Federation Commander

is there going to be anymore master starship books like romulan, gorn, or tholian?

Romulan MSSB is being worked on right now. Others are planed.

We do one book at a time and over time will do them all.

Romulans are almost done (mostly lacking art) and Lyrans are well started.

Steve Cole wrote:We do one book at a time and over time will do them all.

Romulans are almost done (mostly lacking art) and Lyrans are well started.

nice! can't wait for the Romulan book to come out

There are two big things to any book, the text and the art. In the case of the Romulans, the text is well into the "minor line items from staff show up now and then but otherwise we're finished" stage. The art is better than halfway done. I did all of the war eagles and king eagles yesterday. I was then handed "mark ups" for five early years hawk ships that are the next thing he needs.

Any ideal when we might see a FedCom Master Ship Book.

No, it's a matter of too many other things to do. It would have to be selected by the design committee. There will always be more ideas than time.

Since FC has all of the ship data on the card, the rulebook is just amusing background reading and pictures, not a critical or priority document. In SFB you really need that data to use the ship; in FCyou don't.

Just to give my vote: I consider background material and what not a critical thing. I like to role play my games

Do the master ship books contain the empire's historical information or is it literally just information about specific ships and their design? Ie: in the Federation Master Starship Book - is there information about the Federation in general in the SFU or just the history of the evolution of say, a federation heavy cruiser?

I ask because the "R" sections (I think it is) for SFB modules I have only so far seen in print. I'd love to collect the empire lore in those sections on PDF.

Something that may be going unnoticed is that a lot of FC players want the background and technical data that is necessary to SFB. They simply do not want the time consuming, overly complicated game system that comes with SFB.

It is definitely a conumdrum.

I totally agree with Mike on that point. I was just looking at the FC rule book and this is a direct quote:

"The history of the Star Fleet Universe covers an extended period of time, the details of which are not particularly critical to players of Federation Commander ."

Critical for tactical play no, but for anyone who wants to role play being a captain or admiral for a given empire - it's pretty important! I have literally bought some SFB products SOLELY for the R section empire backgrounds. I'd rather like to collect all the background/cultural data on the various empires honestly - for those RP purposes listed above. It's also great to set up campaigns, write fan-fiction, use for character backstory (rp stuff), etc.

(As an aside - are the R sections the only place the lore is listed?)

I suspect that I am not alone in enjoying the lore of the universe! Hell, I prefer it to the "real thing" in most cases, to be honest.

Itharus wrote:(As an aside - are the R sections the only place the lore is listed?)

I believe the primary sources of "lore" are the R sections, scenarios, and stories. The primary source, from what I can see, are actually the scenarios.

Hhhhmm. I'll have to see if there are any scenario collections running around, then. I know there's a collection of some for FC on wh23

ADB - you guys should hunt down your fans who are writers and encourage some fan-fiction! (Or do you do that in CL? I haven't picked one of those up yet). Might help out your RPG line!

The anchor of every issue of Captain's Log is a major fiction piece.

Many of the writers (going back a quarter century) are players. Besides being the "game's overworked designer", Steve Cole is a talented writer and has written the fiction piece in some cases. I've dabbled, mostly with monographs on the technical side of the lore.

Yes, fiction is a major component of Captain's Log. ADB actively solicits fiction from fans, and has for a long time.

Oh, right on. I'll stop derailing this thread though, lol