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WE WANT YOUR COMMENTS!
Stephen V. Cole writes: We have merged the two websites. The combined site now has a new front page, site map, and index, making it a lot easier to use. You are welcome to comment on the changes, but more importantly, please suggest changes, and check the changes we make. Here is my e-mail: Design@StarFleetGames.com or you can comment on either forum.
A POEM I WROTE ONCE
Steve Cole admits: Yes, I used to write poetry, lots of it. I won a contest back in High School and had a poem published in a book of poems by high school students from all over the country. The poem went like this: === The Universe felt the reverberation. The black box fell; 'twas man's decision. To end himself; God's greatest vision. No heavens slept, for none existed. === It didn't really have a hidden or secret meaning and I'm not really sure why no heavens existed or why they would have been asleep if they had existed. It was just a weird little thing I did and submitted, guessing (correctly) that the judges who picked such things would think it was just what they wanted. Somewhere in my house is the only copy of my longest poem, The Song of Tnnqvi, which was ten pages. I don't remember much of it, and fondly hope that before I die I can find and read that poem again. I do remember a few snatches. Basically, God made the Earth and Satan made hell, and Satah built a tunnel from Hell to Earth so he could go and make trouble. Human warrior-monks, selected by God, built a fort right smack in front of the tunnel, so that the demons would have to fight their way out. After a heroic battle, Tnnqvi (commander of the fort) decided to counter-attack, leading his troops down the tunnel into Hell itself, to kill Schmaltz (the son and half-brother of Satan) and somehow close the tunnel. By the time Tnnqvi got to the Valley of Schmaltz (riding his horse backwards because he was confused by a blow to the head), all of his men had been killed, but so had everyone in Hell except Satan and Schmaltz, so Tnnqvi killed Schmaltz and walked all the way back to Earth, closing the tunnel with his last breath. Like I said, I can remember a couple of snatches of it... === "Charge for the Schmaltz!" he said, then he was struck in the head, down from behind and away. == And then, then they came back. But not all, not all of Tnnqvi. Missing an ear and a toe, Causing him pain and great woe, Trailing his blood in the snow. === Anyway, that's all I remember. When I find the manuscript, I will post it. I also wrote a lot of sappy love poetry to my high school girlfriend and one love poem to the girl I married.
New Rules For Setting Up At Origins
This is Steven Petrick posting. We here at ADB are all abuzz about the new rules that Origins is imposing on unloading and setting up booths in the exhibit hall. There are supposed to be scheduled periods for each company and allocated times for each company to get its vehicle into the parking area and get things unloaded and into the exhibit hall. We have a lot of stuff, and are an essentially two-man operation with some help (always appreciated) from the players, but this year we may actually be pleading for people to show up and help us, at least with getting the van unloaded. (We do not as yet know what loading is going to look like for departure.) Part of this is that Origins has said that the exhibit hall will not provide any carts to assist in the operations (not that that would normally have much affect on us based on past experience, but if no one has carts then everyone is going to be making more trips to occupy their booth space leading, it would seem, to more congestion and delays). There can be little doubt that the economy is affecting Origins, and they are doing their best to remain viable, and these new rules may well be part of that, so we are not angry at them for doing what they may have to do to survive, but we are seriously concerned about the effects these rules may have on our operations. There is also a new "meet the retailers" period scheduled on the first day, which will require SVC to be in his booth when we would normally have the "sing-along", and this may force rescheduling of the sing-along.
FRANK BROOKS WRITES: FEDERATION COMMANDER Play-by-Email Playing FEDERATION COMMANDER by Email is an alternative to playing Face-to-Face. While there are a few differences (i.e., your opponent isn't sitting across the table from you), it is the same game. The basic gist of the FEDERATION COMMANDER Play-by-Email (PBEM) system is that you and your opponent submit your orders for the turn to a moderator via Email. The moderator then processes them, and sends a "Sitrep" (Situation Report) to the players via Email. You receive the results, write up your next set of orders, and then submit your orders once again. The process is repeated until the game is completed. Sounds simple? That's because it IS! It'll take a little getting used to (after all, what doesn't?), but once you've got the hang of it, you'll be lobbing photon torpedoes (or whatever your weapon of choice is) at opponents from all over the world. Every FEDERATION COMMANDER PBEM game has at least three participants: two or more players and one moderator. The moderator's purpose is to accept orders from the players and carry them out, reporting the results of those orders to all players. While (s)he is not a player, the moderator fulfills a very important role in the game. Good moderators and good players make for a good, enjoyable game of FEDERATION COMMANDER. Moderating a FEDERATION COMMANDER PBEM game is also an excellent way to learn more about the FEDERATION COMMANDER rules. While there are some disadvantages to PBEM (it does take longer to finish a game), there are advantages as well. You can play against people in other parts of the world (how often do you get to Australia, anyway?), you can play multiple games at once, and you can have large multi-player games (without worrying about running out of chips and soda). For more information about playing FEDERATION COMMANDER PBEM, please visit the Play-by-Email section of ADB, Inc.'s website at www.StarFleetGames.com/pbemgames and we will be happy to help you.
Stephen V. Cole writes: Our website is vast and full of fun, useful, and interesting documents, charts, play aids, illustrations, and other things. Most of the best stuff is found at: http://starfleetgames.com/playerresources.shtml which has lists of resources and links to other lists of resources. Take a look down the list and see if there are documents you always wanted and could never find or documents which you never knew you were looking for.
