How to Find New Opponents

Steve Cole writes:

Many gamers are looking for new opponents. This is nothing new. When I was a teenager, there were maybe four war gamers in Amarillo that I knew, but there must have been more as the one store that carried Avalon Hill games (then the only wargames) would sell one or two now and then that my friends and I knew we didn't buy. Funny, it never once occurred to us to ask the store manager to give our phone numbers to the other guys. When I was in college, SPI (then the second wargame company and rapidly becoming larger and more innovative than Avalon Hill) had an opponent wanted list. I sent in my dollar to get it, and found only one person (of the 20 on the list) who was within 120 miles; the first and last person on the list were each 450 miles away (in opposite directions).

These days, the concept of contacting other gamers has had decades to mature, works much better, and there are a lot of ways to do it. For best results, you should do all of them.

If you play Federation Commander, then you can go to the Commander's Circle and enter your data (as much or as little as you are comfortable with) and perhaps find opponents near you. We are gaining new sign-ins every day, and since it's free you can try it every month or two and find out if somebody nearby has signed in. http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/Commanders%20Circle/

Primarily for Federation Commander players, the Forum has a topic where local stores and groups post announcements and invitations. Players can let other players know they're around. How silly would you feel if you found out that the guy who you've been arguing with on the forum for years actually lives in your town. (That HAS happened.) http://www.federationcommander.com/phpBB2

You can to go to a local store and ask them to let you post a notice looking for opponents. You could also run a demo of your favorite game(s) and "grow your own" opponents. If a person already plays the game you are demoing, he'll doubtless drop by just to swap phone numbers.

Many towns have community bulletin boards on the local cable company's "home" channel. These are variously free or cost just a couple of dollars. It's hit-and-miss, but you could get lucky. (When I commanded Company C of the 1-39 MPs, I gained a dozen new recruits in a year that came from cable TV.) You could also buy a cheap want ad in the newspaper or the free advertising newspaper (American's Want Ads or whatever yours is called) found in quickie marts. There is also Craigslist, but you should use the normal caution you would for meeting a stranger.

The quickest result, probably, is Starlist. Go to http://starfleetgames.com/starlist.shtml. Enter your data in the form, and you'll get a list of local players back. (This may take a day or two as it is done by hand.) Starlist is the most effective hunt for new players because the database has some 5,000 players in it, far more than all of the other sources combined. The only drawback is that Starlist works with full information (name and address) and those who are seriously concerned about identity theft often find this uncomfortable. In all reality, however, Starlist would not give an identity thief any more information than a local phone book would, and if that's enough for those criminals to operate, they would be vastly more likely to use the phone book than to request a copy of Starlist.

You can find opponents for all of our games on our BBS. Go to http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/ and you'll see "Seeking Opponents" on the main menu. You can post a notice there (and search the previous postings). Again, you can post as much or as little information as you are comfortable with.

Friends of our page on Facebook can post to see who is out there. Not a friend? Become one here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amarillo-Design-Bureau-Inc/231728653279?ref=mf

With more effort, you can post opponent wanted notices in a whole lot of boardgame sites (see http://www.starfleetgames.com/links.shtml for suggestions).

If there is a game convention within driving distance, it's worth a trip to see if you might find someone who is also within driving distance. If there is a game club in your home town or a store with a gaming area, go there and set up the game and wait for somebody to ask what it is. (Even better, take a friend who will play the game with you so you won't be bored.) If there is a Star Trek club in your home town, show them Federation Commander or Star Fleet Battle Force. There are people who have printed a card with the logo of one of our games and their email address and left these in the windows of their cars who got emails from other gamers in their home towns who were seeking opponents.

You can go always go to SFB Online (http://www.sfbonline.com/index.jsp) and play Star Fleet Battles and Federation Commander online with live opponents from around the world for the princely sum of $5 per month. You might even stumble into somebody local.

There are probably more ways than this to find opponents, but unless you live in a cave somewhere, you can almost certainly find a new friend within a short while by trying these methods.

Answers to the Top 10 Questions that a Starship Captain Never Wants to Ask, Q7

7. If you're not using the UIM to aim the disruptors, what are you using it for?

To aim the drones. Isn't that why it was installed?


