Simming

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Simming is an online text-based role-playing game that takes place in a chat room, by e-mail or on an Internet forum. Individual games, known as sims, read like a story -- albeit one written by several people.

People who participate in sims are known as simmers or players, and are usually attracted to the game by a love of writing, the ability to develop characters, and the freedom of imagination offered by simming.

The most popular sims are based on television and movie series, such as Star Trek, Stargate, and Star Wars. These sims often break into sub-genres -- Stargate SG-1 and Star Trek: Enterprise, for example. Sims can also be set in fantasy realms, historical times, or exist in a unique universe developed by the players. Internet simulation Senate games are also popular. Sims can take place in canon universes, while others are set in parallel universes, alternate realities, or universes loosely based on canon.

To hold a sim, one only needs a few people familiar with basic simming concepts to meet online and sim together. However, to facilitate sims, a number of simming organizations have been created to hold regularly scheduled sims, train new players, and provide structure.

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[edit] Game play

[edit] Characters

Each simmer plays, and to a large extent develops, their own character -- although most simming organizations have guidelines specifying types of acceptable characters and how much leeway a simmer has over character development.

Some characters are only used for one sim or a short amount of time, while others are developed and refined by simmers over the course of years. Many simmers take part in more than one sim and, as such, play multiple characters.

In most cases, characters are regarded as belonging to the simmers who created them, and others are not allowed to make drastic changes to them without the creator's consent.

In addition to characters played by simmers, most sims also incorporate non-player characters, or NPCs. Some of these NPCs have recurring roles, while others appear only for one plot within the sim.

[edit] The sim

As a sim begins, a simmer -- usually a host -- introduces a story, and the simmers reply with their aspect of the story and the actions of their character. Based on how the simmers respond, the host may adjust the direction of the sim and add challenges for the simmers to overcome. For example, a crew of a Star Trek sim sent to rescue a landing party may suddenly be forced to battle its way out of an alien ambush.

The host usually is an experienced simmer, and is the individual who leads and organizes it. In cases where a sim uses military ranks, the host tends to play the highest ranking officer in the sim. Some sims have two hosts, known as a host team. However, many sims designate an individual as a game master (also known as a game moderator or sim master) who is responsible for coming up with the story, determining the outcome of events, and generally playing 'God' in the sim. This approach allows the host to concentrate on his or her character and is forced to make decisions without having control over their outcome.

Sims do not generally follow a script. Often the host or game master does not know where the sim will end up because the actions taken by other simmers can send the sim into unforeseen directions. Unlike other role-playing games, dice, cards, and other methods for determining the outcome of events are not employed. Rather, it is up to the imagination of the simmer to drive the sim, and the skill of the host or game master to orchestrate the sim and ensure a harmonious game.

The degree to which simmers are left to their own devices varies from sim to sim. Many "traditional" sims are organized to give the host or game master a large degree of control over the unfolding of events in a sim, including the authority to invalidate actions taken by simmers. Alternate methods of organizing, such as free-form structures where simmers decide the effects of their actions, rotating structures where the job of host or game master changes from week to week, or sims where all members act as peers (effectively sharing game master authority equally), have gained popularity in recent years. Some argue that these alternate approaches enhance creativity.

Beyond the structure of authority over the game, sims also differ in the restrictions placed on their settings. Some sims remain close to their genre's canon, maintaining the status quo as defined by official publications and media. Others allow simmers to innovate and change the environment to a greater degree, permitting the invention of new technologies and alterations of relationships between established characters, governments, and other entities. Most sims do not fall strictly into one category or the other, and hosts and game masters often have a policy on canon, whether informal or well-defined.

The basic rules and mechanics of simming are fairly uniform across all simming organizations, but each organization -- and even different sims within the same organization -- approach the game in a variety of different ways. This has generated great diversity in the simming community and allows simmers to easily move from sim to sim to find one that best suits their needs and simming style. Because the fundamentals of simming are fairly uniform, many organizations will credit time spent in other organizations and allow experienced new members to start with a higher position in the sim.

[edit] Simming formats

Sims conducted via e-mail or on an Internet forum usually read like a book, with every simmer posting another piece of the story from their perspective and describing actions they take to advance the storyline. These sims take weeks, even months, to develop, and often generate several subplots and strong character development and interaction.

In contrast, sims that are conducted in a chat room last a few hours and occur periodically (usually weekly). Most simming organizations limit these sims to one hour and continue the story over several weeks -- like a television show. The basic premise is the same as e-mail and forum based sims -- simmers play their character and respond to a story line -- but chat sims focus on problem solving, action, and quick decision making. Sentences are often clipped, and symbols and abbreviations are utilized for easy understanding and communication of events. For example, all text describing an action is surrounded by either multiple colons (::action:: or :::action:::) or asterisks (*action*) to avoid having to type out a full description of what has been done.

Chat based simming was very popular in the 1990s, but e-mail and forum based sims now tend to be more popular.

These types of sims, and indeed simming in general, should not be confused with text simming, which is a computer game genre that utilizes text and numbers instead of graphics for game play. Many of these games focus on sports, and -- for example -- allow one to play the role of a General Manager and control a team.

