Trek Online
From The Simming League
Trek Online (abbreviated TOL) was a Star Trek sim club renowned for its tight-knit community and offbeat simming style. It existed from 1996 to 2004.
Trek Online was a leader of the simming community on America Online and a founding member of the Simming League. It was one of the first simming republics and built itself around openness, communication, and a focus on club-wide events and community. The club purposely capped its growth in late 1997 when it reached one hundred members, enabling it field a wide range of sims and activities while retaining the tight-knit feeling of a small club. Until its collapse in 2003/2004, the club ran a dozen sims, multiple trivia games and activities, and was home to 90 to 120 members at any given time.
Former members of TOL continue to gather and sim when they feel like it to this day, meaning the ships, characters, and culture of Trek Online continues to evolve.
Contents |
Offerings
Sims
- Also see: The Sims of Trek Online
Trek Online was primarily a chat-based sim club with DS9/Voyager era Federation sims. For most of TOL's existence, the USS Generation, USS Vindicator, USS Endeavor, and USS Stonewall were the most successful sims, with the USS Challenger, and USS Dark Angel popular during later years. The club also featured a highly successful Klingon sim, the IKS Dark Falcon, a Romulan sim, the ISS Vorta, and a classic era vessel, the USS Wrightstown.
Despite its leanings as a chat club, Trek Online ran one or two email or message board sims at any given time - the most successful of which were Viper Flight, the USS Valkyrie, and Dark Forge Station.
Sim hosts in Trek Online were sticklers for starting and ending their sims on time, using proper simming language, and remaining within the probable bounds of Star Trek canon. Nevertheless, TOL's sims were known for their creativity. Multi-month story arcs were common, and subtle gags and running feuds between characters contributed to plots that sometimes bordered on the Monty Pythonesque. A few times a year, joint sims would occur where the crews would sim together, but be in two different chat rooms with the mission coordinated by a Sim Master in each room. The Joint Vindi/Endeavor Thanksgiving sim became an annual tradition in TOL.
From its earliest days, Trek Online encouraged plots that allowed others to command the ship for a few weeks - using a vacation, disappearance, or incapacitation of the captain as an excuse to do so. This later evolved into sims where command rotated among crew members without an overriding plot feature to explain it, and ultimately to the New Horizons (TOL) sim where the ship, era, and captain changed each week.
Activities
In addition to sims, Trek Online offered a wide array of activities to its members. The most famous was The Trekkenest Trek Trivia in all of Trekdom e-mail string, where a member would ask a Star Trek trivia question, and whomever got it right would ask the next question. TOL also ran weekly chat-based Star Trek trivia sessions, which were heavily attended and served as a primary recruiting tool for the club. During most of its history, the club always ran one, and sometimes two, weekly Trek trivia chats. At various points, the club also ran weekly Star Trek chats. These died off after Star Trek Voyager left the air.
To foster a sense of community, the club held a series of special gatherings during the course of the year, including Election Day in January when the presidential election results were announced, Presidents' Day in July (because both Chas Hammer and Robin Knight were born on July 19), an anniversary party in September to celebrate the clubs founding, and the Apollo 8 Anniversary/Winter Solstice non-denominational holiday party in December. Random chat parties and events would also break out during the course of the year whenever enough TOLers gathered together.
Trek Online was one of the first clubs granted enhanced message boards by the Non Affiliated Gaming Forum, which enabled the club to make folders and sub-forums that could support numerous message board based discussions and activities simultaneously. This set up was a precursor to today's internet message boards. Before this, clubs on AOL only had one forum where all threads and replies were posted.
TOL Times
The Trek Online Times was the club's award-winning newsletter. It was e-mailed to all club members each month from the clubs founding until its demise. In addition to club news, log reports, and a schedule of events, the TOL Times featured original stories and submissions written by club members, a calendar of Star Trek shows, conventions, and actors' birthdays, and a comedy section.
Culture
- Main article: The Culture of Trek Online
Over the years, Trek Online's overactive members developed many running gags and inside jokes. At post sim chats, parties, and on the message boards, these items evolved, taking on a life of their own and developing into a full-fledged, unofficial, uncoordinated, but nevertheless ever-present sim centered on the imaginary city of Trekonlina.
