Quadrant Delta
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quadrant Delta is a Play by E-Mail (PBeM) role-playing game set in the Star Trek Universe. The game is set in the Delta Quadrant, approximately thirty-five years after the USS Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant.
This is one of the longest running PBeM’s on the internet. It has been in one form or another since 1993. It was originally known as the United Federation of Players International (UFPI). In an interview with the CommBadge, Linda Parris a Quadrant Delta founder, discusses the origins of the UFPI:
CB: Now onto when you first found out about UFPI on AOL. Most of us in the organization known as UFPI were not around when it had started on AOL. You have stated that you were a charter member, so I take it you and some others started this idea, how did this come about and explain what it was like back in the golden days of UFPI on AOL(g).
LP: Actually, if you want to get technical.....the UFP started over on Prodigy. That is where I first joined as the CMO of the USS Pegasus, back in July '93. Then, someone named Chris Spires decided to take the UFP to AOL. (He can tell you more about that) I followed and the rest is history. (vbg) IN THE BEGINNING.....there were two dutystations, the Ticonderoga and the Excalibur. Then we "opened" GorVosh Station. We read and typed our posts online in the message board section of the gaming forum. Needless to say, some of us had very large AOL bills. Remember, it was back before there were such things as flash sessions and we were charged by the hour. It was not untypical for a monthly AOL bill to be over $100.00.
Due to that, and the fact that our posts were starting to come under "censorship" by our good friend Avatar, (ahhh, a name from the past) we decided to develop the e-mail system. We had no listservers, so everyone kept mailing lists. Just a few weeks later, one of our members offered to create listservers for us through his college account and he also developed our first "web page". And through several revisions and a lot of growing pains, the UFPI has evolved into what it is today.''
In 1999 the UFPI had an internal split. Out of that split Quadrant Delta was born. The founding members of the UFPI made some administrative changes and renamed the organization Quadrant Delta. In 2000, some key personnel left the organization. Its website fell into disrepair and the server it was on went out of business. As a result, recruitment fell off to almost nothing. Even though the remaining dutystations were dedicated to the game, without new players to replace leaving players, the game couldn’t sustain itself.
In 2002 there was an attempt to revive the game, and many former players rejoined. However, there was no effort to recruit new players, and many dutystations closed.
Many players speculate that the reason many players lost interest is that there was a multi-dutystation storyline involving an interstellar war. Writing of war for two years caused many players to lose interest.
In 2005, the remaining players recreated the website, in an effort to recruit new players. Quadrant Delta is rising from the ashes. New players are coming to the game and old players are returning.
