Captain's Log #45 Moves Along

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

One of the joys of creating in a business is that sometimes you have a lot more you would like to say, but you run out of room in which to say it. Your creativity has to work to a "budget." There is only so much space. You can find yourself spending off hours thinking of things you want to say, to tie something into the larger game background, and there is just not room to say it. Suddenly you are trying hard to fit a lot into only a few words, and much detail has to be summarily dismissed into the darkness.

There is also the eternal problem of dealing with the creativity of others. We are fortunate that we have a lot of very creative people who both play our games, and enjoy sharing their own ideas and concepts. And sometimes that means erasing something I want to say so that they can (when the company feels their concept is a good one) have their own say.

I long ago stopped writing term papers, mostly because I work here, and I think the space should be made available for others. And, yes, because I long ago made the top rank available for term papers (followed closely by Ken Burnside). Also, it is hard for me to tell anymore what ideas I have addressed. The dearth of term paper submissions of late led me to post one in hopes of generating more submissions. It perhaps tells you how desperate we are for more submissions that this one was rated the best of the issue. (Yes, it is one of those sneaky little things I have done on several occasions when I played a lot, and had largely forgotten about.)

While they take a lot of work on my part, I enjoy the battle groups because they allow many players to express their own tactical concepts and perhaps engender discussions with their friends in their local groups. I am already at work trying to think of a good plot for the next one, but have not found one as yet. We need to get the Federation Commander battle group set up also.

I do know which monster is next, and this one will be (compared to a lot of them) easy to do. Often the hardest part is trying to invent some kind of explanation for the monster that is "different" from previous monsters. The next one, however, will not need a lot of explanation as to its operations in terms of its motives, actions, and reactions.

Well, things are moving along.

But once again I will plead for you all to share your own tactical insights. There have been only two Federation & Empire Tactics Notes uploaded since the pot closed for Captain's Log #45, and one of those arrived by mail and was typed in by me so that others could see and comment on it.

We really do need more term papers, tactical notes, command notes, conquest notes, call out notes, and primers for the next issue, so take the opportunity to create and show people how clever you are!