Ok, so I know this is a verboten topic on the ADB BBS, due to a copyright dispute.
But I picked up a copy of several of the Companion Games / Far Side material at my friendly local game store as a legitimate purchase, and would like to discuss it, if anyone's played with it. Since it's all banned material on the ADB BBS, despite my having bought it fair n' square, I haven't had much of a chance to talk about it, let alone play it. Any of you guys read it/played it?
I Had Some Back in the Day
I got some of the Companion stuff back when Schulte was first developing it and shopping it out. I never actually used any of it in play, but I read the rules for most of the first 5 or 6 races (the crab guys, the robot guys, whatever), and really, they all just seemed a combination of all slightly too good and kind of silly.
Like, non of the ships had APR, just warp and impulse instead (as apr is just worse than warp/impulse), and for the BPVs, the ships was all just a little too good (36 shields instead of 30, 40 power instead of 38, whatever) relative to regular SFB ships.
So they weren't just "illegal",
So they weren't just "illegal", they were broken? Too bad. I've flipped through the books and they do seem "interesting", with some neat ideas. But I've never gotten to play with them. I know they came out of the NY SFB community (or at least I thought they did), so I thought maybe some of you guys had tried 'em.
Got any links?
What is the game in question? What sort of game is it? Why is it "in dispute" ? etc...
Companion Games
Was a short lived company in the early 90's that produced unauthorized SFB expansion material involving non canon races and technology. They got ceased and desisted by ADB, and the people involved got, essentially, excommunicated from SFB (at least one of the guys involved was an SFB staff member for some period of time).
I don't know that the ships/rules in question were "broken", so much as just kind of slightly overpowered and kind of silly.
The Companion Games stuff
The Companion Games stuff wasn't bad. It was better when they used regular phasers and not the medium phasers or whatever they where called.
They had one race that was just really nasty - the equivalent of the Andros in their sector. Almost unbeatable one-on-one but not as effective in fleet battles.
OK, so, so far I've heard
OK, so, so far I've heard that the BPV might have been a tad off, perhaps due to lack of playtesting. And that maybe some of the races (Crab people?) were a bit odd.
My understanding is that there's still to this day bad blood between Companion Games and ADB. But at any rate - as I'm sitting here with the books I bought so long ago - anybody actually flown these guys?
We didn't fly them alot but
We didn't fly them alot but did use them occasionaly.
The Krebitz (sp?) or Crab people were pretty good pretty closed to balanced.
Also, the SABOT weapon was a unique twist. Kind of a Hellbore type weapon, that would seek the shield originally hit by the SABOT.
If you are looking to play the companion games stuff, I would start with them.
Gregg