Bravo Fleet
It has been almost two months since my last Fleet Command Report where I laid out the 2025 Roadmap for Bravo Fleet and our goals and ambitions for the organization this year. In that time, we’ve crept closer and closer to reaching some of those goals. With a few things on the horizon, this felt like a good time to release a new report talking about the near future.
2025 Fleet Action
Some of you may have noticed that a Discord event has been created for the next Fleet Action, titled “Nightfall”. The story is complete and the BFSS have been working very hard to put together all of the ancillary world building and lore content as well as the competitions. Right now we are anticipating that the 2025 Fleet Action will begin on First Contact Day, April 5th, and run for a period of 6 weeks — so same format as usual. I won’t give too much away for the story other than to say that this Fleet Action’s Campaign will be a direct continuation story of a previous Campaign. Part II is on its way!
Bravo Fleet Wiki
I just want to give a shoutout to the Bravo Fleet Wiki while I’m here. This is the encyclopedia of Bravo Fleet information and includes specifications, empires, ship articles, etc. both as official Bravo Fleet canon as well as Member canon. There is a great team led by our Bravo Fleet Science Officer, McGig, who helps keep everything tidy and in order and generates official Bravo Fleet content. I think the thing that most people are used to interacting with in that arena are the ship articles. However! The entire point of the BF Wiki is that it is user generated. That means we want members to have accounts there and add information from their stories there. Visit a planet in your story? Add it to the Wiki. Encounter a new species worth documenting? Add it to the Wiki.
Not sure if what you’re adding is Bravo Fleet canon or just Member canon? More likely than not, it is Member canon. Bravo Fleet canon articles are marked with a specific icon (the Bravo Fleet logo!) at the top of the article so you’re immediately aware. So what’s the difference? Bravo Fleet canon is content officially produced by the Intel Office. Member canon is everything else. In the past, I’ve compared Bravo Fleet these days to being a lot like a D&D campaign. The Intel Office sets the board, background, and big picture, but you, the individual member, work within that framework. We’ve found time and time again that this is what people want. When we originally set off on this journey 5+ years ago, we tried to give people as much freedom and sandbox as they wanted but the constant criticism was that people didn’t know where to even begin.
So we shifted to this more D&D style where we set the sandbox and everyone plays within those bounds and that seems to be more well received. It has been a lot more work from our end, but I think it has produced overall much better results and much happier members so we’re happy to continue down this path. What I’m getting at, though, is the difference between Bravo Fleet canon and Member canon: Bravo Fleet canon everyone has to follow and acknowledge (you can’t just pretend the Romulan supernova didn’t happen), whereas Member canon is there to enrich other peoples journeys or not. If someone adds the planet Thermia to the BF Wiki as Member canon, another member can choose to engage with that or not. But they aren’t forced, which is key. You can decide whether that enriches your story and is worth using, or not. Meanwhile, the originator of Thermia can continue marching along using it to their heart’s content. Also remember that Member canon cannot contradict Bravo Fleet canon, but Member canon can and will be contradictory with different members’ stories. Bravo Fleet canon is a way to set the game board, Member canon is a way to enrich each other’s experience if we so choose.
Also, if you see something on the Wiki that looks wrong? Fix it! You don’t have to tell us about it (unless its a locked article). The whole point of the Wiki is that it’s user generated. That means you can fix it yourself! Help us out!
This may be a rehashing of an old topic, but we really do want people to use the Wiki! If you don’t already have a Wiki account, please reach out to McGig and he can set you up with one.
Roleplaying Games
Two soapboxes in one report? Perish the thought. Yet, here we are!
Roleplaying games. Sims. SIMMs. All the same thing. Bravo Fleet was built on this activity model, and it almost died by it. When we moved away from solely this model in 2020 it was out of necessity and survival. It became clear to me as BFCO the first time around back in 2009 that the sim model of activity was dying a slow, gasping breath. When we moved away from the sim-only model and offered other activities, a lot of the sim-centric people flocked to the other offerings.
In the past few years, we have done a lot of lifting to try and keep the roleplaying games we offer alive. We even expanded to the Starbase Bravo sandbox RPG which people seem to love as well as the Pioneer, our first Star Trek Adventures TTRPG. But the truth of the matter is that it is a niche activity these days. A quick spin around The Wider Community™ will quickly show you that the bulk of them are dead on their feet with very few sims posting anything remotely active in the past 6-12 months; the active ones by far being the exception not the rule. Time after time in Bravo Fleet, we end up seeing two main culprits: first, the entire concept of wanting to do it is based on nostalgia and second, no one wants to actually run the games. A lot of effort goes into GMing a roleplaying game, getting the pieces together, keeping people on track, etc. It’s a lot of work even after we in Bravo Fleet have already removed a bunch of hurdles like setting up a website by yourself.
That being said, we do encourage this activity for people who want to do it. But the reason I’m getting on this soapbox is because charges have been levied against us that we’re actively discouraging it. That couldn’t be further from the truth. In truth, we’ve poured a lot of resources into trying to get roleplaying games going but we can’t force anyone to run one, and someone does have to be the GM at the end of the day. On top of that, those that are considering GMing have to cope with the fact that they’ll put out an ad for people to join and then those people who said they were interested won’t actually join (the nostalgia factor). But we encourage anyone who meets the minimum requirements to run a roleplaying game in Bravo Fleet and wants to: please do. We are here to support you. This format of roleplaying isn’t what it once was either in Bravo Fleet or across the internet as a whole, but we’re proud to still offer it to those who want to do it. If you just want to write collaboratively, we have Cross Command writing as well which isn’t as time intensive!