feline necromancer there was no coming back for Fourtoes.  And once after performing and emergency episiotomy (where you cut the opening to the birth canal surgically to give the female more room to give birth, this particular kitten decided it wasn't coming out head or breach but SPINE first!!) on a cat, I wanted her checked out after!  all things that can be used as reference!)

You can also ask anyone on the ship/base if they fancy having an ongoing condition or NPC a char with an ongoing condition.  I've deliberately crocked up Hrafn's knee so that she has to have physiotherapy.  Dr Kintiss can draw on this and/or if Hrafn is at a loose end she can go down.  The injury is such that it won't hamper duties, but I might have a slight limp when I'm tired or have been standing a while etc and it might flare up in future.

If you're a doctor you can run First Aid classes for the crew, either NPC'd or if someone wants to learn how to correctly administer hypo's or tie bandages, or what exactly does that light/bleep mean on a tricorder??

ALL PLAYERS

Just something that has occurred naturally for Hrafn and sort of inadvertantly for Ruth... cross-training.  With Ruth she started in Flight, went into Sec/Tac and ended up where she likes best in Science. She also did some duty hours IC once on the Britannia and learned how to recalibrate consoles down in Engineering. In the case of Hrafn she is best friends with doctors and engineers so she's picked up things over the years, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a character asking the relevant DH if s/he can or recommend one of their staff to do so, cross train in certain elements.  Doesn't mean you are trying to take the job from someone, just if you find yourself in a sticky situation on an away team, or the Bridge blown to bits in an explosion and half the crew stunned/injured/not able to function... then it wouldn't be so much of a stretch of the imagination to say '...well it worked when I did it down in Engineering...' for say Hrafn to get down under a console and start ripping out and swapping isolinear chips to get the console to perform differently.  Or have someone grab a medkit and start patching up people in the midst of a battle.

This also in the case of DHs gets you knowing what your APC crewmembers are capable of not just in the case of what they should be able to do in terms of their rank and departmental role, but things that they've learnt elsewhere.

Crewmembers can ask their DHs for training (I don't mean the Academy courses here) IC like 'How exactly can this [bit of equipment, plant, weapon, program] work better...

and remember always... there is generally someone around that will RP with you, be that same department or cross department.

Finally, I will mention something that I tended to forget a lot until I got back into RPing full time.

MOVEMENT

Don't forget that unless you are actively involved in a specific task, in a specific place (in which case you probably wouldn't be fishing around for ideas to RP/make a post!) then you aren't superglued to the spot.  If you're on the Bridge you can hand over to a crewmember or ask someone to come up to the Bridge to relieve you while you go and look at something in the labs, check a prisoner in the Brig, check up on a patient in the sickbay.  Remember that if you're on duty it doesn't look good going back to your quarters - unless like Hrafn in the current Phoenix mission she went to get a particular item pertaining to the mission and was in and out once she'd located it... I mean it wouldn't be good to go down there hop on the bed and start reading a romance novel on a PADD!!

If you are not on duty then you have the choice of visiting other off duty crewmembers, grabbing some chow in the Mess, getting some medical issues attended to, asking for cross-training as specified above, doing personal study, using a holodeck for some R&R/Training/Meditation etc.

RANDOM IDEAS

Use Memory Alpha to research something pertaining to your department.  Not only do you get knowledgable in this subject but then use it in a post, even if it's turning to an NPC at the console next to you and saying "Did you know...."  some captains love technobabble!

Does your character have a personality trait?? If not how about inventing one?!  And use that as a fall back - character development in all ways isn't a bad thing.  E.g. with Hrafn I've got Arch and Gabe's children liking me, so that when we have completed 'Revenge is Sweet Child of Mine' I will be bringing Ruthie onto the ship with me... I'm laying the groundwork already.

Children and pets are also another way to 'create a post'.  They are 'recurring NPCs' that you can bring up.  Hrafn has the Tekin twins (who admittedly only say Daaaaaaaaaaa! and TanKat along with other mutterings, at the moment but they are only 8 months old!), Evie the nanny and will have Ruthie.  But even with the twins if on duty I can can do a 'pondering what the twins are up to' post, if offduty can do a 'doting Mummy' post.

There, just a ...cough... a few ideas that have helped me out!