I have a rough idea, inspired by Advanced Squad Leader (no, don't run, they just call me mad!). Basically, the players of ASL maintain a sort of publically available database where people who have played a scenario can report their results and make comments. It keeps track of roughly how often certain scenarios are played versus others, if there is a skew towards one side or the other, and of course has feedback on what others think of it, ideas for tweaking it, and so forth.

Would something like this be something people are interested in? I'll dig around for the ASL site and post a link to that here in a bit.

By Justin Howell (Jhhowell) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 04:08 pm: Edit

I made something like what you're proposing for my own personal use. Honestly the main point was just to help me remember what product a scenario was in, what races were involved, and what looked cool. There are some very brief and sometimes cryptic comments about scenarios I've actually played, i.e. "broken", "fun", "good with beginners" etc. In fact I posted a link to this Excel file in Specific Scenario Tactics on July 8, 2002. I don't think I've done anything with it since around then...

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 04:30 pm: Edit

It's a bit of that, but I'm also curious in knowing what other players think of different scenarios, as scenario play is my favorite flavor of SFB.

By Mike Ryan (Mikeryan) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 05:39 pm: Edit

It's an interesting idea. I always like reading the Playtesters Comments for a scenario when they're there. They usually offer some interesting insight into the scenario. Sometimes, they even provide me with a phrase for promoting the scenario with other players (like the "half Byzantine horse trading, half poker" line from "Would You Buy a Used Figther From This Man?").

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 05:51 pm: Edit

That, and with J2 and R10 adding new rules and systems, it would be neat to see suggests and reports on how those things impact previous scenarios.

I don't have the skill to do any kind of auto-updating database, but I could prob help maintain a website, and have some space on which to host it.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 06:02 pm: Edit

Probably too many scenarios to easily handle a database. I would like to see a listing of estimated scenario duration (in hours) and best scenarios for certain conditions (like unusual number of players).

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 06:13 pm: Edit

ASL has a goodly number of scenarios as well, so I don't think the number of scenarios would be a big deal. Besides, isn't that the point of databases?

By Ed Grondin (Ensignedg) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 06:16 pm: Edit

Richard....

Since most published scenarios (historical ones anyways)are 2 to 3 players tops. The best thing I can think of for unusual numbers (say 4 or more people) would be to play some of the larger scenarios and split the 'players' into teams.

Other than that consider playing something like

Dreadnaughts over Orion

Space Hockey

Assigned Target (I think that is the name, the free-for-all where everyone gets a random target at the begining of each turn).

But I agree a note indicating average play time would be good. Though with so many things that can influence game time this may prove to difficult

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 06:25 pm: Edit

Play time could just as easily be a full general descriptors:

A couple of hours.
An afternoon.
All day.
The whole dang weekend.

By Justin Howell (Jhhowell) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 06:32 pm: Edit

The number of scenarios isn't that big of a problem. My list has 205 so far, of which 19 have 3+ players, since people are talking about those.

I agree that average play time is a tough quantity to include. For example, SH37 "Would You Buy a Used Figther From This Man?" went pretty quickly when our group played it, for reasons I won't get into now. But I can easily see that being an extremely lengthy scenario with different players drawing different victory conditions...

An idea I had but never had time to include in my file is to list the number of ships, fighters, and PFs on each side. That information should give at least a rough idea of how complicated and (in theory) lengthy a given scenario is.

By Ed Grondin (Ensignedg) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 06:33 pm: Edit

Richard

The last scenario I was thinking of may have also been the Captain's Round.... Both Assigned Target and The Captain's Round were in Module T (I don't have T-2000 but I imagine that they would be there as well)

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 06:43 pm: Edit

I would be happy with just a Scenario annex with the scenarios in order with information like: Title, year, size class (this would have to do with the number of ships), number of Players and product appearence.

If it were a database then being able to list by any of the above would be great. For instance instead of the order by Scenario number, list by year etc.

Click on a scenario to post/read comments.

By Richard Sherman (Rich) on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 08:02 pm: Edit

I'd definitely be interested in some sort of database regarding scenarios. Published scenarios are my favorite way to play SFB.

By Justin Howell (Jhhowell) on Saturday, May 24, 2003 - 10:10 pm: Edit

OK, I've updated my scenario database based on some of the above commentary. Year, number of ships, and whether or not fighters or PFs are involved are now included. This is complete for BS, AM, C1-2, R2-7, O1-3, Y1 (236 scenarios total). The module M scenarios lack the above detail, and I have no clue what's in J1-2, K, X1, C3-4, R1, O4, or Captain's Logs. If people want, they can send me the info and I'll put it up, or you can take what I've done and add to it yourself.

Sadly the spreadsheet format is not well-suited to extensive player commentary, which many of us would like to see. I don't see an obvious way around this that would still preserve the ease of sorting and updating that the spreadsheet format offers. But I'll be the first to admit that I'm a total novice at this kind of thing!

sfbscen.xls

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, May 25, 2003 - 09:35 pm: Edit

Wild. One suggetion, put a filter on the items so users can quickly find that 3 players scenario with fighters but no PFs. Go to Data, Filter, Auto Filter to try it.

By Justin Howell (Jhhowell) on Monday, May 26, 2003 - 04:26 pm: Edit

Tos, thanks! That's a neat trick.

By Scott Stanford (Stanford) on Friday, October 20, 2006 - 03:06 am: Edit

SFB Scenario Database

Many moons ago I entered some summary scenario information into a Filemaker Pro database. The reason was that I wanted to be able to pick scenarios based on certain criteria (e.g. includes pirates, or not too many fighters, or only certain races or ships, etc.). The file also included information on where to find the scenario (e.g. the scenario number or which Captain's Log to look in). Then I stopped playing SFB for a while, and I certainly haven't kept up with the more recent Captain's Logs.

However, it occurs to me that such a database might benefit the SFB community at-large, helping people rediscover some of the great scenarios of old (like Harbor Patrol, my personal favorite). And since I made the file, the Web has matured to a point where I'll bet such a database could be made into a living document by someone with the time, interest, and a bit of html.

That person not being me, I've run the idea by SVC, and he's given his OK for me to find someone out there who wants to take this idea and run with it. I've posted an MS Word document describing the file and how it works here:

http://www.box.net/public/f85alx3syq

A list of the almost 500 scenarios that have already been input is here:

http://www.box.net/public/zoaadikx0m

If this looks like something you're interested in, drop me a line.

Sorry in advance for crossposting--hard to figure out what exactly the right forum is.