Yep that’s what it’s been for a few weeks now, most of my games have been playtesting new scenarios for a new supplement I am writing for Stars & Lasers.
It has been easy going for a couple of the scenarios but this last one was not going right, and has taken ages to get to a point where it was working right and was fair.
I am trying to put together six new scenarios for the supplement and I still have three to go, I already have the ideas I just need to…… playtest!!
Any way back to this latest one, the whole idea was for one big ship to be taken on by smaller ships, sounds easy but then I added the fact that it has just left a big battle and it was damaged, then throw in that it has just come into an area of space where a few enemy ships have detected it and have moved in for the kill… sounds like it should have worked really nicely, I have learned that putting scenarios together is never that easy.
Well what happened was the big ship never managed to get past turn three!! The small ships always took it out, so I had to change the way the starting damage was worked out for the big ship, this I did and it still just would not work, the big ship never lost!!
So, after spending an evening at my club with a helpful friend who was willing to play the same scenario over and over again, we managed after loads of adjustments to get it to where it worked just about right, it was hard to beat the big ship but it could be done.
I had a few more goes today, and well it works, it is not easy to kill the big ship but it is satisfying when you actually manage to do so, that I guess is the fun of scenarios in games, not just having two similar sized fleets shooting it out on a table until one side wins, sometimes that is fun but I like those games where both sides are not equal and that both sides have something to do, like the big ship surviving for six turns or the small ships having to kill it within six turns, or even things like escorting a convoy across the tabletop or stopping those enemy supplies getting through….
Also in the new supplement, there are going to be more ships and more weapons and even some scenery to use in Stars & Lasers, I will post some work in progress posts here as and when I get things done.
For anyone interested in seeing what the rules are like, they are on sale here – http://www.wargamevault.com/product/210571/Stars–Lasers?src=latest_rule_sets
