New Pine Scent ! ! !

State of the RPG Address
by President Richard Millhouse Merk

My fellow Trekkies (*shakes his jowls and makes the 'peace-sign' with both hands raised high*). It's been an interesting year in the humble world of our ongoing online 'enterprise'—with ups, downs, twists and turns beyond the dreams of delirium.

The last few months have seen a number of attempts at introducing new RPG's to our illustrious ranks—do the names USS Incursion and B5 Crusade: Resurrection ring a bell?—but alas all failed to achieve escape velocity and quickly fell back to earth, kaput. Then along came the USS Victory, yet another in the long line of hopefuls, and against all expectations, succeeded where the others had crashed and burned!

Elsewhere, the USS Taurus foundered briefly in a cosmic Sargasso sea of internal turmoil and dissension, but eventually limped on under the guidance of a new captain. The coming year will see her long-suffering crew of dedicated players merge with those of the USS Leviathan, the longest-running Deep Range Fleet game still in operation, under the new rubric USS Leviathan-B. Reportedly, though flying under the moniker Leviathan, her mission will be a continuation of the Taurus' storyline.

Elsewhere still, the Starbase 901 RPG has slipped behind the black event horizon of the inevitable computer glitches and email crashes that continually plague our existence, causing a delay in the distribution of posts, but the new year will see a veritable explosion of top-notch written material from this RPG when all the trapped material finally escapes the gravity well of inactivity!

So, while the past year has had it's share of misfortunes, miscalculations, and misunderstandings, departing players, computer crashes, plagues, pestilence and bad hair days, we've also had unprecendented success! Fantastic new players have enriched our ranks, and the old veterans among us continue to produce creative, imaginative prose. The USS Eagle continues to go strong. 2003 will usher in the creation of a new RPG, the Leviathan-B, and the vague possibility of the USS Hornet being reactivated still looms on the proverbial horizon.

On an even more exciting note, plans are in the works for merging the Deep Range Fleet with another Trek PBeM organization - the Strategic Strike Force (SSF) Their web home can be found at http://starfleet-ssf.com . More news on that front will be dispensed as it happens, so stay tuned!

Most Importantly, heartfelt thanks go out from the entire DRF staff to all the players. Without you the DRF wouldn't exist. You all make the DRF what it is—the greatest Star Trek email role playing group on the internet!

And now we return you to our regularly scheduled program already in progress....

Ship Shape

USS Victory

by David Moody

The USS Victory, the most recent addition to the Deep Range Fleet, is between official missions, but from the lean of recent posts, perhaps she's not between missions at all… The Victory's original fleet was the Deep Range, but had some concerns to work out and some inimitable stretching to do before settling down back here in her home port. Proud to be a part, she is forging forth into untrodden ground with a strong cast of players, including eleven strong players; none mediocre.

Her NC17 rating in firmly mind, the vessel is seeking a Tactical Officer to serve as the Prometheus class vessel's secondary section commanding officer during Multi-Vector Modes (MVMs) as well as the complete ship's second officer.

The vessel has met her own future, solved the mystery of a missing crew, and suffered the slings and arrows of a stationary prankster and more than one timecop. All in a month's work, her crew says!

To follow her adventures, check the website, or feel free to lurk for the daily posts! Contact Captain Lenti Utex to lurk along.

USS Eagle

by Richard T. Merk

The Eagle continues apace. Now that the holiday is over, we will be starting our next mission—a rescue operation to the striken planet Tanzaria. What will we find when we get there? What has happened to the once-peaceful world? Are persistent rumors of 'flying saucers' true?

In the last month we have gained several new excellent players, one of which has the distinction of playing the part of a characters who is a DRF first—the ship's chaplain!

 

CONTRIBUTIONS WANTED!

If you want to write something to be included in the next issue of the Inimitably Superfluous Deep Range Fleet Newsletter, please do so! I'm not picky - it can be about anything in the world! Just email it to me at richardmerk@msn.com

HAILING FREQUENCIES CLOSED