Stretch Goals Including a 4th Player Position!
almost 8 years ago
– Fri, May 06, 2016 at 11:42:31 AM
We're into the final week and easily within range of funding a new edition of Web & Starship! Thanks very much for your support.
The surge at the end of a project can be substantial, so to encourage more support for the game (and encourage you to entice your friends to join!) we are adding some stretch goals. These are funding goals for the project beyond the amount we ask for the project in general, which in this case is $10k. If we can can generate even more support, then we will add components and material to the new edition.
The obvious highlight is a new player position if we can achieve 200% of our goal.
Here is what we would like to add to the game:
At $12,500: Range Finders
- We will add three "range finders" to the game components. These are used to determine the "x" graph component of the three-dimensional distance between star systems. Only one range finder was included in the original 1984 edition. That meant all the players had to share it. No longer. Each player will have a color-coded range finder all his or her own. Range finders are technically not required for play as we are adding a Star Distance Reference Chart to the new edition, but many backers (and the designer!) have expressed a desire for them.
At $15,000: Turn Sequence Cards
- Three (or six) turn sequence cards will help all the players keep track of what's coming next in a game turn or war turn. There will either be three double-sided or six single-sided cards depending on what fits best on our printer sheets. Here are the turn charts from the original rulebook that we'll reproduce on cards:
At $20,000... The Hive
- A brand-new 4th player position: The Hive. This nano-tech "infection" style invader maintains the asymmetric challenge of the game as all three existing players, Gwynhyfarr, Pereen and Terrans alike, will struggle to confront this new foe.
- More details on The Hive and how they function in play is forthcoming... as soon as we achieve 100% funding and can set aim at rising to 200% to add this content to the new edition of Web & Starship.
- Prior stretch goals increase as well. Now four range finders and 4 (or 8) turn sequence cards.
- Note: a three-player game using the three Earth invaders will be an optional game.
- Also note: adding The Hive to the game will delay delivery to accommodate the playtesting required to balance the game.
So please spread the word about our new and improved and now possibly EXPANDED edition of Web & Starship. This 1984 award-winner is back to win new fans... and maybe more awards!
Web & Starship: Game Design Pillars
about 8 years ago
– Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 11:51:23 AM
Web & Starship: Game Design Pillars
by Greg Costikyan
Three-Player Game
One of my main objectives with Web & Starship was to create an interesting three-player game. This may seem an odd objective in the Eurogame era, in which three-player versions of games are almost universal; but creating a three player game when competition is direct and head-to-head is far more difficult than doing so in a “solitaire gamed played simultaneously,” with players able to affect each other indirectly if at all – which is what most Eurogames are.
If players can attack each other directly, three-player games tend to devolve quickly into two-against-one, with the “one” likely screwed. This is not fun.
My solution was to create a game in which wars are of limited duration, with a build-up period between them; the idea being that the enforced stop allows people to reconsider their strategic options, renegotiate their relationships, and perhaps go a different way in the next war.
It still tends to be a game of “whack the leader,” but that is perhaps appropriate in a three-player game; if one player is in the lead, the others combine against them, so the game remains tense through the end (ideally).
Asymmetric Warfare
When I designed the game, I had been doing a fair bit of research into naval warfare in the Early Modern era. Heavily gunned sailing ships dominated in the Atlantic much earlier than they did in the Mediterranean, where galleys remained the dominant ship of war into the 18th century. But throughout the era, the two had difficulty coming to grips with each other; until naval gunnery got better, sailing ships with cannon had problems striking fleet, agile galleys; and galleys, despite their high manpower strength, had problems swarming over the high sides of sailing ships. Two competing systems of warfare, that have troubles coming to grips with each other.
I wanted to try to recreate that dynamic in Web & Starship.
The Pereen are limited to slower-than-light probes that deliver gateways, which then allow instant army deployment. But their probes are susceptible to destruction by defending ships, and thus have problems getting into systems defended by the Gwynhyfarr (or Terrans). Yet if they manage to slip in, they can funnel their entire army through the gateway and overwhelm defenders.
In contrast, the Gwynhyfarr can travel everywhere, but have difficulty conquering Pereen worlds, because the Pereen can easily concentrate their forces at the point of conflict.
Two competing systems of warfare that have difficulty coming to grips with each other.
The Terrans are initially weak, but since they can use both technologies, have an advantage against both.
Game-as-Novel
I wanted the game to play out in the fashion of hard SF novel, like those of Poul Anderson among others. I wanted it to be possible for players to tell the events of the game to each other after the fact, and imagine that a narrative had occurred – not directly, in the fashion of a graphic adventure, but as an epiphenomenon of play.
I wanted players to feel like they had experienced the game equivalent of a hard-SF story.
Hard SF
Of course, FTL is pretty nigh impossible as far as we know. But I wanted the game to have the feel of Campbellian science fiction; when things beyond the science we know are posited, they are limited, and the rules we establish for how they work are consistent.
I wanted to game to feel as if, adopting its premises – the possibility of FTL travel, the existence of two nearby alien civilizations – the game itself was a plausible representation of a possible future. Among other things, that's why the star map is based on reality; the stars shown on the map are in their correct positions relative to Sol in 3D space. Not all nearby stars are depicted; I made the assumption (which may well be incorrect) that M-class dwarf stars are too old and small to harbor inhabitable planets.
Series
Web & Starship was imagined as part of a series of games exploring different scenarios for what we might find when we got to the stars. The only other published game I consider part of the series is Trailblazer, which I designed for Metagaming; it's a space trading game, and assumes we're alone, at least in our neighborhood. I also designed a never-published game I called Terra Uber Alles, in which an emerging human civilization discovers an old, powerful, but declining empire in its region of space. I never got it to the point where I was happy with it, and ultimately decided that GDW's Imperium was the game I wanted, so not a lot of point in pursuing my own design.
Earth Day Special for the Terrans
about 8 years ago
– Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 11:50:54 AM
For the remainder of Earth Day (and into Saturday a bit to allow other time zones an opportunity too), a specially-priced version of the Terran Special Edition is available. For this day only this special edition is priced at the same $85 as the Deluxe Edition, which makes the signed and numbered print a free bonus!
If you're currently at the Deluxe Edition pledge level, then you may wish to change your pledge to the Special Edition, and if you're currently watching the project at WEB or STARSHIP, then you may wish to secure a copy of this specially-priced edition.
In any event, Happy Earth Day and thanks for supporting the project. We're well past the 20% funding level and Kickstarter metrics say that 81% of all projects that exceed 20% will be fully funded, so we're a virtual lock. Now it's just a matter of how widely we can spread the word.
