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By tlmirkes (Tim Mirkes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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#403340
So the question came up during a game of Trek last night, and got me thinking about all the ways people have created to allow more than one opponent to share in a game of STCCG. I thought I'd post one I've used most commonly here, and with a little help from the community here, we can hopefully catalogue some of the other ways we play with our home groups.

The Wagon Wheel
Each player seeds 6 missions. An additional mission that can be attempted by any crew is used as the "hub" of the wheel. There will be as many spokes as there are players. Each player seeds a mission adjacent to the hub, placing it roughly 60 degrees from the other players' missions. The locations of the spokes are now established. Further missions will be seeded along the spokes, with each player placing their next mission in the spoke to the left of their previous seeded mission. Once the spokes are 3 missions long, players begin seeding to complete the "wheel" part of the wagon wheel, again, rotating their placement. Assuming a [Fed] / [Kli] / [Rom] game, the final layout might look like this:
Trek 3-Player Wagon Wheel.png
Trek 3-Player Wagon Wheel.png (55.39 KiB) Viewed 2648 times
Players then can seed their other cards normally under missions or at spaceline locations.

Cards which refer to "off one end of the spaceline" do nothing. Cards that refer to a "farthest location" or an "opposite end" simply refer to the mission with the greatest span from the current location (or the opposite side of the wheel ring, as convenient). Otherwise, navigation is along the spokes, outward from the hub, or along the wheel, counting span normally.

This works with 4 players as well, simply adding a spoke and spreading things out a little bit to accommodate the extra missions. 4-player setups end up taking a large space to play, but it works well, and provides some fun interactions and movement decision points. Arguably, games also bloat out in play time as more players join in, but at that point, many of the games have been more about the social time than competitive play, so the inclusive game setup serves its purpose just fine.

How else do people include more than one other player into their STCCG games? I've heard rumors of grid layouts and modified spacelines, and I want details! :D
 
 - Beta Quadrant
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#403345
How do you adapt to include regions?

Also, who seeds which dilemmas where? Is there an agreement that each player only seeds dilemmas for one other player?
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#403346
Ah, The Great Wheel! That's how I always played multiplayer, too.

Here's the original rules sheet for it, from the Decipher website:

http://ussexcelsior.com/stccg1e/1e_mult ... 110999.pdf
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By Iron Prime (Dan Van Kampen)
 - Delta Quadrant
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Moderator
#403348
BCSWowbagger wrote:Ah, The Great Wheel! That's how I always played multiplayer, too.
Me too! Though we did use a giant square the very first time- too unwiedly and we scrapped it.
Ah the memories. We used either ❖ Space or ❖ Nebula as the center/hub.

I have heard of using a 'grid' as well, sort of a proto-2E thing.
Last edited by Iron Prime on Fri Nov 17, 2017 4:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By Boffo97 (Dave Hines)
 - Gamma Quadrant
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Retired Moderator
#403354
I played it like this (mostly because I didn't pay as much attention to the Rulebook as I should before coming here).

Let's presuppose that I'm player 1, with player 2 to my left and player 3 to my right. Each of us shuffles up our missions and places them face down.

I look at player 2 and draw my first mission, playing it at what will be the end of the spaceline. He plays his mission next to it. We continue until we've each played three missions leaving a 6 mission spaceline between us. I then turn to player 3 and play my next mission, angling the spaceline towards me a bit. I play my last three missions, he plays his first 3. Then player 2 and 3 play their last 3 missions each between each other. Whether or not I can go onto their branch of the spaceline depended on the rules we were arbitrarily deciding on for this.

The nice part about this is how it adapted for more players. You can probably easily see how you'd do it for 4 or even 5 players. Of course, under such a system, playing cards like Space was right out.
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#403359
Iron Prime wrote: I have heard of using a 'grid' as well, sort of a proto-2E thing.
I've seen grid used, and it works a lot better if you have some tokens, since there's no room around the missions for stacks of people and ships.

I've also seen the grand wheel, but without the spokes. (just a big long circle).
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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Regent
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#403361
Grand wheel is fun - especially in OTSD sealed. Watching Borg Ships pinball off of multiple Q-Nets is hilarious.

Back in the day I played multiplayer with spokes but no wheel and two ❖ Space in the middle. Obviously the Black Hole would make an inevitable appearance and everyone would try to finish before the missions circled the drain. Good times!
Last edited by Armus on Fri Nov 17, 2017 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By Boffo97 (Dave Hines)
 - Gamma Quadrant
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Retired Moderator
#403362
There's also the simplest alternative... standard straight spaceline, but just with 3 people contributing rather than 2.

The only problem there is that you start needing a really long table for anything over 3 players.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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Regent
Community Contributor
#403363
EHCCGPP wrote:There's also the simplest alternative... standard straight spaceline, but just with 3 people contributing rather than 2.

