DARKSTAR CAMPAIGN UPDATE: DUCHESS ANNABEL’S WAR IS OVER
Darkstar - Tabletop Gameplay
Just a new table photos some some of our actual game play. We’re working on a few 3D pieces. Each hex on the map is 180 kilometers of space, each turn is one minute of time. This means that each point of movement in the game is 3 kilometers per second. Usual games pit 3-8 ships per side against each other and last 8-10 turns. The games take about 2-4 hours. Each starship gets its own record sheet, which tracks damage, weapons fire, ordinance expenditure, and velocity. You don’t just get “movement” points in the game, after all, however fast you were moving last turn is how fast you are moving this turn, available thrust must be expended carefully to decelerate, turn, roll, accelerate, or perform other maneuvers in a roughly “Newtonian physics” movement system.
Some friends and I as teenagers wanted to design a more “realistic” space combat game. So we focussed on just designing two ships, with schematics, power grids, thrust ratios, crew etc… The design was great fun, and we were very inspired by the edition of GURPS vehicles from that time which had that sort of approach. We played a few games, but we worked hard to make it truly 3D, so our GCSE trigonometry skills were needed to work out movement and attack angles. It was a terrible game in many ways, but I still love the idea of including… Read more »
These was an old game called Renegade Legions that had that kind of detail when you assessed damage in your ship, actually following electrical circuit paths to determine the damage to your ship. It was fun for awhile, but it did get old. In DarkStar, there is a lot of realistic detail…can a ship make it to the system in time to join the battle, does your commander have enough rank “points” to command the number of ships you want to bring in, what was damaged in the last round that you can’t use this round, etc. However, to use… Read more »
Thanks, @davehawes and @gladesrunner – Yes, some of the wargames in the old FASA Renegade Legion Universe were definitely influences on the Darkstar design. So were the GURPS system Dave mentions, Traveler 2300, Steve Jackson Car Wars, FASA Star Trek Tactical Starship Combat Simulator, Battletech, and others. The tech and setting tries to be somewhat plausible, but of course as soon as you include any kind of FTL, you’re already “off the map” to a certain degree. Our campaign settings try to be 3D, but honestly our tactical board game remains 2D (as you can see in the photos). We… Read more »
Yeah on the realism point, I mean I like all kinds of worlds, but I do prefer them to at least be internally consistent about how the “science” of the world works. That can work really well, if you say “magical invention X does ABC and works as such…” but then look at that and try and say, well if that really happened, how would everything else behave. Patrick Rothfuss I think does this really well in his fantasy books and the master Arthur C Clarke in his science fiction novels. I think a lot of the best sci-fi stories… Read more »
Indeed I agree about the internal consistency and the “plausibility” of the science. I should hesitate from calling it “realism” since we do in fact include a limited degree of FTL travel, which is very dubious if it will ever happen. But we try to be consistent for good suspension of disbelief. I also agree wholehearted with the “stories we tell” at the table. Darkstar had a very clear vision of what kind s of games and stories we wanted, and the tech, system, and world history was constructed retroactively to produce a world that fit that model. A few… Read more »
Whilst I’m open to all sorts of ideas and different stories (variety is the spice of life) I do think it sounds like Darkstar is very well thought out and would certainly be a universe I would enjoy seeing more of both mechanically and storywise. Many very good points there! Especially on the gravity stuff, I think even if you could artificially induce the boson exchange that would cause a gravitational effect, the result would be the two bodies being pulled closer together. It sort of suggests the only plausible “gravity” device would be to have spherical ships with something… Read more »
Indeed, @davehawes – I very briefly considered the more realistic artificial gravity options of rotating ships, etc … and while we stick with that model for orbital installations, ports, and the like, none of us really wanted a fleet a starships that looked like flying bicycle wheels or rolling pins. 😀 That definitely would be the more realistic way in strict sense, however. Interested to hear about the boson exchange for generating gravity. We’re “explaining” (albeit loosely) where these people have leaved to focus tremendous amounts of energy and gravitons to create artificial local curvatures of space-time. Admittedly this is… Read more »
I picked up the rulebook and source books for SITS on DrivethruRPG – Saganami Island Tactical Simulator from the Honor Harrington universe. It is vector based ship combat game with full pitch, yaw and elevations factored in by stacking blocks and wedges. I’ve considered picking up the components and giving the game a whirl, but wow is it complicated. There are good reviews and comments from the designer on BGG. The pdf of the rules isn’t too dear and has lots of cool ideas for resolving 3D movement and attacks.
