Part of the reason I decided to knock Spaceship 47: The Board Game on the head, is because there are a lot of story driven co-operative board games coming out and even though Spaceship 47 had a few novel things going for it (almost instantaneous set-up time, character arcs etc.), I don’t think it would stand out enough from the crowd.
I have been wondering about other more original ways of progressing with Spaceship 47. I’ve come up with one half-decent idea and one that isn’t very good. here they are.
Set of Interacting CYOA Books
The first (and I admit, not very good) idea I had is a set of Choose Your Own Adventure books where each book is dedicated to a different character. However, at certain points in the book, your character would need certain information from a character in another book. The idea is that you and your friends would read the different books and then interact with each other when needed.
“Hey, I am breaking into this star base and need a key code, any of you come across one?”
“Oh yeah, a few chapters back, I found the following code: 23468966966338” etc.
CYOA Book with Board Driven Combats
The other idea I had was an A4 sized Choose Your Own Adventure book, where at certain points in the adventure, your choice would lead you into a combat. That section of the book would have one of the pages as a map for you to play out the combat on. The opposite page would have the information needed to run the combat (enemy stats, things that happen on turns etc.). The outcome of the combat would determine which section of the book you would progress to.
As well as a pencil and some dice that you need with certain books of this type, you would need something to mark where all of the characters are on the map while the combat plays out.
I’ll keep blogging if I come up with any other ideas.