Lincoln’s War

In 2192, a horde of “barbarians” have smashed the approaches to the rich industrial Sol system! This barbarian fleet of FTL-capable ships slowly consumed the best worlds from the technologically advanced peoples. Despite desperate defenses the horde defeated all who stood in there way, darkening skies with their legion of invasion barges.

Finally, a battle-tested fleet has gathered at Sol. Here, the line is drawn. Here the United Defense Command (UDC) promises to break the invasion or die trying. There is no retreat! Victory or death!

The barbarian player has a large pool of resources to build the invasion force (IFOR). The barbarians are barely capable of FTL travel and their ships are rudimentary. What they lack in technological prowess they make up for with numbers. Essentially, the IFOR is made up of ships out of the Triplanetary rules booklet.

UDC ships are the last, best hope for the technologically advanced worlds coreward. They are capable of multi-fuel burns (borrowing from the “wear” concept), and are considered “torch” ships (they do not have to refuel, but they DO have to resupply). They are also very expensive. UDC gets one orbital fortress for free (probably in orbit above Terra).

The barbarian player can approach from any vector, using the FTL rules in “Endgame”. The UDC player may elect a vector as “coreward”, and that cannot be used for barbarian arrival. The UDC player then places its units as desired.

IFOR’s goal is to take as many worlds as possible by landing their invasion barges (use a liner or packet). Each invasion barge that lands deposits a ground unit. I’m going to have to have a very simple ground combat resolution system. Ships in orbit can suppress hex sides and enemy units, but cannot destroy those units. Besieged UDC units can hold out, but not forever. If enough units are landed, the fight will be brutal, but the outcome all but certain. UDC player may have options for purchasing ground units, but I’m not sure yet.

Terra is worth more points than, say, Mars. If IFOR takes Terra, that is a huge loss for the UDC. The UDC player must inflict enough damage to prevent this, but cannot afford to lose the fleet in the process.

Also, the IFOR will not use nuclear weapons on the planets they intend to invade. They will use them on extra-terrestrial targets, however.

Attacking Terra with a goal of destroying hex side bases (also known as “suppressing”) alone isn’t a compelling scenario. Instead, let’s assume that the attacking force (I’ll call them the Strike Force) can make one of 2 tactical choices:

1. Attack Terra with overwhelming firepower. Every ship carries a nuclear weapon capable of suppressing a hex side. The attack will be brutal and fast. There will be no rescue made for any disabled ship of the Strike Force.
2. Attack Terra with enough bombs hit the target, but conduct the raid so that the Strike Force can refuel and exit the system.

Hitting Terra yields the greatest rewards, but losing the Strike Force costs points. Sol Fleet gains a decisive victory if no hex side is hit, but can salvage a Pyrrhic victory by destroying the Strike Force. If all hex sides are hit but Strike Force is eliminated then the scenario is a draw.

I would like to have some interesting options for each side. Let’s assume that in order for their interstellar engines to function, each ship has to have a minimum velocity, say 5-10 hexes per turn. Strike Force ships may decide to maintain a a high velocity vector, and use Terra’s gravity to slingshot toward an escape. Otherwise they will have to maneuver and then rendevous with a tanker to refuel as needed.

Before the game starts, Sol Fleet will select 2 valid escape vectors. Strike Fleet picks a third vector. Strike Fleet ships may approach the system from any of these vectors. Sol Fleet has to guess which approach Strike Force will take on entry and exit. Once Sol Fleet has deployed their ships, Strike Fleets selects their approach for each ship.

Strike Fleet ships drop from interstellar travel at the minimum velocity toward Sol. The order of appearance depends on a slight randomization. Let’s say that for every ship, Strike Force rolls a die, and any “1″ means that ship is delayed 1 turn. This means that some ships may never make the trip in time for the raid, but it’s unlikely.

Sol Fleet must prioritize which ships to investigate (all ships are unknown until they enter detection range) or to commit as targets for their ships and ordinance. Sol Fleet will not know which tactic the Strike Force has chosen, or which route they intend to take. They only know that Terra is the target.

It’s possible that Sol Fleet will remain close to Terra and try to intercept as the Strike Force converges. I don’t know if this strategy will work. I’d like to playtest it!

As far as starting fleets, I’m leaning towards Strike Force having a 20-30% edge in resources. Each side must decide between firepower and flexibility. Neither side will have prior knowledge of the other’s fleet until the game starts.

I found ChrisW’s Triplanetary Map Variants page. It’s not as slick as Winchell’s, but it is full of descriptions on how to setup things like “pocket” editions of the game.

I spent my lunch today finishing the trim on the 2 acetate overlays for my MegaPlanetary map. Kinkos actually printed the map at 50×36, so 4 inches on each overlay had to go.

