Federation Commander

Mike wrote:A work like that would require an entirely new paradigm for ADB. While it would be nice, I'm imagining that the amount of time or personnel required to do it would not be a profitable investment them. It would be aimed at a very narrow audience with a limited potential of return.

"The General War in the SFU"

???

Would it? at the moment all work is aimed at whatever subset of people play the game in question. Whilst a work like that is aimed at all who play any SFU based game, from SFB, FC, ACTA, PD, Starmada, F&E etc etc. It appears to me to be aimed at about as wide an audience as you could get for ADB. There's a lot of 'history' for the SFU but it is scattered all over in old publications. Where are newer players who didn't get into SFB 25 years ago, and may be playing games like ACTA, expected to go if they'd like some good comprehensive background?

One option could be to take a look at games like BattleTech, where support for various eras and settings is handled with different print and PDF publications.


At the moment, Catalyst Game Labs divide the present BT timeline into six eras, and have a series of sourcebooks set in one or more of these time periods. For example, there is a print-based volume covering the Reunification War (the defining conflict that was fought by the nascent Star League against the then-independent states of the Periphery), while a smaller PDF-only volume looks at the preceding Age of War (fought using primitive BattleMechs in the years prior to the formation of the Star League).

Also, alternate settings and locations have been given a similar treatment. Another example is in the early Succession Wars era (which were fought in the wake of the Star League's collapse). Next year will see historical files set in the Inner Sphere showing the early Succession Wars play out. But at the same time, there is already a print volume which follows the exiles who fled the Inner Sphere and who went on to become the Clans, and a PDF-only follow-up showing how Clan society evolved from those early generations of exiles into the kind of factions that would crash back into the Inner Sphere during Operation REVIVAL. (And another recent volume cast a broad net into the Deep Periphery as of 3095, showing a variety of far distant human societies who have developed at a distant remove from the Inner Sphere; some of whom had been "out there" for so long that they entirely skipped over the rise and fall of the Star League itself.)

Each of those files come with rules enabling both tabletop and RPG campaigns set in the era in question, with specific options for notable regiments or major personalities to help this kind of setup.


In principle, something similar could be done to both highlight a major era or conflict in the Alpha Octant (Early Years, General War, etc) or to provide a solid introduction to various non-Alpha settings (Omega, LMC, Triangulum, and so on).

Right now, perhaps the closest thing we have to that is the series of faction sourcebooks for Prime Directive; but perhaps there might be other options on the table which may help bring the Star Fleet Universe to life.

Nerroth wrote:One option could be to take a look at games like BattleTech, where support for various eras and settings is handled with different print and PDF publications.


At the moment, Catalyst Game Labs divide the present BT timeline into six eras, and have a series of sourcebooks set in one or more of these time periods.

That was maybe the sort of thing I was thinking about late last night, or source books for RPGs. What's more its not uncommon to do these as nice deluxe hardbacks. I can quite easily persuade myself to spend a lot more on a nicely done comprehensive hard back background book than I might spend on some paperback game.

I have no idea what would be involved in such a work, but as a customer I think FedCom seems to have got the point that there really isn't much more that I think ADB can sell me. There may be a few more epacks, and maybe attack products, but do they have the ships to make much more of them. I have no real interest in the other ADB games. The one thing that stands out to me as something I would actually quite like is that sort of background book that isn't tied to a specific game - or if it is then make it FedCom :

Well, the simple answer is that A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GENRAL WAR is on the website and has been for years. You can find it on the master index easily enough and it is exactly what you asked for.

It would not be that difficult to gather up all of the "history and background articles" into a single Mark-1 publication. The problem is that is only half of the data. The rest is scattered in scenario and ship backgrounds and in background paragraphs of various fiction stories. That, too, could be gathered into a Mark-02 history book. The Empire sourcebooks already exist and are massive things that cannot really be incorporated into another books (they would just make it four times as big), but would be part of a set. Remember that the RPG empire sourcebooks have less than 10% RPG material (maybe less than that) and are mostly reading material. So it would be very efficient to buy the Klingon book and ignore a few pages of weapons charts.

Rewriting it all into one cohesive book would be a monstrous task and I doubt there is much of a market for any version of a history book, so we'd have to go with one of the low-work versions.

But, sure, we take the general war history, the timeline, the empire backgrounds, and bind them into a book for you. Don't even ask about e23 however. The original Mark 1 version would be half of the size of the Mark 2 version