Potential participation game scenario

Being a rather veteran gamer, I remember way back when to the days when Star Fleet Battles was a mere ziplock bag game for just a few quid.  And... more relevantly - to a couple of SFB participation games I saw at shows where each player had a ship and usually about 12-20 players were exploring a game table full of planets, asteroids, nebula and so on.... basically a giant treasure hunt.  Ships had to close on a location to scan it, and would either detect (and later pick up) one of the "treasures" (can't remember what they actually were!) or would have an encounter, which could be a space monster, a pirate ship, some random damage or whatever.

Can't help feeling that a game like that would work rather well for Engage at a games show, and would provide the potential to get a lot of the game features across to new players in a really fun way.  The mix of Impulse and Warp moves would really work well and make the whole game wild and unpredictable for everyone playing.  It could be a great game, and very visual - gathering attention to the game and making people want to play what would obviously be a fun game.

It would need a modified initiative system to accommodate so many individual players (or perhaps just a "select three actions then all players execute action 1 and resolve, followed by all players executing action 2 and resolving etc).  We would also probably need a deck of encounters.

The Retrieval scenario in the rulebook is already somewhat similar to this scenario and perhaps could be adapted.

Anyway... just a thought.  Would like to see Engage having a noticeable profile at some of the forthcoming shows.

Hey, Ben here.

Thanks - that's a great idea!
Did you ever partake in these big games, or just get to see them in action?

That is definitely something we'll do if we ever get the opportunity.

The next show we're at is Colours (only had space for us on the Sunday), but i'm not sure how much space we'll have.

Ben.

I remember taking part in one massive SFB game... had around thirty Klingon D7s deployed. No surprise that the game was never finished, is it?

Not sure I ever took part in any of the treasure hunt games, though I have borrowed the idea for a couple of games I ran for largish groups.

Maybe for SELWG or Salute? Salute of course being the biggest for grabbing attention. Probably the most expensive as well though, I guess. I'll be at Colours, I'm sure. Though I generally aim for the Saturday as otherwise some of the trader stock sells out.

I do think that Engage! really would make an excellent treasure hunt game.