Game Design - Random Thoughts 01

My gaming group is a fickle bunch. They will buy practically anything for a system that they already own.

Totally used without permission

As such, I have access to nearly the entire collection of Warhammer 40k material starting with Rogue Trader up to the present.

The same could be said for Pathfinder. While very few of of the group own the core rule book, everyone owns at least ONE Pathfinder book.

This can be a problem if we want to try something other than grimdark battles or fantasy role playing. Especially since there is some laggard response to any new attempts at purchasing products/systems outside of what we already play.

For instance, I want to play miniature space battles. Everyone has a few star ship miniatures from various manufactures/factions. What we lack is a generic cohesive rule set. Now, I am personally a big fan Full Thrust. The price is right (free) and allows for comprehensive ship design.

The problem is lazy players. I have e-mailed them all the rules. I have even printed out the rules for myself. The lazy SOBs will NOT read the damn rules or stat out their ships prior to getting together to play. Not to mention Full Thrust uses specific symbols to represent ship statistics which takes time to get used to/instinctively interpret/use.

Seriously, when I have time to play, I want to PLAY, not teach, nor design my lazy buddy's fleet for him.

SO, I must create a rule set so simple, that a near comatose turnip can design a fleet in a few minutes and has rules simple enough that it encompasses no more space than two pages or so.

From FreeVector - Looks really cool

Here are a few principals I want to include in the system;

1: A single 3x5 card per unit(s). No army lists, no codexes, no clipboards.

2: Every stat must be equally important during the game. If it does not meet this criteria, it's out. This will assist with internal balance, if that type of thing is important to you.

3: Only positive modifiers that are added together. If a negative modifier applies it should be mechanically added to other sides bonuses.

4: No IGOUGO

5: There should be an element of randomness/fog of war integral to the system.

Just a few thoughts. More to come in the future!

Finishing up that Full Thrust review...

Sorry, folks.

Seems that my last post, a supposed review, didn't actually review anything.

Full Thrust is flat out the best space combat game I have ever played.

There are several reasons for this (in no particular order);

1. Free - 'nuff said

2. Build your own ships! - the point build method seems fairly balanced with every option having a counter of some sort.

3. Cinematic movement with a nod towards inertia - movement is life or death

4. Range and facing matters.

5. Dead simple basic mechanic - gets you playing within a few minutes.

6. The options, oh God, the sheer amount of options that you can use to add to the basic game. Objects, bases, minefields, stealth, sensors, repair parties, towing, and even more!

7. Scaleless - You are not locked into a given scale and you can even use markers or chits instead of miniatures.

8. Hexless - no special board required to play - you are not constrained for instance you could turn the living room floor into a huge battle space.

9. Equipment light - dice, ships, movement record sheet, ship status record (you can fit 12 on a regular page), measuring tape, turning template (made from and old CD), and a pencil. I already owned all of this stuff for other games, except for the turning/vector template which I made from an old AOL CD and a sharpie

10. Tons of resources. Even a Facebook fan page.

11. Alternating activations/integrated turns

The system lends itself best to each side having less than 10 ships per side. I got my gaming buddies to play and we were knocking out games within a few minutes. No game lasted more than 20 minutes and that was with 3-5 ships per side. We played six games before calling it a day.

We did not play with fighters and I have heard that "paper" carriers can break the system at some level. I don't have enough experience to say one way or another.

In the end I cannot recommend Full Thrust enough. Hell, its free, you're not risking anything to try it out.

Bring the Rain! - A Full Thrust Review

These days most of my hobby time is devoted to painting miniatures for my various Pathfinder games.

I have been interested in playing a space combat game for a while.

I tried Star Wars Starship battles when it came out but, in the end, found it to be too simplistic.

I have purchased and played the quite excellent Battleship Galaxies when it came out. It is a really nice game with some unique resource management challenges built in as part of the game play. My only real gripe is the set up time involved and the somewhat limited play area (even though two game boards are included). I never felt like I got a real chance to outmaneuver my opponent.

I received some Firestorm Armada ships for Christmas and they are very beautiful ships. Unfortunately I am not interested in purchasing another rule set or learning it. Especially one that requires cards, tokens, and dice.

So, I hit the interwebz hard and found several free rule sets that seemed to fit what I was looking for. Of all the choices available, the most popular seems to be Full Thrust.

Full Thrust was originally published in 1991 or thereabouts. A second edition was released circa 1995. Jon Tuffley wrote these rules. Jon is well know for running Ground Zero Games and authoring several rule sets such as Stargrunt 2 and Dirtside 2. Don't be thrown by the age of these rules! They have stood the test of time and survived.

Full Thrust is non-setting specific. So, you can play practically any background you can come up with. Conversions can be found throughout the Internet covering setting specific ships and fleets for old favorites such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Starblazers, BSG, BFG, and Babylon 5.

There are many Full Thrust resources out there;

http://fullthrust.star-ranger.com/

http://www.homegame.org/siefert/uftwwwp/

http://www.spinwardstars.com/ft/