- paulbaalham
Star Trek or Star Wars?
Photo by aksoy
I’m a big ol’ geek. One of my many nerdy interests is Science Fiction. My two favourite Science Fiction things are Star Trek and Star Wars. While it isn’t true 100% of the time, I prefer to think of Star Trek as a more thoughtful, cerebral show and Star Wars to be home to fast paced awesome action.
For Spaceship 47, I started off wanting to make a board game where it felt like for 90 minutes you were in a fast paced action flick. But is that suited to a board game? Where people like to mull over their turns to make sure they take the “correct” decision? As the idea is that the game takes place over 10 sessions, building up an over arching narrative, would something a bit slower paced and more cerebral be better?
Tonight I played Adventure Games: The Dungeon with my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was quite puzzly and I could see how a version of Spaceship 47 that used similar rules could play out over the 10 sessions. Am I just being enticed by the coolness of the new (to me at least, The Dungeon has been out for about a year).
I think what I really need to do is take as many steps back as possible and think about what kind of story I want to tell. The stories I want to tell are:
The over arching story that the group are trying to get through – taking back Earth,
The story for each session – rescuing the Chent Ambassador, exploring an abandoned spaceship etc.
Each character having to go through their own individual story as well. E.g Revenge, overcoming addiction etc.
What type of game would serve this best? In other words, should I be making a Star Wars board game or a Star Trek board game?
It might seem like I should aim for a system that can handle both action packed vignettes (Star Wars) as well as something a bit slower and more thoughtful (Star Trek), but I am a big believer in the rules supporting the tone of a game and I don’t want to try and reach out to both sides and fall through the cracks.
I am definitely going to ponder this a bit more and try and work out exactly what the game needs to support for the stories that I want to tell.