MFI RP SIM/Library/Stardates
Approved Title: Stardate Theory
Entered Library: 17 August 2008
Article Author: Samuel J. Bibb
The Star Trek universe has and still does use a custom dating system due to the fact that everyone is moving around the Galazy at different times during both night and day. The Earth calendar is primarily revolves on the Earth moving around the Sun.. but not everybody comes from Earth in the Star Trek Universe hence we employ the dating system more commonly known as "Stardates"
Whilst the Star Trek franchise was in full production, stardates were usually selected based on a series start value and an end value so... they didn't really mean anything or for that matter would work for us. For a roleplaying game such as ours, it is essential that we have a way to keep track of everything that is happening "In Character." In order to conquer this issue we have developed our own Stardate system which employs the current "In Character" year (Present Year + 376). Our stardate is actually quite simply and is formatted as shown below:
yyyymm.dd
Where:
yyyy = The current IN CHARACTER year mm = The current REAL month dd = The current REAL date
The current REAL date is simply the current date. For example, if today is the 18th day of the month, the number you’d put in for “dd” would be 18. Note that the date portion is always two digits, so the 4th of the month would for this purpose be identified as "04"
The current REAL month is a two digit number representing the real month. If it is January, the number is 01, in February is 02, and so on.
The current MFSD year is calculated by adding 376 to the actual current year. So, in the year 2000, we added 376 to create an In Character year year of 2376. In 2008 (Present Year) we added 376 again to acquire an In Character year of 2384
When you add all these parts together, you have a stardate. Let’s try one: January 1st 2008 would become 238401.01.