David Kass
(c) 2002 Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc. Captain's Log #25

RANDOM THOUGHTS #142

Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself that Jean wants him to do a blog about the company.

1. We own three big Kyocera print engines (and a fourth, smaller one). We like that because these industrial-size print engines (from the $7K version to the $100K Docutech) all tend to break down when used at maximum rate for a day or two. If you put all your money into one big print engine, then when it's down, you're down. Having four, we're never down. If one breaks down, we just turn it off and keep going with the others, and call the Kyocera dealer at the start of the next business day. Every single time I have consulted with another company about setting up a print plant, the chosen vendor (Kyocera, Cannon, Xerox, whoever) tries to get the game company to buy one big box instead of three or four small ones. I patiently explain (to the game company and to the vendor) just how stupid this is. The bloody things break down (with something a technician can fix in an hour), and it's better to have a second, third, and fourth machine. It's also more cost effective. Our four Kyoceras (which cost us less than $25,000 total) run rings around even a $100,000 Docutech machine.
 
2. The utility infielder in a game publishing company is the company president. Having built the company from nothing, the president of the company once did everything by himself. Pretty much everything this company does is something I learned how to do a long time ago, and (except in the case of accounting where Leanna told me I was all wet, and that web design stuff that confuses me) something I taught everyone else how to do. So when we had a bit of a crisis getting all those new products out on the same day last January, I was the guy who filled in for anyone else who wasn't available.  While Leanna was doing invoices, I added the new products to the shopping cart. While Mike was packing orders, I was shrinkwrapping products. While Joel was uploading shopping cart photos, I was packing Reinforcements Attack. 

3. I wonder if anybody out there understands how this business (or any business) runs if they haven't run a business. There are lots of categories of things to do, and it's hard to balance them. Some of them are "get to it as fast as you can" and there is a list of those and when not doing anything else I go to the top of that list for my work. Some things magically appear on the list from time to time and go right to the #1 spot. Some of those are predictable (e.g., Communique that has to be done before the 7th of any given month so the staff can report before it goes out on the 10th) while others are less so (I got a set of ACTASF cards from Matthew and had promised him that whenever he sent a set I would drop anything other than an emergency to check the cards right away and fire the required fixes back to him; those cards get this treatment because they've been delayed too long and because we need the fixed cards to get the revised rulebook out). Some new items that show up get to start their march to the top of the list from a higher or lower spot (e.g., a possible big money deal for a project goes to the highest part of the list). That, unfortunately, means everything else goes down a notch. Then there are the fires that blow up or break out. Recently, something that should have been a simple yes/no decision ended up being a major multi-hour project involving phone calls to outside parties. That kicked other things off that day's schedule. (I had promised one guy on Thursday afternoon that his thing was now #1 on the list and would obviously get done on Friday. Then a fire broke out Friday noon and pushed his thing to Saturday.) Other things happen.

4. A big drive-engine to my work schedule is my email (and to a lesser extent, the BBS and Forum). Every morning, I walk in here to find (after de-spamming the in-box) anywhere from four to ten real emails that actually require more than a one-word answer (yes, no, sure, whatever, laugh, etc.). The BBS and Forum produce similar "items that should be attended to". Some of those go away with one or two minutes of thought and reply, or looking something up. Others take longer. Some take so long that they don't get done that day, and become line items on the to-do list, or just get lost altogether. (Still in the in-box, they get found on "sweeps" where I go looking for things I can delete easily. When I find one of these forgotten projects, I re-direct it to myself which puts it at the top of the in-box where it gets another chance.)

5. Then there is the Visitation of the Great Dragon. This is when something happens that is so big it totally wipes out the schedule. Even routine stuff gets delayed, the to-do list gets all but forgotten, and promises get broken. Mostly this is the last week or two of finishing a new product. In Jan 2013 I found myself spending hours working on the packing line or the shrinkwrap machine, which of course pushed my "to do" list back a few days. During Jean's December visit, she had priority over my time and I got to go look at routine or to-do items only when she had nothing for me to do.

