What To Do:
To set out some simple guidelines of what to do in posting to get your character active in the plot and/or sub-plots is easy, to use the guidelines is not so easy.
The simple guidelines:
Write in such a way that you portray a real person, with emotions, habits, weaknesses, a past, and one who may make mistakes and is just trying to live by their beliefs to the best of their ability.
Have fun writing your posts.
Write so that others have fun reading your logs.
Keep true to your biography, but don't be constrained by it.
Sounds pretty easy, eh? Well it is, and it isn't. Your writing should be about and consistent with a real person, one that just happens to live in the universe of your RPG. A good way to get involved in the main plot is to make suggestions for improvements or secondary approaches directed towards your superior get you visibility which may in turn generate an assignment for you to do something that could even become critical to the plot. Character interaction and joint posts can also be a great way to get involved too.
If you feel your character is always being left out of the main plot, talk to your commanding officer about it, they can suggest ways to get more involved or may even be able to focus the next plot on you or your department. Please realize, despite the best effort of your commanding officer, she/he may not be able to create a plot which will actively include every member of the ship (try to think of a plot that will intimately involve 30 different people, if you can, let your commanding officer know what it is). In a situation in which you are not highly involved in the mission, create a sub-plot, recurring ones are best. Some suggested sub-plots include:
*A romance, ask a fellow crew member to share a Holodeck program with you.
*A rivalry, use the Holodeck or challenge someone to a game of darts in the lounge; party, (always good to get people to interact) throw a surprise birthday party for another character.
(There are numerous other types of sub-plots, some that may require approval from your commanding officer are: )
*A recurring villain NPC
*recurring technical/mechanical problem,
*or maybe even an outbreak of a flu.
The best rule to keep in mind is, do you leave things for other to do? If those you play with can't have fun, you soon won't have anyone to play with.
Examples - What TO Do:
Say you are on an away mission but you are just one of the little guys (a junior science officer), you can make an open ended post that you find a plant that should not be native to this planet, and is only known to exist five sectors away. This gives your commanding officer the opportunity to feed your idea into the main plot which involves a medical quarantine of part of the planet or opens up a possible sub-plot for other players to expand upon.
What NOT To Do:
Say your current mission is to protect a sector from some raiding pirates and you're the assistant flight control officer. Do not make a post that while on duty you detect a large deposit of metal on a remote moon. You steer the ship over to see what it is and find the pirates secret base. Your post then goes on to have the ops officer hail the pirates and tell them to surrender. They do.
Superhero Syndrome...
This is known as the Superhero Syndrome.
Characters shouldn't be made "gods", knowing everything and doing anything perfectly, or even graduating within the top 10% of the class. Analyze the above actions and you can see a lot of plot problems - for one, the helm doesn't do scanning for metals, science, tactical, or operations does. Second, if you had the captain order you to pilot to the base, and if you had the Ops officer hail them, you've broken the cardinal rules of roleplaying, which are NEVER undermine the CO or overuse another person's character without his/her permission. Finally, pirates would not surrender that easily. It's definitely a fine line that is tread when it comes to plot lines. When in doubt, stick to what you know and what you can do at your post or in your current situation. If you have a question about what the sensors might be reading, or even if you'd like to suggest a plot change, contact the commanding officer or executive officer.
Remember, don't do everything, you are roleplaying to interact with others, not show what god-like powers you can think of for your character. Think of what Starfleet would be like if Q were to join with all of his powers...everything would be easy--there would be no challenge.
Examples - What NOT To Do:
Say you are on an away mission but you are just one of the little guys (a junior science officer), you can make a post that you find a plant that should not be native to this planet, and is only known to exist five sectors away. Then you go on to state that this plant is obviously either the cure or cause of the disease that has the planet quarantined.
For starters, the planet could be quarantined for other reasons - deadly indigenous flora or fauna, aliens shrouded in a VERY secluded spot, etc. Second, maybe the commanding officer wanted this plant to strike out and kill an NPC on the team, or for it to be a life form. You've created a massive complication in this matter for the commanding officer to try to handle. WHEN IN DOUBT, ask your commanding officer. Tell him/her what you were thinking about sending. You might just happen to have a better idea than what they had and they might tell you to go ahead and post, or they might be able to sit down and explain why that post wouldn't fit in. Either way, it's a lot better than posting it and then having your commanding officer upset with you.