The only problem there is that you start needing a really long table for anything over 3 players.
In that format I'm seeding SIX copies of Cytherians. :shifty:
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By tlmirkes (Tim Mirkes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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#403365
frakkingoff wrote:How do you adapt to include regions?

Also, who seeds which dilemmas where? Is there an agreement that each player only seeds dilemmas for one other player?
Generally, when we had someone show up with regions, we'd rearrange the wheel after the fact to bring all the region missions together, or allow the person with regions to insert them normally and let the remaining players just end up with a bunch of missions grouped neatly together. It depended on how competitive we were feeling; it tended toward the first option, but we appreciated that there was a certain balance to following the normal insertion rules with the great wheel format as well.

As far as dilemmas, when we did constructed seed decks, we'd have a lot of freedom. You could seed any player's missions, but there was a lot of "I can't put any under that guy's because I've got other things to do, so you should cover it so he doesn't get a free pass" followed by a few minutes of (sometimes heated) negotiation about "whose resposibility" it was to throw some dilemmas out for the dang Dominion player already. It introduced an interesting negotiation element to seeding, which was sometimes really fun on its own.

Eventually, our gaming time got crimped by work, school, and other life obligations, so we eventually moved to a random mix of dilemmas seeded according to mission type. This let us introduce casual players who weren't interested in learning the intricacies of seed deck construction yet still wanted to play, but also meant that setup was much faster and less politicky and/or stressful. Shuffle the pile of space/both dilemmas, whip 4 under each space mission, repeat for planet/both dilemmas, seed some facilities, and get on with the game. We could finish a 4-player game in a couple hours thanks to that random dilemma pile method.

Sure, it meant sometimes someone got a walk as their deck hit two Love Interests, Shaka, and Armus and traipsed to victory while the next guy over hit Denevan Neural Parasites, Dal'rok, Horta, and Dead End, but the randomness was part of the allure for most of us.

We learned pretty quickly to not take these games too seriously. Between the length of play time, size of the space wheel, and dilemma variability, if we weren't in it for fun, we'd sour on it pretty fast.
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By tlmirkes (Tim Mirkes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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#403367
Iron Prime wrote:I have heard of using a 'grid' as well, sort of a proto-2E thing.
Does anyone have more info about this grid? I had someone tell me about it at a sealed event at GenCon this year, too. I've seen pictures on BoardGameGeek of someone's grid-based variant. I've never actually seen rules or a setup guide for using the grid.

I assume it uses standard edge to edge movement with no diagonals, counting spans normally, using tokens for tracking as AllenGould mentioned. But how would you set up the missions? How would their position be decided, and how many people had to play to make the grid workable? I have so many questions!
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
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#403371
tlmirkes wrote: Does anyone have more info about this grid? I had someone tell me about it at a sealed event at GenCon this year, too. I've seen pictures on BoardGameGeek of someone's grid-based variant. I've never actually seen rules or a setup guide for using the grid.

I assume it uses standard edge to edge movement with no diagonals, counting spans normally, using tokens for tracking as AllenGould mentioned. But how would you set up the missions? How would their position be decided, and how many people had to play to make the grid workable? I have so many questions!
It's been literal decades since I've seen this (like, PAQ era), so this is as best as I can remember and there's probably changes that were needed.

* Movement is edge to edge, no diagonals. All sides were "spaceline edges" for the purposes of WNOHGB or the like.

* I think the missions were preset out in our game (because the guy had like a 10x10 grid going), with randomish dilemmas underneath? (Dude was *weird*.) If I were to attempt it now, I'd still give everyone six missions, have the grid already "drawn" (so people know where the edges are), and then fill in the blanks with Space and Nebula. Realistically, this is the sort of event where you have to coordinate in advance.)
 
By Se7enofMine (ChadC)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Moderator
#403375
EHCCGPP wrote:There's also the simplest alternative... standard straight spaceline, but just with 3 people contributing rather than 2.

The only problem there is that you start needing a really long table for anything over 3 players.
*in my best Scottish accent* some tables are longer than others ....

*hopefully someone gets that*


I would LOVE to sit down and play a 3 person game. That would he so awesome.

Dilemmas would be pretty easy. Make a rule ahead of time that each player MUST play 3 planet and 3 space missions. Then each player makes up combos: 2 space, 2 planet, 2 dual. That should cover off everything and not have any mis-seeds. Well unless the players are all idiots and can't count. So you start player 1, he seeds a combo at a random mission. Then player 2 and so on. All being mindful of how many missions of each type are left and what combos you have. Of something gets misseeded so be it.

My gosh that would be fun.
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By OLE_ALE
 - Beta Quadrant
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#403552
Laying out a hexagon grid and seeding missions in the spaces would be an interesting experiment, say 6 x 6. That would be plenty of spaces for four players, or even five, and empty spaces could be filled with Space. Long end of the spaceline effects could refer to the longest diagonal.
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