Federation Commander

[Mike]

I sponsor an organization called the Strategy Gaming Club at the high school where I teach. We had our first meeting for organizational purposes this past week and had 16 students in attendance and 3 others who will join, but could not be at the meeting.

I've sponsored this for several years and used to feature a mega-impulse house rules version of SFB. All of the students who were involved with it then have since graduated and some even started SFB gaming groups at the colleges they attended. They contact me from time to time.

In the club meetings we play an out-of-print game called Battle (Yaquinto Games), sometimes Chess, Diplomacy about four times a year, the old Avalon Hill classic Blitzkrieg once or twice a year, and Federation Commander a couple of times each month. As I introduced each game and showed the game components to the group, by far the biggest positive reaction was for Federation Commander. A couple of new guys told me afterwards that they thought Star Trek was awesome and had never heard of a game based on it before. They all want to learn how to play. I also emphasized the starfleetgames.com website for them to visit and pushed First Missions for them to try out.

It should be a good year...

By the way, this is something that anyone could do if they had the time and could find a faculty sponsor at a local high school or even a middle school. We hold our meetings in my classroom after school on Fridays, but Saturdays would work at an off-campus location, too. The advantages of having meetings at a school are:
1) That's where the students already are, and
2) Freshmen and sophomores may not be driving yet and will depend on their parents for their rides. Their folks simply have to pick them up later.

Fridays are good because there is no pressure of assignments or tests on the next day. Friday is not considered a "school night."

Has anyone else ever thought about doing something like this?

[SABEL]

I use to run a small club for my students at the "old" high school I taught at as well, and have run some games for students at my current school but I have not had a club for some time now. I saw students that had some interest but more and more they seem to prefer to use a compture than sit down to a game. The local game store I go to has seen very few high school age kids in but college and more adults are keep a regular showing.
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What is it with and raising the shields all the time!