My Life for the Fleet! [In the Lab]


Some loose notes on a hack of Don Eskridge's The Resistance, a most excellent variant of traditional Werewolf/Mafia games.

My Life for the Fleet!
Players are captains of ships that barely escaped a planet-wide hostile alien attack. The only sanctuary is a fabled planet on the other side of the galaxy. The fleet is on its way there, but must collect what few supplies they can along the way. Some of the crew, even the captains themselves, are secretly covert operatives for the alien menace.

The basic structure of Resistance remains the same. A series of missions, each requiring different subset of players to be team members pending majority approval, then execution of the mission in which spies can sabotage the whole thing.

The twist is that each mission asks players to volunteer a certain number of crewmen for each mission. Each mission requires a certain number and any captain can offer as many crewmen as they wish. Each mission has its rewards, including essential supplies to last the fleet until they reach sanctuary.

Each mission also has unexpected costs, that get worse if the spies sabotage the mission. A mission can still succeed despite the costs, if the captains are willing to sacrifice more crewmen.

So this is can go a lot of ways. It could be almost a co-operative game, in the spirit of Forbidden Island, where the captains need certain artifacts to chart the course to sanctuary. It could be like Catan, where collecting certain resources allows you to buy gear that improves the chances of a future mission's success. Heck, each player could be the captain of a different kind of ship, each providing different powers to the rest of the group.

Now, I haven't played the BSG board game, but I know there is a strong "Are you a Cylon?" element in it. If this loose idea is too close to that game, I'll toss it in the heap for later mining. If not, I can pursue this for further development next year. Your thoughts?

Comments

  1. TomgurgAugust 25, 2011 at 12:06 PM

    This is neat. I played The Resistance recently and it was fun. And I'm watching BSG. So I like this idea. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Daniel SolisAugust 25, 2011 at 12:15 PM

    Did you play Resistance with the plot cards? I haven't had the opportunity yet, but they seem like they add a great variety of play.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Marc MajcherAugust 25, 2011 at 12:33 PM

    I introduced The Resistance to some gamer friends a weekend or two ago, and their reaction was basically, "Awesome! This is just like the BSG board game without all the boring parts!" Which, yeah.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Daniel SolisAugust 25, 2011 at 1:00 PM

    Ouch! :P Hopefully I'm not just adding more cruft to an elegant game. I was hoping that the crewmen added this additional element of subterfuge.

    "How can I be a spy? I offered up my own crew for this mission! What about him? He hasn't contributed anything!"

    ReplyDelete
  5. Doho123August 27, 2011 at 11:18 PM

    Yes, this is pretty much the board game. Instead of crewmen, you are skill points.

    "To defeat crisis X, we need 10 points from skills Politics and Engineering". Everyone plays cards facedown, and reveals, politics card and engineering count as positive points, any other skill types count as negative.

    But you have to be careful about "tanking a check" as different characters draw from different skills. So if theres some piloting cards in the skill check above, you can be assured that only the players who are playing the pilots are the traitors.

    (well, its a bit more complicated than that since two random skill cards are added to the card play, and different skill cards can also be played as special moves, but that that's the general idea of it).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Daniel SolisAugust 28, 2011 at 12:02 AM

    Gotcha. I just posted some notes that make the game less about social deduction and more about resource management and pushing luck. Is it still too close to BSG?

    http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/notes-for-fleet-in-lab.html

    ReplyDelete

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