The Minerva is a PBEM (Play By E-Mail) sim. You contribute to the action and story by posting. This is coordinated through the services of Topica who provides the mailing list for us. Don’t know how to post? Read on.

There are two main styles of posting utilized by most Play By Email groups. The USS Minerva uses the “Novel” or “Expanded Action” style as opposed to the “Script” style. This means that the posts for the Minerva read more like a novel, where actions and thoughts are narrated, than like a shooting script, where actions are simply notated and thoughts are generally left out.

The subject of your post is important because not every message is a post. If you're just sending a message, which is certainly fine, put whatever subject you normally would in that field to let everyone know what it's about. If you're sending a post (which is a part of the story, as opposed to just a message) put the subject as "Post: ## - Your Name". We start with "Post #1," of course and add 1 to the number of the previous post each time. That way it makes it very easy to follow the action and tell what sequence the events happen in. Including your character's name in the subject lets everyone know immediately who it is from and makes finding past posts a lot easier.

Start your post with an “OFF” section. This is where you can type stuff that is not part of the story. For instance:

It isn’t raining here today. Since I’m a raindrop inspector I have nothing to do. So I think I’ll go ahead and post. Oh, and I think Cathero’s last post was really awesome!

After the OFF section comes (very appropriately) the “ON” section. You may have guessed that this is where you type your contribution to the story. We use the Expanded Action style which basically is written like a book. Try to be grammatically correct but don’t let the rules of English intimidate you. Here’s an example:

Note: All posts should be written in the 3rd person.

Captain Cathero was lounging back in the relatively comfortable chair he had in his ready room. His feet were propped up on his desk and his hands were gently interwoven behind his head. He had done absolutely nothing productive so far today. Then the door chirped, indicating someone wanted to speak with him. Cathero quickly sat up in his chair and put his feet on the floor, “Come,” he instructed.

Commander Syrna entered holding a padd in her hand. “Ready for our daily meeting?”

“Yes, come right in, Commander.”

The executive officer placed several padds on the Captain’s desk, “Here are the daily reports and the maintenance specifications.”

“Ah, good work, commander,” Cathero responded.

Whenever a new person speaks or becomes the focus of attention begin a new paragraph. This makes it much easier to follow the action in the story.

Also, to make it easier to follow thoughts put them inside 'single quotation marks' instead of “double quotation marks.” But otherwise treat them the same as spoken dialog.

To let everyone know where your post is taking place you can start out by putting the location inside [brackets]. This lets us know right at the start where the action is. (If you ever want something to occur in an unknown or unspecified location just put [Unknown...] etc.) This is completely optional, and some people (myself included) prefer to state a location in the actual post text somewhere

This is picking up right were we left off, in Cathero’s ready room.

ON:

[Potomac, Cathero's ready room...]

Cathero looked down at the reports, (Great, more work,) he thought to himself. He then noticed some dirt had fallen off his boots onto his desk while his feet were propped up. He tried to brush it off with a sweeping gesture of his arm. “So, how is engineering coming along with those repairs to the warp manifolds?”

“They inform me that the corrections should be completed by 1400 hours tomorrow, sir,” Syrna reported. But she knew that the estimations of engineers were always off by at least two hours.

“Ah, excellent.” There was still dust remaining on his desk so Cathero faked a sneeze to try and blow it off. “Do you think – ACHOO!”

We also have a special way of indicating conversation over the communicator. Just like thoughts are in 'single quotation marks' to make them immediately distinguishable communicator conversation is put in angle brackets (the greater than/less than signs) to indicate that the speaker is not present. They don't show up in HTML so I'll just use { and } to demonstrate.

The sneeze failed to remove the last of the dust so Cathero tried to casually move the padds on top of the incriminating dirt.

"Uh, are you alright, sir?" asked Syrna.

"Hmm?" Cathero glanced up. "Oh, oh yeah. Fine. I'm just fine. Uh, we'd better get ready to -" he was cut off by a message from the bridge.

{Bridge to Captain Cathero,} it was Leon's voice.

"Cathero here, go ahead Leon."

{Sir, we're receiving a message from Star Base 12, priority three.} Leon sounds curious as to the contents of the unexpected transmission. {Should we route it to your ready room?}

"No, I'll be there in a moment." He stands and says to Syrna, "Lets go find out what the brass wants." (I hope she didn't notice the dirt. I don't want my XO to think that I, a captain, was being lazy when I ought to be hard at work!)

Syrna lets the captain leave first and then turns to go. She pauses for a moment though and taps her comm badge, "Syrna to janitorial staff."

{Custodians here, sir.}

"The captian was putting his feet on his desk again. Make sure you send someone up here to wipe his desk off."

{Aye, sir.}

At the end of your post you need to sign it to let everyone know exactly who sent it (this is a lot easier than memorizing e-mail addresses). You sign your post like this:

Your Rank (abbreviated). Character Name
Character Position (Tactical Officer, Chief Engineer etc...)
USS Minerva, NCC-36181

ON:

[Minerva, bridge...]

Captain Cathero stepped onto the bridge, "Report."

Leon gets up out of the captain's chair and delivers the news, "He's been on hold for two minutes. Didn't say what he wanted."

"Hopefully its not to announce another 'Take your tribble to work day,'" Syrna said as she joined the captain on the bridge.

Cathero shuddered at the thought of the last botched attempt to make tribbles more mainstream in the Fleet. "Open the channel."

Leon complied, "Aye, sir."

Instead of the expected Federation beaurocrat Rear-Admiral Seldon appeared on screen.

"Bob! This is a pleasant surprise. To what do we owe the honor, Admiral?" Cathero was relieved that it was Seldon and not some paper pusher who would, without doubt, tell him how to run his ship.

{Well, Simon, you know I can't let my captains have too much freedom. If I let you all have free reign you could claim I had nothing to do with your success,} Seldon joked. {But I won't get in your way too much today.}

"Good," Cathero joked back. "I thought you'd be pleased with our latest status reports and mission summaries. We're always on the front line of adventure."

Seldon nodded his acknowledgement. {I have a new crewman for you to take on. They just joined the Fleet today. Return to Starbase 12 to pick them up so they can join your noble crew as you go galaxy hopping.}

"Why, this is hardly the bad news we expected, sir," said Cathero. "In fact, I am always happy to welcome a new person to the Minerva!"

OFF:

Well, its starting to rain here. I've got to inspect my daily quota of rain drops. I hope you liked the post!

Lt. Frank Force
Science Officer
USS Minerva, NCC-36181