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Last updated:
July 24th, 2005

Who we are - the Fiends themselves

Game Designers Notebook - the birth of Breaking Away

Keeping It Simple - advice on games design from James Ernest of Cheapass Games

GCSE Graphics Course: Producing A Board Game

Sick Review of the Year 1997, 1998,  1999 and 2001 (but not 2000)

Music To My Eras - musings on musical fashions

Zine Idioter - becoming a zine editor

Go together - some games are better played by post

Star Trader - one of the few postal games to match the complexity of computer moderated PBM games

Mind Your Language - a rant about people who mangle the English language

One of the biggest differences between games run in zines and games run by PBM companies is the complexity. Zines tend to run games that are conversions of board games, and even board games at the more detailed end of the scale, such as Axis and Allies, require fewer orders per turn than your typical computer-moderated PBM game; this is not surprising, as face to face board games could not support a game structure where each player takes (say) 6 hours to do one turn - although the legendary Steve Jones has been accused on numerous occasions of being unaware of this time limitation.

Consequently, zine based games tend to appeal to the macro managers and there are not many aimed at the micro managers, the players who like to get involved in the nitty gritty of sorting out logistics. Such games are available in the zine world, however - games such as Blood Royale and the original Civilization are occasionally given an outing. This issue, however, I thought I would highlight one of the most complicated games the zine world has to offer, namely the old SPI game, Star Trader.

This game is run by Mike Dommett, otherwise known as "The Dommett", a nickname which conjures up images of a friendly heraldic beast (I'm saying nothing .....), and is published in To Win Just Once, a zine whose name when spoken out loud sounds like "to whinge just once" - an achievement no gamer has ever managed. The zine is published by my fellow Flagship contributor, Paul Evans (see http://www.pevans.co.uk/PostalGames.html for more details).

In Star Trader each player controls a corporation trading among a network of developed planets connected to each other by hyper-jump routes. Each planet operates a market featuring one or more commodities (such as isotopes, spices, petroleum), and the prices of these commodities vary from planet to planet, thereby offering arbitrage opportunities, such as buying Isotopes at a unit cost of 2 on Gamma Laporis and then transporting them to Tau Ceti, where last turn the market was cheerfully paying 8 for isotopes. Trading is facilitated by the usual accoutrements, such as space ships, factories and warehouses, and these are financed through bank loans. All of which suggests this is a dry, friendly game of shunting goods around the galaxy, but there are numerous elements which prevent the game from being dry or friendly.

Firstly, some corporations (usually the ones that have managed to equip their ships with forbidden military hardware) take the Sir Francis Drake view that letting the other guy do all the hard work and then relieving him of his possessions is a far more sensible way to run a business.

Secondly, whilst some money can be made from carting radioactive materials about the space lanes the real money is to be earnt from illicit smuggling of goods such as drugs, military hardware or slaves, as well as urgent legal missions such as transporting exotic alien plants from one planet to another.

Thirdly, knowledge is power. The aforementioned business opportunities (such as the alien plants) arise randomly and individual companies only learn about them if they have sufficiently high connections in either the political, business or criminal arenas; reputation levels in these arenas can be improved both by deed and through back-handers. A well connected company might also get early warning of likely events, such as a terrorist attack on the warehouses of Mu Herculis, and this information may be freely traded - with no obligation on the part of the seller to tell the truth!

Business is war, as somebody once said, and corporations are not above sponsoring a few terrorist attacks of their own on a rival's property, though the use of safe harbours or the protective services of agents can thwart sabotage attempts.

A few turns of playing this game are enough to turn anyone into a paranoid wreck if, like me, you try and keep your nose clean. I am having enough trouble trying to do cash flow projections so I can make sure I pay off my loan, without having to worry about pirates waiting off planet to intercept my cargo ship with its hold full of alloys. I am trying to trade in sufficient quantities in various products at two or three planets to earn favoured trader status (this status entitles you to advantages such as seeing everybody else's trading strategy before you commit to yours) but at every stage I have been thwarted by that man Paul Evans. Either he is overpaying or I am underpaying, and as he has a more experienced player than I it is most likely that I am going to have to be a bit more aggressive in my interaction with the game's trading mechanism which takes into account things such as the disparity between supply and demand, the prices at which corporations are either willing to buy or sell and the quantities they wish to deal in; each successful trade in a given turn will generally shift the price up or down a bit thereby triggering another trade ("I'll sell 4 liquor at 6") which will again modify the price, so it is a bit tricky trying to guess where the market will be even though, as in most zine games, you have almost perfect information about what your opponents are trying to trade (even if you don't know the prices they want to trade at).

Maybe I should just take up the offer I recently received of a tooled up raider ship and simply blow Mr. Evans out of the sky? It wouldn't do much for my political or business reputation but I already own a ship suitable for smuggling so a switch to a life of crime is a possibility if honest trading does not work out.

Played face to face this is a slow-moving, slightly fiddly, long game of the sort more or less killed stone dead by the advent of "gone in 60 minutes" German games. Played by post, where you have ample time to flick through the 20 page rule book to find that obscure rule which enables you to modify your ship with a Battle Communications pod so you can jam the Federal Patrol's sensors when you are on a smuggling run, it is a flavoursome game for cut-throats and wheeler dealers. Recommended - but you'll probably have to wait for the current game to end as this is a human moderated game which takes a lot of time to GM.

John Harrington