One of my professors actually designed and created a game called Star Hunter whose entire purpose was pretty much to make a playable and reasonably simple SFB. It's not based on Star Trek for obvious reasons, but the gameplay is incredibly similar and exponentially less complex.
It's still in testing (I've had the pleasure to help test it a number of times), but you can print out everything you need to play it from his web site: Star Dog Games. He's been planning to put up some files on Kinko's web site so you could just go there and click print, but I'm not sure if he's made it that far yet.
It's definitely worth the time to check out, though, I highly recommend it to any fan of the SFB-style of game.
I've played Age of Mythology.. you'd think a board game based on an RTS would be crap, but they did an incredible job of converting this one. They started by throwing away any concept of a "map".
Instead, it's entirely about empire management. The entire game is about choosing what to do when. Do you gather resources? build armies? attack people? create city improvements? advance to the next age? You can only do so much, and I guarantee you'll never be able to do everything you want. But that's what makes games fun.:)
The only thing I can't say I like too much is the battle system, it gets tedious quickly. I think we eventually came up with some house rules for it, but it's been a while so I'm not certain.
I was pondering opening an account there after my friend pointed me to the site. It looked like a great deal.. any format, any bit rate, wide selection of music I like (which is mostly European), and a more than reasonable prices based on bandwidth. Beats the snot out of anything else I've seen, and I'd be more than happy to pay them their prices than sift through p2p or IRC or what-have-you.
Guess I should've known it was too good to be true. If they don't make it through this, I sure as hell hope another site comes along and manages to do it legally. Anyone else know of other services with similar prices and selection?
I was about to make a comment to this effect. The real problem here is that the games are designed in such a way as to make this situation arise. I won't claim to have the solutions (though I've done a lot of thinking about it, as I'm looking to get into designing games), but I think that the most effective way to combat this problem is simply to design a game where it has no impact.
Slashdot Mirror
Ee gads, talk about an overly complex game.
One of my professors actually designed and created a game called Star Hunter whose entire purpose was pretty much to make a playable and reasonably simple SFB. It's not based on Star Trek for obvious reasons, but the gameplay is incredibly similar and exponentially less complex.
It's still in testing (I've had the pleasure to help test it a number of times), but you can print out everything you need to play it from his web site: Star Dog Games. He's been planning to put up some files on Kinko's web site so you could just go there and click print, but I'm not sure if he's made it that far yet.
It's definitely worth the time to check out, though, I highly recommend it to any fan of the SFB-style of game.
I've played Age of Mythology.. you'd think a board game based on an RTS would be crap, but they did an incredible job of converting this one. They started by throwing away any concept of a "map".
Instead, it's entirely about empire management. The entire game is about choosing what to do when. Do you gather resources? build armies? attack people? create city improvements? advance to the next age? You can only do so much, and I guarantee you'll never be able to do everything you want. But that's what makes games fun. :)
The only thing I can't say I like too much is the battle system, it gets tedious quickly. I think we eventually came up with some house rules for it, but it's been a while so I'm not certain.
All in all, though, I'd recommend it.
I was pondering opening an account there after my friend pointed me to the site. It looked like a great deal.. any format, any bit rate, wide selection of music I like (which is mostly European), and a more than reasonable prices based on bandwidth. Beats the snot out of anything else I've seen, and I'd be more than happy to pay them their prices than sift through p2p or IRC or what-have-you. Guess I should've known it was too good to be true. If they don't make it through this, I sure as hell hope another site comes along and manages to do it legally. Anyone else know of other services with similar prices and selection?
I was about to make a comment to this effect. The real problem here is that the games are designed in such a way as to make this situation arise. I won't claim to have the solutions (though I've done a lot of thinking about it, as I'm looking to get into designing games), but I think that the most effective way to combat this problem is simply to design a game where it has no impact.