Sounds well worth a look. I’d love to see a let’s play video of something like that to get a feel for it.
As far as Darkstar goes, I’m sure it looks complicated, and I guess it is. But the record sheets track everything for you, so there are really no rules to remember in your head or charts to look up, etc. Everything is on the sheet so facilitate fast, easy game play without sacrificing too much tactical depth.
And while you don’t need a working knowledge of MS Excel to play the game, to run a game (especially a campaign) would require a pretty serious familiarity with the software.
It’s probably sad to say I have more than a passing familiarity with excel 🙂 It is a handy piece of software for those of us not quite at MatLab levels!
Awesome, @davehawes ! I’ll have to start posting up some .pdf copies of the starship construction tables. Super-simplified, they’re just a series of shopping lists driven by data validation tables on a hidden, protected tab. This allows players to pick from all kinds of components, with data for mass, cost, power requirements, and other factors driven by (a) component, (b) class of the warship … i.e., “x” level armor weighs more on a battleship than on a corvette, etc … and (c) amount purchased. These values are pulled in off these validation tables by VLOOKUP functions which then simply multiply… Read more »
Sounds very nifty, yeah my lifelong career has involved 3D graphics programming in some way or another, but for the last few years I’ve spent more time working on spreadsheets analysing data produced by a bunch of other programmers, rarely get the time myself to actually code these days 🙂 It sounds like the system works very nicely in terms of balance and list construction (which is something else I am a big fan of). Nice to see that arms race when it comes to tactics and ship design, as one group put something together, that decisively wins a few… Read more »
I also apologise for not being able to read “gigawatt” in anything other than Doc Brown’s voice from Back to the Future
Not at all, sir. Yours was the correct response. 😀 Is there another way to pronounce gigawatt? 😛 😛 😛
this looks cool even without fancy 3d models. where would one find thr rules for this game and more information on it?
@oriskany has them all in a pdf…maybe he could be persuaded to post them.
Thanks, @bloodstrike – I’ve always remained true to my heretical beliefs that miniatures and wargaming are never synonymous or reliant on each other. My best wargame experiences have always been with counters and hex grids, for example.
I’ll be posting some more information, turn sequences, charts, rules, background, and above all, battle reports for Darkstar in the coming days.
looking forward to further posts
BURN THE HERETIC!
Actually, in all seriousness, I’ve always really enjoyed grids and hex-based gameplay, and have even played pretty great games that use miniatures and grids of different kinds. It always seemed odd to me that the tape-measure was somehow fundamental to the idea of a wargame.
Thanks @bloodstrike and @davehawes – I’m out of town today visiting my Dad (Memorial Day weekend here in the US) – but I will try to post some more of the spreadsheets and maps and maybe starships later today after we drive home. 😀
Hope you have a good trip.
My metrics for the weekend – @davehawes – 1500 ml of 100-proof Black Label Southern Comfort liqueur – I feel like I’ve been in space for real. 😮 Definitely needed that to shake off the burnout, depression, and general funk that’s been building up lately. Hope you had a great weekend as well.
Sorry to hear you have been in a funk, and not the good, John Frusciante Guitar Style kind of funk. I hope you feel better.
My weekend was a welcome break from work, some tabletop gaming, some video-gaming and quality time with friends, my wife and my dog. So all the good things 🙂