The Gaming Den

While I was at PAX this past weekend, my boss told me that he never read Heinlein's Rocket Ship Galileo; because it was called Rocket Ship Galileo, and not the more accurate Fucking Nazis on the Fucking Moon! His outrage at having been unsold on the book by the bland title until he was too old and cynical to enjoy it properly was intense.

And while it's too late for the book, I believe that the name and base concept are perfectly acceptable for a modern cooperative board game. Each player takes the role of a plucky teen, all of which are traveling to the moon with a local scientist on a lark. There's a time limit, based on the impending Nazi assault from the moon that the characters are unaware of, but the players are.

Phase 1: Build a Rocket
Searching the neighborhood to find components for their rocket ship. It must be fast to make the journey in appropriate time, maneuverable and armored to protect it from hazards, and instrumented for scientific purposes.

Phase 2: Travel to the Moon
The journey is full of problems, because yours is not a professionally-made ship and space is dangerous.

Phase 3: Fucking Nazis!
Once on the Moon, find a way to deal with the fucking Nazis who are there, apparently. Try to sabotage their base reactor? Use their comms to call in a preemptive strike from Earth? Gather intelligence to deliver to the authorities at home before escaping in a stolen Nazi ship?


Does this appeal to anyone whose brain isn't fried from working a huge convention?

http://www.ironsky.net

Also, if I were going to fly to the moon you can be damn' sure it would be in an icosahedron covered in gravity-blocking paint (covered by gravity-blocking paint-blocking shutters) full of wood paneling, red velvet, and chickens.

I could see it as being kind of like Earthbound or Flash Gordon in theme. And I think it would work better if you were not entirely sure what the lunar menace was.

Imagine for the moment that you have an Act Deck that has a series of symbols. Each symbol is color coded, and during each Act of the game, you'd draw another card. And you'd have a villain suspect that would itself have three symbols on it. And when you drew the act card, you would draw and discard the Enemy card until you got an Enemy consistent with every symbol that had been drawn on that and previous acts. So before Act III, the enemy could be unmasked as actually being a different enemy.

Each of the enemy cards has effects listed for each act. So early on it's strange sitings and space monsters and falling stars. In Act III it's Aryan Supermen in flying saucers going apeshit on your town. The point is that Act III also includes victory conditions. Before that, you're just trying to do various holding actions and advance to the next act before you lose the game Arkham style.

So you get from Act I to Act II by getting to the Moon. You get from Act II to Act III by unmasking the enemy plot on the moon. You win the game by getting to Act III and stopping the enemy plot.

How many enemy cards you have to write is entirely dependent upon how many symbols you have. With 4 symbols you only need 4 enemies. With 5 symbols, you need 10, and with 6 symbols you need 20.

So... a little Betrayal in the House on the Hill, a little Arkham Horror, and a little bit of fucking moon nazis.

-Username17