The current form of Star Trek: A Call To Duty has evolved greatly since its original inception in 1995. Once a fledgling organization on a private online network, ACTD now boasts over 300 members and ships in all three of the major gameplay styles, wrapped into an immersive game that many players (including players that are members in other online Trek RPGs) hail as The Best On The Net.

Star Trek: A Call To Duty was formed out of its parent organization, Virtual Trek (vTrek). vTrek was founded in May of 1995.  vTrek operated in two gameplay styles: The 5th Fleet, a chat-based group akin to ACTD's Chat Division, and The 7th Fleet, akin to ACTD's Newsgroup Division. At its height, vTrek boasted 100+ members across 10 ships, and a special-event Klingon ship.

In October 1996, Paramount Digital Entertainment (PDE), the online media group of Paramount Pictures and Viacom, entered into a partnership agreement with MSN to begin developing official Star Trek content exclusively on the MSN network. PDE expressed interest in operating a game that allowed Star Trek fans to be a little interactive, and play out lives of Starfleet officers. Thus was the beginning of ACTD itself, with the game to become the first - and only - online RPG officially affiliated and endorsed by Paramount Pictures.

vTrek officially discontinued operation on December 31, 1996. A few days later, on January 5, 1997, Star Trek: A Call To Duty opened its doors to members of the MSN 2.5 network with four IRC vessels: The USS Seleya, USS Geneva, USS Callisto, and USS Griffon.

The game immediately flourished in the public, mostly due to its prominent position on the front page of StarTrek.com, which gained large amounts of traffic from the recently-released movie Star Trek: First Contact, and the address advertisement on Deep Space Nine and Voyager television series.

The end of 1999 brought frustrations, as PDE was rocked with technical difficulties in managing its IRC chat network. It was thereafter announced that, at the beginning of the new year, PDE would cease the network's operations. ACTD's affiliation with PDE as the official Star Trek RPG also ceased, a side-effect of PDE’s closing of chat network operations. Neither side was unhappy with each other. On January 9, 2000, ACTD began operations on a self-run independent chat network as a public Internet Star Trek RPG. It retained the ability to call itself the only Trek RPG ever endorsed by Paramount, a title which has brought awe and mild disbelief among passers-by.

July 2000 brought another milestone to ACTD’s player community, with the holding of the first official ACTD player convention in Gurnee, IL outside of Chicago. Since then, ACTD has held a convention in various North American cities every July, giving members the chance to place faces to names, meet new people, and enjoy conversation with everyone. Other player-coordinated unofficial mini-conventions have been held all over the world, ranging between completely informal dinner get-togethers to parties held at a player’s house.

In September 2001, the Newsgroup Division of ACTD was launched after months of testing. This brought a second avenue of gameplay to ACTD, paralleling the original vTrek setup of IRC and BBS-style gameplay.

Later, in early 2002, the PBEM Division was opened, adding the highly popular email-based gameplay style prevalent among most other online RPGs. This brought ACTD to three gameplay divisions, covering all major forms of online roleplaying, save for the MUD/MUSH/MUSE style of online turn-based roleplaying.

Today, ACTD stands at over 300 members across 40 vessels in 3 different gameplay style divisions. The game may have evolved and grown dramatically, but many aspects of the game's core operation continue to be overseen by the same people who built them 6 years ago. Despite continual growth, none of the focus has been, or ever will be lost, from ACTD's philosophy: “The characters are what make the game, not the ship”.

ACTD has a rich and storied past, written by countless hundreds of members who have all continued the Starfleet charter of boldly going. Come and be the next person to forge part of that history.

Note: All information on this page is from the ACTD main site, a link for which can be found on the Links page, all credit goes there.