Luckily, my wife has a wide array of fabric cutting and measurement tools, like this wicked rotary cutting blade. She warns me a lot about how sharp the thing is. I was super paranoid about the position of my hands when using it. I had to suppress all the mental imagery of me trying to drive to the hospital with my bloody index finger in an ice filled bag.

After cutting and trimming I lined one side with transparent packing tape to create a hinge. Within 10 minutes I had two panels of acetate that I can lift and reset as needed. The last thing I have to do is to create some templates for the planetary bodies and their detector zones, if needed.

I have a couple of scenarios I’d like to work up.

“Endgame” pits Sol Fleet against a hostile force trying to devastate Terra with either mass driver (like tugging a planetoid as a weapon) or nuclear weapons. I’d want a situation in which the closer the striking force got to earth, the more accurate and devastating the attack. In other words, I want to get the attackers to get as close as possible to Terra before launching the attack. Bonus points for having fuel leftover to escape the system. Meanwhile Sol Fleet can manage at victory if they prevent any weapons from reaching the planet.

In “The Fall of Earth” a defending fleet has to prevent an incoming, barbarian fleet from capturing planets. The barbarians gain a decisive victory if they capture Earth. The trick is that the defending fleet will be horribly outnumbered, but far more advanced in technology. Terra and Mars would be worth many more points that the moons of Jupiter or Venus. Some of the defenders ships would have the ability to change course by more than 1 hex per turn (or maybe even the graviton drives), and have better weapons. But the attackers would have many, many more “low-tech” ships. Attackers get points for getting their invasion barges into orbit and landing their troops. I’d have to cook up some planetary combat outcomes, perhaps based on how many troops land.

I saw this game posted on the Camp Nerdly planning pages and to be honest, it was the one event I looked forward to the most. The premise of the game is that the players are trying to gather enough victories from a pool of dice to indict a suspect in a series of murders.

This particular game was listed a playtest. Kat Miller ran the game along with Michael S. Miller and Alexander Newman. Earlier in the evening I was so uptight about not missing this game that I interrupted Alexander’s Nine Worlds game out of fear that the playtest began early.

Kat explained that the game design emerged from her frustration about how bad RPGs were at generating detective or mystery fiction. Serial begins with everyone creating parts of a victim profile and then creating victims that match that profile. Play continues with alternating series of investigation and victim vignettes.

Each player drives a victim vignette towards answering a simple question that each victim wants most in their life (”Will I get back together with my ex-wife?”). The result of these scenes, which is always a 50/50 chance of being “yes” or “no”, has no concrete effect on the mechanics of the game. None. But without them, I don’t think the game would have nearly the emotional weight that it ended dumping on my lap.

Although the victim I created ended up in a morgue, the post-investigation vignette answered the question I posed earlier, “Will I get custody of my kids?” (The victim profile specified divorced.) I narrated that the ex-wife is unpacking moving boxes, but instead of the cross-country move that other scenes established, it was in fact the old house that the victim lived in with his family before the divorce. I had the wife placing a picture of the victim on the mantle as the last “shot”.

I really didn’t grasp completely how each player can collect dice during an investigation scene. I’m sure after some study, they will become obvious. I did notice that the game rewards players for trying to create investigation details and linking them back to the victim profile and other player’s findings. I can imagine coupling these details with the investigation scenes, despite my muddled understanding of how to frame and narrate the action itself.

I found myself seeing the outcome in my head, but struggling to get them articulated. Michael S. and Alexander were smooth operators and injected several scene details and characterizations that supported my play.

I’d be curious to see if Kat adds a lot of rule illustrations through “faux” play examples. For someone like me, without the seeing it in action, I might not realize that playing out these scenes could as free-form and still get back to answering the victim’s question. My fogginess didn’t detract from the play overall, as far as I could tell. I enjoyed just about everything about the game.

I can’t wait to see this in print and all polished up. Kat has something cooking in the kitchen.

It’s home and ready for the acetate!

The map in the lower left-hand corner is the original map, for comparison. Now, I have to make and print some planetary body templates, as well as their detector zones.

I’ve found a link to a hex paper generator. I created a 50×40 inch hex map with 0.3 inch hexes.

The original Triplanetary map used hexes roughly 0.56 inches on a 22×28 inch map. The difference in playing area from the old to the new is roughly 10 times.

Incredibly, Kinko’s online printing service printed my PDF for $0.75/sq. ft. For a mere $10 and change I had a fantastic map printed out.

I found a local A.C. Moore to dry mount the map on foam board. The gentlemen behind the counter took one look at my map and said “Wargame?”

We spoke for a minute about gaming and maps. It turns out since 1975 and the heyday of Traveller, he’s been dry mounting all of his maps. He wistfully told me about how he had the original Chainmail rules in his hand back in the day, but decided to not buy it at the time.

He wore a tattoo on his left forearm - that of a dragon. I know I stood before the Sauron of dry mounting.

