STF

ANNOUNCEMENT: Introduction to the Academy

Posted April 21, 2020, 5:59 p.m. by Captain Emmeline Davis (Commanding Officer) (Sarah M)

Hey everyone,

Since we’ve had a sizable number of people join over the past couple of weeks, I wanted to take a few moments to give a rundown on the “Academy experience” in STF and how it differs from our main fleet ships. One of the most wonderful and aggravating parts of STF is that this club has been in existence for a very long time; I’m told that it’s the longest active running Star Trek RPG, but don’t quote me on that. With that comes a lot of experience in helping new members get acclimated, but also a lot to explain to new members about the way we do the things we do. So, this likely very long post is going to attempt to hit that point and I hope that you feel free to ask any questions you might have along the way.

What should I expect for my “Starfleet Academy” experience?

In order to ensure you pick up as much as possible during your Academy experience, you and your fellow cadets get to role-play together on USS Challenger without having to worry about joining other ships. The USS Challenger is a ship specifically designed, staffed, and maintained all for the singular purpose of helping new members. Some of our main fleet ships have crews that have been together for years on end and, while you’ll find everyone in STF to be very welcoming, those ships do not always have the same support for new members as the USS Challenger does. Staying on the USS Challenger during your Academy experience ensures that both you and your mentors can focus on making sure you have all the skills you need before joining the regular ships. That being said, while you can’t officially join any other ships/areas while you are in the Academy, you can absolutely read along and start getting familiar with what else STF has to offer! There’s lots of stuff to read on the other ships, plus little secrets and texts hidden in various places that have been collected in the long, long history of this club.

Your stay in the Academy and on the USS Challenger won’t last long. Academy sims generally last three to four months and, at the end, every cadet who has been aboard for enough time will move on to the main fleet. Despite our best intentions, sims can sometimes run longer than planned, so my policy as CO is that, as soon as you have been active and participating on the ship for three months, the command staff will review you for graduation and we’ll go from there. The benefit for you is that you get to leave the Academy and join any ship you wish in approximately three months. The flip side is that you may not get to experience the full beginning, middle, and end of a sim, but we think getting you head out into the rest of the club and experience our main fleet ships as well as the several, unique alternate RP environments we have is well worth missing a little bit of an Academy sim.

A summary of what the skills we will be covering with you on the Challenger can be found here: https://www.star-fleet.com/acad/syllabus/. Some mentoring takes place on Discord, but because not everyone can join in there, we also will make a lot of use of OOC (“Out Of Character”) comments as well.. Please never feel like you’re being criticized if this occurs! Mostly, we want to make sure that everyone can learn together on how STF does things.

How is the Academy experience different?

On an Academy ship like the Challenger, you have eight people helping out who are either experienced STF members (the CO, the XO, the CNS, the GM, and some of the DHs) or newer members who recently graduated from the Academy (some DHs, although we don’t have any of those right now). While we all enjoy playing the characters we’ve created here, the focus is truly on acclimating new members to STF and so, things that are really awesome and fun on mainstream ships don’t tend to happen as much here (deep character development, interpersonal relationships, etc.). While you should feel free to start exploring those things, keep in mind that you will be moving on in three months (you’ll still keep the same character) to a potentially completely new crew, so you may want to save the really deep character development until then.

Related to that, Academy sims tend to be much simpler than the longer sims you’ll see on main fleet ships. The goal is always to try to have the sim last 3-4 months (even if that doesn’t happen due to various issues), whereas it’s very normal for main fleet sims to last six, nine, or 12 months (or more!) and to have various acts to them. In order to make sure the Academy sim progresses and you get to experience as much of it as possible in the short time you are on Challenger, you’ll occasionally see an experienced member moving things along in a way that might feel rushed so that we can help the GM get to a particular plot point. You should always feel free to finish up a thread that you’re involved in, but sometimes the main plot will advance potentially a bit quicker than ideal for everyone’s participation. It’s all part of the balance of keeping the experience as positive and as informative as possible while also managing that people are joining and leaving the ship all of the time. If you ever have any questions or there is something in particular you’d like to explore with your character, always feel free to reach out to your DH.

~ Sarah, CO


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