VBAM Games Forums

Hello,
I was wondering how suitable Vbam might be for my situation. I happen to be totally blind, and a fan of 4x style strategy games. I'm unable to play many of these on the computer, but am trying to find a reasonable substitute.
I would most likely play solo, if at all possible. The biggest issue I foresee is mapping. I don't know how necessary they are for this particular system. Moreover, I understand that generally, tactical battles are farmed out to another system of some sort. I wonder how much I might be able to handle abstractly?
Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. I love the idea of diplomacy, and long-running campaigns.

By default, Vbam's combats are resolved in the built-in abstract combat resolution module with adapting the ships to a tactical system as a side module (and significant selling point for many). The general idea is you use the abstract system for the unimportant/lopsided battles and take the really important/tactically interesting battles and bust out your minis and tactical rule system of choice.

As for mapping, it could be tricky to keep track of, but you might have in each system's stats a stat such as:

System Beta Draconis Jump Lanes
Restricted to System Sol
Major to System Alpha Centauri

System Sol Jump Lanes
Restricted to System Beta Draconis
Minor to System Alpha Centauri

That would give you the topology without needing a visible map.

Thanks. This is encouraging. I swear I had a copy of the first edition rules at some point, but can't remember which site I bought them from.

On the subject of other questions which I wonder about, how are non-player empires handled? Another system I'm interested in, StarFire, has fairly elaborate rules for its NPRs. It requires a hex map, which isn't super accessible. Could I theoretically play as one "player race," and encounter various aliens along the way?

Thanks for your thoughts.

The core book doesn't have rules for NPR empires as this is scheduled to be released in a later supplement.

From what I hear, most people who played 1e VBAM played it solo. If 2e is similar to 1e (which I have never played, but have read much about), once you run into a non-player empire, you'll roll on several charts to determine its "personality" - aggression, xenophobia, etc, size, tech level, and development, then they become additional empires that your run in addition to your own.

If I'm incorrect, I'm sure a designer and/or veteran will show up and correct me at some point.

That sounds very promising indeed.

I went ahead and purchased the first edition Campaign Moderator's Companion, as that seems to have much of the info on the type of campaign I'm interested in. A quick skim seems to suggest this will be super helpful.
I guess where I'm having trouble is figuring out how to get started. The emphasis on source materials is a bit daunting—it seems like I need to have a good idea of the particulars of the universe beforehand. This makes sense, I just can't help feeling minorly overwhelmed.

I guess the campaign I'd be interested in is the "exploration campaign,' with my race encountering NPEs as it expands. I'm unsure of how suitable the Campaign Guide and CMC are on their own for this. The details of fleets and tech years and such are a bit beyond me.

Any advice from folks who've done this sort of thing before would be greatly appreciated.

The 2e equivalent should be out soon, brand new and focused on making it easier/more streamlined. I've been waiting for it to jump in myself.

I'm looking forward to it.

I read that one of the big problems with doing 1E solo is the lack of a ship design system. I am curious what 2E can provide in that regard.

Is their an estimated date for the 2E material? Any chance for play testing? I'd love to hear from the author if possible

Sorry for the delay in replying to this conversation; I'm currently in the middle of getting ready to move to Cleveland, so everything is a bit delayed from where I hoped we'd be by now.

Mapping in a game is going to be a bit complicated in your situation, but I don't think it should be insurmountable. The 2e exploration campaign rules are going to focus on using a hex map to track the location of star systems on the map as you expand outward. I'm not sure if a map that has all of the hexes numbered would help out in that case or not. I think Iron Sky's idea of recording which jump lanes each system has and where they connect to is probably going to be the easiest way to track things.

The 1e Companion rules should work fine with the 2e Campaign Guide until the revised 2e Companion is available. I'd hoped to have those rules out to playtest by the end of this month, but I ended up taking a job in Ohio and am spending my time boxing and preparing for a move instead. By mid-October I should be back in a position to push forward and get those finished.

In any event, the usual strategy for playing a solo VBAM campaign is to pick an empire to play and roll up a home system to start out from. You can decide if you want a larger empire to start with, but starting with a single system is usually easier because it means less bookkeeping early on. Then you can start exploring jump lanes and finding new systems, and there is a chance that you will activate new empires as you explore systems. The rules in the Companion cover the diplomatic side of running the NPEs and how those interactions work. It is then left up to the player to use the NPE's Aggression, Integrity, and Xenophobia stats to decide what kind of actions that they might be interested in performing or how they may wish to spend their resources.

As for empires, the eight sample empires included in the 2e Campaign Guide give you a good selection of force lists that you can use in your solo campaigns. You could also mix and match units from the various force lists using the Tech Roulette optional rule in the CG to give each power a unique force list.

