Category Archives: Science Fiction

Bring on the Singularity

Reason Magazine (which I’m finding to be an increasingly good online read lately) has an interesting interview with Vernor Vinge about the Singularity and related topics. Very thought-provoking stuff. The whole concept of the Singularity is, my wife assures me, crazy; but it’s a fascinating idea nonetheless. Anyway, if you, like me, eagerly anticipate the day when the stars are right and our AI overlords will take over to make things right again, go check out the interview. And if you’ve not read Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep or (my favorite) A Deepness in the Sky, hasten thee to a library and check ’em out–they represent some of the best sci-fi I’ve read in years.

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First impressions: Federation and Empire

Last week I had the chance to play Federation and Empire, a wargame set in ADB’s Star Fleet Universe. Whereas Star Fleet Battles depicts battles between individual starships, F&E depicts strategic-scale conflict between warring star empires. Each player controls one or more empires (the Federation, the Romulans, the Klingons, etc.); during your own turn, you allocate your empire’s economic resources to build up (or repair) fleets of starships, and then you send those fleets out to capture your opponent’s star systems, destroy his fleets, and (hopefully) drive his economy into the ground.

I won’t attempt a thorough review of the game here; I only played through a single turn, and am still fuzzy on a lot of the rules. But in short, it’s a very fun, and very demanding, game. It’s demanding both in that it has a lot of rules which must be learned, and also in that it would take a very long time to play through most of the game’s scenarios. (A skilled group of players might be able to get through one of the shorter scenarios in a day or two, but playing through the biggest scenario could easily take months.)

For my first game, I played the Kzinti empire and my opponent played the Lyrans. In the Star Fleet Universe official history, the Lyrans attack the Kzinti, which sparks a World War I-style cascade of alliances and treaties, with the end result of dragging the entire galaxy into war. That sounds fun, but we decided to start small, playing out just the initial Lyran attack and the Kzinti response.

When your turn begins, you fill out an “economic worksheet” for your empire, much like the Energy Allocation stage in Star Fleet Battles. (There’s a joke about tax forms in there somewhere, but I’ll leave it to you to find it.) This is where you spend money to construct military units, and depending on how much tinkering you want to do with your construction schedule, this can take a few minutes or much, much longer. In addition to building new ships, you can repair old ones, or–interestingly–you can “convert” existing ships into other types of ship. (For instance, you might convert an existing cruiser into a carrier.) All of this costs money, of course; at the beginning of the game, I had more money than I could use, but apparently as the game progresses (and your enemies steal territory from you) your empire becomes increasingly low on cash. (After a certain number of turns, for example, your empire’s economy becomes “exhausted” by wartime demand–a clever rule, I thought.)

After completing the economic worksheet, you proceed to the heart of the game: moving vast fleets of starships across a giant map of the galaxy. And by “giant map,” I really mean it–my opponent owned a glorious 30×70″ full-color map that was so cool, I can’t imagine playing F&E without it. (The map that comes in the basic game box is puny in comparison.) You move your fleets into position; your opponent then moves (with some restrictions) his fleets in response, and then battle is joined.

Fleet battles were the most fun part of the game I played. A fleet might have a few or several dozen ships in it, and part of the strategy of doing battle in F&E involves assembling the most effective “battle line.” You can place a certain number of ships from your fleet into the front battle line; there’s also a “second line” where you can place support ships, or ships that for whatever reason you don’t want exposed out on the frontline. Your other ships are kept in reserve, and can be brought up to the battle line later to replace losses.

One interesting aspect of F&E combat is that before battle begins, you and your opponent each choose the “intensity” level with which you want to fight. This basically represents the degree of caution (or recklessness) you want your ships to use in combat. Choosing a low intensity level lowers the amount of damage you can do to the enemy, but also lowers the damage you’ll receive. A high intensity level increases the amount of damage you can inflict, but also increases the risk of suffering massive casualties yourself. If you are greatly outnumbered by your enemy and just want to survive long enough to retreat, you’d probably choose a low intensity; whereas if the situation were reversed and you were trying to wipe out a smaller enemy force, you’d go for a higher intensity.

After that comes the dice-rolling, damage-allocating part of combat. You tally up your total firepower, roll some dice (simultaneously with your opponent), and inflict a certain amount of damage on your enemy. You can choose to target specific ships with your attack (maybe you really, really want to take down a pesky enemy dreadnought), or you can just let your opponent distribute the damage however he likes. (There are advantages and drawbacks to each.) After you’ve taken damage, you can try to withdraw, or proceed to the next round, where you bring up replacements from your reserves and repeat the process.

After combat, some housekeeping and final movement is done, and you wrap up your turn.

That’s F&E from the perspective of a total newbie who played for a grand total of one turn. I found it to be very fun, but also very overwhelming; as with SFB and many other wargames, the basic concepts are not terribly complicated, but there are vast layers of nuance and additional rules you need to master in order to play effectively. And then there’s the time commitment thing. It took most of an afternoon to play through one round of the game, using only two empires. I cannot imagine the amount of time you’d need to play through a full-blown galactic war scenario with all of the major empires in play.

