June 2007 Profile: Starfleet Sim Club (STF)

By Chas Hammer

In our gaming world, clubs form and disband over night. Clubs that last several years must be doing something right. Now imagine a club that is older than the world wide web. Founded in 1991, the Starfleet Sim Club (STF)is, at 16 years of age, older than some of its members.

It can lay claim to being the oldest club in existence, and even to coming up with the idea of the sim club in the first place.

What grew into STF started life as a collection of Star Trek fans on Classic Prodigy - an online service that no longer exists - who defended Prodigy's Star Trek discussion boards from flamers and raided rival boards, especially the 90210 discussion board. To organize these actions, a group of admirals and captains was proclaimed. But as invariably occurs, some grew tired and wanted to spend their time on more constructive things - and simming, or online role playing as it was called on Prodigy, broke out.

During this period in 1991 and 1992, simming was one chaotic jumble with everyone simming together. More often than not, everyone tried to kill each other in an attempt to be named top admiral. To bring order to the mess and soothe egos, one of the Admirals - Adrian Kowalewski - came up with a brilliant idea. Everyone would keep the rank they earned during the 90210 wars. Instead of everyone simming together and arguing who was in command and how the sim should unfold, each admiral and captain would get their own sim with their own crew to command as they saw fit. It was a revolutionary idea. Some opposed it. Some complained that having people sim apart on different ships would never work. But the idea worked. STF was born; the idea of the sim club was born; and simming would never be the same. Within months the idea of the sim club spread to AOL, CompuServe, and irc. Where before there had only been massive free for all sims, clubs began to appear.

Since that fateful day, STF has survived many crises and thrived because of its unique founding circumstances. There was no single leader at the beginning, and there is no single leader today. STF began as a community of competing people who came together to sim, and to this day, STF draws strength from that fact.

The President of STF is elected every eight months. While the President is described as an elected dictator, open discussion is central to every administration. The President is assisted by a cabinet of six Fleet Commanders and five Department Directors - thus ensuring the club belongs to no one person and remains a diverse community of ideas and interests.

A sense of community, tradition, and history is evident at every level of the club. Very few clubs can match the archives of the STF Library, which contain documents from the clubs founding to the present day. The extensive resources of the Personnel Department and Academy are open to all new members, and at the academy, new members have, at their disposal, eight experienced role-players to help them get settled and learn about STF.

To facilitate community, all areas within the club are run according to the same general guidelines - posting is done in the third person past tense. Nearly every area is run by a Commanding Officer, with an Executive Officer as his or her assistant, and a Gamemaster to lead the story. STF also employs its own software, effWeBB, which was written by a member in 1997 and has been continuously improved since that time - giving the club a unique message board environment all its own. Just as important, STF focuses on doing one thing, and doing it well - running Star Trek message board sims. The net effect is that STF has become a second home for its members - so much so that the club holds annual real life meet ups in the United States and United Kingdom.

Today the club is home to over 150 members based in 39 role-playing areas - one Enterprise era ship, one TOS movie era ship, two starbases, two outposts, two planets, three Academy ships, and 28 regular ships.

Chances are good that in 5 years members of STF will gather at their annual real life meet up and toast the clubs 21st birthday.

For further information on the club, please visit its website.

This articles has been reposted, with permission, from the Simming League website.