Federation Commander

I came to the SFU very late, so I don't have memories of what it was like with no publications from anyone during this time period. With Captain's Logs #17 and #18 going up together, it made me wonder what it was like for those of you who played SFB. Did you guess that ADB would emerge from TFG's ashes?

I was out of gaming during the Interregnum, so I don't have any memories. ADB was up and running gangbusters by the time I came back, in 2002.

I was one of the lucky ones.
We had a very active SFB / F&E group during the mid to late 90s (and still do). We met once a month for SFB, once a month for F&E ,and still found time the other two weekends of each month for PRGs and board games.

It wasn't until after the interognum was over and everyone was talking about it that we realized we hadn't purchased any new SFB or F&E stuff for over 5 years.

We've made up for it since!

Those are the four years that i was in high school. Good times.

My last 4 years in the Army, mostly focused on Micro Armor at that time (lack of SFB opponents) --
Battletech was the big thing on Ft Lewis at the time, also about the same time NY started the lead in toys ruckus that hit the miniatures business pretty hard ---
Also, the rise of PC games that hit table top gaming in the gut, along with the beginning of card games ---

My first son was born in 92 and my gaming fund ran dry. Then we lost our local game store about 93. I did a web search for some minis probably about 98 or 99 and saw that Task Force had gone under. I had no idea that ADB would be reborn. I was very glad when, just a couple of years ago, I found that it had.

Battletech is the game I've played the most since I started gaming in the late 80s and I was just getting into SFB in the early 90s. The guy who expaned my gaming horizon with SFB had EVERYTHING possible.

I started buying my own stuff in 94/95, and there was plenty of it on the market with what seemed like new items being released during that period so I didnt really notice. Bought a ton of minis and source material and was busy reading and painting when I wasn't engaging the enemies of the Empire in combat.

SFC (which I still play today) kinda killed off SFB for our group at the time and Battletech's learning curve was easier for new gamers.

Not at all suprised by ADB's continued success.

I was stationed at RAF St Athan, and had been just promoted to command my first Squadron. Fortunately I met a couple of SFB players there, and he played quite a few games (including an epic Ghostlight One scenario) over the interregnum. Didn't notice the interregnum much except at Games fairs where we could never find anything new. A trip to San Diego when I was going through my Aerosystems Engineering Masters Degree re-introduced me to new SFB stuff with the first Omega module.

In that period, I spent most of my time with fantasy skirmish miniatures (mainly Rackahm's Confrontation) but dabbled in a few others. When I came back to SF gaming, the interregnum was past.

From '91 to about summer '98, I mostly played Tag and Hide-N-Seek for the Army.

I did find the Discuss BBS shortly befor Christmas of '98 while at grad school. Started to make time for SFB and the likes. I was very happy that the Coles were able to form ADB, INC and get SFB back into publication!

Jean wrote:I came to the SFU very late, so I don't have memories of what it was like with no publications from anyone during this time period. With Captain's Logs #17 and #18 going up together, it made me wonder what it was like for those of you who played SFB. Did you guess that ADB would emerge from TFG's ashes?

I ran my last tournament in about 1999...
... and no one played. Well, we did play a couple rounds of Cadet training manual, for total newbs, but no one was willing to play SFB. I've played ONE game of SFB since.

I ran an annual tournament at what passed for the local gaming convention. It went from an average of 20 SFB players in the early players down to 10, then finally, the con died, in about 1997... the local GW outrider asked me to run an SFB tourney at the Waaagh! Day in 1998, and I did - not even 8 players. In 1999, at the next Waaagh! day, none. I was done.

It was a case of failing to sustain optimism, at least locally... it took too long for the ashes to settle. And several other really good games came out, and so SFB, looking dead, was replaced with B5W and Full Thrust.

We played a lot of Prime Directive 1E, and loved it (still do), but SFB just slowly faded. Still have my milk-crate full of SFB rulebooks in the other room... broken out solely for use in RPGing.

To answer Jean's original question:

Did you guess that ADB would emerge from TFG's ashes?

Nope. I figured when TFG went broke and bankrupt, that would be it. I still don't see how the sales SVC talks about are able to sustain the staff and the ADB company. They must be living on pensions.

Mike wrote:To answer Jean's original question:

Did you guess that ADB would emerge from TFG's ashes?

Nope. I figured when TFG went broke and bankrupt, that would be it. I still don't see how the sales SVC talks about are able to sustain the staff and the ADB company. They must be living on pensions.

I just figured that they were still doing some Aerospace Engineering, as well. From what I'd seen, back then, ADB wasn't a game company - it was an Engineering Firm that also had a couple game designers employed, who fed material to TFG, and happened to use their down-time between engineering projects as design time.

Do you remember 1995-1999?

No. Those four years are a complete blank.

Was interested in SFB pre-1986, I think '85-'86, never really got a chance to play but collected the materials. Went on to other things (Magic: The Gathering) and Warhamster/Warhamster 39,999. The advent of M:TG was the deathblow to TFG, so that probably would have been '95. In various moves and leaking-roof disasters lost all my materials from those years. Few years back googled SFB wondering what happened to it and found Starfleetgames.com again. Got really interested when Fed Com rolled around.

While I (Steve Cole) am a registered professional engineer (Texas License #47252) ADB was never an aerospace engineering firm or a civil engineering firm. It was always a game design company and nothing else.

A separate company (Tiger Publications) did military intelligence analysis for 17 years, selling the business back to the guy we bought it from (Jim Dunnigan) in 1999. That company employed the same three people (Leanna, SVC, and SPP).

We don't make much (I am pretty sure any of you who are actually employed make more than we do) but we have no kids, no debts, and live a relatively modest middle-class lifestyle. I don't take vacations much but that's because my health doesn't travel well, not because I cannot afford it.