From: Allan Goodall <agoodall@a...>
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 02:13:59 -0400
Subject: Another GenCon Review, FT Dice, and the GZG games
Here's my GenCon review. I'll try to emphasize GZG (and FT in particular). GENERAL COMMENTS I had a blast at GenCon this year. It seemed a bit smaller, probably as a result of the near collapse of TSR. There was less (but still present) interest in CCGs, but miniatures looked a bit more popular this year. The RPGs that I play were at about the same level of interest as previous years. My wife, Leann, and I played a number of different games. I played two RPGs, one board game (Kremlin, which I won) and miniatures. Leann played nothing but RPGs. Leann had a wonderful time, voted as the best roleplayer in each game that held a vote (including a Vampire scenario set in Casa Loma, a mansion twenty minutes from our real life house). I got to meet a number of FT players, finally putting some names to faces. I met Mike Miserendino, Dean Gundberg, Mark Siefert, Chris Pratt, Jeff Guillion, Rick Rutherford, Bryan Miller, and several others I'm sure I'm forgetting. Jeff Guillion and I had a very interesting discussion about the future direction of the various GZG games. We both agreed that we'd like to see a fleet book, campaign rules, and a fix of the FT point system even more than we'd want to see a FT3. We also felt that adding the SG2 command system to DS2 should be a priority. I saw Mike Miserendino several times. On the Sunday, I found a bag stuffed into one of my bags. It contained Mike's t-shirt, mug, and game tickets. It appears that someone threw them into my bag sometime on the Thursday when I first dropped by the FT tables. I talked to Rick several times, and got to play against him in Mike's Dark Star game. I took some photographs and hope to have them on the net sometime after they are developed. DEALER'S ROOM/NEW GAMES There was a lot of free stuff given away this year. The deal of the con was at the Atlas Games booth. For about 45 minutes of your time, you could walk away with 900 cards for the _On The Edge_ CCG (suggested retail price was over US$140). Both my wife and I did this. We also scooped some booster packs for US$5 (I got 36 packs, Leann got 32). The dice suppliers (Chessex, The Armoury, Koplow) all had cheap bins of dice to scoop and most were giving away a die or two. Chaosium had a "wheel of fortune"; I somehow missed it, but Leann got the golden Cthulhu and received a mess of stuff (including two Call of Cthulhu supplements, a Mythos standard pack, and a bumper sticker). I bought over $80 worth of stuff at the Pagan Publishing booth (half was a pendant for Leann) and got a free copy of the first Halloween movie (the good one) on video. WOTC was giving away a fair bit of stuff at their booth. On the Sunday, Heartbreaker was giving away starter decks for Doomtroooper. If you didn't walk out of the con without at least $10 worth of free stuff, you weren't trying. There were a number of new games shown at the con. _Babylon 5 Wars_ was available for sale. I liked the Minbari cruiser, but echo the criticisms on the detailing of the Starfuries. At US$50 it seemed a bit too pricey for me, though that was mostly because I didn't know how many ships were in it. I'll probably just continue to wait for the larger ships to be released on their own and use, though the game still piques my curiousity. The Earthforce Sourcebook was NOT available at GenCon (big disappointment) though Dean Gundberg told me about a demo he played. It looks good and should be out later this month. The _Deadlands_ miniatures game (_Deadlands_ is a Wild West/Horror RPG) looked fine but--again--it was US$50 and included miniatures. I thought these companies had learned from _Silent Death_. I'll buy a set of miniatures rules on spec for $25 if it looks interesting, and either use my own minis or buy them separately. I will NOT buy a $50 (that's $75 Canadian!) on spec. I'll have to wait for a review on this one. Although not a new game, Chessex had a big display for _Flintloque_. I admit I was tempted, but I decided to pass on this game as I'm already into too many games. ICE had a good selection of _Silent Death_ ships, including some Mike Miserendino used in his Dark Star game. I bought some more of their hex bases and a pack of plastic missiles/torpedoes (for SD and FT use). They also had large resin cast figures for some of their more popular fighters. These looked to be 25mm in scale and work well as fighters for SG2. They were a reasonably good buy at $12 each, but I didn't get any. GeoHex's booth was once again well stocked. I saw their Dungeonscape product and it looked good. Unfortunately they only had the full version available for US$120 but they plan to release it later in smaller chunks. My local game store is very interested in this. I got some of the river, dirt road, paved rooad, and farm field packs that GeoHex sells for use with their terrain products. These are the cheapest road and river sets I've found. I recommend them for SG2 and DS2 players. I also recommend terrain from Terrain Creations. They sell a number of hill sets, as well as a 2' x 2' board. Their terrain is not styrofoam but apparently some super dense version of the foam you find in cushions or pillows. It's pretty stiff but it has some give and it doesn't chip or dent like the GeoHex stuff. I prefer the look of the GeoHex terrain, but Terrain Creations stuff is far more sturdy and quite a bit cheaper (a basic set of 9 pieces is $25). I've bought something from their booth for the last 3 years (this year it was Irregular Hill set #2) and can recommend them to all SG2 and DS2 players. One last thing: dice. Chessex makes a new set of 6-siders. It's made with 1, 2, and 