U.S.S. Victory NCC-97571 :: Wiki - Nova for Dummies (Newbies Intro to Nova)

SUMMARY: A brief guide and information on the basics of how Nova works

MISSION NOTES

This is the area for the game managers - or whoever they designate or authorize - to leave notes and guidelines for the writers. To see Mission Notes, if they are in use, click the Show/Hide (upper right) of a New Mission Post window or when you are in a saved post.

Suggestion: Go into your account and make certain it is set to receive all e-mails. You'll be alerted when Saved JPs you are an author on are updated with tags or when a new post is released and posted. Comments added to posts, Private Messages, and News Items will be sent to your e-mail account too.

POSTING

Posting in Nova operates two ways. You can write and immediately post or you can save your post to release later. Joint Posts are most often written in saved mode and only released when completed.

Joint Posts: Nova allows for ease of Joint Posting by allowing the owner of the post to select which authors/characters are to be involved. Each time a saved Joint Post is updated, if the users' e-mail is set to on in their accounts, posts will be e-mailed. When the JP is complete, the post owner or game manager can release it.

Narratives/Solo Posts: When writing a character narrative post, you only need select the ONE character. Even though you've only selected the one author, when posted, Nova will e-mail it out to all users that have that feature turned on.

ADD A COMMENT

The Add a Comment feature is intended for users to leave comments regarding posts, news items, wiki articles, etc. Most games use it for leaving feedback to the authors.

General Information:

Link to Anodyne Tutorials. We are providing a link to all the how-to tutorials at the Anodyne site rather than attempting to duplicate them here. Not all of the Pages will be pertinent to mission management and posting, the majority that are, are well written and easy to understand.

MISSION ORGANIZATION

Mission Groups

Mission Groups are an optional feature. They are designed to further organize missions into logical groups such as by date, or types of missions, etc. If there are additional ships and crews, they can also be used for that by creating a Mission Group for each ship.

Missions

Missions can be equated to threads in forums if you are accustomed to that type of RPG writing. Within each Mission are Mission Posts (more on posts later).

Each Mission set up allows for a Mission Description, Summary, Notes, and Date Start and End. Most of these fields are self-explanatory. Description will be the overall details of the mission, Summary will be completed at the end of the mission and give an overall summary of the mission, Notes can be routinely updated with information the Players need before they post in the mission.

Mission Posts

Elements of a Mission Post

Mission Notes: When you open a new post (Write Mission Post), at the top right corner of the composition window (just next to the right side menu) you will see Show/Hide. Click on this to read any notes that team leaders or GMs have added to the mission. Things you should know before posting.

Authors: Select the author (or authors if the scene is a Joint Post). If the scene includes NPCs that you have access to, click and add them as well. It is my understanding that only GMs and the authors selected can edit posts. You can, however, add more characters as the scene grows, if needed - or delete them if they are not needed.

Mission: This field is pre-populated with the name of the mission you are writing the Mission Post for unless several missions are in process.

Title: This is the post title and should be a brief indicator of what the scene is about.

Location: Where the post actually occurs such as Voyager, Deck 6, Infirmary, etc.

Timeline: Please pay attention to other posts and set your time accordingly.

Content: This is the body or text of the post. Text formatting (i.e. bold, italics, etc.) is done via HTML.

Tags: This is not what you think it is. It is NOT tags to the next character for posting. It is search tags. If there are key words that will aid in searching for this post via the board's search feature, list them here. They should be single words separated by a comma. Example: Victory,Kennit,array

Save / Post: Hint...you may want to write a few lines and click Save just in case the board hiccups or write the bulk of your post in a SIMPLE document writer such as Notepad. Save is just what it says, it will save the post and list it on the Mission Posts page under the Saved Posts tab. You can edit it there, have the other characters edit, etc. and wait to post until it's complete, or you may click Post and go ahead and post it. Depending on your settings, Nova will e-mail Saved and Posted Mission Posts to everyone.

Comments: These are mainly for giving post feedback, but work well for OOC notes that need to stay with a particular post.

Mission Logs

These are individual journals or logs that can be written by each character.