I bought this baby on my vacation to Portland over the break last week from the awesome folks at Guardian Games (seriously, there are crazy good game stores in Portland). I was looking for something that was more RPG-inspired boardgame, but I think this one really is more boardgame-inspired RPG, and its certainly written like one.
You can check out their website here: http://www.battlestations.info/
The basic premise is it's a Star Trek style scenario, with the players playing crew on a ship exploring the unknown reaches of the galaxy. The twist is, you use geomorph tiles to lay out the ship designs, so the players actually move from battlestation to battlestation in the ship to perform different actions during play. There's also a higher scale hex map of the local space where you track movement of the ships and planets and so forth.
The fiddly bits of the different ship systems can be kinda confusing, or at least they were for me when trying to read them during a massive head cold, but so far it looks pretty cool.
I'm gonna be giving this a spin with the roommate this weekend.
This does look pretty cool. Thanks for the info.
One of the cool touches I thought, is they've taken some steps to alleviate the problem of not having enough players to fill out the crew compliment of a ship.
The character systems themselves are pretty simple, characters only have a handful of core stats and some special abilities they earn with level, so playing multiple characters is both easy, and encouraged by the designers.
There are also "bots", which are just as it sounds: robots that can replace any crew role. They have set stats, and don't level, though they can be upgraded like equipment (in fact, EVERYTHING from player gear to ship modules can be upgraded). They can be given orders remotely by any player and will follow them to the letter.
There's also NPC allies that can be assigned as part of a mission or earned as a random reward, that CAN actually improve rank to a limited amount over time, as they use similar rules to enemies which scale to the party. Unlike bots though, they're their own person, run by the GM.
The Mission Difficulty system is kinda cool too. MD is a variable that's calculated from party rank (including NPCs and bots), and enemies scale to match the party, roughly speaking, so you add up the party ranks and get MD 5, say, and then you roll on a table to come up with the enemies stats from the MD 5 column, and an additional column based on their Athletics scores. So challenges are fitted roughly to party ability, but randomized to keep things interesting and avoid too much predictability.
The result is it seems, on paper at least, that you can run the game with as many or as few people as need be and not be totally hosed. I shall have to see how it plays out this weekend.
It is a very cool game.
Some good info on it at BGG (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12350/battlestations). 35 pages of posts!
Wow, I can't believe I hadn't heard of this before. I hung out at BGG for a long time before the RPGnet-like atmosphere led to me deleting my account (no great loss for that site), and I don't recall ever seeing it in discussions. It sounds very cool.
J, be sure to let us know how the game goes this weekend.
We call it "Traveller: the Boardgame" with utmost affection.
In what way is it an RPG? Do you actually play out the characters, do you have role-playing that happens, and that's supported by the mechanics?
Or is it just a wargame where individuals have stats?
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;449578In what way is it an RPG? Do you actually play out the characters, do you have role-playing that happens, and that's supported by the mechanics?
Or is it just a wargame where individuals have stats?
RPGPundit
Roleplaying is supported and encouraged. The book is emphatic about the importance of roleplaying your guy, lest the game devolve into a mechanical exercise, and at one point the book suggests players try to negotiate their way out bad spots with enemy ships.
I think the game is somewhat poorly billed as a boardgame, it can certainly be played as that, in much the sense that 3e or GURPS3's adv. combat can be, but it's not only that.
Quote from: RPGPundit;449578In what way is it an RPG? Do you actually play out the characters, do you have role-playing that happens, and that's supported by the mechanics?
Or is it just a wargame where individuals have stats?
At cons, I usually see Battlestations played in the boardgame room alongside other hybrids like Descent. However, there is no reason you could not tilt the hybrid toward the roleplay side as many groups did with Warhammer Quest.
Quote from: KenHR;449324Some good info on it at BGG (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12350/battlestations). 35 pages of posts!
Wow, I can't believe I hadn't heard of this before. I hung out at BGG for a long time before the RPGnet-like atmosphere led to me deleting my account (no great loss for that site), and I don't recall ever seeing it in discussions. It sounds very cool.
It was a darling of that site for a while. And you're right that BGG has a pompous atmosphere, much like rpgnet.
Quote from: J Arcane;449582Roleplaying is supported and encouraged. The book is emphatic about the importance of roleplaying your guy, lest the game devolve into a mechanical exercise, and at one point the book suggests players try to negotiate their way out bad spots with enemy ships.
But is there anything to mechanically back all that up? Are there attributes? personality traits? Background? social skills?
Or is it basically a wargame, where you're encouraged to add some freeform roleplay?
RPGPundit
Are there personality traits, backgrounds, and social skills in basic D&D?
It has skills, but attributes are hands, move, target #, hit points, luck, and credits. It's primarily a wargame. RPG is limited, IMO, to what the GM makes of it.
Sounds like a true hybrid.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;450118Sounds like a true hybrid.
RPGPundit
I think this is probably the best way to describe it. It straddles the line closely enough you can really go either way with it.