CAPTAIN’S LOG #45 — © 2012 ADB Inc. Page 103

STAR FLEET UNIVERSE VENUES

For several weeks, Steve Cole teased the customers withmysterious reports about “Secret Project T” which was finally re-vealed to be the lighthearted game “Tribbles vs. Klingons.” WhenSteve Cole starts talking about taking the company in new direc-tions, and doing games with “four pages of rules and toys” youhad better watch out!

This “party game” assumes that the lower three decks of aKlingon battlecruiser are infested with tribbles. Klingons fear noenemy, but tribbles cause them to curl up in a little ball and cryfor their mommies. Meanwhile, the tribbles are eating their waythrough the ship’s food stockpiles, replicator systems, and emer-gency rations. That’s bad enough, but when those things aregone, the tribbles start looking for other things they can eat, suchas the insulation on the ship’s wiring. Tribbles eat, so they haveteeth, and they’re not above taking a bite out of any Klingon wholets them get close enough.

The captain calls for stout-hearted volunteers to head intothe lower decks with phasers, disruptors, daggers, and explo-sives. They are to kill the tribbles faster than they can reproduce,which means first shutting down (or blowing up) the food replicatorstation on each deck. Meanwhile, that mangy cat one of the jun-ior officers brought on board thinks it’s fun to run around scatter-ing packs of tribbles and occasionally killing one of them.

Designed for casual gamers who enjoy social interaction(helping their friends and sending some bad luck to anyone likelyto win the game before they can) this may well be our first “made-in-China mass-market game.” The current plan is to put it onKickstarter (after we have time to work out all of the productionoptions). Kickstarter allows levels of support, so as more andmore people pledge to buy the game (plus swag like lapel pinsand T-shirts) the quality of the game goes up and up. We mighthave mounted boards by a professional artist. The Klingon war-riors may be upgraded from cardboard on a plastic stand to metalfigures or even plastic toys.

The game is designed to include three 11x17 (or perhaps12x18) full-color maps. These same maps can also be used forcommon RPG systems such as GURPS or Traveller.

The tribbles will be portrayed by small “puffballs.”A deck of cards will provide special opportunities such as

extra weapons (the arc welder is useful if you can reach the com-partment where it is stored), creating more tribbles (more killsequals more glory and the captain doesn’t really need to know),or sending your rivals to be interviewed by the secret police. Youcan gain a burst of adrenaline or make your friends faint or losetrack of their location. Be careful that no one plays the “bad hairday” card on you or tribbles will fall from the ceiling vents!

Each player takes his turn, during which he can move, shoot,fight, pick things up, drop things, open doors, close doors, placeexplosives, or a lot of other things. (Rather than use a die roll todecide movement, each player gets four actions per turn. Wehate games where the player who is about to win keeps rolling a“1” and crawls to the finish line.) Shooting tribbles is easy, rela-tively safe, kind of fun, and allows you to run up a huge score.The thing you do not want to do is get into hand-to-fur combatwith a pack of tribbles. While you probably won’t die, if enoughtribbles pile on top of you, you just may faint and be transportedto sick bay. That is not only embarassing and bad for your war-rior reputation, but it means you aren’t doing what the other play-ers are doing — killing more tribbles! (In our playtest games,players easily exceeded a total of 50 tribbles killed.)

Tribbles are constantly spewing from the replicator stations,and every turn, several random tribbles suddenly reproduce.

The cover art concept above is by Adam Turner while thelogo and medical supply locker are by Xander Fulton. Game de-sign by Stephen V. Cole. (Leanna Cole, Jean Sexton, Steven P.Petrick, Joel Shutts, and Mike Sparks have all playtested it — sofar). Release this Christmas is possible but far from certain. Wehave yet to master overseas production.