More Playtesting For Project Generations

http://spaceship.brainiac.com/spaceship6.html

Last night, we got back into FATE SF gaming, and resumed playtesting for Project Generations! The focus of play, as an evening of rain and ice descended on the Twin Cities, was a space battle over a space ark - a battle fought using the ark's own auxiliary ships.

I used two rows of six index cards to represent the 180 degrees above and below the axis of the cylindrical space ark. The combat was fought using Starblazer Adventures ships, characters, and space combat rules.

I used Star Trek Micromachines to represent the ships involved in the battle. Poker chips were used to designate zones above the nap-of-generation ship zones represented by the index cards.

(And Micromachines are so gloriously not-to-scale! Shuttlecraft are half the size of a Romulan Warbird!)

Detachable plastic ship stands were used to represent the ark's point defense systems, which also tried to get into the action.

The players seemed to have fun, and they gave me some great feedback on the tabletop aspects of running the conflict.

There was a lot of food for thought, including these three questions for you, Dear Reader:

• What do you feel are the most critical aspects of space combat to represent in an RPG? 
• What are the most tedious aspects of how space combat gets represented in RPGs?
• Where have you had a BLAST with space combat in a wargame or RPG?