3 in one colour and 4, 5, and 6 in another colour. They were giving one or two away as a free sample. I thought they were interesting but drew a blank on what I'd use them for. In the mailing list game, though, Dean Gundberg pulled out a bunch he'd bought. He pointed out that they were excellent for FT. Since a beam can only hit on a 4, 5, or 6 anyway, the colours made it easy to weed out dice rolls that couldn't even be POTENTIAL beam hits! I was sold and ended up buying 16 of these dice. I found that they speeded up my dice rolling during the mailing list game. Thanks Dean! They will be generally available this fall. You might want to consider them. GAMES I PLAYED/RAN First, the none GZG stuff. I finally got a chance to play in the Call of Cthulhu masters tournament. I did very well, with some of the best roleplaying I've ever done. I came in third in the voting in the first session and didn't advance. The other two guys were just too damned good. The scenario was excellent (the author was one of Chaosium's writers) and the atmosphere was fantastic. I had a ball. I also got to try out the new Cthulhu live action rules. This was great! Live Action games are done more-or-less in real time with a "what you see is what you get" attitude. If you want to search a room you don't roll the dice, you simply search the room. I had a chill run up my back when I got to a room marked "surgery" and could hear chanting behind the door! It only went on for an hour and a half but I'm hooked. I plan to run a scenario later this year. Let's see, I won a game of Kremlin, and lost in a multiplayer game of Ogre miniatures. The game was played in 25mm with scratch built vehicles. The game was fun, but I had forgotten just how beer-and-pretzels Ogre really is. Okay, the GZG stuff. I ran 2 games for GeoHex and played in Mike's Dark Star game. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that GeoHex was giving a 30% discount to its judges until after I had spent most of my money and already dropped $25 on GeoHex terrain. Oh well, I'm happy to support a worthwhile company. Mike did a pretty good job of describing his Dark Star game. I agree that it should have been labelled Intermediate and that ditching the fighters would speed up the game. Mike's models were well painted and the scenario was a lot of fun. I'd play it again; hopefully next time we'd have time to complete it. I ran two FT games myself. The first was Operation Brimstone. A NAC fleet is above an ESU planet in geosyncrhonous orbit. Coming just over the horizon is a NAC bombardment monitor with some other ships in tight formation. The ESU have a fleet of system defense boats coming in from the other end of the table as reinforcements, with a small FTL fleet warping in. The NAC bombardment monitor has to hit a "window" above the target, a 4" strip at one end of the short table edges. A win is based solely on the number of bombs that hit the surface. The bombardment monitor enters on turn 2 in tight formation. Every ship in the formation (4 ships) is moved as if they were one ship. Hits are spread randomly amongst the ships in the formation unless the firer was within 12". If a ship is killed in formation it does damage to the others right next to it. However, a ship can peel out of formation, thus destroying the tight formation. At that point, all of the ships are placed on the table and treated as different vessels. It's an ingenious scenario rule, actually. Finally, a set of 3 gun emplacements on the planet (essentially A batteries in bunkers; 10 damage points kills them, they are considered to have one shield level, and the range to the target is equal to the range from the ship to the table edge plus 12") give aid to the ESU. This is a fairly tough scenario for the NAC, made harder by the fact that it was playtested on a narrower table. We increased the speed of the monitor group, but they were really still too far away from the window by the end of the game. The ESU FTL fleet was too conservative and jumped onto the middle of the table on turn 2. If they had jumped further "down field" they would have been more decisive. They concentrated mostly on the other NAC escort ships, almost to the point of ignoring the bombardment monitor! However, time was on the ESU's side. A wing of ESU fighters rose from the planet, through the "window," and did some damage to the NAC bombardment formation. A squadron of ESU ships flew through the NAC fleet and engaged the bombardment monitor while it was still a turn away from the window. It was destroyed and the ESU won (though the NAC, I felt, deserved a mission win as the ESU fleet was mostly wiped out). It was a good scenario hampered by the extra wide table at GenCon. I would suggest that for the wider table the bombardment monitor should enter on the first turn. Also, I'd like to see the victory conditions changed so it isn't an all-or-nothing game for the bombardment monitor. The monitor should gain the NAC the most victory conditions, but if the ESU destroy themselves trying to stop it the NAC should still be able to win on ESU fleet destruction. Finally, this was the last of a bunch of linked scenarios that also tied in with some SG2 games. The results of one scenario were never carried over to the other scenarios due to logistic difficulties. Some of the players liked the idea of linked scenarios with scenario results carrying from one game to the next, so we should maybe try this next year. The second scenario I ran was a Star Trek scenario called "Klingons at Large". I was expecting a number of novice players who were more into Star Trek than FT. Instead, I got a number of SFB players most of whom had played FT before. The ships were mostly taken from SFB. Classic Constitution class cruisers, a