Combat is fairly abstract, and you wouldn't have to track unit locations on a map. You would just need to have a way to keep track of the stats for each unit and total the AS/AF values to perform the appropriate attacks. Then it is a matter of doing some fairly easy mental math (Total Stat x d6 / 10 in most cases) to see how much damage is assigned. If it becomes problematic to handle large numbers of units, you can always use the optional rule that doubles unit maintenance costs to limit the absolute number of units that you have to work with. This will keep encounter sizes smaller, which might be more manageable depending on how you are tracking things during a battle.

I'll try to think if I have any other insights that I can add, but I'd also appreciate any more questions that you might have and I'll try to answer them as best I can!

Thanks for getting in touch. I hope the move goes as well as such things can. I'm looking forward to seeing whatever does come out for 2E's solo rules.

A hex map probably isn't going to be very helpful for me. Even with numbered hexes it's still a fundamentally visual representation. If I had a Braille map or something of the sort that would be different, but I'm not sure how I'd begin creating such a thing. I think tracking jump routes is going to be the best for now.

I suppose the only way I can learn if this will work is to start somewhere, so I'll go through system generation tonight and see what happens. I did buy 2E, so that will help.

If I have any questions, I'll be sure to post them. Thanks for the enthusiasm

Mapping is likely to be the key problem to be overcome here, and I'm struggling to think of many good solutions to it. The one thing I can think of is that you could use a solution like the advanced system generation rules from the 1e Companion and have each star system represent a "star cluster." Maybe take a page from the Mass Effect game and have one system per cluster contain some sort of a "jump relay" so that it is the one place in the cluster that fleets can use to jump into or out of the cluster. You would then treat each system in the same star cluster as if they were connected by a major lane.

What that would do for you is reduce the number of jump lane connections that you have to keep track of. Instead you'd be more worried about which cluster a particular system was in. Exploration would then focus on unlocking these new clusters rather than exploring individual star systems. Or you could require empires to explore an unexplored jump lane to unlock a new cluster, then have to successfully explore to discover any systems other than the one where the jump relay is located.

The Commodore rules for advanced star systems in the 1e Companion should be usable here, just instead of multiple planets you'd have different star systems. For example, if you had a Minor system that was supposed to have 6 planets would instead be a star cluster containing 6 star systems. You would then use the 2e system generation rules to create statistics for those systems.

I'm just thinking that reducing the number of jump lanes that you have to track might simplify the map significantly and make it easier for you to organize without a visual reference. Admittedly, it would create a Pacific theater style "island hopping" situation where you'd be fighting for control of clusters rather than a more expansive galaxy map, but that might be an acceptable tradeoff for the ease of use benefits.

Please let us know how things go, and if you run into any readability problems with the books (especially the tables!) in case we need to help out in any way.

Sorry to jump in a bit late here, but there are some ideas we may be able to explore for playing.

First, would the hex or grid maps from the Federation Admiral playtest be useful? I could see it being something very regimented and easy to track. The nice thing is that with a standard hex map a 2e map could be made to overlay that. I would be happy to build it for you too.

Would you have any interest in online gaming if we could make that work? One of the fun things we get to do is run regular playtests and campaigns via email or forum. Right now I am running a With a Purpose playtest with five players and I think I could make it accessible.

And finally, would tactile maps be helpful? I have seen after a bit of research that special pens can be used for tactile traces. I would be happy to print a few maps and add the tactile layer to assist if you want one.

All the best,
Jay

Hi,

I'd love to try online play, I think. I feel like PBEM is a bit more accessible than a forum, but either approach might work.

I don't know about the maps. A big part of making it useable would probably involve putting Braille labels on them, and that's hard. I think I'll see how the textual list works for now.

As for the clusters idea, that's something to consider. I got a bit sidetracked last night, but hopefully can get something solo going at som point this week.

What was the Federation Admiral play test?

Please see below:

Caplin wrote:
I'd love to try online play, I think. I feel like PBEM is a bit more accessible than a forum, but either approach might work.

That could work! A lot of our games are very story driven and we spend almost as much time working our diplomacy and plotting as we do playing the actual game. Stay tuned for future game announcements here!

Caplin wrote: I don't know about the maps. A big part of making it useable would probably involve putting Braille labels on them, and that's hard. I think I'll see how the textual list works for now.

I found a few label makers and might be able to make something work. Let me know if you want me to give it a try. It is no problem.

Caplin wrote: As for the clusters idea, that's something to consider. I got a bit sidetracked last night, but hopefully can get something solo going at som point this week.

Yeah, Tyrel might really be on to something.

Caplin wrote: What was the Federation Admiral play test?

Federation Admiral was the campaign system for Amarillo Design Bureau that will almost certainly never see the light of day. The maps were all grid or hex based. So it was easy to assign coordinates to system. The chart would say Erasmus 25, 10. Then in column 25, row 10 you would find that system. It is something we talked about using in future books if there was interest.

-Jay