This Week at ADB, Inc., 11-17 April 2010
Steve Cole reports: The weather was rainy all week, which (in this part of the country) is an unusual and good thing. The flood of spam continued as before, with about 4000 per day, every day, of every week, all year. Sigh. We got the Pegasus and B9 minis and they are nice and will ship on schedule. My (SVC's)week was calm and productive. I finished the Romulan Armada book. I did and uploaded more staff medal pages. Inspired by the BBS, I did the Star Fleet Battle Force page of CL#41.I went to the Tea Party on 15 April with 1500 of my closest friends. Petrick stayed busy on CL#41, R12, and C3A. Mike and Leanna stayed busy on orders and trying to build up the inventory. Leanna plans to convert FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPIRE into our first Kindle Book. Joel got the covers for CL#41 and Romulan Armada done and sent them to press. We got them in time on Friday. Joel continued to fight copyright pirate sites. Joel got a tour of the printing plant that did the covers. Jean kept working on PD Federation (mostly on the Fralli, who cause major problems with the rules) and reported that our page on Facebook was up to 255 fans. We had some visitors on Tuesday from the Amarillo Enterprise Network, who support small entrepreneurial businesses, and are old friends of ours. I'd love to report that the house remodel project is over, but it's not. The company doing the granite vanity in the powder room backed out of the deal and another company cannot do it to next week. Even then, I'm not sure when the replacement windows will get done. Electric power went out at 5:30 Friday, but was restored at 6:50. We used the time to go get dinner.
How to Find Opponents
Steve Cole writes: Many gamers are looking for new opponents. This is nothing new. When I was a teenager, there were maybe four wargamers in Amarillo that I knew, but there must have been more as the one store that carried Avalon Hill games (then the only wargames) would sell one or two now and then that my friends and I knew we didn't buy. Funny, it never once occurred to us to ask the store manager to give our phone numbers to the other guys. When I was in college, SPI (then the second wargame company and rapidly becoming larger and more innovative than Avalon Hill) had an opponent wanted list. I sent in my dollar to get it, and found only one person (of the 20 on the list) who was within 120 miles; the first and last person on the list were each 450 miles away (in opposite directions). These days, the concept of contacting other gamers has had decades to mature, and works much better, and you have a lot of ways to do it. For best results, do all of them. You can go to the Commander's Circle and enter your data (as much or as little as you are comfortable with) and perhaps find opponents near you. We are gaining new sign-in's every day, and since it's free you can try it every month or two and find out of somebody near you has signed in. You can go to the Forum and find the area where local stores and groups post announcements and invitations and let people know you're around. How silly would you feel if you found out that the guy who you've been arguing with on the forum for years actually lives in your town. (That HAS happened.) Feel free to go to your local store and ask them to let you post a notice looking for opponents. You could also run a demo of FEDERATION COMMANDER (or any of our games) and "grow your own" opponents. If anybody already plays the game you demo, they'll doubtless drop by just to swap phone numbers. Many towns have community bulletin boards on the local cable company's "home" channel. These are variously free or cost just a couple of dollars. It's hit-and-miss, but you could get lucky. (When I commanded Company C of the 1-39 MPs, I gained a dozen new recruits in a year that came from cable TV.) You could also buy a cheap want ad in the newspaper or the free advertising newspaper (American's Want Ads or whatever yours is called) found in quickie marts. The quickest result, probably, is Starlist. Go to our Legacy site and look for the button that says Player Resources. Under that menu is a link for Starlist. Enter your data in the form, and you'll get a list of local players back. (This may take a day or two as it is done by hand.) Starlist is the most effective hunt for new players because the database has some five thousand players in it, far more than all of the other sources combined. The only drawback is that Starlist works with full information (name and address) and those who are seriously concerned about identity theft often find this uncomfortable. In all reality, however, Starlist would not give an identity thief any more information than your local phone book would, and if that's enough for those criminals to operate, they would be vastly more likely to use the phone book than to request a copy of Starlist. The original website has a bulletin board system and the eighth item on the main menu is "seeking opponents". You can post a notice there (and search the previous postings). Again, you can post as much or as little information as you are comfortable with. Many of those on Starlist and StarFleetGames.com/discus will be players of STAR FLEET BATTLES, but most of those can be convinced to play FEDERATION COMMANDER. Indeed, over half of the names on Starlist are people who quit playing STAR FLEET BATTLES for lack of opponents (or because SFB was too complex for them or their opponents) and most of those are ready recruits for the faster cleaner FEDERATION COMMANDER game system. With more effort, you can post opponent wanted notices in a whole lot of boardgame sites (see the links list on our site). If there is a game convention within driving distance, it's worth a trip to see if you might find someone who is also within driving distance. If there is a game club in your home town, or a store with a gaming area, go there and set up the game and wait for somebody to ask what it is. (Even better, take a friend who will play the game with you so you won't be bored.) If there is a star trek club in your home town, show them FEDERATION COMMANDER or Star Fleet Battle Force. There are people who have printed a card with the logo of one of our games and their Email address and left these in the windows of their cards who got Emails from other gamers in their home towns who were seeking opponents. You can go always go to SFB Online and play FEDERATION COMMANDER on-line with live opponents from around the world for the princely sum of $5 per month. You might even stumble into somebody local. There are probably more ways than this to find opponents, but unless you live in a cave somewhere, you can almost certainly find a new friend within a short while by trying these methods.
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