Converting Established games to VBAM for campaigns.

[Sting52jb]

For Christmas i'm getting a few fleets from the new Firestorm Armada game. I'm looking to possibly run a small campaign using the VBAM campaign rules but am looking for some advice on how to stat out the different races available using the rules presented in the VBAM Menageri book

such as obviously the Aquans would be Aquatic. the Drindrazi would be Aggressive. the Dictorate sound to be Cybernetic.

Also thinking about doing this for a few other game systems for example the game Galactic Knights,

The Aquarian Alliance Stellar Forces would obviously have the Aquatic racial trait. The Carnivorian Republic Star Forces could have the Fearsome racial trait. while the Entomolian Imperial Fleet could possibly have the Hivemind racial trait.

Also thinking about the different races from Full Thrust, Cold Navy, the major races from Star Trek (Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Gorn, Tholian) and how you could represent the Empire, Rebellion, and Mon Calamari from Star Wars and the Colonial, Cylons from Battlestar Galatcica as these are all games I would like to run using the VBAM campaign rules. I'm open to Ideas any other major race from an established Sci-fi World as well.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

[Tyrel Lohr]

A lot of the Menagerie trait assignments are pretty subjective and require you to sit down and think about what the empire's core traits are. As you pointed out, some of them are extremely obvious, while others are a little more difficult.

I can't speak to the Firestorm Armada or Galactic Knights settings, but as for some of the Star Trek and Star Wars races these options stand out:

Federation: Gifted Negotiators, Expansionist
Klingons: Aggressive, Honorable
Romulans: Sneaky, Xenophobic
Cardassians: Master Tacticians: Maneuvers??
Gorn: Physical Conditioning
Tholian: Xenophobic
Ferengi: Mercantile
Galactic Empire: Prejudiced (non-Humans)
Rebel Alliance: Expert Wing Commanders, Sneaky
Mon Calamari: Aquatic, Master Tacticians: Command, (maybe Shipwrights, too.)

I know that Sean Martinez has done several sci-fi race conversions, and you can check out his website at: http://www.big-freaky-sean.org/VBAM/ . He had some B5 conversions, too, but I can't find them on his site anymore.

-Tyrel

[Sting52jb]

Thanks Tyrel those are good starting off points. I have the B5 races covered i believe. Most of them were in an issue of the web magazine The Great Machine.

[Bandit]

All the B5 Races are on my Hard Drive. I am getting ready to relaunch my website and do more with gaming on it. Especially VBAM. Love the game.

[gstano]

My apologies to Sting52jb for not providing any insight to his existing question. However, he brings up the question of converting other games.

Bandit - As you work on your new web page, are you planning on redoing the B5Wars ships as 2nd Edition VBAM stats? I am curious as I would like to know if others have contemplated this. Tyrel provided some great guidance to create 1E VBAM stats for B5Wars and I am thinking of using this as a guideline for what values to fill in for the 2nd Edition ship construction promotional rules. With the 1st Edition as a guideline, I could then add in any special parameters. Overall, looking things over there does not appear to be a 100% identical switch from 1st to 2nd Edition, so I am looking to see what others have contemplated.

Thanks!

[Charles Lewis]

We have talked about providing upgrade packs with revised ship stats for the various published sourcebooks so that owners of 1E material can use it with the 2E rules. I won't guarantee that's going to happen, but I intend to do something along those lines for Jovian Chronicles.

I would advise anyone contemplating such work to wait until the 2E unit design rules are settled, as I'd hate for anyone to invest a fair amount of time only to see the work wasted after a significant change occurs (which happened to me in some early iterations of a JC upgrade).

[gstano]

Charles,

Thanks for the heads-up. I agree that it would be bad to put a ton of time into things only to have major changes occur. I can see one tough issue with the conversion is the fact that the 2E ships have more complexity in them than the 1E designs. At the end of the day, for a conversion the 1E stats may serve best as a guideline and go from there.