> HOW would you run such a campaign (short of number crunching
Oerjan answered:
> With lots of paperwork. Ask any veteran Starfire campaign
"How many turns have you completed?"
<vbg>
Explanation, or exculpation: I bought both Starfire and Imperial
Starfire a while ago--5 years? Maybe more, I don't think I had a
computer when I bought it. The version I bought was, mmm, paperwork intensive.
Oerjan, it's my understanding y'all have substantially overhauled the system
to make it more playable?
> Laserlight wrote:
> Oerjan answered:
In the longest-running Imperial Starfire campaign I've played in,
somewhere around 200 with no computer support. I know several
paper-administred campaigns which has run for longer than that, too...
anything is possible when you're a fanatic, I guess :-/
> Explanation, or exculpation: I bought both Starfire and Imperial
You bought the worst version for paperwork - after player requests had
made the designers inflict massive bookkeeping detail on the game, but before
player requests had made them take it out again. Or, rather, had made *us*
take it out again, since there was a change of ownership inbetween. FWIW, I
had the same campaign system (Imperial Starfire), getting into the game just
after New Empires had gone OOP.
Yes, we've done our best to reduce paperwork - by 80-90% or so. Even
so, you still often want computer support when the player empires are several
hundred inhabited star systems in size and there are a score of
non-player races running around as well :-/
Later,
I bought Starfire back when it came in a little baggie back in the early
eighties. And the follow-on games. We had a couple of good games under
our belts in college before the second edition came out and completely revised
the strategic rules, IIRC. Our group then proceeded to play several campaign
games with the new set. We just gave up due to inertia (when fleets got to be
as large as the ones we were flying, the battles became very annoying to
actually play out).
Since then, it is always taken as a threat when someone says, "Oh yeah? Well
maybe I'll just start up another Starfire campaign."
Ahh, the good old days...
Rob
[quoted original message omitted]
> Robert W. Hofrichter wrote:
[On Starfire campaigns]
> We just gave up due to inertia (when fleets got to be as large as the
The standard remedy for bloated fleet sizes was to cut income to 10-25%
of what the rules said you should get, depending on whether you played New
Empires or Imperial Starfire. It didn't reduce the rest of the
paperwork much, though :-(
Regards,