Anyone want to help thrash out campaign rules??

[fredmiracle]

Fred, thank you so much for making this excellent CDG for campaigns.
After looking over your rules and map, I think it's very nearly there. It looks easy and fun to play.

thanks!! I'm eager to work some more on it, although time just hasn't been on my side. I haven't even had time to finish thinking about Ozeriig's thoughtful comments. The bit we played over Christmas seems promising, but also like significant testing and tweaking is needed to perfect it.

I feel very strongly that players should be in the role of the human commander, not God or Neptune. So the player should only be able to play cards that represent things somewhat under his or her control.

I can understand that perspective. Personally I don't mind it being somewhat 'gamey'--I kind of like the idea of sticking a typhoon on your opponent. I guess because it is the Aubrey/Hornblower genre that inspired it, and because those guys are undeniably pretty lucky as well as skillful (and in a sense their skill often appears as creating good luck for themselves--Hornblower would sense from the froth on the waves that a typhoon was over the horizon) it fits my sensibilities.

But I'm not hung up on it, and can see the possibility of having a separate random events deck. Exactly how that fits into the gameplay (i.e. how do the right cards get chosen to interject themselves into a chase sequence as opposed to disrupting a blockade) would definitely need some thought. Also I have so-far resisted multiple decks (like one for "fair winds" and one for "special events") just because I like the simplicity of one deck and one basic mechanism.

P.S. -- I'm going to make a Cyberboard module for the card campaign game. That will let people play it by e-mail, and eliminate the need to have printed components for those who prefer the PC to administer things. Once I have the gamebox made, I'd like to make two scenarios for it: One would be Fred's fictional campaign scenario, and the other would be a historical Lake Ontario 1813 scenario that would use the same system but have its own subset of rules, special cards, named ships, etc.

that would be amazing. what it really needs right now is playtesting, so if it could be done in our virtual community that would greatly expedite the progress we could make.