6. In a small business (and ours in no exception) everybody has more than one job, but being human, they tend to spend most of their time on one job, pretty much ignore the job they hate the most, and dabble in the others. For example, I hate doing marketing and my failure to do it right causes sales to suffer. (Jean will take that over in May. She likes doing marketing.) So, I started a practice of several times a week taking a scratch pad to work. I assigned everybody a "priority task for after lunch" to make sure at least something gets done on the jobs they hate the most. Leanna, buried in orders, uploaded Fed ePack #2 (after having it for a week and having sent nothing to e23 for a month) only because of the priority task system. I made it a point to walk around right after lunch and remind everyone of their priority task, and to go back in mid-afternoon to check on those who had yet to report their task having been done. It's called Leadership, which is one of my "other jobs" that I don't do very often.

Free Stuff for Star Fleet Universe Players!

Steve Cole writes:

We have a lot of free stuff on our website. Let me point you to some of the most popular things. Doing this in alphabetical order we start with Federation & Empire. They have play aids and countersheet graphics here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/index.shtml#FNE

Some people do not realize that you can download what amounts to a free copy of the Federation Commander game (well, enough of the game to play a few battles). First Missions will give you enough of the game that you can try it out. Go here to download it: http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/Commanders%20Circle/first-missions.shtml

But that's just a start. Commander's Circle has lots of free resources such as various formats of the Master Ship Chart, Ship Cards, the current and back issues of Communique, scenarios, and playtest rules. If you register, then you can find other Federation Commander players.

Prime Directive players can find a treasure trove of play aids, including medals, insignia, maps, the timeline, and lots of other goodies to spice up a game. These can be found here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/index.shtml#PD

Star Fleet Battle Force has new cards and play aids as well. These are located here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/index.shtml#SFBF

Star Fleet Battles players have the Cadet Training Manual and Cadet Training Handbook. These were done as a way to get players into the complicated Star Fleet Battles game system. You can download them for free here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/CadetTraining.shtml Also available on the same webpage are lots of SSDs for the game.

We have wallpaper for your computer so you can show your SFU pride. Those are here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/wallpapers.shtml

Don't forget Hailing Frequencies, our free monthly newsletter. Covering all our games, you can read back issues here: http://www.federationcommander.com/Newsletter/past.html Don't forget to sign up to get the link delivered straight to your email box each month. You can "opt in" here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/newsletter.shtml

There are many historical documents which are available for download. Maps, deck plans, assorted graphics, and much, much more can be found here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/historicaldownloads.shtml

Browse our master index to find all sorts of interesting information: http://www.starfleetgames.com/masterindex.shtml

As you can see, you could spend days browsing. We hope you enjoy what you find.

Products, the Future, and Jean

Steve Cole reports: 

We're in a situation in which we need to "transition the company" into a new form for the future. We need to be doing games with "four pages of rules, a mounted board, a deck of cards, and some toys" if we want to thrive in the current market. That transition will not be a mere flip of a switch, but will involve considerable effort. We have to learn new skills on many levels. We need to start immediately on new projects such as TRIBBLES VS. KLINGONS.
      
But Murphy's Laws include one particularly haunting one: Whatever has to be done immediately, something else has to be done first.
      
And the first thing I had to do was get Jean Sexton moved to Amarillo. It was the worst possible time, given Origins staring us in the face and my broken leg, but it had to be done now for Jean's safety (not to mention her mental health and general well-being). She was in a situation that was not just toxic but dangerous, and she had to leave there as soon as she finished her 30 years and her retirement kicked in. She could not leave earlier and needed to leave as soon as she could.
 