The only expensive part of this whole process was the cost of the dry mounting ($48.xx). My wife expressed ire. I reminded her that it was her idea to have a professional to the dry mounting. I would have been happy with a glue stick and some tape.

Nonetheless, I will now have a snappy and sassy map to lay my dual acetate overlays upon. I’ll make up some planetary templates with gravity arrows and get busy making some scenarios worthy of play.

This time it’s Winchel Chung’s Triplanetary page. He includes a concise summary of the movement rules with diagrams. His effort is well done and easy to follow.

A few weeks prior to Camp Nerdly, before I’d even put money down for a reservation, I asked Andy Kitowski if board games would be acceptable to bring. I was worried that Camp Nerdly would be a venue only for role playing games. Of course, Nerdly was about bringing the awesome, and Andy confirmed that board games would be welcome.

I looked over my collection of interesting games. Triplanetary stood out. The last time I played it was several years ago. I updated my Camp Nerdly schedule with a slot for this GDW classic. I expected most participants to pass this and other board games over. But I also held out hope that among the Nerdlings, at least one would get excited over vector based movement on a hexmap.

Ships in Triplanetary move by expending fuel to alter their current vector. The game forces players to plan ahead while remaining tactically flexible. It’s easy to misjudge your course and end up slingshot from orbit into the dark reaches of space without enough fuel to return home. Experienced players probably memorize optimal orbital approaches. It’s best to keep everyone on their toes with nuclear weapons.

Saturday morning at Camp Nerdly, I unfolded the old Triplanetary map. Almost immediately Fred Wolke and his 2 children, Annita and William, joined me. Fred demonstrated how to make starship miniatures from golf tees the day before. GDW used the movement system in Triplanetary, as it turns out, as the basis for some of their later Traveller products. Fred’s participation proved to be decisive - he had an intuitive feel for the mechanics of the game. Even his children appeared to be at ease with the vector mechanics.

Also joining us was Joshua Seigler. I met Joshua the previous fall at MACE during a game of Dogs in the Vineyard run by Jason Morningstar. Joshua claimed, over and over, that he’d never played these game before. Sure, Joshua, sure. You keep saying it, and we’ll keep believing it.

I picked the simplest scenario I could. All players raced to each “major” gravity well and then back to Terra. Yes, I know this sounds simple. You can’t appreciate the delicate planning involved until you have 5 units of fuel to navigate from Callisto to Mars. You just can’t.

Joshua and the Wolke siblings took a route from Terra to Jupiter’s moon. William Wolke and Joshua exchanged gunfire for about a week, even as they threaded the deadly asteroid fields near Clandestine base. Annita wearied of the race and dropped out during this leg. I goofed on the rules, as it turns out. I swore I read that ships in the race could not fire at another ship while inside the “detector” zones around planets. I read the rules again and again since the game, and I can find no such rule. Sorry to everyone. I’m sure ESPN prefered ships blowing up in HDTV. Next time, it will be a televised fight.

At the same time, Fred Wolke and I set course for Sol and Mercury. I chose not bypass the sun and head for Venus for a stop and refit. I figured I could come back use the star for a little push on my way to Mars. I used the “overload” maneuver on just about every orbital breakway. This turns out to be a kiss and a curse. While I enjoyed the immediate burst of velocity, the resulting whip-sling around the sun almost ruined my chances in the race.

Fred turned toward Mercury after his encounter with the sun, and then landed to refuel. He used Venus as I used the sun, and rocketed to Mars.

Our orbits were long, wide arcs, with my eventual course more desperate as we neared the red planet. Fred chose to bypass Mars, squeezing another 4 days of limited fuel use until he approached Callisto. At the same time we crossed the Martian asteroid fields, Joshua was whipping by us, screaming inbound for Venus and the inner solar system.

Within a few days of each other, Fred and I traded gravity slingshot vectors. I had a slight lead as we cleared the Ganymede corridor, and planned to use my lead for an eventual victory. Fortunately for Fred, my ability to plan orbital approaches is pretty dismal. I had to burn more fuel and overran a landing vector by a day. Fred and I reached the finish line in a dead tie. Joshua, against the odds, launched from a refuel on Mercury to come within 6 or 7 million miles of victory.

I used, overall, 4 units of fuel less than Fred, so I was the winner. It was the first time I’d completed the “Grand Tour” and not lose a ship!

I think Triplanetary is a fascinating game. The movement scale is dog slow compared to most science fiction. Ships don’t reach hyperspace or maneuver like Babylon 5. Each turn is a day and the wise captain uses the gravity wells of the major system bodies to his or her gain.

I studied the map and began to think of ways to expand it. I also thought of other scenarios not covered in the book. Maybe this will lead to some home-made Triplanetary? Maybe we’ll call it… MEGA-Planetary!