[edit] Simming organizations

Main article: Simming organization

A number of simming organizations -- known as sim clubs or groups -- exist, ranging in size from a few members to over a thousand, each offering different types and styles of sims, and other online activities such as out-of-character games and trivia.

Simming organizations provide regularly scheduled sims, resources and infrastructure to members and their sims such as websites and e-mail systems, advertising and recruiting resources to draw in new members, training programs to familiarize new simmers with the basics of the game, and systems to train new hosts to fill open positions or launch new simulations. Administrative roles in simming organizations are generally filled by simmers who volunteer their time to the group.

A friendly, but intense rivalry exists among organizations to attract the most simmers and offer the best resources.

The leaders of sim clubs have in turn established organizations and associations of clubs, leaders, and hosts to swap tips and share resources. Attempts at more formal structures to link clubs together through alliances or leagues of organizations (reminiscent of the United Nations) have met with mixed success.

[edit] History

Simming began on the large computer networks of major universities in the United States in the 1980s, and drew heavily upon the traditions of fanzines and off-line role-playing games during its early days. The first sims consisted of a host or game master who would create a plot for a sci-fi or fantasy based story. All members would then contribute the reactions of their characters or a resolution from their character's perspectives, which the host or game master would mold into a cohesive narrative. However, simming has since evolved its own rules and customs, thanks in part to a series of pioneering simming organizations.

As national online services appeared in the United States in the early 1990s, simming grew in popularity and the need to provide structure and organize formal simming clubs became acute.

The first simming organizations appeared around 1990 on America Online, and later on other major American national online services. They transformed the game from a small gathering of individuals into a self organized and governed form of entertainment with clubs that had hundreds of members. Soon, the largest of these pioneering organizations came to dominate simming on their respective online services, with the Federation Klingon Alliance and Starfleet Online on America Online (re-named to SpaceFleet Online around '95 in response to complaints from Paramount Pictures), Fleet 74 on CompuServe, and the similarly named Star-Fleet Online on Prodigy. Star Wars simming also established itself in the early 1990s. The Star Wars Sim Forum on America Online is one example (it later changed names to Space Wars Sim Forum due to complaints from LucasArts).[citation needed]

The introduction of unlimited billing in 1997, and the growth of direct access to the Internet, caused the decline of those pioneering organizations, but new organizations appeared to further evolve the game. The Alliance Simulation Group, for example, was one of the first to combine Star Trek sims and non Trek sims together under the same roof (although some organizations existed in this form earlier than 1997, such as the ASG, which incorporated multiple genres in 1995), and Trek Online helped democratize the managerial aspects of simming -- which previously tended to be hierarchical and dependent on rank and loyalty to the leadership of the club.

Non Star Trek sims have existed since the early days of simming, but have grown in popularity since 1999 and 2000. Star Wars and fantasy sims in particular were aided by the formation of several America Online chat rooms dedicated to the genres. Many of these non Trek simming organizations on AOL became known as guilds and usually dominated a single public chat room. Each chat room became a territory of sorts, with one major guild or two allied guilds sharing a room (The Republic and the Young in the EA Star Wars Chat, for example), and diplomats were often sent to other chat rooms. Like other simming organizations, guilds tended to have weekly newsletters, complete with missions, rosters, reports from guild leaders, and minutes of chat room meetings.

All during the 1990s, the simming community on America Online was the largest of all the online services. However, around 2001, America Online began to shut down many of its community areas, including the ones dedicated to simming. This forced the simming organizations located there to move onto the internet, where they were joined by a growing number of new simmers and organizations catering to all imaginable genres, styles, and languages.

The Internet has allowed organizations, such as the Federation Sim Fleet, Starfleet Legacy Alliance, United Confederation of Interstellar Planets, Star-Fleet(.com) and Bravo Fleet to utilize the latest technology and web tools to create massive simming organizations with hundreds, even thousands of members. Some science fiction franchises have also gotten involved in simming endeavors: the Star Trek Simulation Forum was created in 2002 and served as the chat-based role-playing game of the official Star Trek website beginning in October of that year, though Startrek.com had a previous unorganized chatroom named #holosuite which existed in the late 1990s. In late 2004, the Star Wars Sim Forum was recreated on the World Wide Web, this time on the Internet by veterans of the older America Online-based Star Wars message board sims.[citation needed]

[edit] Issues in simming

[edit] Capitalization

In some circles, the term sim is always capitalized as SIM. The origin of this is unclear, but guidebooks and newsletters from several early simming organizations capitalized the word in all instances, "Tonight's SIM will be about..." "Please pay attention to the SIM Master..." and so forth. This usage has increasingly fallen out of favor, and some argue that SIM is improper because the capital letters incorrectly imply that it is an acronym rather than an abbreviation of "simulation" or "simulate."

[edit] Text simming

A text sim is short for text simulation and is the common term for a type of computer game. These computer games attempt to simulate some aspect of the real world using text and numbers rather than graphics. A common type of text sim is the sports text sim. Games in this genre include Championship Manager/Football Manager, JumpShot Basketball, Out of the Park Baseball and Front Office Football.

While both are computer-based, text sims should not be confused with chatroom simming. Text simulations are formal games, while chatroom-based simulation universes are informal and faction-based.

[edit] External links