It would be great if moving her was over when we got back to Amarillo with her and a huge U-Haul truck full of her lifetime accumulation of everything you can imagine, but there was more to it. We had to get a new office built (which was still not quite finished when she got here) and trying to add new phone lines revealed the collapsing state of the Civil War-era phone system in the building we bought. So, time and money had to be spent on a new phone system (something we have known for years had to be done). Even that was not all of it it, as we have to help her get everything into her new apartment and sorted out so she can live there. As anyone who has moved knows, the first day in your new home has a lot more to do with stacks of boxes than it does with throwing a housewarming party. She cannot empty a given box because she cannot get to the place where stuff needs to be put away because of other boxes stacked in front of it. So, we pitched in (as much as she would allow) to move boxes around to clear a few square feet of floor space. She then began processing boxes on the edge of the empty spot. If something could be put away (in a closet or cabinet) it was. Otherwise, the box had to go to the far side of the empty spot. Everything put away was a victory, and the empty spot got bigger every day as she worked through it. (She couldn't even sleep in her new apartment for almost two weeks because there was nowhere to set up her bed. Leanna made our guest room available for as long as she needed it.) Every now and then she found something that the moving crew loaded that should have been left behind, and that item has to be returned to its proper owner in a tense exchange with an unhappy ex-boyfriend for something of Jean's that the packing crew accidentally left behind.
      
Carl von Clausewitz (the greatest military theorist of all time) said that you should never change anything, but if you do, you should not be afraid to change everything. So, Jean's arrival means a lot of things will change. She will take over answering the telephone from Steven Petrick, the Rangers from Steve Cole, the e23 program from Leanna, and convention support and customer support from Mike Sparks. We bought an answering machine, so from now on during meetings the phone will go to voice mail so that we don't have four people doing nothing while the fifth takes a phone call. We will be hiring one or two new employees (one to help Mike with inventory and orders, another eventually to replace Joel Shutts, our graphics director who went to his first grown-up job last week).
     
Origins is looming. It's only 29 days away as I write this, and none of the new products are ready. Captain's Log #47 is the highest priority, and that (at least) will get done. We've become experts at doing those and in two or three weeks we'll be printing copies. That doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else. The Federation Master Starship Book will be released, at least in an interim form. It's done except for art and whatever reports show up, but reports show up every day (and more will show up once it's released). I've decided that whatever state it's in a few days before the trip is what will be on sale (at the show and on the cart) and will be frozen for at least six months or maybe a year. If we keep fixing trivial details on the Federation book, the Klingon book won't ever get started. The amount of work that will take the Federation MSSB from 90% to 99% finished would take the Klingon MSSB from 0% to 90%. SFB Module C6 (Paravians and Carnivons) was derailed by the fatal crash of Steven Petrick's computer. That is being replaced, but even so, doing and checking 120 SSDs in 29 days is going to be a severe challenge, especially given that Captain's Log #47 is in line ahead of it. I have not officially given up all hope of finishing it, but reality is biting. In theory, the Federation Commander Tactics Manual only needs page layout, as Patrick Doyle has written all of it. In theory, once Captain's Log #47 is finished, I'll jump into the FCTM and whip it into shape quickly. Well, everybody needs to have a theory. Speaking of theories, Ken Burnside says he can whip up an SFU version of Squadron Strike, but I suspect that only happens in time for Origins if we allow him to take universe-violating liberties with the database that have gotten us into trouble with other joint ventures. That won't be allowed, and whether Ken can produce a viable product in the time available is not known.

        
And even if work on those products must begin immediately, other things must be done first. Old friends visited for one day, and since one of them is working on a vital part of Traveller Prime Directive and we can get a lot more done at a table than over the phone, we have to take advantage of a rare and unplanned visit. The spring trip to Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary was 11-12 May and had been scheduled for so long that we could not cancel it. The annual company picnic (a local trade show where we get enough free office supplies and chocolate to last a year) will wipe out one day of this week. For some strange reason, the other 10,000 people going to the show don't care if that is inconvenient for our schedule. We managed to upload something to e23 during Operation Fetch and the week before, but nothing was ready for the next week. Jean is going to push hard to get at least a couple of items (that I did two months ago) checked so they can be uploaded. When she finishes checking them, it will take me most of a productive day to make her corrections. Oh well.
        