dreadnought, a carrier, and a bunch of destroyers versus a similar smattering of Klingons. The only new, non-official weapon was the Klingon disruptor. It worked like a beam weapon, doing 4d6 up to 6", 3d6 up to 12", 2d6 up to 18" and 1d6 up to 24". Both sides lined up on the long table edge and the game ran as a free for all. I've never met such a bunch of whiners as the guys in this game. We were using the basic fighter rules in this game (as opposed to the rules where fighters move before ships) and so I stupidly disregarded the fighter endurance rules. At one point I had the Federation players whining about the over powerful Klingon fighters, while at the other end of the table I had the Klingons complaining about the over powerful Fed fighters. These were the same guys who did NOT like the optional rules of moving the fighters before ship movement! Few Fed ships had ADAF or PDAF but the Feds could use their A batteries against fighters exactly in the same manner as C batteries. I got some more whining when they were told that they couldn't use their A batteries to shoot down fighters attacking OTHER ships. They asked, "How can we beat these fighters when they get into our rear arc? We have no PDAFs." I answered, "Speed. Fighters are slow and an only move 12 inches." They said this was "unrealistic." They kept using analogies to WW2 combat, explaining that it was realistic for "battleships" to outrun fighters. Guys, this is Sci-Fi! No, worse, it's STAR TREK! Then the Klingons started whining about how their disruptors sucked (bear in mind that they had A beams as well) compared to the Fed photon (pulse) torpedoes. It was all a bit frustrating. In the end, the Feds won what was a pretty close battle up until the last couple of turns. They might not have won had one of the Klingons not been mildly drunk during the game. They all seemed to enjoy the game, but the continued to diss the scenario afterward. I would suggest that to even up the disruptors, that they should remain as they are but ignore shields. This would balance the scenario a bit. The forces should be smaller, too. The only reason there was enough time to get anything approaching a decisive victory was because I split the table in half and let the two halves play as if they were separate battles (the side with the drunk guy was slower than the other side of the table). At one point the one half of the table was a full turn ahead of the other half. In retrospect, most of the scenarios should have been listed as Intermediate. For novice games, the format should be very simple: set up two forces on either side of the table and let them go at it head-to-head. A set of victory conditions should be created for killed vessels (i.e. 1 point for escorts, 5 for cruisers, 15 for capitals). At the end of the scenario total the number of ships killed and declare a winner. Novice players are concentrating enough on learning the game that they don't need to worry about victory conditions. I noticed this in each game I played or ran. The novice players got confused with what we veterans would consider "interesting" scenarios. In 1996 I played in a scenario called "Helm, Full Thrust" which was basically two fleets slamming into each other. This was a simple game but a lot of fun, even for a veteran like me. I think the best way to do it is to give a player 3 or 4 ships (not the 5 or 6 more typical this year). For novice games, there should be no fighters or only a very small number of fighters. Fighters slow up the game for novices. The more complex games should be Intermediate or Skilled. These games should have the victory conditions explained and nothing else. In these games the scenarios can be more intricate and the fleets can be larger. Finally, to draw in new players I suggest that other genres be used. For Star Trek games, more emphasis should be placed on the TV universe than SFB. I would suggest dropping the fighters entirely. The Klingon disruptors can be "fixed" by leaving them as they are except that they ignore shields. I would like to see a novice game based on ST:TNG, DS9, or Voyager. An idea might be to enlist a second GM as an NPC. Have the players go up against an NPC run Borg cube. The slow pace of the alternating player firing could be ignored since the one side, run by the second GM, only has the one ship: the cube. The cube can jink around (maybe even moving randomly) while the players concentrate on firing and maneouvre. If you want to have fighters, set up a Star Wars scenario. Give each player a Star Destroyer or a Mon Calamari cruiser and one or two fighter squadrons. I suspect that this could be a fun novice game. For SG2 and DS2, I'd like to see some games using the GW background. I think that an SG2 game using 40K figures or a DS2 game using epic figures would be very popular. This would be particularly funny since the FT and SG2 games were generally right beside the GW games! If I seem critical of the FT games, I'd like to point out that they were very good scenarios. A lot of work went into them, and it showed. Even when they didn't end by the alotted time, everyone seemed to enjoy the games. I just feel that they were maybe a little too ambitious for novice players. However, as intermediate games, they would be well received. I had to turn people away from my games (five in the case of the Klingon game). I do believe that there are now enough FT players at GenCon to justify two tracks of FT games. In closing, GZG and GeoHex were well represented at GenCon. The game tracks were agressive but--from what I saw--competently run. Everyone had a good time, and that's the most important thing. On the Sunday, I played in the mailing list game. I'll describe it in a separate message as this one is already too long.