VBAM Games Forums

(redacted for peevishness)
I would like an update on progress.

It it truly amazing how often you pop in to post another of these "You all suck" topics.

You know, you are right. It is a bit churlish of me. I should have more restraint. I get frustrated, but I should just let it go. I have done a little reviewing of the rules and have offered to join the testers group (which they accepted but then never followed through with), so I have a bit of... not stake in it but some interest.
But to be fair, I only post every couple months, and it actually does have a tendency to get the only responses forthcoming.
And, now that I look at it, I have posted what I could as about 8 'please communicate better, damnit!' posts... in the 4 years since I have been giving feedback on the rules.... does that really amaze you?

Wanting more communication is good - I happen to be with you on that. The issue is that you chose to make your 'requests' in an extremely negative tone.

I trust that work on the rules is still progressing, that has been the case in months past and is probably the same still. Unfortunately I believe the work they do on VBAM is in addition to their regular jobs so undoubtedly the rules are sometimes thrust on the backburner in favour of commitments to the regular job or other "real life" concerns like, family time or taking an evening to relax. Coming from a perspective where I'm trying to develop some starship combat rules myself I know that it can often be difficult to find time or energy outside of the regular job to get things done.

It may also be that if there was a reluctance to post anything it was born from a situation where there's nothing to report. If an individual wasn't able to find time to do the work he wants to do then posting a report about the state of the project being unchanged in the past month may not be the most appealing, particularly if one has already run into problems meeting a previous goal.

Having said that it would be good if a forum crawl was part of their regular routine so these sort of frustrations can be avoided if only to reassure some fans that all is well.

For my part, I find it pretty remarkable that they've managed to publish as many books as they have in the past given the work was done in addition to their regular jobs and given that track record I have every confidence that second edition is on its way. Perhaps after the most recent changes to the rules have been adequately playtested.

I can report that the playtest game is ongoing. They just ran a combat via email on the playtest group over the last couple weeks between fleets of somewhere around 30-50 ships per side + 20-30 fighters per side. They are tweaking and polishing some rules based on that.

Still some ambiguities in the playtest rules, but they are working on polishing them out.

Hi everyone,

We are moving through the playtest nicely. While I am pushing the playtest turns and forcing the group to play out the battles (I think it helps expose rule oddities that Tyrel and I take for granted), Tyrel is putting the final pass on the rules. We are at the point we are finishing the minutia of a blockade, which really does mean we are just cleaning up details at this point.

-Jay