After Origins, we get to the real future. TRIBBLES VS. KLINGONS needs overseas production (which I have no idea how to do) and a Kickstarter launch (which ADB has never done and could not be done until Jean was here to manage it). Traveller Prime Directive won't need Kickstarter but still needs to be finished. (The space combat system has never been finalized, players want to be the television deck crew and rules must be written for that, and of course 12 sets of deck plans must be done (half of which exist in some form). It's one of three planned joint venture lines with Mongoose. The other two are the Starline 2500 series miniatures (we have told Mongoose not to send us any new ships to review until every ship from Book One is on the market) and the ACTASF rulebook (which was done in such a rush that major revisions must be made before it can become an online PDF or a second book can be published). It remains to be seen if the rules problems in ACTASF and the production problems with the 2500s have fatally wounded those product lines. We're basically going to have to reboot them to make them the success they should have been. We have several more games with a few pages of rules, a deck of cards, and some toys in our future, including Merchants of the Federation (with Jay Waschak of VBAM) and Battlestations Star Fleet (with the Siadek brothers of Gorilla Games). The components of TRIBBLES VS. KLINGONS will give us a start on KRAG (Klingon Rapid Assault Group), the inside-the-ship man-to-man combat system. There are new card games and dice games out there, as well as (you guessed it) STAR FLEET MARINES VS. ZOMBIES.
      
The future does not by any means include abandoning the existing product lines. Over the next two years, SFB will get X2, F&E will get Minor Empires, FC will get X-ships and go beyond the Borders of Madness, Star Fleet Marines will get a third (armored cavalry) and fourth (monsters) module, new RPG books (Orion Pirates, Feline Empires, Gorns) and new game engines will be done, the long-awaited expansion deck for SFBF will happen, Starmada needs another couple of books, and more Starline 2400-series miniatures will be done. Those won't be the only products released for existing lines.
      
We hope you will come with us to this exciting future.

This Week at ADB, Inc., 5-11 May 2013

Steve Cole reports:

This was Jean's first week in Amarillo, although reality dictated that she spend most of the time unpacking, getting utilities connected, and getting her office organized. (Everyone spent a chunk of their time helping her get this done.) The weather this week was mild. The spam storm mostly remained at something under 200 per day.
    
On Friday we were visited by Garth and Celestia Getgen (two of our graphic designers) and they joined us on the annual company team-building retreat to Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary.
     
Steve Cole worked on catching up from trip backlog, getting Communique and Hailing Frequencies done, writing blogs, getting the Origins events straightened out,
        
Steve Petrick worked on catching up from trip backlog, the Federation Master Starship Book, rules questions, and Module C6.
    
Leanna kept orders and accounting up to date.
   
Mike kept orders going out, rebuilt the inventory, and managed customer service.
        
Joel got Communique uploaded remotely, but communications issues delayed Hailing Frequencies.
   
Jean managed our page on Facebook (which is up to 1,587 friends), proofread Communique, Hailing Frequencies, and blogs; and did some marketing.

Exploring Excellent Ebooks

We have continued our long-awaited move to offer more of our products as PDFs by way of the e23 and DriveThru RPG websites. So far on e23, we have released a lot of stuff for Federation Commander, including the Revision Six Reference Rulebook, the 72 ships from Federation Commander Briefing #2 (divided into six packs of 12 ships and a separate rules pack), and more than a dozen Ship Card Packs. Our ebook PDFs are in color and high resolution. PDFs of most books are searchable (older Captain’s Logs are not).

The way e23 works, once you buy a product, you can download it again for no cost if you lose it or if we upload a revised version of that edition. Thus, the people who bought Reference Rulebook Revision 5 were able to obtain Reference Rulebook Revision 6 for free (and to download it again when we discovered we had accidentally left out rule 4S).

We must note that these products are copyrighted and are not to be uploaded or passed around to your friends. Doing so is piracy, a criminal act, and may result in us deciding not to offer any more PDF products. We have already uploaded many Starmada, Star Fleet Battles, Federation & Empire, and GURPS Prime Directive products We have created a new page that allows easy access to our PDFS for sale on e23. From here you can see what we currently have posted and have links to those products.

Our Prime Directive PD20 Modern books are sold as ebooks exclusively through DriveThru RPG.

So check them out! Many people like the fact they can search our rulebooks for a keyword and find everything that pertains to that issue. Others like the fact they can carry around multiple books on one device. Some Ship Cards are available exclusively through e23. Whatever your reason for using them, we hope that you enjoy them and rate them.