When the Dominion’s Lost Fleet invaded the Deneb Sector, Starbase Bravo was too distant to send support for anything but the final Battle of Farpoint. When the Borg’s assimilation signal activated unwitting Borg drones at Earth and Avalon Fleet Yards, the crew of Starbase Bravo could only watch in helpless horror. Now that the rogue Changelings’ plot for Frontier Day has failed, I’ll paraphrase one of Deep Space 9’s taglines to say:

At the edge of the final frontier, the galaxy’s greatest mysteries are about to unfold aboard Starbase Bravo!

Mission briefings are coming to Starbase Bravo. After the success of Mission Briefings in our May 2023 Fleet Action, the Academy department has prepared four briefings that provide unique locations, challenges, antagonists, and objectives for players to write about over the course of each respective mission. As a collaborative writing sandbox, Mission Briefings are being offered to groups of writers who volunteer to take these prompts and elaborate them into mission stories.

The vision for Starbase Bravo has always been to tell slice-of-life collaborative stories about junior officers as they gradually prove themselves up the ranks. No member’s individual stories should ever be disastrous or impactful enough to interfere with the storytelling by the rest of the crew across the sizeable Starbase Bravo. However, a Guardian-class starbase is a like city in space. Crew members of Starbase Bravo can undertake plenty of exciting adventures without requiring the senior staff to go to red alert every time.

Another goal of the Starbase Bravo sandbox is to offer opportunities for members to formally and informally practice the tasks and skills required to GM an RPG. While these briefings can be written in an egalitarian and collaborative process, we’re also offering these briefings to provide aspiring GMs with the opportunity to practice.  Mission GMs may seek volunteers to join a selected Mission Briefing and take a leadership role in plotting out the individual stories and pace of that mission.

General Orders

• The four mission briefings for Starbase Bravo 2401 Q2 are available on the Bravo Fleet Wiki.  These missions include “Gomthree Has Something To Say”, “Conscientious Objection”, “Liberated Pursuit”, and “First Contact In Practice”!

• Leverage the sbb-looking-for-group channel on Discord to form groups of, perhaps, 2 to 6 players who want to volunteer for one of the four mission briefings.

• One member from each group can DM myself (Brendan) or Heidi on Discord to claim a mission briefing. Provide us with the names of all of the characters / players participating in the mission briefing. Briefings will be provided to groups of volunteers on a first-come first-serve basis.

• Make your best attempt to gather all of the members in your Mission Briefing before claiming a briefing to ensure we make them available to everyone who wants to participate. For similar reasons, while members are allowed to participate in more than one briefing or to join a mission briefing after it has begun, we ask that you consider taking a smaller role in any secondary briefings you join.

• As each mission briefing is claimed, the Academy department will open a dedicated mission in Starbase Bravo for members to post their stories within that brief.

• All of the players in the group will also be provided with additional key points that weren’t listed in the initial briefing. The key points are additional plot points and backstory provided as a suggestion from which to platform your creativity.

• Most of the briefings will not specify how the mission should be accomplished; rather, they provide suggestions, considerations and non-exhaustive options. You are free to evolve and change the suggested plot based on your own creative inspiration. Feel free to create your own mission poster for your briefing too!

• To empower our members to tell complete stories with a beginning, middle and end, all of these missions will close by October 14, 2023.

Whether you are writing your missions with an impromptu GM or are taking more of a collective approach, we would encourage you to develop a general plan of how many story posts you want to write to tell each mission’s story.  (Bravo Fleet Academy offers a Plot Development Program on this very topic!) Because we’re aiming for about two months to tell these missions, we’d recommend being realistic about how many posts can be jointly-written in that time. Although you are welcome and encouraged to write as many posts as you like, make sure to set attainable goals that will enable you to complete the stories by the end of each mission.

For crew members aboard Starbase Bravo who would prefer to continue telling their own stories, the Frontier Day mission will remain open for the next couple of weeks, allowing players to continue writing their reactions to the Frontier Day disasters in the days following April 12, 2401.

Take the CONN

As the Academy department embarks on adapting this new storytelling approach aboard Starbase Bravo, I’m very pleased to announce we will be doing so in strength.

Fleet Captain Romaes Anjin (Kai on Discord) has joined the Academy department as a Staff Assistant responsible for the Starbase Bravo sandbox. Not only does Kai serve Bravo Fleet as the Task Force 17 Commanding Officer, we will be leveraging his extensive experience as an RPG GM to assist in the day-to-day operation of Starbase Bravo. Kai will be supporting members in onboarding, promotions, match-making writing partners and answering any questions our members may have. While Kai is joining us after the development of these first four mission briefings, he will be very much involved in plotting out the future of Starbase Bravo’s missions in 2401 and beyond.

Please feel free to congratulate Kai on his new role in the sbb-chat channel on discord!

Remember: promotions on Starbase Bravo are linked to your joint-writing activity. The more SBB duty ribbons you earn, the higher tiers of positions are unlocked to you. Feel free to DM Kai or myself every time you’re eligible for a higher tier and would like to promote your character to another position!

We look forward to reading every exciting story post you write based on the new mission briefings!