You guys ever play Star Fleet Battles?

[mao]

In my early days, I was a fanatic, for a couple of months. One of my best winning streaks was with the Klingon D7. I just had a terrible thought. I stopped playing SFB and Legion the first time I lost each of them after  very long winning streaks, very sad comment, ah well I could be crappy  Wisdom comes w age I guess , I really loved them both a lot. Any way back to your normally scheduled thread(I think I now have the record of fastest thread derailment). It's a long complicated story, Anybody interested in reading it?( after all , I am the only wargamer) How to play is EXTREMELY complicated and I remember the vast majority of it.

[mao]

The game has awesome simultaneous rules for movement and your turn. Will post in House Rules Thread. Link below

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Aug 4, 2021 2:47:39 GMT -5 mao said:

In my early days, I was a fanatic, for a couple of months. One of my best winning streaks was with the Klingon D7. I just had a terrible thought. I stopped playing SFB and Legion the first time I lost each of them after  very long winning streaks, very sad comment, ah well I could be crappy  Wisdom comes w age I guess , I really loved them both a lot. Any way back to your normally scheduled thread(I think I now have the record of fastest thread derailment). It's a long complicated story, Anybody interested in reading it?( after all , I am the only wargamer) How to play is EXTREMELY complicated and I remember the vast majority of it.

Never had a chance to, but I would be interested in hearing about it. Too many games, too little time. I am sure there are dozens if not hundreds of games I would enjoy given time and opportunity. I just wish a lot of these games had existed when I was about 7 or 8 years old and that I had a copy of them. From 7 or 8 up I could have been gaming any time there was bad weather. On the other hand I did spend that time reading, so maybe that was a better use of the time, who knows?

[mao]

That age I was playing w my GI Joes

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Aug 4, 2021 13:29:49 GMT -5 mao said:

That age I was playing w my GI Joes

I was reading adult books, so I know I would have been up for almost any game. I would have eaten OD&D whole at that age.

[raikenclw]

I had a friend in college* who was a real fanatic for Star Fleet Battles, so we played quite often. IIRC, my particular favorite ship was the Gorn missile cruiser. I got quite skilled at launching missiles at just the right time to have them converge successfully on a single target . . . which usually was utterly obliterated. After a while, I was banned from using that ship if I wanted to keep playing.

*As a "non-traditional" student (I didn't go to college until after working a couple of years and then spending a term in the Air Force), I was several years older and rather more mature than my contemporaries there.

[ironnerd]

Played it once, thought it was pretty cool. Never had an opportunity to play it again.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

For those that did play Star Fleet Battles what did it do well and what did it do poorly? What did you like best about it and what did you not like at all?

[raikenclw]

Aug 24, 2021 8:41:34 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

For those that did play Star Fleet Battles what did it do well and what did it do poorly? What did you like best about it and what did you not like at all?

Like: How the game handled ship movement. Requiring it be pre-plotted and then playing it out across multiple phases seemed a good way to simulate space combat. I can imagine that "real" combat of that nature would proceed so quickly that it would be hard to react perfectly to events in real time, at least for human reflexes.

Dislike: I recall being frustrated with the limited capabilities of missiles to track targets once launched. IIRC the game was deliberately duplicating the abilities of scouting vessels from the various shows, rather than the abilities of purpose-built warships. I have heard that later editions of the rules were rather more generous in that area.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

I never did play SFB but I'm highly interested in the game. I've looked at those boxed sets over the years and been *this close* to purchasing several times I did buy the Cadet's Handbook or Cadet Training Module or whatever it's called. It definitely sparked my interest but I couldn't get my friends interested in anything other than D&D at the time. While D&D is a fine game a little variety never hurt.  

[raikenclw]

You know, I think we could play SFB here. We would just need to agree on the ruleset to be used; I suggest the original "pocket game," available as a scanned PDF through DriveThruRPG for $10.

To actually play the game, we would need someone to volunteer as GM. Each player would submit their pre-plotted energy expenditures and movements to the GM, who would appropriately update the battle map for each phase, then post each updated map to the game thread.

My memory is hazy (some three decades later) as to further details of play. But I suspect that the bulk of each turn could be handled with routine posts to the game thread. IIRC, hits and damage were dependent on range, arc of fire and random d6 rolls. I would assume that the GM would handle all die rolls.

Any takers? GM volunteers?

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

raikenclw intriguing idea.  I didn't know that was available at DriveThru.   Hmmmm......