Mastodawn

I don't really post much to social media anymore, but I thought I would report that after 29 years I finally watched all of #Babylon5 - I gave up during the telepath arc in season 5 when it was first shown.

Turns out that was a mistake, because it got pretty darn good after that! The Centauri story was really well done (and tragic, even though we basically knew what was going to happen).

The LotR analogies I've heard about the show held true given they gave each of the major characters a sending off at the end too :D (also "going beyond the Rim" is really obviously "sailing to the West"). And the last episode "Sleeping in Light" was really nicely done and very sad.

Though they did leave a few threads dangling... (like what happened to Bester's girlfriend, and what happened with that urn at the end)

But overall, it's a fantastic show and was really fun to watch it all again :). I'm off on vacation for a few weeks but maybe afterwards we'll watch Call to Arms and Crusade. #scifi

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀Mar 2

@evildrganymede

There was a supplement to the Babylon Five table top role playing game called the "Earthforce Sourcebook". Like most source books it is tedious to read.

Except the last half has a vector movement based space combat table top game which is fun to play. Including a card stock sheet of ship counters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthforce_Sourcebook

Earthforce Sourcebook - Wikipedia

@nyrath @evildrganymede I played a B5 space combat game back inthe day. Just once or twice. It was very fun. I think based on the Full Thrust game? Memory is hazy on that.

My friend who owned the game and asked me to play it with him passed away a couple of years ago and when his widow asked if I'd like to have any of his books and games these B5 games were in the top five to save.

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀Mar 3

@nikink @evildrganymede

Yes, the Babylon 5 tabletop space combat game featured in The Earthforce Sourcebook was written by Tuffy, and is based on his game Full Thrust.

Roger BW 😷Mar 3

@nyrath @nikink @evildrganymede Jon Tuffley. It was one of the few games at the time that even attempted vector movement.

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀Mar 3

@RogerBW @nikink @evildrganymede

It hit the sweet spot of right between the simplistic Triplanetary (drawing vectors on the map) and the hyper-accurate Attack Vector: Tactical (three dimensional vectors and firing arcs.

Tuffley's Full Thrust added vectors to Full Thrust with additional rules found in Fleet Book One.

Roger BW 😷Mar 3

@nyrath @nikink @evildrganymede Indeed. I don't think AV:T existed at the time (and IMO it's not really playable beyond small engagements, which makes it a bizarre choice for the Honor Harrington game) Of course both Triplanetary and Full Thrust make the error of assuming that the full impulse is applied instantly at the start of the movement rather than being spread over the duration of the movement; the quick fix for this is that your displacement from _this turn's acceleration_ should be half what the game says it is. (I don't know whether AV:T does this; I find its prose both obfuscatory and soporific.)

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀Mar 3

@RogerBW @nikink @evildrganymede

The rules for Full Thrust can be downloaded for free here: https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/rules.html

Free because they want to entice you into purchasing their miniature starships.
Download:

Full Thrust
Full Thrust Fleetbook 1 (contains vector rules)
Full Thrust Fleetbook 2
{Don't bother with More Thrust, those rules are a bit odd}

Rules - Ground Zero Games

Manufacturer of fine scale models for wargaming and collecting

Roger BW 😷Mar 3

@nyrath @nikink @evildrganymede Highly recommended, I used to play a _lot_ of this.
(Full Thrust/More Thrust are effectively v1 of the rules, and the Fleet Books dump More Thrust and replace a chunk of the original to make v2.)

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀Mar 3

@RogerBW @nikink @evildrganymede

Star Ranger used Full Thrust to make unofficial ship control sheets for lots of ships from various media scifi shows.

https://fullthrust.star-ranger.com/SFXmenu.htm

SCN - Sci-Fi Crossover Menu

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀Mar 3

@RogerBW @nikink @evildrganymede

Yes, AV:T does spread out the Full impulse over the entire turn. That was Ken's original inspiration to make his game.

Isaac Ji Kuo Mar 3

@nyrath @nikink @evildrganymede The other B5 game - the one with the hexes made of 7 sub-hexes - was weird in a wonderfully unique way.

The scale was just so bizarre, with firing arcs that mattered by it took forever to turn around ... you could more easily just keep on going across the galaxy than you could turn around to reinforce things back home a hex or so behind you.

It made you think about strategy in weird ways.

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀Mar 2

@evildrganymede

The parts about President Clark (who was vice president before the suspicious death of the former president), and the sinister NightWatch are quite relevant today

evildrganymede Mar 2

@nyrath oh yeah we thought that was insanely relevant when we were watching those parts!

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀Mar 3

@evildrganymede

Especially since those episodes were written in the 1990s. Very prescient.
But I guess it was predictable: fascists are gonna fas.

Isaac Ji Kuo Mar 3

@nyrath @evildrganymede Yeah, predictable.

At the time, assassination conspiracy theories about JFK were super popular, and the whole Iran-Contra thing made it clear the entire Republican Party was obsessed with making Watergate not even illegal the next time.

And TEOTWAKI was super trendy at the time, because the conspiracy theory nuts were going crazy over Bush's "New World Order" stuff.

@evildrganymede Strangely enough, I watched every episode of B5 twice back in the 90's, sometimes more, but I never watched the final episode of Season 5. I could never bring myself to end it.

Until last year when I rewatched the entire show and *finally* watched Sleeping in Light to close it all off at long last.

60sRefugee Mar 3

@evildrganymede There was an episode in which Sheridan is time-skipped to a future where he and Delenn are Londo's prisoners on Centauri Prime, but despite their predicament Delenn tells Sheridan that their son is "safe". I took that to mean that he escaped the controller.

Anton Sherwood Mar 3

@evildrganymede And why didn't Londo, in the last hour of his life, warn about the urn