Among the most famous staples of TOL's culture were the Men in Blue (MiBs), Smite Buttons, Smite Bots, Jelly Beans, Vats of Spam, Pudding, the Can of Unopenable Peanuts, and XO Plants.
The clubs culture was encapsulated in Robin Knight's TOL Park comic strips.
Organization
- Also see: The Leadership of Trek Online
In the days before the widespread use of the Internet, Trek Online was one of the few clubs to have simultaneous operations on multiple online services. At various times, TOL could be found on America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, in irc, and organizing multiplayer online games such as Star Trek Armada.
The America Online division was the largest, and the one that most people identified with Trek Online. All the other divisions fielded only two or three sims or games. During the 1990s, the other divisions had their own director independent of the club on AOL, but was under the nominal supervision of the President of the club on America Online. However, by 2000, with the rise of the internet and the club's website, these distinctions ceased to exist, and all of Trek Online's operations came under the direct control of the President and Assembly that had originated on America Online.
Hosts within Trek Online had creative control over their sims as long as they stayed within general guidelines and procedural rules (such as don't blow up your ship, send out weekly logs and attendance reports, start the sim on time, etc.) which were established by the club's founders, Chas Hammer and Julie Ryse. These were effective throughout all of the online services.
Members of Trek Online were free to join as many sims as they wished - indeed TOL was one of the first clubs to allow and encourage its members to take part in several sims.
In a dual attempt to minimize bureaucracy and keep the club small, all of the sim hosts reported directly to the President. There were no fleets within TOL. To assist the sims, the club ran an Academy that trained and oriented all new members, and a Sim Support Division that developed graphics, sound files, and sim plots. Both the Academy and Sim Support Division were headed by Admirals who also reported directly to the President. There also was an Activities Division - usually headed by the Vice President - that was charged with overseeing the club's chats and trivia sessions.
From the club's earliest days, sim hosts played an integral role in decision making - indeed there was hardly a major decision or change to the club's guidebook that was made without their input and approval. Under Chas Hammer, this was formalized into a simming republic. An Assembly made up of every captain and one crew member elected from each sim continuously met on the clubs message boards to discuss club business and vote on important matters. The members of the club also directly elected the President, first to a one year term, and then every six months.
The only major shortcoming of the system was with the Judiciary - and this would prove fatal. Unlike other clubs where judicial power tends to remain in the hands of the President or admirals, Trek Online maintained an independent court made up of Justices appointed by the President and confirmed by the Assembly. The Justices were empowered to hold full fledged trials when needed. Unfortunately, when problems arose, this system created a pressure cooker that - on several occasions - caused passions to run high and troublemakers to get off due to loopholes. Several high profile failures of the clubs judicial system in 2002 and 2003 helped doom TOL.
History
Trek Online was founded on the Classic Prodigy online service by Chas Hammer and Julie Ryse on August 31, 1996, after the sim club in which they were both Vice Presidents - STECO - collapsed. At the same time, on America Online, Chip Rollins was establishing the UFP/SF sim club, in which Chas had applied to serve as a First Officer. Hours after he had founded Trek Online, Chas was unexpectedly named the Vice President of the UFP/SF by Chip.
The UFP/SF on AOL grew quickly, but was plagued by internal conflict. On January 19, 1997, Chip resigned as the President of his club, and made Chas the new President. In hopes of bringing stability to the club on AOL, Chas merged it with Trek Online, which had grown steadily during its first months of existence on Prodigy. However, over the coming weeks, Chas fought with Kris 'Scott' Perry for leadership of the club on AOL, until finally, on February 1, 1997, Scott recognized Chas as the leader.
During the spring and summer of 1997, TOL fought off determined troublemakers who attempted to raid its sims and destroy the club. Despite this, the club grew in strength, and when peace settled in during the fall of 1997, TOL hit its stride, growing into a club with a hundred members and a dozen sims.
The club capped its growth in late 1997 after reaching one hundred members and focused on becoming a true community. It also created an Assembly and wrote a Constitution during 1998, making it one of the first simming republics. Trek Online also helped to establish the Simming League.
During 1998 and 1999, the club entered into a golden era of prosperity. Most of what Trek Online has subsequently been remembered for was created during this period.
