Federation Commander Campaign Notes

One of the many projects going through my head when I am not feeling sorry for myself is an RP campaign system for Federation Commander, a hex n chit/miniatures wargame of the "machine sheet" variety.

You know, Machine Sheet. Those games where your units have a big sheet of paper filled with stats and damage boxes and piles of other detail most gamers don't care about.

Well Federation Commander is a Star Trek machine sheet game. Except it has a sort of kind of Trek license and could possibly be a prototype game universe for what many of the current wargame universes are. You know, "In the grim darkness of the grimly dark far future/fantasy world of Blah Blah there is only war". Basically Federation Commander is Star Trek how I always wanted it to be. Lots of jolly big capital class starships shooting the stuffing out of each other. Trek sans Roddenberry's idealist utopian dreams.

Take Trek, mix with Warhammer 40K, add in some original races and ignore any Trek besides the original series and the animated one, stir for 30 years. (See Federation Commander is a fancier streamlined version of the long running "Star Fleet Battles", a game for people who like the rules insanity/lifestyle gaming of Advanced Squad Leader (the full version) but would rather have starships neeming each other as opposed to replaying World War 2 for eternity.

Seriously. I am all WW2ed out. Greatest Generation, some of the worst atrocities ever recorded, Normandy blah blah. Humanity's history encompasses more than just the 1930s and 40s. There have always been soldiers dying for causes just and unjust for millennia.

Ahem.


Back then we had a miniatures RPG goulash where everyone was Star Wars Imperial TIE Fighter pilots taking on missions for the Empire and given options to join various factions and maybe not always backstab each other.

(Of course most people DID, but its not the GM's place to enforce player cooperation. Merely to make life difficult for the jerks in the long run. Sadly, karma never had a chance to rear its ugly head.)

As an aside, why DO hobby games players love jumping at the chance to be douchebags anyhow? Am I the only one who wants to play heroes anymore?

I combined 2 miniatures games, Silent Death for starfighter operations and Star Wars Miniatures for ground ones. Then I added in a simple quickie RPG advancement scheme and away we went.

Except this time using Federation Commander for space combat, and I have no idea what for Away Team missions. (My Adamythryl Engine system? Necromunda/40K? Traveller? D6 Space?)

With Star Trek now hot again because of a TOTALLY AWESOME movie, and my desire to play more Federation Commander, it seems like a good time to overload some Photon Torpedoes, cloak a Romulan vessel, and launch some Kzinti drones.

And I need the excuse to buy the 2 newest expansions. Orion Pirates as a full faction! Lyrans! Hydrans!

Basically it would be a riff on the movie events happening in the Star Fleet Universe which changes ITS timeline, except the villain of the movie's actions change and the SFU's main baddies, the Andromedans show up a good 30 years early and everything changes.

Everyone is a captain of a small ship from their chosen faction at the edge of space, guarding against pirates and the potential return of the Andromedans. While everyone is loosely allied, old grudges die hard (I know this one IRL all too well.) and who is to say anyone is REALLY gonna make nice nice with old enemies?

Plus secret orders from Starfleet/Romulan Command, ect could make for some tricky situations out on the frontier. Work with your new allies? Maybe its the smartest and best solution, but since when does anybody ever do that? :p

Ground stuff will be little ground battles/RP bits ala Trek.

Now my goal is to figure out which game system will be selected for the ground battles, and write up a quick set of campaign rules.