finishes his Temple project by painting the kit he previously assembled.
VBAM Galaxies Community Project
A New Proving Ground for the VBAM Campaign System
There has been a flurry of activity on our forums recently discussing a number of exciting new rules for the Victory by Any Means (VBAM) campaign system. This has jump-started a new community development project that we're calling VBAM Galaxies. The goal of Galaxies is to bring our community of fans together to discuss their favorite aspects of the VBAM rules from previous versions and help create a "community edition" of the rules where we can test new rules and find out what people want to see in future books.
Here are some of the highlights of what we've been collaborating on the last month:
- Single Squadron Task Forces
- We've been taking a look at how simplifying task forces can help improve setup and resolution of CSCR combat, and the kinds of interesting new combat interactions that can be added to the rules when you have a smaller number of ships "on the table" on any given combat round. There are several after-action reports posted where we're been working through how that would affect the flow and feel of combat.
- 4x Empire Builder
- A lot of our players prefer an exploration-focused campaign, especially those that play the game solo. For that reason we've been discussing making this the standard approach, with the "Before the Game" section of the rules walking players through how to set up a "start from scratch" scenario rather than generating all of the systems and their stats before the game.
- Adding More Companion Content to the Basic Rules
- There are a lot of rules that we've come to expect in VBAM, many of which were released in the 1E Companion and are slated for update in the 2E Companion. However, some of these rules – such as Anomalies and Non-Player Empires – are common enough that we've begun discussing the merits of including them in the basic campaign rules.
We hope that this kind of constantly evolving public playtest version of the rules will more actively involve our fans in VBAM development and in turn help us determine what rules work, which don't, and in which direction players want to see the rules mature going forward. Playtest versions of rules for upcoming books will eventually be posted in conjunction with the Galaxies project to further test and refine the rules before release.
Only time will tell what impact the VBAM Galaxies project will have on the game. At worst, we'll get some interesting new optional rules that we can all use in our campaigns. At best, we might end up with an even better version of the rules that could eventually form the core of a revised version of the game. It's still early days on Galaxies, so who knows where it will eventually lead? One thing that is clear is that this will give us a more direct way of communicating new material to our fans more quickly than has been the case in the recent past.
Please join in on the discussion at the VBAM Games Forums and let your voice be heard! What do you want to see in the rules? What have you liked or not liked about previous editions? The more input we get, the more we can improve the rules for everyone.