In January 2000, Chas Hammer retired as the President, and Robin Knight Mace was elected President. However, under her, attendance and activity in the club began to decline, and she resigned in May 2000 so Chas could return as the President. Chas was able to rebuild the club and restore it to its former self.
Unfortunately, under the surface, tensions lurked. The real energy and spirit of the club now lay with SO'koth Vidiot qul'tuq aka Vid, his crew on the USS Dark Angel, and the captains with whom he was friends. However, Chas brought back his old core and largely ignored Vid and his friends for months. In 2001, Chas finally made Vid the Vice President, but he continued to remain distant from Vid. In November 2001, Chas retired once again, and Vid became the President.
Under Vid, the club remained strong, at least for the first six months. In the spring of 2002, Vid's wife gave birth to their first child, and Vid naturally did not have time for the club, causing Trek Online to enter a slow decline. Vid wisely chose not to run for reelection in the fall of 2002, and Penny Boopter was elected President.
Around the same time, Chas returned and found the club in a state of disrepair. He did not want to return to the Presidency, but rather wanted to teach and build up a new generation of leaders within the club. To that end, Penny nominated Chas to serve as the Chief Justice, and Chas made plans to run the Academy and start a new sim. However, before Chas could get very far, it was brought to the attention of the club's leadership that a popular male member of the club was harassing a female member in real life - to the point she had gone to the police. Chas advised the leadership that club precedent was clear, the male member had to be kicked out, but the new leadership thought a trial in Trek Online was required before anyone could be kicked out of the club, so, in a chat room with the high ranking members of TOL present, the female member was forced to confront the person harassing her and say she had gone to the police. Chas was livid the club's leadership would make her do such a thing. He unleashed a torrent of criticism against the leadership of TOL and against how far the club had slipped in the year he had been gone. This did not endear Chas to Penny - the new President - and it further alienated Vid and his friends - who had previously been in charge of the club and allowed things to slip to the point that Chas was now criticizing. Together, they banded together and sidelined Chas, although Chas was able to return and command a sim.
For the remainder of 2002 and into 2003, the club continued to decline. Attendance fell to record lows, recruiting dried up, and it was not uncommon for sims to start an hour late and descend into mindless shoot-'em-up battles. While TOL's hosts became opposed to Penny because she did not work to stem the decline, she remained popular with the remaining members and was reelected in April 2003. Fed up with the decline, Vid announced privately that it had been a mistake for him to have left the Presidency and that he was going to retake the club. Chas publicly called this a mutiny and came to Penny's defense. Outraged, Vid and his supporters left Trek Online to form Rogue Fleet.
Chas attempted to work with Penny, but she was convinced Chas would topple her, so she undercut Chas at every turn. Disgusted, in July 2003, Chas quit Trek Online. In August of 2003, Penny resigned as the President, making Matthew Joseph Dawn the new President. However, he was unable to stop the decline, and he, too, resigned in December, paving the way for Penny to return. She did little, however. Realizing the club was finished, and wishing it had been different, Chas and Vid returned to TOL to sim together with the surviving ships, and in July 2004, Penny finally threw in the towel and turned the club over to Chas. Chas promptly shut down Trek Online.
Several sims survived the collapse of Trek Online. The USS Endeavor continued to sim on its own, but subsequently died. A version of the USS Vindicator, with the blessing of Chas Hammer, continued on as a message board sim and remained active until August of 2006. The SS Tailchaser, which left TOL during the split in 2003 to join Rogue Fleet, remains active to this day (now as an independent sim), but Rogue Fleet itself and its sims have ceased. Viper Flight also continues as a low level, independent e-mail sim. There have been sightings of gaming clans in Star Trek MMORPG's using the Trek Online name, but its unknown if they are related to the club's old gaming clans.
In addition, to this day many members have stayed in touch and continue to gather and sim at random as they feel like it, thus continuing to evolve the ships, characters, and culture of Trek Online.
At the ending of the club, Penny Boopter turned Trek Online over to Chas Hammer, and Chas retains ownership of the club, its name, records, and legacy, to this day.
Notable Members
- Main page: Trek Online Wall of Honor
External Links
Trek Online Archives, including the TOL Times
TOL Park Comic Strip
My Simming Memoirs
