FTL Is A Board Game

[Tuesday]

Just an FYI, this guy has been working on a Tabletop roleplaying version of FTL:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2835

[notacomputer]

If anyone still follows this thread there is another board game that is very similar to FtL. Though it is in a steampunk setting. Its called Zephyr: Winds of Change. More info here: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/180853/zephyr-winds-change or here: http://www.zephyrboardgame.com/

[Robert Scythe]

FTL seems to take a lot of concepts from a board/roleplaying game called "Battle Stations" that uses similar crew races and tile set up ship designs. A friend of mine introduced it to us and we went " Oh, shit, this is FTL!" We found out later that "Battle Stations" predates FTL by 5 years or something like that. It has all the elements of FTL and more with its lore and roleplaying aspects as well as its ship to ship combat including crew interactions and boarding parties.

[johnyjackson]

It took me a while to realize this, but if you consider it FTL is effectively a very complex board game that handles the bookkeeping automatically.

You have land tiles, each providing a different resource like attack strength or oxygen. You have three kinds of pieces you can move around the board, power, crew, and targets. Your money is scrap, missiles, drones, and fuel. On a very basic level, investing scrap in a subsystem has a lot in common with buying hotels in monopoly. You're enhancing a piece of land so that it can sap resources from the opponent. Random events could be viewed as a form of chance and community chest cards.

In fact, what element of FTL could not be recreated in a similar form with paper and dice? All of it I suspect, but the bookkeeping would get too time consuming. It would be easiest if converted to a turn based game, but even a real-time game where both you and someone playing the opponent can call a time-out at any moment to issue new orders could potentially work, and use stopwatches to measure things when things happen like weapon firing , engine spin-up, and health loss from oxygen.

The strength of FTL is that it combines many different kinds of board games together, and based on random chance and player choice draws in elements from different ones. One playthrough of FTL might be a more tactical game, like checkers or chess. Another playthrough might be more luck based, like candyland or chutes & ladders. Many playthroughs rest somewhere between those two extremes, where there's a healthy dose of luck involved but you can make gambles based on calculated risks. The game stays fresh because it's really hundreds of overlapping similar board games and you get a different one each time.

would love to see it as a board game, but I don't think that ALL of the game's elements can be incorporated in a board game.

[GeorgeCloutier]

I made an account just to say this:

Space Alert

FTL is already a board game, and it's called "Space Alert" and it is AMAZING. It's also the most stressful boardgame you'll ever play, even moreso than FTL. At least in FTL there's a pause button, Space Alert is in real time.

Basically every member of your crew in FTL is a human player in Space Alert, the game is played in real time and everyone needs to work together to fire the weapons, charge the shields, and fend off boarders. Enemy ships plentiful, and are represented by a single card with stats. (no, you cannot board them, but don't worry, you wouldn't want to anyway)

Check it out, it's well worth picking up. When I saw a friend playing FTL I figured it was Space Alert in Video Game form. They're both maddening in their own ways, but Space Alert does provide for more social aspects.

Also Space Alert has an expansion making in even more crazy. Y'all should check it out!

The idea for FTL was inspired by tabletop board games, such as Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game