I can’t believe that is been nearly a month since the last project update. Sorry for the delay, guys; time is just flying by way too fast on this end, and sometimes it is frustrating that I don’t has as much substantial progress to report than I would like.

The last month has been spent continuing the process of combing through the current VBAM 2E draft and seeing what final changes need to be made to the rules, either for game balance or completeness reasons or because of space concerns. After doing some judicious cutting we are currently sitting at around 160-170 pages without the CSCR/CGCR, scenarios, or complete introductory chapters in place. Final page count for the 2E Campaign Guide is likely to be around 200 pages, or about 80 pages longer than the original Campaign Guide.

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It has been awhile since our last general update, and for that I must apologize. The month of January was a hectic one for the VBAM crew, and our work and personal responsibilities got the better of us and left very little time to work on VBAM projects. I was especially hard hit by a slew of projects which kept me from getting much done on VBAM 2E during that month, but my work schedule has since improved and I am happy to report some additional progress has been made in the last few weeks.
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This is a late update just to keep everyone in the loop as to where we are at with Second Edition. I spent most of the weekend working on integrating additional notes and making changes to existing rules. Specifically, I spent a great deal of time moving the trade and piracy rules into their own chapter, coincidentally entitled “Trade & Piracy”. This moves the rules for trade links and trade routes out of the Economics chapter, and the piracy rules out of the Space Combat chapter. At first blush, I think the move will benefit both concepts fit well together.
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As promised, here is a shotgun blast of new information relating to VBAM Second Edition! Below you will find draft versions of three new 2E chapters.

VBAM 2E – Empires

VBAM 2E – Colonies

VBAM 2E – Economics

Now, a few caveats on these materials. First, the Empires section, though mostly complete, is currently undergoing some pretty heavy revision to merge several topics in the latter half of the chapter into a single entity. You will also notice that the rules for the Releasing Empires are not present, but rather are represented by a scattering of nonsensical notes. This is because I am still trying to figure out the best way to translate these rules into practical game effects and achieve the correct level of game balance. Expect these gaps to be filled in later on.

Additionally, in the government rules in that chapter, the descriptions for some governments are missing, and they also show some older bonuses for each government type. I will be updating those this weekend, after which point I will post an updated version of the rules for people to use. Right now, however, it is complete enough to give you an idea of what kinds of bonuses/penalties each government type and focus will provide.

Also of extreme interest on this end is to hear back about what players think about the new empire generations rules for 2E. These provide a good framework for players and CMs to use when creating new empires, and they also provide a bit of randomness that CMs can use to generate new and interesting non-player empires.

The Colonies rules are mostly complete, though the infrastructure descriptions will be fleshed out following the next draft revision of the Supply rules. There are also some sections of the morale that are in need of final revision.

The Economic rules provide a good overview of where we are going with the economics in game, including the current playtest version of the new trade rules.

I hope you and your family have a great holiday weekend, and we look forward to hearing from you about these new topics. Later this weekend I will hopefully get some more content posted for review, but for right now this should give most of you something to digest!

Just a quick message posted from the middle of a system wipe and reinstall (oh joy!) to let customers know that we now have 25 mm hex bases and both low and high height flying stands available for purchase at the VBAM Store. They are available in quantities of 10 for $1.50 USD or 50 for $6.00 USD. These are the same style of bases and stands that come with our miniatures.

While I was adding the stands to our online catalog, I also went through and discounted several of our miniatures, especially those in the Boltian/Kuissian line. Take a look and see if any of them have hit a price point that you like and get some ordered! Do it now! Not so subtle, pushy marketing has to work, right?

Another addition to the catalog is a discounted PDF 1E campaign rules package that includes the Campaign Guide, Campaign Moderator’s Companion, and The Menagerie as a single download at half the normal price. This product was added in order to give late-comers to the game a chance to pick up the rules and join in on the 2E debate and discussion prior to its release early next year.

As for the promised VBAM 2E Colonies update — that will be posted later tonight. As alluded to earlier in this update, “bit rot” finally overwhelmed my development system these last few weeks and I had to break down and finally sit down and do a Windows reinstall. Luckily, I had ordered some replacement parts almost two months ago in anticipation of having to do this, so I now have a new 1TB hard drive and DVD-RW drive in the system. I am currently porting all of my content from one drive to the other, and so far everything seems to be working (knock on wood). The fact that I was reinstalling Windows, drivers, and software kept me away from mail and internet last night, but as evidenced by this update things are back up and working again.

The Colonies update will be joined by the Economics and Empire sections — a Christmas bonus for our VBAM players! We really do appreciate your time and energy, and the fact that you have found some enjoyment in the campaign system. Here’s to a very Merry Happy — and look for those updates tonight!

Welcome to this third (and much belated) installment of the VBAM Second Edition preview series. The last few weeks have been busy ones for me, both personally and professionally. It is obviously “that time of year again,” during which we find ourselves pulled in a hundred different directions. Despite all of this, work on 2E has continued to move forward. I am at the awkward stage of development at which every minor change, clarification, or restructuring creates a cascade effect requiring that other sections of the rules be updated to reflect these new modifications. It is for that reason that I have held off until now to release additional playtest materials for review. I wanted to make sure that as much of the materials were ready for review as possible before placing them out there for public scrutiny.
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