Firefly-based Board Game

POSTED BY: Kozure
UPDATED: Thursday, February 26, 2004 19:22
VIEWED: 13134
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URIAH

Tuesday, February 10, 2004 12:16 PM

I just have an aversion to any game that involves cards..."cardboard crack" has destroyed most of a generation of potential RPG players and turned them into "booster-pack junkies".

KOZURE

Tuesday, February 10, 2004 3:22 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Uriah:
I just have an aversion to any game that involves cards..."cardboard crack" has destroyed most of a generation of potential RPG players and turned them into "booster-pack junkies".

I have a bit of the same take on CCGs. CCGs often make it easier for the person who spends the most money on the most cards to win handily. This is not always true and it is possible for a skilled player to win with an off-the-shelf deck, but I don't think anyone will argue that a person with an uncustomized starter deck will win less frequently than someone who's spent $200 on booster decks and spent weeks looking for the "Black Bugblatter Beast of the Nth Dimension Super-destructo-card of Doom"

In this game, however, the cards are strictly "closed-set"; while there is the possibility of adding new cards in the future, the card decks are complete as they are and require no "collecting".

Many more recent board games involve cards or limited resources of some kind - this helps to offset the random nature of dice-rolling. Thus my intent is for this game to have unexpected twists but also a sense of strategy and resource management - when to use the big cards and when to let little defeats happen.

Elements of chance are:

Dice rolling in fights and challenges
Draw of Shiny cards
Draw of Tales

Elements of strategy/non-chance are:

Crew cards which the players automatically begin with
Positioning the crew on the ship strategically (moves are fixed)
Play of Shiny or Crew cards to affect event outcome (card resource management)
Selection of actions during the Rest and Relaxation phase
Choice of Tales for monetary reward or ease of completion.

That's a kind of forensic dissection; my main goal in developing the game was to design something which captures the flavour of the series. This actually is a dangerous approach for game design, but I'm hoping that in this case, it works.

I'm mentioning most of the progress in my blog, but I'll post some recent completed game components here. I'm reworking the status card to hold more information and be more intuitive. Tale cards should be finished tonight (*crosses fingers*) and then it should be testable.

and one of my favourite Shiny cards...

...here is a rough version of the crew status card:

KOZURE

Monday, February 23, 2004 6:23 AM

Well, it's finally done and I had a chance to playtest it with friends this past Wednesday. Much to my everlasting happiness, it plays not altogether too badly.

It's free and you can get more details here:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/czono/firefly-board-home.htm

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to host the dozen or so large (1.5 MB+) files on my usual ISP, so the links on the page above link to a Yahoo!Groups file site. If any kind Browncoat would care to step forward to host these larger than average files, I'd be much obliged.

Hope you enjoy... I'm looking forward to feedback.

Kozure the Kamikaze Highlander

Proud Citizen of Canada-That-Was

BROWNCOAT1

Monday, February 23, 2004 3:30 PM

Looks good Kozure. I am going to download this stuff today and play test it this week.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

TYMEN

Monday, February 23, 2004 9:26 PM

Where are the Zoe Crew cards?

Tymen

KOZURE

Monday, February 23, 2004 9:53 PM

Ah...curses.

I must have missed that on my checklist. They're done, but I guess I didn't upload them. I've uploaded it now... it should show up as an option in the Crew Cards folder in the files section.

Kozure the Kamikaze Highlander

Proud Citizen of Canada-That-Was

TYMEN

Monday, February 23, 2004 9:54 PM

Good to know, thanks.

Tymen

KOZURE

Monday, February 23, 2004 11:08 PM

I'm very pleased to say that a very generous fellow Browncoat has offered to mirror the files at his site, hosting provided by Runebearer. Out of courtesy to Runebearer's bandwidth, I suppose I should ask that you only use that link if the Yahoo method isn't working.

head to:

http://www.runebearer.com/Firefly

The capital "F" is important, it seems.

Many thanks to Runebearer! Happy downloading!

Kozure the Kamikaze Highlander

Proud Citizen of Canada-That-Was

KOZURE

Thursday, February 26, 2004 7:22 PM

Just a quick *bump* for those who may not have seen the announcement at the beginning of this week that the game is in a playable state and available for free download both at Yahoo!Groups and through the generous hosting by Runebearer at this address:

http://www.runebearer.com/Firefly

The Yahoo mailing list is a discussion group to suggest improvements and modifications. We've only just begun, so if you'd like to have influence on how this game develops further (once again, it's fully playable as it exists right now) please feel free to chime in.

As an added note, I'd like to solicit nominations for additional Tales to be added to the 14 official "canon" episodes. These can be existing fanfic or new creations all on their own.

I'm going to add the unfilmed episdode "Dead or Alive" and then proceed to create more based on some of the fan fiction here and elsewhere. There's more than an ample base for many, many tales to come.

Kozure the Kamikaze Highlander

Proud Citizen of Canada-That-Was

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