Still, it’s a fun one, and I think I’d like to add it to my game library at some point. I would like to be competent enough with it to play in a game of F&E at Origins later this year. Maybe by the time Origins rolls around, we’ll be up to turn #3…

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Calling the Exterminator

As you can see, I’m still learning the ropes. But here’s a front and back picture of Battletech miniature painting attempt #2, an Exterminator:

The lighting in the photos is not the greatest; in real life, there’s a slightly more prominent metallic sheen, and there’s some dark-brown undercarriage coloring visible. (You’ll just have to take my word for it.) I like this paint job a bit better than my previous effort, and I learned a few more things about miniature painting in the process.

As for the Exterminator itself, I’ve always thought its oddly bulky torso and shambling gait looked kinda cool. Reading around on the web revealed that it’s usually painted a shiny silver; the body here is silver in color, but I wanted its sparkly shine to be peeking out from beneath a heavy layer of battlefield smoke and grime.

Next up for painting is, I think, a Zeus, another iconic Battlemech. I think I’ll go with some brighter and cleaner colors this time; both the Dragon and the Exterminator are pretty grungy and washed-out looking, and I’m ready for a change of pace. Practice makes perfect, or so they say….

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ASL + SFB = the apocalypse is imminent

Time to set the Doomsday Clock ahead another minute: the company behind Star Fleet Battles is hard at work on Star Fleet Assault, a ground combat game set in the Star Fleet universe. As I speak, the 400-page Star Fleet Battles rulebook and several Advanced Squad Leader tomes are weighing down a bookshelf in the living room, and I’ll admit I’ve fantasized once or twice about what sort of unholy hybrid abomination might result from combining the two into one Game to End All Games. When Star Fleet Assault comes out, I may finally have my answer.

In all seriousness: this sounds like a very cool game, at least from the preliminary description. The basic gameplay sounds less complex than that of ASL, although who knows what it’ll look like when all the optional rules have been added in. I’m particularly interested to see what sorts of ground combat vehicles exist in the Star Fleet Battles universe–that’s an aspect of Star Trek that’s hardly ever been touched upon.

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Happy New Year; or, a watched Battletech miniature never dries

Happy New Year! Now that the holiday craziness is over, it’s back to Real Life (and, hopefully, regular posting).

So what did you do to celebrate New Year’s Eve? A night on the town, perhaps, waiting for the ball to drop at midnight? Or maybe you got together for an evening of bacchanalian festivities with friends and loved ones? This being a blog about games, you can probably guess that my New Year’s Eve was spent doing something game-related. Truly, what can match the excitement of a holiday evening spent painting Battletech miniatures? Yes, my friends, that is what I was doing while you were out drinking too much and kissing your significant other at the stroke of midnight. Here’s the result:

It’s the first Battletech mini I’ve painted in well over a decade, and I’m sure it shows. Nevertheless, I’m pleased with how it turned out. The mech is a Kurita Dragon, an unremarkable but solid workhorse, chosen for my first paint attempt because it was simple to assemble. The color scheme is for deployment in a forest-type environment. As you may note, I used a very diluted black wash to give it a battle-worn appearance–what’s supposed to look like carbon scoring, smokestains, and rust marks. That effect didn’t turn out quite as I had hoped (remember, it’s my first time!), but I learned a few lessons for use on the next mech (an Exterminator, already primed and ready to be painted).

I didn’t spend my mini-painting holiday evening alone, of course. While my wife happily played The Sims in the computer room, I was sharing my painting workbench (aka the dining room table) with my friend Chad, who painted several incredibly cool Star Fleet Battles miniatures in the time it took me to paint the engine housing on the Dragon. Chad’s masterpiece of the evening was a very nice-looking Gorn cruiser–it was really fun to watch it come to life as he painted. (Check out pictures of Chad’s work at the above links.)

All in all, a fitting way to greet the new year. I hope 2007 is already shaping up to be a good year for you, and I hope that your list of New Year’s resolutions includes at least one pledge to do more gaming this year!

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Oh, thou! in Hellas deem’d of heavenly birth

How can you not love a book that presents, with a perfectly straight face, the following two lines

The man gaped at her. “Are the apes after Kenny? I knew something like this would happen.” — p. 134

Doyle kept his face impassive, but his mind was racing. God help us, it’s Romany again, he realized. What in hell is the man up to here? What can he hope to gain by brainwashing Lord Byron and turning him loose to make semi-treasonous speeches? — p. 203

Both quotes are from Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates, a time-travel novel that was definitely one of the best books I read this year. A very fun read, if you’re looking for something entertaining and a bit light-hearted. Really, I can’t recommend it enough.

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Why weren’t the Clone Wars cooler?

