Stellar Wars Expanded Designer Notes History Stellar Wars has a long history. Since I started playing wargames, I had always had various ideas of designing my own games. I had done a few initial designs in High School, but none ever went anywhere. A few friends from High School had a shared interest in space and we each designed our own worlds, race, and ships. We never actually gamed with our creations, although probably would have if we had picked up a system. In 1985 I started looking at space combat games. I had picked up StarFire, Star Fleet Battles, Mayday, and others, but none fit the way that I felt that space combat should be gamed. So, I set out to design my own game. Using various commercial games as a start, I sat down and starting working on my game. By the end of 1985 I had most of the game complete. Since I was in College, the game went on the shelf for a while. After graduating in 1987, I worked on the game some more. At this point the design was about 95% complete. Going into the Air Force again put the game on the shelf. In 1989 I decided to really do something with the game. I tightened up the rules, added a few items and called the design finished. I had a local print shop run 100 copies of the game. I put up a notice on rec.games.board on USENET letting people know of the game and telling them that if they send me their address, I'll send them a copy of the game. I knew how hard it was to sell a game, so I just wanted to get it out. About 70 people responded and received the game. A few months later I made an electronic version of the game and posted it to rec.games.board. As far as I know, Stellar Wars was the first Freeware board game to be posted on the Internet. Between the print and electronic versions, I got some good responses. Some asked for clarifications on the rules, others pointed out problems with the design. These latter comments would become the core design changes for the second edition, but this would have to wait a few more years. In 1993, I decided to work on a second edition and get it printed. A few rule modifications were made based on feedback I had recieved on the first edition. Before The Design One of the first things I did in the design process was to find and read any books that discuss wargame design. I found two books, a magazine article, and a few other sources that discussed wargame design and marketing. Most of the reading focused on the marketing of the games and very little on how to actually design the game. The one book that discussed the detail of design was "Game Design: Theory & Practice" by Steve Jackson and Nick Schuessler. This became my bible for designing the game. The Design There are a number of key items that affected the design of Stellar Wars. Most are a few concepts about how I feel a game should be. Others were reached as I worked out the design and had to solve various problems that came up. There are four concepts that I had before I designed the game: 1. Playability vs Realism. There is a good chunk of wargamers that like to scream "realism" and hate games that are not good simulations. This is fine, but I feel that if a game is not enjoyable to play, why play it again. So I like to stress the playability side. And with a space combat game, true realism would turn the game into one big mathmatics exercise. 2. Miniatures vs Board Games. I've played both miniature rules and board games. I've enjoyed the speed and ease of movement in board games and I've enjoyed the few constraints of miniature rules. Board games can be too contrained on their scenarios, boards, and setup conditions. Miniatures sets the rules for engagement of forces and you define the forces, the terrain, and the goal. All of my game designs have been essenttually miniature rules set to a hex board. I define the rules for combat and movement and that's it. The rest is up to the player. 3. Open-Ended vs Story Setting. Continuing with the above thought, I like to design my games to be open-ended in setting. Most board games define a setting in which the game is played. They give you a history of who the waring parties are and define the battles which make of the various scenarios. I prefer to write the rules for how the game is played and let the players define the setting. This allows the game to be used by people that have already designed their universe and need a system to game it. 4. Open-Ended in Units. I really liked games that allowed me to design my own units. Not only could I win by tactics, but also by designing good units. Designing units allows you to enjoy the game without having an opponent around. All of my games have unit design as an integral part of the game. One of the biggest hurdles I had to get over in the design process was tactics. Most games based on a objective defined in terms of a map. Capture this town, breakthough this line, etc. Movement is defined in terms of getting around obsticles between you and your objective. In space, like Naval combat, there is no town to capture, there is not terrain to move around. It's one big empty playing field. Given that, how would a space combat game be played? At the worst, the players would bring all ships within range of each other and have one big slugfest. The winner will be the one that gets the better die rolls. Where is the fun in that? I had to put something in the design that would make the players want to move thier ships. I did not want the rules of the game to dictate tactics, so the only thing I could do was to put sides on each ship. Each ship has six sides and each one of these sides have their own attributes, like shields and armor. If a ship takes some serious damage to one side of the ship, they must turn the ship to face that side away from the enemy. If they don't they will be exposing a weak side to enemy fire, chancing destruction. You do not have to destroy all shields and armor on a ship to destroy it, but all one one side. Each weapon is located on a side and has a defined firing arc. To fire on a ship, they must be in the firing arc of one of the weapons. This means you have to turn the ship to fire at the enemy. Another way to introduce maneuver into the game. Since I knew that each ship would be made up of different systems that each had to be kept track of, I knew that I would need a ship control sheet for bookkeeping. One thing that I did not like about most other space combat games is that thier ship control sheets were designed for each ship. If you actually created your own ship, you had to draw up your own control sheet. I made sure that my control sheet would be generic. It also fits in well with the unit design rules. Most turn sequences of wargames is the traditional Player 1 (move, fire) & Player 2 (move, fire). This sequence can make the game predicable in figuring out your tactics and guessing when to do something. I added the Initiative Roll to break up this predicability and add the "fog of war." See Steve Jackson's book on game design for a full analysis of turn sequences and how they affect combat.