Anyone for Triplanetary?

From: momander@flypaper.com (Martin Omander)

Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 23:10:27 +0000

Hi all,

When randomly poking around the net the other day I found a few pages
devoted to GDW's space combat game Triplanetary. For those of you who
haven't had the chance to play this simple and elegant game, here is
an excerpt of a review written by Christopher A. Weuve
(http://www.kentaurus.com/triplan.htm):

------------------------------------------------------------------
The primary thing that Triplanetary offers is a really cool movement
system, which was later used (in a different form) in GDW's Mayday.
The scale is approximately daily turns, with the solar system from
Jupiter inwards represented on the map.
[...]
Movement is Newtonian -- once you are moving along a certain vector
(speed and direction), you continue moving along that vector until
acceleration (in the form of gravity or thrust) is applied to change
the vector.
[...]
Each ship has a basic thrust value of one, meaning that it can move
the head of the vector arrow into one of the six hexes surrounding the
hex the ship will move into if it simply coasts along its current
vector.
[...]
Each thrust point costs one fuel point; most ship types have between
15-25 fuel points, with a few having more and a few less.
------------------------------------------------------------------

I played this game back in high school and have many fond memories of
it. The simple rules allow you to concentrate on maneuvering, using
gravitational sling-shot effects around planets, and preserving fuel
so you can make it back to Earth again. The scenarios dealt with solar
system races, asteroid mining, piracy, full-scale space war, etc.

On the web pages I also found Cyberboard
(http://cyberboard.brainiac.com/), a nice piece of software that
allows you to play virtually any game by email, without having a board
taking up a table in your house all the time. The Triplanetary map and
units for Cyberboard are very well made
(http://grognard.com/info1/triplan.zip).

So now I have all the pieces to play this beauty by email! Is there
anyone out there who's up for a game or two? It would be great if you
have the box and know the rules. If not, I'm sure we can still set up
a game; I'll just have to find my old copy of the game at my parents'
house. If you've never heard of the game, but think you like what
you've heard so far, let's talk!

I'm looking for a reasonably fast-paced game where we exchange emails
every two days or so. Executing a turn would take 10-15 minutes of
your time, depending on size of scenario.

Also, if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, we could meet and play
in real life, the way they did it in the olden times :-)

/Martin Omander
martin_omander@hotmail.com