The portrayal of the Clone Wars in the Star Wars Episodes 1, 2, and 3 has long bothered me. Long, long ago, when I first watched Star Wars and heard crazy old Ben Kenobi’s offhand reference to the Clone Wars (in which he had served alongside Anakin Skywalker, the best starfighter pilot in the galaxy!), my young mind conjured up images of an epic conflict that ravaged the galaxy.

The Clone Wars of my imagining were all part of a civil war in which brother fought brother, master fought apprentice, and hero fought hero. The schism started small but grew to engulf every known star system. There were true heroes on both sides, all struggling to fix a failing Republic: the Loyalists (who believed the dying Republic could be reformed from within) stood on one side and the Separatists (who believed that the Republic had passed the point of redemption and needed to be torn down) on the other.

The heroes of the Clone Wars were to the people of the Rebellion-era Star Wars universe what the heroes of Greek myth are to us today–they were larger than life, with power and might far beyond anything that would come after. And like the heroes of Greek mythology, their flaws were just as great. In time, noble ideals were lost beneath beneath monstrous egos; the forbidden science of cloning was tapped to make good on never-ending battlefield losses; and in the end, Jedi on both sides even turned to the Dark Side in a desperate quest for something, anything that would give them an edge and bring the devastation to an end.

And somewhere in the midst of all this, the Emperor came with the promise of peace. I never thought too much about the details, which didn’t seem all that interesting anyway, but as a young Star Wars fan I saw the Empire that grew out of the Clone Wars as a sort of populist movement. The people of the Republic may have hated the corruption of their government, but they grew to hate the hell of galactic war even more. The idealistic Jedi struggle looked more and more to the average Republic citizen like the squabbling of children with too much power. The Emperor, who had earlier fanned the flames of civil war, now tapped into this frustration. The details are lost to the passage of time, but when the bloodshed ended, the Emperor was in charge, the Jedi were on the run, and both Loyalist and Separatist found that they had lost the war.

That was how I envisioned the Clone Wars, at least. But the Clone Wars as portrayed in Episodes 1, 2, and 3 seem… well, pretty lame in comparison. Lucas’ Clone Wars isn’t a tragic clash of mighty heroes, but a battle between the Good Guys and the Goofy Evil Robots. Despite the extreme amount of boring detail we’re given about the state of the Republic, we never get even a mildly satisfying reason why the Separatists are trying to leave the Republic in the first place, except that they’re Evil. The Jedi aren’t mighty but flawed heroes; they’re utterly worthless bureaucrats who can’t even stop the Trade Federation from invading the Happiest, Most Peaceful Planet in the Galaxy. Despite the fact that the Republic Senate and the Jedi Council are both portrayed as useless, corrupt, or both, the films expect us to side with the Loyalists simply because the Republic is a Democracy. The battles of the Clone Wars are not tense, tear-jerking dramas in which former friends are forced to fight and even kill each other over their ideals; instead, they’re dull CGI engagements between faceless clone soldiers and droids with silly accents. Even the most epic battle scenes of the prequels, like the space battle at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, manage to evoke only the barest scrap of emotional investment.

It was probably foolish to imagine that Lucas’ vision of the Clone Wars would match mine perfectly. And as frustrating as the prequels can be at points, Lucas has packed them with quite a few cool ideas. But the Clone Wars themselves–what should be the epic backdrop against which the fall of Anakin Skywalker occurs–are far more dull than I had hoped they would be.

I wanted the American Civil War in space, and I got a confusing and poorly-explained war between clones and robots.

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Playing Star Wars like it's actually, you know, Star Wars

While browsing the RPG.net fora today, I came across a link to a great essay by Steve Darlington on how to run a Star Wars RPG in the spirit of the movies. Even if you’re not a gamer, the essay has a lot of good observations as to what makes the films so immensely enjoyable. (Now if only Lucas had followed some of this advice while making the prequel trilogy….)

Darlington’s main point is that a SW game needs to convey the epic, space-opera feel of the movies–the heroes must be at the center of everything, they should always be fighting against impossible odds, and the stakes should always be huge. Epic lightsaber battles against a Sith Lord (who is, of course, actually your father) over a lava pit, outrunning the entire Imperial navy in your junk-heap space freighter (with a few little modifications), suicidal trench runs to take down the Death Star with twenty seconds left before it reaches firing range to blow up your planet…. those things are all Star Wars.

Fending off random thugs while delivering spice shipments to a backwater planet for the umpteenth time… that, while it is more along the lines of a typical RPG scenario, is definitely not Star Wars–unless along the way to deliver your spice shipment you get attacked by Imperials, escape legions of Stormtroopers ordered to capture you and send you to the Spice Mines of Kessel, and end up singlehandedly blowing up a Super Star Destroyer seconds before it destroys the whole frickin’ universe.

I’ve run several Star Wars games, and none of them felt nearly as fun as they should have, given my love for the SW movies. Reading this article, I think I have a better idea of why those games didn’t work. Next time, I’ll try to make the adventure a bit more epic and exciting than “get through the Imperial customs station without being noticed.”

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