Spaceship 47

The theme of the game is to evoke the feel of a 90s Science Fiction TV show. Back in the 90s, I was a massive fan of Star Trek and Babylon 5 and to a lesser extent Stargate SG-1 and wanted to write my own space exploration TV show. Of course, I was a teenager who never went near the TV industry. But as my interest in board games grew, I thought I could turn the story into a board game.

The original idea of Spaceship 47 back in the late 90s is different than the story that will be told with the board game.  Partly that is because it is impossible for an unpublished story to satay the same over 30 years but mainly it is because telling a story via a TV show and a board game are different and the story needed to change because of the media I am using for the story.

It is a funny age that we live in that there can be spoilers for a board game, but the following outlines the campaign story for the board game, so if you don’t want to be spoiled then don’t click on the spoiler below.

Click to reveal the spoiler

In the board game, Spaceship 47 is the only spaceship to escape an attack on Earth by an evil alien race called the Draydun.  A “black hole bomb” is detonated as they are leaving, slowing down time in the vicinity of Earth. This gives the spaceship 10 weeks to travel the galaxy, find allies, technology and information that they can use in the final episode where they come back to Earth to liberate the planet from the evil Draydun.

The campaign of the board game will be split into 12 missions/episodes.  The first mission will serve as the pilot episode of the board game, setting up the story of the season, then the next 10 missions will see the crew travelling around the galaxy and then the final mission will be when they attempt to take back control of Earth before the Draydun’s attack succeeds.

Each player will take the role of one of the crew of the spaceship and the players will work together to complete each mission using their character’s powers and their own smarts to either succeed or fail the missions together.

There will be at least four characters to choose from (as the game is for 2 to 4 players!), with at least four species included. Below are the three non-human species, from left to right, the Stishak: a friendly alien species that could help the Humans; androids; sentient chimpanzees.

ALT TEXT: There are three images. The left most image is of a lizard like creature standing on two legs with blue and yellow skin with a lighting strike happening behind it. The centre image is of a metallic humanoid in a suit . The right most image is of two chimpanzees dressed in combat fatigues and holding guns.

All art by Symatt (https://bsky.app/profile/symatt.bsky.social)

The inclusion of the Stishak as one of the main characters is a nod to Star Trek where one of the main characters is always an alien (TOS: Spock; TNG: Worf; DS9: Kira Nerys; Voyager: Tuvok) although the Stishak character is more like Teal’c in SG-1 as it knows more about the galaxy that the humans are exploring.

Another nod to Star Trek is the Crimson Shirted Rookies that the players will have with them on each mission that can be sacrificed to stop bad things happening to the main characters. These Crimson Shirted Rookies are replenished at the start of each mission.

As well as a Species, each character will also have a profession. I am unsure which professions will be included in the game, but the Stishak will almost certainly be a Diplomat. Other professions may include: Engineer, Doctor, Security Officer, Scout, Sniper (which would be called Deadeye in the game) and Science Officer.

The next blog post will discuss the first mission and will hopefully talk about some of the rules of the game.